Good morning. Google wants to substantially limit the information a key auditor of YouTube can share about the risks of advertising on the video service, according to people familiar with the situation, highlighting tensions between the tech giant and Madison Avenue.

The auditor, New York-based OpenSlate, is refusing to sign a contract that would prevent it from reporting to clients when ads have run in videos with sensitive subject matter, including hate speech, adult content, children's content, profanity, violence and illegal substances, according to an email the firm sent over the weekend to ad agencies. Under the terms Google proposed, OpenSlate would need approval from Google to share certain metrics about YouTube’s content, one of the people familiar with the situation said.

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OpenSlate works with leading brands and ad agencies, like McDonald’s, Pfizer, Unilever and WPP, providing them with information to confirm that their ads on YouTube are appearing alongside content that marketers deem safe. In the email to ad agencies, which was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, OpenSlate said it hasn’t been able to reach an agreement with Google to be included in a new, updated version of YouTube’s ad-measurement program.“The terms of this program would severely limit OpenSlate’s ability to deliver transparency to clients,” the firm said in the email. The firm also said in the email that it remains open to an agreement that doesn’t include such restrictions.

Google said in a statement, “Our brand safety partners are always able to share their independent reporting with clients.” Google said OpenSlate isn’t currently among its official brand-safety partners. The company didn’t comment specifically on whether it has proposed restrictions for OpenSlate in any categories of content, citing contractual confidentiality obligations during active negotiations.

South Korea has significantly improved its legal framework on fighting money-laundering, but it needs to step up efforts to prevent public officials from laundering bribes and to solidify its ability to freeze the assets of persons and entities blacklisted by the United Nations, a global anti-money-laundering watchdog said.

The Financial Action Task Force, which sets standards and monitors anti-money-laundering and counterterrorism-financing policies in countries around the world, said South Korea has strengthened its rules and policies on those fronts since its last assessment in 2008.

North Korea has developed increasingly sophisticated hacking capabilities that have enabled it to steal from financial institutions and cryptocurrency exchanges and evade international sanctions, according to a new United Nations report.

Prepared by a panel of international experts, the report blamed North Korea for a broad range of sanctions-busting efforts through early February, using photos, maps and other information provided by U.N. members to document Pyongyang’s efforts to “flout” Security Council restrictions and obtain hundreds of millions of dollars. The report supports a view among security experts that North Korea’s hacking operations can be lucrative enough for the cash-hungry regime to help counter sanctions pressure on Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear weapons program.

• The Treasury Department on Sunday announced a rule in conjunction with U.S. Customs and Border Protection to allow companies to delay for 90 days the payment of tariffs on certain goods coming into the U.S. in March and April.
   
• China’s banks have allowed many borrowers to leave debts unpaid—or extend loan maturities—while their revenues and personal incomes have dived, on the encouragement of financial regulators and government authorities.
   
• Australia plans to require Google and Facebook to pay local media organizations for their content, the latest development in a global debate over whether the tech giants are unfairly benefiting from news articles that appear on their platforms.
   
• The U.K.’s anticompetition authority said it provisionally approved Amazon planned investment in British startup Deliveroo, citing the food-delivery company’s financial vulnerability amid the new coronavirus pandemic. The deal promises to give the e-commerce giant access to the rapidly growing delivery business in Europe at a time when the pandemic is exerting extreme pressure on the nascent industry world-wide.

An influential Senate panel is calling for stricter oversight of Chinese telecommunications companies operating in the U.S., after an investigation found years of weak supervision by regulators threatens national security.

In a forthcoming report, the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations will level sharp criticism at a group of telecom regulators for failing to scrutinize the Chinese companies and the way they handle data going back nearly two decades. Senate investigators who briefed The Wall Street Journal on their findings said that without proper oversight the Chinese companies “present an unacceptable amount of risk.”

The group of regulators—which is composed of national security officials from several agencies—is known as Team Telecom and is charged with maintaining the integrity of telecommunications infrastructure. Members of the group said they are aware of the panel’s findings that, they said, support efforts already under way to overhaul oversight of the Chinese businesses.

The federal government, scrambling to find N95 masks to protect health-care workers from coronavirus infection, has placed more than $110 million in mask orders at high prices with unproven vendors, according to a Wall Street Journal review of federal contracting data.

Some of the vendors already have missed delivery deadlines or have backed out because of supply problems. The parent company of one supplier is in bankruptcy and its owners have been accused of fraud in lawsuits by multiple business partners.

• Companies from Amazon to General Motors are exploring ways to test their employees for Covid-19 before they come in to work.
   
• Companies are suspending or terminating business agreements by relying on a common but rarely invoked escape hatch in the fine print of many commercial contracts, as the new coronavirus and government measures to slow its spread upend the economy.
   
• Restaurants and their allies are lobbying President Trump and Congress to press insurance companies to cover “business interruption” claims stemming from the coronavirus, even where restaurants have policies that exclude losses from pandemics.
   
• New York Fed President John Williams said that even a swift resolution to the coronavirus pandemic is unlikely to bring a fast recovery to the U.S. economy. Meanwhile, Bank of England Gov. Andrew Bailey said it is plausible that the U.K. economy could shrink by as much as 35% in the second quarter if the current lockdown lasts for three months.
   
• The coronavirus pandemic has made many tech companies’ wares more essential in ways that could add to the industry’s strength, even if it isn’t immediately reflected in the bottom line.

• Volkswagen will restart car plants across Europe, offering a pandemic-era blueprint for other global manufacturers that will alter workers’ daily lives and, at least temporarily, relegate productivity to the back seat. The world’s biggest car maker by sales is issuing new manuals to its global workforce, detailing a list of 100 workplace changes designed to minimize the risk of coronavirus infections. The changes are so extensive that unions say staff will need extra time to familiarize themselves with the new practices.

• Walmart is being tested like never before by a coronavirus pandemic that has shut down much of the nation, put 10% of its workforce on leave and led to at least 18 deaths at the company. Managing the health of workers and shoppers, reassuring local officials, and keeping stores and warehouses staffed have become a massive effort inside Walmart at a time when customers are relying more than ever on the nation’s largest retailer.
   
• U.S. steel companies are slashing production to match a sharp collapse in demand caused by manufacturers idling plants to slow the coronavirus pandemic. The U.S. steel industry has fallen into its most severe downturn since the 2008 financial crisis. U.S. Steel, ArcelorMittal and other steelmakers are ratcheting back output and shedding workers, anticipating that orders and prices will fall further.
   
• Now that millions are suddenly doing their jobs at home as a result of the new coronavirus, more companies want to know how employees are spending their time. Some of them are relying on the same surveillance tools that have been used to monitor work in the office, and they don’t always disclose when the software is added to laptops remotely.

The coronavirus crash is a profound jolt for startup founders accustomed to a sea of cash from venture capitalists floating their entrepreneurial dreams. Investors have thrown money at all kinds of startups in recent years, stretching into categories well beyond technology, from real estate to meal prep to mattresses.

Inexpensive money, fueled by a decade of low interest rates, paid the tab. Conquering founders were still following a go-big-or-go-home approach—blitzscaling, as some called it—when the pandemic arrived. After years of blowing through cash, they have to grow up fast and must make tough decisions to conserve it.

• Lululemon's decision to divvy up the role of interim finance chief and allocate it to existing executives could be an example of how companies plan to navigate CFO vacancies during the coronavirus pandemic, recruiters said.
   
• Howard Willard, the chief executive of Altria Group, stepped down from the Marlboro maker after two rocky years on the job that resulted in big losses on an investment in Juul Labs .