Good morning. Amazon employees have used data about independent sellers on the company’s platform to develop competing products, a practice at odds with the company’s stated policies.

The online retailing giant has long asserted, including to Congress, that when it makes and sells its own products, it doesn’t use information it collects from the site’s individual third-party sellers—data those sellers view as proprietary. Yet interviews with more than 20 former employees of Amazon’s private-label business and documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal reveal that employees did just that. 

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Such information can help Amazon decide how to price an item, which features to copy or whether to enter a product segment based on its earning potential, according to people familiar with the practice, including a current employee and some former employees who participated in it.

A top congressional committee investigating technology companies has now questioned whether Amazon misled Congress in sworn testimony.

• Juul Labs and other e-cigarette makers now have until early September to either submit their vaping products for federal review or take them off the U.S. market. A federal court granted the Food and Drug Administration permission to extend the deadline from May 12 because the coronavirus pandemic had disrupted laboratory work required for the manufacturers’ applications. The FDA also said some of its staff had been redeployed to work for the U.S. Public Health Service during the outbreak.
   
• The Texas Attorney General filed a lawsuit accusing Cal-Maine Foods Inc., the nation’s largest egg producer, of price-gouging and profiting illegally off the coronavirus pandemic by selling eggs at more than 300% of their normal cost. “Cal-Maine is taking advantage of a disaster by offering for sale…eggs at exorbitant or excessive prices,” Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office alleged in a lawsuit filed in state court, charging the company with violations of the state’s Deceptive Trade Practices Act.
   
• In a ruling that favored environmentalists, the Supreme Court said Thursday the federal Clean Water Act applies to pollution sources like pipes and wells when their discharges are essentially equivalent to polluting directly into rivers, lakes or oceans.

About 4.4 million Americans sought unemployment benefits last week, bringing the total claims for the past five weeks to more than 26 million, the Labor Department said Thursday. 

The tally comes as business activity in the U.S., Europe and Japan collapsed in April as governments tightened restrictions on movement and social interaction aimed at limiting the spread of the coronavirus, according to surveys of purchasing managers.

Federal Reserve officials turn next week to planning and implementation rather than announcing new initiatives, after several frenzied weeks creating a raft of emergency lending programs.

• J.C. Penney is in advanced talks for bankruptcy funding with a group of lenders, a sign the troubled retailer is about to succumb to the economic collapse caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

One project aims to help connect health-care providers with trusted, nontraditional suppliers of medical equipment. It typically takes about four to six weeks for buyers to vet and onboard new vendors or suppliers after they find each other, according to Mark Treshock, IBM's global blockchain solutions leader for health care and life sciences. The blockchain could help “dramatically” bring that time down for health-care providers in dire need of equipment such as masks, test kits and ventilators, he said.

With public scrutiny of the coronavirus rescue intensifying, the Treasury Department asked publicly traded companies to repay loans they received from a federal program intended to aid small businesses.

Ruth’s Hospitality Group Inc., the owner of the Ruth’s Chris Steak House chain, said Thursday it would refund $20 million. It was among 150 public companies that received nearly $600 million in forgivable loans this month from the Paycheck Protection Program.

The Federal Reserve said it plans to disclose monthly the borrowers, loan amounts and interest rates on funding from several new lending programs the central bank is in the process of establishing.

Meanwhile, Sen. Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) is asking banks to address whether they favored certain borrowers in processing applications for government-backed small business loans, in violation of the program’s mandate for treating applications on a first-come, first-served basis.

• Google said it would require all advertisers to verify their identities to purchase ads through the company’s ad-buying software, a move that would help it crack down on ads purveying misinformation or products related to the coronavirus.

The unknown depth and duration of the coronavirus pandemic has disrupted finance chiefs’ ability to generate sound forecasts, complicating efforts to conduct the required impairment tests for goodwill, securities lawyers and valuation experts say.

The scenario is forcing companies to devote more time and resources to determining when to perform their impairment tests and, if necessary, record a charge for goodwill.

Goodwill is created when a company acquires another business for more than the value of its hard assets. U.S. accounting standards require companies to test for goodwill impairment at least once a year to determine whether future cash flows associated with an acquisition are still expected.

Films and hit shows such as “Contagion” and “Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness” have been huge draws for streaming services in recent weeks, and for illegal websites that host pirated copies.

Business is booming on these sites since stay-at-home orders went into effect in many countries during March. Visits by U.S. and U.K. residents jumped about 31% from February to March, according to London-based Muso TNT Ltd., which tracks piracy trends. Numbers from residents of Germany, Portugal, Spain and India were comparable, while Italy saw the largest jump, at over 50%.

• Gap warned it had burned through half its cash savings, even after drawing down its entire credit line and skipping April rent payments, and would need to raise additional money to fund its operations this year.
   
• The construction industry is at the heart of the debate over how to safeguard public health while also preventing the economy from grinding to a halt. Builders contend with a patchwork of state and local rules for working during the pandemic, and governments are constantly re-evaluating their restrictions.

Expedia Group named a new chief executive as the online travel-booking company confirmed it will raise billions to shore up a business that has been devastated by the coronavirus pandemic. The company, which had been without a chief executive and permanent finance chief since December, named Vice Chairman Peter Kern as CEO and gave acting Chief Financial Officer Eric Hart the role permanently, the company said Thursday

The Seattle company agreed to sell a roughly $1.2 billion equity stake to Silver Lake and Apollo Global Management and to give each private-equity firm a seat on its board. Expedia also said it would issue $2 billion of additional debt and take other steps, including halting dividends, cutting executive salaries and furloughing some employees, as travel remains at a virtual standstill.

• DraftKings took a step toward trading on public markets as shareholders of a special-purpose acquisition company voted to approve its takeover of the sports-betting operator.
   
• A buzzy fintech firm that pitches individuals access to investments normally limited to large institutions is under fire from dozens of customers. The customers are calling on digital-wealth management platform Yieldstreet Inc. for a full explanation of why their investments haven’t paid out as expected.

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Send comments to the Risk & Compliance editor, Jack Hagel, at jack.hagel@wsj.com