Good morning. The Justice Department proposed a rollback of legal protections that online platforms have enjoyed for more than two decades, in an effort to make tech companies more responsible in how they police their content. The department’s changes are designed to spur online platforms to be more aggressive in addressing illicit and harmful conduct on their sites, and to be fairer and more consistent in their decisions to take down content they find objectionable. The department said the time was ripe to realign tech-company legal immunity “with the realities of the modern internet.”

The proposal—the latest effort to revamp the defining law of the internet age—would have to be adopted by a divided Congress, and it could be difficult to get such a complicated, controversial plan enacted in an election year. Still, the move represents an escalation in a continuing clash between the White House and big tech firms such as Twitter, Google and Facebook.

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Last month, President Trump signed an executive order that sought to target the legal protections of social-media companies, responding to concerns among some conservatives about alleged online censorship by the platforms. The executive order aimed to limit legal immunity for social-media companies when they are deemed to unfairly curb users’ speech, for instance by deleting their posts or suspending their accounts. The administration, however, can’t impose many of these changes unilaterally.

The Justice Department’s proposed changes address the type of speech concerns raised by Mr. Trump, but they extend more broadly, seeking to strip civil immunity afforded to tech companies in a range of other circumstances if online platforms are complicit in unlawful behavior taking place on their networks.

Meanwhile, several American civil-rights groups are encouraging big advertisers to pull spending from Facebook to protest what they say is the company’s failure to make its platform a less-hostile place. The campaign, announced Wednesday, comes after years of private discussions between these groups and Facebook, which the activists say have amounted to little change in the way the social-media giant enforces its policies around hate speech and misinformation.

False statements made by applicants for coronavirus relief loans and cyberattacks on the health-care industry are among the the coronavirus-related enforcement issues facing the U.S. Department of Justice, according to criminal division chief Brian Benczkowski.

Meanwhile, Steven Peikin, a co-director of enforcement for the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, said the regulator was looking at whether market disruptions stemming from the pandemic were creating opportunities for misconduct.

Federal prosecutors accused a Chinese manufacturer of selling 140,000 defective masks to a U.S. distributor, the latest case brought against a company for allegedly selling substandard products that could put wearers at risk amid the coronavirus pandemic.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents stopped the masks for inspection at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York in early May, according to a complaint filed Wednesday by the U.S. attorney’s office for the District of New Jersey.

Prosecutors alleged that Shenzhen, China-based Crawford Technology Group (HK) Co. sold masks that claimed to meet regulations which require them to filter out at least 95% of very small particles, including droplets containing viruses. The company claimed the masks were KN95s, which are similar to N95 masks in the U.S., according to the 13-page complaint. Such masks are widely used by health-care workers.

• The Trump administration launched a new phase in its effort to pressure Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to end a civil war that has taken hundreds of thousands of lives, blacklisting Syrian businessmen, officials and family members of the regime leader. Senior U.S. officials said the action was the first salvo in a series of sanctions planned for the coming months. Targets include other officials and businesses the U.S. says are supporting and profiting from the decadelong war at the expense of civilians.
   
• The former chief executive of Bumble Bee Foods was sentenced to more than three years in jail for his lead role in a conspiracy to fix prices of canned tuna, the Justice Department said. A jury, after a four-week trial in late 2019, convicted Christopher Lischewski of participating in an antitrust scheme to fix canned-tuna prices in the U.S. from around November 2010 to December 2013. He had been charged in May 2018 for the case. Mr. Lischewski was also ordered to pay a $100,000 fine for the scheme, which affected more than $600 million in canned-tuna sales, prosecutors said.
   
• The Senate Commerce Committee issued strong bipartisan complaints about what lawmakers alleged has been persistent foot-dragging by the Federal Aviation Administration in providing internal documents related to the agency’s initial certification of Boeing’s embattled 737 MAX jets.
   
• Bankrupt rental-car company Hertz Global Holdings suspended its sale of up to $500 million in shares after the Securities and Exchange Commission said it had questions about the deal.
   
• The European Commission outlined options to redress what it described as market distortions stemming from state-subsidized foreign firms. The proposals aim to prevent foreign companies that have received significant grants, loans, tax credits or other forms of state aid from acquiring European companies or competing with them for certain contracts inside the EU.
   
• As the U.S. and other world powers hurtle toward a confrontation over the Iran nuclear accord, European diplomats are trying to forge a compromise to save the deal from collapse by proposing a limited extension of the arms embargo on Tehran. A five-year ban on conventional-arms trade with Iran was included in the 2015 nuclear deal and is set to expire on October 18.
   
• The Justice Department Inked a Deal to Sell 1MDB Penthouse for 64% Off. The Condo Board Is Fighting Back.

AmTrust Financial Services Inc. and its former chief financial officer agreed Tuesday to pay $10.5 million to settle allegations they failed to fully disclose how they estimated losses from insurance claims.

The civil settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission resolves an investigation that New York-based AmTrust disclosed in 2018, at which time it had been under way for nearly five years.

A group of whistleblowers that included a former auditor at BDO USA LLP as well as Harry Markopolos, who exposed Bernard Madoff’s Ponzi scheme, reported questionable accounting practices at AmTrust to authorities, The Wall Street Journal reported in 2017.

The PepsiCo unit that sells Aunt Jemima products said it would retire the brand because of its origins in racist imagery of black people. Mars said it would change its Uncle Ben’s brand. And Conagra Brands said it was reviewing its Mrs. Butterworth’s bottle.

The owners of the supermarket staples, much like the owners of classic films like “Gone With the Wind” and popular police TV shows, are rethinking their products and marketing as the U.S. confronts racial disparities following the killing of George Floyd. More companies are commemorating Juneteenth, and Nascar has banned the Confederate battle flag at its events.

• Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said recent economic improvement could be jeopardized if Congress curtailed support to workers displaced and businesses shuttered by the coronavirus pandemic.
   
• Germany recorded its largest local Covid-19 outbreak since it started reopening its economy in early May, with more than 600 employees of a slaughterhouse testing positive for coronavirus this week, authorities said on Wednesday. The announcement highlighted the risk of a new spike in infections even as the pace of the coronavirus pandemic is slowing across Europe.
   
• Chinese officials cancelled hundreds of flights in and out of Beijing, restricted movement and renewed closures of businesses and schools as they battled to contain a fresh wave of new coronavirus cases in the nation’s capital.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin declared an impasse in international talks on how countries tax multinational corporations, increasing the odds of an escalating trade and tariff dispute in the midst of a global downturn.

Mr. Mnuchin’s move made the already-fragile talks even less likely to reach a conclusion, solidifying a breakdown that had been months in the making. Without a deal, European countries are more likely to press ahead with targeted taxes on digital companies, including U.S. tech giants such as Facebook Inc. and Alphabet Inc. If that happens, the U.S. has threatened to impose retaliatory tariffs.

Google announced a new hiring goal to dramatically boost the number of black executives at the search giant. The initiative, laid out in a memo to staff Wednesday by Chief Executive Sundar Pichai, places the company firmly to one side on cultural issues that have historically roiled its staff. The company has been the subject of lawsuits and fevered internal debate over whether efforts to increase diversity discriminated against white and Asian men.

Mr. Pichai said he aimed to increase the proportion of “leadership representation of underrepresented groups” overall by 30% at the company by 2025. He added that the Alphabet Inc. unit would provide $175 million in a mix of financing and funding to related businesses.

• Netflix CEO Reed Hastings and his wife, Patty Quillin, are donating $120 million to historically black colleges and universities, with the funds being split among Morehouse and Spelman Colleges and the United Negro College Fund. The funds—which, when combined, make for the largest gift ever to historically black colleges—will be used for student scholarships and to help some schools rebound from the financial crisis brought on by the coronavirus pandemic.

Target plans to raise starting wages for hourly workers to $15 next month, permanently extending a temporary increase implemented during the coronavirus pandemic and following through ahead of schedule on a pledge made years ago. Target in 2017 said it would gradually move starting wages for hourly workers to $15 by the end of this year. Before the pandemic, Target paid hourly workers at least $13 an hour.

Like other retailers deemed essential during the pandemic, Target raised wages and other benefits as it worked to remain open. At retailers, those measures were meant to reward employees for what is sometimes stressful and dangerous work and to keep stores and warehouses staffed.

• HSBC Holdings resumed plans to cut about 15% of its massive workforce after pausing layoffs because of the coronavirus pandemic. The bank said in February it would shed 35,000 jobs and cut business lines and customer relationships across the U.S. and Europe and refocus the bank on its Asian heartland.