Good morning. Meta Platforms’ Mark Zuckerberg, TikTok’s Shou Zi Chew and other tech CEOs faced withering bipartisan criticism on Wednesday from senators who said social-media platforms must bear more legal liability when children are harmed online.

“You have blood on your hands,” Sen. Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) told the executives during a hearing of the Senate Judiciary Committee, eliciting applause from a packed audience that included many holding pictures of children.

• Grieving families were also at the hearing: Their presence lent the roughly four-hour session an emotional charge, as lawmakers repeated stories of sexual exploitation, suicide and other suffering blamed on social media.
   
• Mixed results: At the same time, it wasn’t clear it would lead to a different result than previous congressional tongue-lashings of the tech industry. Several senators acknowledged the futility of their legislative response to date, despite a bipartisan consensus that the current laws don’t adequately address harms to children on the platforms.
   
• The background: The Wall Street Journal has highlighted persistent dangers to children on social-media platforms, including how Instagram’s algorithms connect a vast network of pedophiles. Several lawmakers cited the Journal’s reporting in their criticism, and they pointed to a wave of lawsuits filed by parents and state attorneys general seeking to hold platforms accountable. Senators noted that many had been dismissed under laws designed to protect online speech.

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EBay to pay $59 million in settlement over pill presses.

EBay will pay $59 million to settle the federal government’s allegations that thousands of pill presses and encapsulating machines were sold on its popular online marketplace.

The Justice Department said Wednesday that eBay has also agreed to enhance its compliance program to resolve claims that the sales of pill presses and encapsulating machines on its platform violated the Controlled Substances Act.

Minority business grants: A new front in the legal battle over racial preferences. 

From the day the Supreme Court outlawed racial preferences in college admissions last year, the business world has been sorting through what the decision might portend for programs that seek to boost opportunities for minorities. A case examining a venture-capital firm’s grants to Black women entrepreneurs could begin to provide some answers.

A federal appeals court on Wednesday will consider a challenge to a program run by the Fearless Fund, an Atlanta-based venture firm that awards grants, through its philanthropic arm, to Black women looking to grow their startups. The grants, funded through corporate donations, provide $20,000 as well as mentorship and training opportunities.

• Dutch regulators on Wednesday fined Uber Technologies 10 million euros, approximately $10.9 million, accusing the ride-hailing company of violating European privacy laws.
   
• A federal judge Wednesday dismissed Disney’s lawsuit alleging Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and his allies retaliated against the company for criticizing legislation he backed, a blow to the entertainment giant in its long-running battle with the governor.
   
• Universal Music Group, the world’s largest music company, said it would stop licensing content to TikTok if the firm fails to reach a new contract with the social-media app to pay its musicians, which include Taylor Swift and Drake.
   
• Amazon.com is facing a government order that could make it responsible for the safety of goods that it sells for outside vendors on its website and ships for them through its logistics network.
   
• The case that brought down Elon Musk’s multibillion-dollar pay package at Tesla was driven by a lawyer who spent decades representing big companies like Goldman Sachs and 21st Century Fox, and a shareholder who played drums in a heavy metal band.
   
• The 15% global minimum tax is here, and it is raising corporate tax payments—just not in the U.S.
   
• Donald Trump has strategically sought to leverage his courtroom appearances for fundraising and to rally his base, but civil litigation against the former president is casting an increasingly dark cloud over his finances.

Humanitarian crisis in Gaza to deepen as aid is frozen. 

Funding cuts from the U.S. and other international donors will likely hit the United Nations’ Palestinian refugee agency operations over the coming month, adding to the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and raising difficult questions for Washington about how best to deliver aid as the war drags on.

At least 10 countries, some of them the agency’s biggest donors, have suspended funding following allegations that at least 12 of its employees had connections to Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel that authorities say killed about 1,200 people and saw some 240 others abducted. Intelligence reports seen by The Wall Street Journal said around 10% of all of the agency’s Gaza staff have ties to Islamist militant groups.

• U.S. Presses for Long Cease-Fire to Pave Way for End of Gaza War

Corporate repayment risk globally improved in 2023.

The risk of companies not getting paid improved globally in 2023, according to a new study by insurer Allianz Trade, suggesting the world economy maintained its resilience despite wars and other global shocks that threatened economic stability.

Allianz Trade, a subsidiary of insurer Allianz that provides trade credit insurance and credit management, said 21 countries posed less risk of non-payment last year, including China, South Africa, Morocco, Greece and Iceland, while four countries, including Egypt, posed more risk. Allianz Trade in 2022 said eight countries posed less risk and 17 more.

In the U.S., Allianz Trade said business risk remains low, with favorable economic policies, strong corporate finances and falling inflation indicating a soft economic landing is likely this year. Allianz Trade pointed out several factors that could present increased longer-term business risk in the U.S., including an aging workforce and an increasingly divisive political climate. Read the complete study here.

—David Smagalla

• The U.S. government said it had disrupted a uniquely dangerous and potentially life-threatening Chinese hacking operation that hijacked hundreds of infected routers and used them to covertly target American and allied critical infrastructure networks.
   
• China’s finance ministry promised more proactive government spending this year, as Beijing doubles down on boosting the economy amid a deepening property slump, while wary economists say bolder moves are needed to rejuvenate growth.
   
• Western officials and Ukrainian soldiers are warning that rising tensions between President Volodymyr Zelensky and his top general could hamper the country’s war effort against Russia.
   
• The Federal Reserve formally shifted its interest-rate outlook, providing flexibility to lower rates in the coming months if it is convinced inflation hazards have receded.
   
• New York Community Bancorp stock plunged 38%, reigniting fears for regional banks.
   
• Volvo Car said it won’t provide further funding to Polestar, the electric-car maker it created with Volvo’s Chinese owner Geely—the latest EV retrenchment by the global auto industry.
   
• Deutsche Bank plans to cut about 3,500 jobs in a bid to reduce costs after it reported a drop in profit due to higher expenses.

• H&M Hennes & Mauritz has unexpectedly replaced its chief executive as the fast-fashion giant seeks to revive its fortunes after several years of stagnant growth and nonstop crises.
   
• BlackRock’s $10 trillion asset management empire is built around passive index investing. Chief Executive Larry Fink is betting that infrastructure will help drive his firm’s next wave of growth.
   
• 23andMe’s fall from $6 billion to nearly $0: The once-hot DNA-testing company is struggling to profit. 
   
• The House passed a bipartisan tax-cut bill that would deliver billions of dollars to companies and low-income families, overcoming election-year inertia and a series of objections from lawmakers in both parties.
   
• European Union leaders agreed to a $54 billion budget aid package for Ukraine on Thursday, locking in their financing for Kyiv for the next four years and overcoming weeks of opposition from Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban.

Follow us on X at @WSJRisk. Follow Risk & Compliance editor David Smagalla @DSmagalla_DJ and reporters Mengqi Sun @_MengqiSun, Dylan Tokar @dgtokar and Richard Vanderford @VanderfordRich.

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