Good morning. Billionaire Changpeng Zhao, founder of the world’s biggest crypto exchange, Binance, was sentenced Tuesday to four months in prison, a lighter punishment than requested by prosecutors who hoped to send a message about crime in the industry.

• AML violation: Zhao, 47, pleaded guilty in November to violating U.S. anti-money-laundering requirements. He agreed to step down as Binance’s chief executive. Zhao remains Binance’s majority shareholder.
   
• Crypto crackdown: The sentence was a culmination of a multiyear U.S. criminal investigation into Binance and showed how U.S. law enforcers have targeted the national-security and money-laundering risks posed by cryptocurrencies. The government has thrown more of its arsenal at the freewheeling crypto industry, including using sanctions to disrupt exchanges and dealers that allegedly cater to cybercriminals and U.S. adversaries.
   
• Billions in fines: Binance itself pleaded guilty to anti-money-laundering violations in a deal with the Justice Department—agreeing to pay fines totaling $4.3 billion and to allow oversight by an independent monitor.

Meta faces EU probe over disinformation ahead of elections.

The European Union is investigating whether Meta Platforms shirked responsibility in tackling disinformation and misleading advertising in breach of its sweeping digital regulation ahead of EU elections in June.

The European Commission, the EU’s executive arm, said Tuesday that it had opened formal proceedings against Facebook and Instagram over suspected infringements of the Digital Services Act when it comes to deceptive advertising and political content on Meta’s platforms.

China moving forced laborers amid U.S. Crackdown, Biden official says.

Forced laborers are being transferred from China’s Xinjiang region to elsewhere in the country in growing numbers, a Biden administration official said, a problem that could test corporate efforts to comply with a U.S. supply-chain crackdown.

Thea Lee, the deputy undersecretary for international affairs at the U.S. Labor Department, said China is increasingly transferring Uyghur forced laborers and other minorities, whose homes are in Xinjiang, to work elsewhere in the country.

• The Biden administration is seeking to reclassify marijuana as a less dangerous drug, a historic move that could make it much easier to buy and sell pot and make the multibillion-dollar industry more profitable.
   
• The Federal Trade Commission is challenging hundreds of pharmaceutical patent listings in an effort to smooth the path to more affordable alternatives to brand-name drugs—including blockbusters such as Ozempic and Victoza.

• TD Bank said it would set aside $450 million for fines it is likely to face from U.S. regulators because of weaknesses with its anti-money laundering practices.

China hints at new growth push as it warns of rising uncertainties.

China signaled a new campaign to rekindle flagging growth, a fresh sign of rising angst at the very top of China’s government over the prospects for the world’s second-largest economy.

At a Tuesday meeting, the Communist Party’s elite Politburo hinted at lowering borrowing costs further and extending new help for the property market while announcing plans to convene a long-deferred policy meeting.

The promise of further action comes as the latest data suggest growth is softening after a decent, if uneven, start to the year, with surveys pointing to weakening activity in manufacturing and services and figures showing a recent plunge in industrial profits.

• China’s Factory Activity Keeps Growing But Loses Some Steam
• McDonald’s Supersizes China Bet as Corporate America Pulls Back

• NATO has been drilling troops to face a Russia threat. But internal disputes over member spending, leadership and new entrants are a problem right now.
   
• North Korea will soon be able to flout sanctions more easily.

• Amazon.com reported record first-quarter sales as the AI boom powered growth in its cloud-computing unit.
   
• A New York judge on Tuesday fined Donald Trump $9,000 and threatened to throw him in jail for repeatedly violating a gag order restricting the former president from making public statements about potential witnesses in his hush-money trial.
   
• Trump said Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich should be freed from a Russian jail.
   
• Patrick Gruhn, a German fintech entrepreneur and former executive at cryptocurrency exchange FTX, paid £1.175 million, equivalent to almost $1.5 million, last Saturday for a gold pocket watch, the largest sum ever spent at auction on a piece of Titanic memorabilia.
   
• Police entered Columbia University’s campus late Tuesday, where they removed pro-Palestinian demonstrators from an academic building they had occupied and from encampments on the school’s main plaza.

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