Friday Morning Briefing: Anniversary of fatal Charlottesville rally puts city on edge

Highlights

“They feel that not being here is giving in to fear and terror.” said Joan Fenton, she knows she will not make much money at her Charlottesville gift shop this weekend, when the downtown district will be virtually locked down for the anniversary of last year’s deadly white nationalist rally. But like many other owners, she will be open anyway.

Exclusive: Trump’s administration has quietly started cutting scores of Pakistani officers from coveted training and educational programs that have been a hallmark of bilateral military relations for more than a decade, U.S. officials say.

Commentary: The Trump administration has done more than separate parents from their children to stop them migrating to the United States, writes Uzoamaka Emeka Nzelibe, an associate professor at the Northwestern Pritzker School of Law. “In a less visible, but equally appalling move, [Attorney General Jeff] Sessions has rewritten well-established case law to eliminate the types of asylum claims brought by Central Americans.”

Tesla

Is SpaceX the model for a private Tesla? The company's CEO Elon Musk has held up his space transportation company SpaceX as a model for taking his loss-making electric car company private, saying he wants existing Tesla investors to continue to hold stock.

Exclusive: Tesla’s board has not yet received a detailed financing plan from CEO Elon Musk, and is seeking more information about how he will take the U.S. electric car maker private in a proposed deal worth $72 billion, people familiar with the matter said.

World

“There were confounding moments because there were terms I never heard of while working and living just in South Korea,” said South Korean businessman Kim Yong-tae, after he worked with North Koreans at the Kaesong Industrial Complex before it was closed in 2016, one of the biggest challenges was communicating in what is ostensibly a shared language.

Russia warned the United States it would regard any U.S. move to curb the activities of its banks as a declaration of economic war which it would retaliate against, stepping up a war of words with Washington over spiraling sanctions.

If Brexit talks break down without a deal, half of Britons believe the final decision over whether to leave the European Union should be taken by the public in a referendum, according to a survey of more than 10,000 people published.

 

Two @Reuters journalists have been detained in Myanmar for 242 days. See full coverage: https://reut.rs/2AVhFVa

6:00 AM - AUG 10, 2018

Business

China paper rebuts trade war criticism, says 'an elephant can't hide'

China’s top newspaper rebutted growing criticism in government circles that Beijing should have taken a lower profile to head off its trade war with the United States, saying that, like an elephant, China cannot hide its size and strength.

4 min read

Trade war threatens reign of luxury stocks

An escalating trade war between the United States and China could abruptly end a glittering stock market run for luxury goods firms, with some investors already put off by lofty valuations in a sector powered by shoppers in the two countries.

7 min read

Gene-editing startups ignite the next 'Frankenfood' fight

In a suburban Minneapolis laboratory, a tiny company that has never turned a profit is poised to beat the world’s biggest agriculture firms to market with the next potential breakthrough in genetic engineering - a crop with “edited” DNA.

9 Min Read

Top Stories on Reuters TV

Man arrested in connection with CA wildfire

VERBATIM: Pence sees 'new battlefield' in space