Here’s what you need to know to start your day.
Good morning.
Here’s what you need to know:
• The United States’ top general met with President Moon Jae-in of South Korea and dialed back U. S. rhetoric, stressing that war with North Korea was a “last resort.”
Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., above, is now in Beijing, where the government said that it would enforce new U. N. sanctions against Pyongyang. The stakes were underscored by a report that the North’s recent missile tests were made possible by the sale of rocket engines, probably from a Ukrainian factory, on the black market.
And today, North and South Korea celebrate their independence from Japan. There is concern that the North might mark the occasion with belligerence.
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• President Trump is expected to announce the opening salvo in what could become a far-reaching investigation into Chinese trade practices.
Even as counterfeiting and the theft of technology secrets remain rife in China, the country is moving to strengthen intellectual property laws to benefit its own companies. Seeking to lead in robotics and microchips, it is also pushing foreign companies in joint ventures to share their technology.
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• Bowing to pressure, President Trump denounced the hate groups who incited violent demonstrations in Charlottesville, Va., declaring that “racism is evil.” He delivering the statement from the White House at a hastily arranged appearance meant to halt the growing political threat posed by the situation.
Earlier in the day, Attorney General Jeff Sessions said that the vehicular assault in Virginia met the legal definition of an act of domestic terrorism .
And the head of Merck, Kenneth C. Frazier, who is black, resigned from a White House council in protest over the president’s earlier statement blaming the weekend violence on “many sides, ” prompting Mr. Trump to attack him on Twitter.
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• The chief executive of Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Ian Narev, will step down next year amid a money-laundering scandal .
Regulators are suing the bank over criminals’ use of its “intelligent” automated teller machines to make enormous cash deposits. The bank could face billions of dollars in fines, but it is vowing to fight the lawsuit and played down the matter in its chief’s resignation.
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• Years after she was attacked with acid, an Afghan woman named Mumtaz, above center, is facing a desperate struggle to survive as a mother and widow.
The jailing of her attacker was hailed as an improbable victory for women’s rights in Afghanistan, but her husband was recently killed in revenge, forcing her to live on $28 scrounged from his pockets when his body was returned. The money has run out, and her father has fled the country.
