LONDON—British political leaders argued over when to hold a snap election, a vote they hope will break a stalemate over when and how the country splits with the European Union—but one that might yield no clear winner.

Brexit has splintered traditional voting blocs in Britain, with people divided on the issue across lines of class, political allegiance and age. Smaller political groups are siphoning off support from the two main parties, Conservative and Labour, and a fresh poll might not produce a government with a clear mandate...

SAN FRANCISCO—The company had several warnings.

In-house audits at PG&E Corp. as early as 2010 said workers were falsifying records of ground-marking at excavation sites intended to protect buried electricity cables and gas pipelines. The workers made it appear they were keeping up with their workload when they were not.

Investors are piling into precious metals at the fastest clip in years, driven by a plunge in global bond yields that has fueled a search for assets that can hold their value during troubled times.

Gold purchases by everyone from central banks to retail buyers have boosted the metal to its highest level in six years, with a coterie of famous investors now touting its role as a haven from market turmoil. Silver and platinum have outpaced all other major asset classes so far in the third quarter, while palladium is up about...

BERLIN—Monsanto Co.’s past public-relations tactics in Europe didn’t break the law, according to a report commissioned by Bayer AG, in the chemicals and pharmaceuticals group’s latest effort to clear the legal and reputational liabilities caused by its acquisition of the agrochemical company.

Bayer has been in crisis mode since closing the Monsanto deal in 2018. In the past year, it has lost three jury trials alleging that Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide causes cancer, which sent its share price falling by roughly a third. It...

LONDON—Prime Minister Boris Johnson suffered the first resignation from his top team since taking power in late July: his brother.

Jo Johnson, the younger brother to the prime minister, said he was standing down as minister for universities in a message Thursday on his verified Twitter account.

“In recent weeks I’ve been torn between family...

WeWork’s parent company is weighing a dramatic reduction in its valuation as it aims to go public while facing widespread skepticism over its business model and corporate governance, according to people familiar with the matter.

We Co. is considering putting a price tag on its IPO that would value it somewhere in the $20 billion range, potentially at the low end, these people said, less than half of the $47 billion mark where it last raised private capital.

The nonfarm private sector in the U.S. added over 50,000 more jobs in August than economists expected, helped by strong growth in midsize businesses and in the service sector.

The private sector added 195,000 jobs last month, according to the ADP National Employment Report. Economists polled by The Wall Street Journal were expecting 140,000 jobs.

Midsize...

HONG KONG—For three months, protests here have been sustained by two forces: the peaceful marchers, and the more radical activists who are willing to confront authorities on the front lines. The city’s leader hopes to divide the two camps after making her first conciliatory moves to try to quell social unrest.

That may not prove so easy in a city where polls show many people had turned against the government and police during the unrest, and anger is still running high.

San Diego—In a cramped courtroom on the eighth floor of San Diego office building, immigration Judge Jesus Clemente had a question for a young woman named Michele: “Madame, how old are you?”

As her young daughter, Mariana, toddled in front of her, the Honduran migrant waited for a translation and then responded in Spanish. “Sixteen.”

Judge...

CHARLESTON, S.C.—Hurricane Dorian plowed up the South Carolina coast Thursday morning, causing flooding and power outages.

The Category 3 storm, producing winds of 115 miles an hour, was 70 miles south-southeast of Charleston and moving at 8 miles an hour, the National Hurricane Center said early Thursday. Hurricane-force winds extended 60 miles out from the storm center.

Low-lying...

PARIS—French President  Emmanuel Macron is making good on a campaign promise to overhaul the sacred cow of the country’s education system: the feared baccalauréat exam.

Since gilets jaunes protests shook the country this year, Mr. Macron has eased up on deficit targets and put the brakes on planned civil-service reductions. But despite teacher strikes and mounting criticism of education overhauls, the president is pressing on with changes to the weeklong high-school graduation exams Napoleon introduced in 1808. Le bac, as it is often called, has been updated only occasionally since then.

Slack Technologies cut an unusual path to its public debut earlier this summer, so it seems only fitting that the company’s first round of quarterly results is also breaking some new ground, namely showing that a stock can lose a quarter of its value and still be priced for perfection.

Slack posted its fiscal second quarter results late Wednesday, the first report since the company’s direct listing in late June.

The...

Global stocks gained on hopes for trade progress after the U.S. and China said they would hold talks in Washington in October.

In the U.S., futures on the S&P 500 rose 0.9%.

The U.S. and China said deputy-level officials would work together in mid-September to lay the groundwork for the meeting after the world’s two largest economies...

Federal Reserve officials are gearing up to reduce interest rates at their next policy meeting in two weeks, most likely by a quarter-percentage point, as the trade war between the U.S. and China darkens the global economic outlook.

The idea of an aggressive half-point cut to battle the slowdown hasn’t gained much support inside the central bank, according to interviews with officials and their public speeches.

While...

TOKYO—Nissan Motor Co. Chief Executive Hiroto Saikawa on Thursday said he will return a portion of his performance-based pay, after Nissan auditors found that the amount was too high.

The pay was in the form of stock appreciation rights, a cash payment linked to the increase in the price of the company’s shares over a period of time. Mr. Saikawa received a higher payment than he was entitled to, because the execution date of those rights was changed to a date when the share price was higher.

SEOUL—Samsung Electronics Co. is releasing a variant of its newest flagship phone meant to boost adoption of blockchain, according to people familiar with the matter—a tall task for a next-era technology that still puzzles many consumers.

The world’s largest smartphone maker will offer a Galaxy Note 10 marketed as a “KlaytnPhone,” named after a South Korean blockchain platform, the people said. It will be sold starting Thursday, they say, only in South Korea.

Insurers are scrambling to blunt the expense of new drugs that can carry prices of more than $2 million per treatment, offering new setups aimed at making the cost of gene therapies more manageable for employers.

Cigna Corp. plans to announce Thursday a new program that allows employers and insurers to pay per-month fees for a service that will cover the cost of gene therapies and manage their use. CVS Health Corp. says it plans to offer a new layer of coverage specifically for gene therapies, which would handle employers’ costs above a certain threshold. Anthem Inc. said it is looking at special insurance setups to help employers protect themselves from the financial impact of the drugs.

WASHINGTON—A federal judge on Wednesday declared that a terrorism watch list created after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks is unconstitutional in its current form, reopening the legal debate about a key national security tool used by thousands of U.S. and international government agencies.

U.S. District Judge Anthony Trenga ruled that the Terrorist Screening Database, which is maintained by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and several other government agencies, doesn’t give Americans on the list an adequate opportunity to challenge...

Chinese and American officials plan to hold trade talks in Washington in early October, a new attempt to tame a trade war that is rippling through the global economy and hurting business investment and confidence.

Chinese Vice Premier Liu He, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin spoke by phone on Thursday morning Beijing time and agreed to meet next month for high-level trade talks, state-run China Central Television said.

Go west for a diverse school. Look to the Northeast for a rich one most likely to land you a great job. For great bang for your buck, consider the City University of New York.

These are some of the conclusions of this year’s Wall Street Journal/Times Higher Education College Rankings, which reveal a rich array of options for students whether they’re most focused on the academic environment, extracurricular engagement, career opportunities or return on investment.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s partnership is shrinking under a new chief executive who wants to restore its exclusivity.

As many as a dozen Goldman partners are negotiating their exits from the firm and are likely to depart by year-end, executives said. They would add to a spike in departures already this year among Goldman’s partners, whose title has inspired envy across Wall Street for decades but lost some of its luster in recent years.

Twitter Inc. said it was temporarily turning off a feature that allows users to send tweets via text message following a spate of hacks affecting several high-profile users, including the company’s Chief Executive Jack Dorsey.

Twitter said Wednesday that it would probe security vulnerabilities at mobile carriers and work to improve the linking of phone numbers used in two-factor authentication, a process intended to offer users more security when they log into their accounts.

Slack Technologies Inc. posted stronger revenue in its first earnings report since its public market debut, but the provider of workplace-collaboration software warned that the pace of growth is slowing.

Shares of Slack fell 13% in after-hours trading Wednesday, pushing the stock down to around $27, near the $26 reference price used for its direct listing in June. Slack also forecast a wider loss than analysts had projected for the current quarter.

WASHINGTON—A federal judge on Wednesday approved a Justice Department settlement that allowed CVS Health Corp.’s nearly $70 billion acquisition of health insurer Aetna Inc., removing a cloud of uncertainty for the merged company.

U.S. District Judge Richard Leonhad spent months questioning whether the settlement did enough to protect competition and consumers in health-care markets, raising the possibility that he might not approve it.

Law-enforcement officials said they have identified a person of interest they suspect of illegally manufacturing and selling the rifle used in Saturday’s mass shooting in West Texas.

Authorities were in the process of investigating the Lubbock, Texas, man, whose identity they haven’t released, and were seeking to question him late Wednesday at his residence, officials said.

The...