TESLA: BARRIER FOR SAFETY WAS MISSING

DETROIT» A safety barrier that protects vehicles from a concrete lane divider was missing which made the impact of a Tesla Model X crash on Friday much worse, the company claimed in a blog post. The driver was killed in the accident.

The company also said in the statement that it doesn’t know what caused the crash on U.S. 101 near Mountain View, Calif., and it’s also unsure if the SUV was operating on its semiautonomous “Autopilot” system. Tesla said it’s working with authorities to recover logs from the damaged SUV’s computer.

White House claims trade win.

The White House has hailed a revamped trade agreement with South Korea as a vindication of President Donald Trump’s hard-nosed approach to international trade.

White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders says “It’s a big deal and a major win for American workers and American businesses.”

Many trade analysts are skeptical that the changes Trump’s team negotiated to the six-year-old U.S.-Korea Free Trade Agreement will make a dent in America’s massive trade deficit or do much to increase U.S. car sales in the near-impenetrable South Korean auto market.

Shale producer buys rival for $9.5B.

Concho Resources Inc. will buy rival shale oil producer RSP Permian Inc. in a $9.5 billion all-share deal, creating one of the largest producers in the region at the center of America’s energy boom. The deal is the largest ever focused exclusively on the Permian, a region straddling West Texas and southeast New Mexico where strata of oil-bearing rock hold billions of barrels of oil.

Equifax names CEO.

Equifax tapped longtime financial industry executive Mark Begor as its new permanent CEO, the company said Wednesday, as Equifax continues to try to recover from fallout surrounding the company’s massive data breach. The 59-year-old Begor will take over from interim CEO Paulino do Rego Barros Jr.

Barrick Gold founder Munk dies.

Peter Munk, a Canadian immigrant who founded Barrick Gold and turned it into the world’s largest gold producer, died on Wednesday. He was 90.