** Automakers want Democratic Senator Joe Manchin to revisit his proposal to restructure the $7,500 electric vehicle tax credit, raising fears it could be largely unworkable because of new sourcing requirements for battery components and critical minerals.
** Fox News anchor Harris Faulkner briefly lost it during a contentious interview with Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) on Tuesday, taking strong issue with the centrist senator asking her if she’s afraid of Democrats doing “something good” for America.
** Occidental Petroleum Corp on Tuesday capped a turnaround with a second-quarter profit that topped Wall Street estimates while slashing debt and launching a share buyback program on the back of strong oil and gas prices.
** Rob Beard, senior vice president, general counsel and corporate secretary at Micron, told the Idaho Statesman on a Zoom call Friday that the memory-making company was considering locations in several states across the country, not just Idaho. “What we would like to build in the United States is a massive manufacturing facility,” Beard said. “So big, we call it a mega-fab.”
World
** The U.N. nuclear chief warned that Europe’s largest nuclear power plant in Ukraine “is completely out of control” and issued an urgent plea to Russia and Ukraine to quickly allow experts to visit the sprawling complex to stabilize the situation and avoid a nuclear accident.
** German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on Wednesday said Russia had no reason to hold up the return of a gas turbine for the Nord Stream 1 pipeline that had been serviced in Canada but has since been stranded in Germany in an escalating energy standoff.
** Water levels on the Rhine River are set to fall perilously close to the point at which it would effectively close, putting the trade of huge quantities of goods at risk as the continent seeks to stave off an economic crisis.
** Brazil’s state-controlled oil company Petrobras will distribute at least twice as much as the biggest international oil producers in second quarter dividends, boosting the government’s coffers amid a tense presidential campaign.
** Electricite de France SA said it’s likely to extend cuts to nuclear generation as scorching weather pushes up river temperatures, bringing the energy crisis in the European Union’s second-largest economy into sharp focus.
** Europe’s imports of Russian-sourced diesel spiked 13% last month as the continent struggled to wean itself off Moscow’s fuel in response to the war in Ukraine.