Defunding NPR and PBS

Good morning. PBS and NPR lose their funding. 7-Eleven won’t be getting a new Canadian owner. And violence lurks beneath Peru’s Rainbow Mountain. Listen to the day’s top stories.

Republicans are set to achieve their decades-long quest to end federal funding for public broadcasting, which pays for PBS and NPR, after the Senate passed a $9 billion package of spending cuts proposed by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency. It shows the DOGE effort is still alive, even after Musk and Donald Trump’s very public falling out. To ease the passage, Senate Republicans had agreed to spare global AIDS programs.

The dollar rebounded and Treasuries fell after yesterday’s brief bout of panic over Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell’s future. Trump’s public backpedaling on his pressure campaign against the central bank chief went some way to restore calm, but it came with a major caveat. Meanwhile, the New York Fed’s president John Williams leaped to Powell’s defense, saying the current interest rate policy is “entirely appropriate.”

Tech stocks also got a boost after the world’s biggest contract chipmaker, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing, raised its outlook for 2025 revenue growth, shoring up investors’ confidence that the global AI spending spree is set to keep going. The company reported a huge 61% jump in profit last quarter.

Sayōnara. Canada’s Couche-Tard dropped its $45.8 billion bid to buy 7-Eleven convenience store operator, Seven & i, in a bitter end to what would have been the biggest ever foreign takeover of a Japanese company. Recriminations followed, as did doubts over 7-Eleven’s plans to list its North American business on the stock market. Check out Bloomberg Original’s mini-doc on the battle.

Behind-the-scenes details of a 2019 agreement between Facebook and US privacy regulators emerged in a Delaware court yesterday, during a trial on investor claims that the settlement cost them at least $7 billion. An A-list of Silicon Valley celebrities is expected to testify over the next two weeks, led by Meta boss Mark Zuckerberg, who faces allegations the settlement was engineered to shield him from liability.

Bloomberg Power Players New York: Set against the backdrop of the US Open Tennis Championships, we'll bring together influential voices from the business of sports to identify the next wave of disruption that could hit this multitrillion-dollar global industry. Join us on Sept. 4. Learn more.

Deep Dive: Sustainable Dining

It’s not KFC. About 1,000 people join the waitlist every night at Coqodaq, a ritzy New York fried chicken restaurant that blends Korean flavors, American style and sustainability. The 150-seat eatery sources chicken from an Amish farm, uses cultured oil, while nuggets come topped with caviar.

The Big Take: Murder Mountain

For the millions of visitors who’ve made the trek up the Andes to Peru’s Rainbow Mountain, it’s a sight to behold. For the local Indigenous community, it’s become a curse. The violence that lurks beneath its vibrant slopes shows how a gold rush can create deadly strife even while it generates desperately needed wealth.

Opinion

Big Tech is "acquihiring" promising AI firms, scooping up talent while avoiding antitrust scrutiny—often by leaving behind business operations—Parmy Olson writes. This has left venture capital investors with fewer returns than expected from a traditional sale or initial public offering. How they react could set the whole industry on a different, and perhaps better, path.

Before You Go

With less than four months to go until the COP30 climate summit in Belém, Brazil’s government is trying to reassure attendees there’ll be enough beds to go around. They’ve identified 30,000 rooms so far, but 45,000 people are expected to descend on the Amazon city and calls to move the event to the much bigger Rio de Janeiro are getting louder.

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