SCOTTSDALE, Arizona (USA)–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Walton Global, ein Unternehmen für Immobilieninvestitionen und Grundstücksverwaltung mit einem verwalteten Vermögen von 3,6 Milliarden US-Dolla, hat heute die Gründung eines Joint Ventures mit Rockpoint, einem Private-Equity-Unternehmen für Immobilien mit Sitz in Boston, bekannt gegeben, um die wachsende Nachfrage nach Einfamilienhäusern für Mieter in den Vereinigten Staaten zu decken. Rockpoint plant, bis zu 300 Millionen USD an Eigenkapital in den BTR-Geschäftszweig (Build-to-Rent) von Walton zu investieren, der ein Immobilienvermögen von bis zu 1 Mrd. USD umfassen soll.
Rockpoint verfügt über umfangreiche Erfahrungen auf dem Markt für Einfamilien-Mietimmobilien, einschließlich Build-to-Rent-Projekte und Aufkauf von bestehenden Immobilien, wobei der Schwerpunkt auf qualitativ hochwertigen, gut gelegenen Immobilien in ausgewählten Wachstumsmärkten in den Vereinigten Staaten liegt.
Die BTR-Plattform von Walton wurde 2021 mit dem Ziel ins Leben gerufen, neue Wohnlösungen in Wohn- und Mietmärkten mit hoher Nachfrage anzubieten. Das Joint Venture konzentriert sich zunächst auf Ziele innerhalb der bestehenden Bebauungspläne und des mehr als 81.000 Acres (ca. 32.780 ha) umfassenden Grundstücksportfolios von Walton in den Vereinigten Staaten.
„Die Erfahrung von Walton mit Grundstücken und unser großes Netzwerk von Top-Bauunternehmen in Verbindung mit dem institutionellen Wissen, das Rockpoint in den BTR-Bereich einbringt, bringt dieses Joint Venture in eine strategische Position, um im ganzen Land benötigten Wohnraum für Menschen zu schaffen, die sich für Miete statt Eigentum entscheiden“, sagte Bill Doherty, CEO von Walton Global.
Walton hat eine erste Pipeline von etwa 3500 Einheiten in expandierenden Ballungsgebieten wie Atlanta, Austin und Jacksonville, die Teil des Joint Ventures werden sollen. Zur Umsetzung der BTR-Strategie geht das Joint Venture Partnerschaften mit erstklassigen nationalen und regionalen Bauunternehmen ein, um die Siedlungen zu entwickeln.
Über Walton Global
Walton Global ist ein führendes privates Unternehmen im Bereich Grundstücksverwaltung und weltweiten Immobilieninvestitionen, das sich auf die Erforschung, den Erwerb, die Verwaltung, die Planung und die Entwicklung von Grundstücken konzentriert. Mit mehr als 43 Jahren Erfahrung kann Walton eine nachgewiesene Erfolgsbilanz bei der Abwicklung von Grundstücksinvestitionsprojekten in den wachstumsstärksten Metropolregionen Nordamerikas vorweisen. Das Unternehmen verwaltet Vermögenswerte in Höhe von 3,6 Milliarden USD im Auftrag seiner globalen Investoren in 73 Ländern sowie von Bauherren, Entwicklern und Industriepartnern. Walton besitzt und verwaltet mehr als 97.000 Acres (ca. 39.255 ha) Land in den Vereinigten Staaten und Kanada. Die Geschäftsbereiche reichen von Grundstücksinvestitionen vor der Erschließung über die Finanzierung von Bauträgergrundstücken bis hin zu Build-to-Rent. Weitere Informationen finden Sie unter walton.com.
Über Rockpoint
Rockpoint ist ein Private-Equity-Unternehmen für Immobilien mit Hauptsitz in Boston und weiteren Niederlassungen in San Francisco und Dallas. Rockpoint verfolgt bei seinen Investitionen einen Ansatz der Fundamentalwertanalyse und konzentriert sich auf ausgewählte Produkttypen in den wichtigsten Märkten in den Vereinigten Staaten. Rockpoint verfolgt mit seinen opportunistischen sowie Wachstums- und Ertragsinvestitionsprogrammen eine konsistente Strategie mit ausgeprägten Renditeprofilen. Rockpoint konzentriert sich auf Vermögenswerte mit einem langfristigen intrinsischen Wert zu attraktiven Preisen im Verhältnis zu den stabilisierten Cashflows und unter besonderer Berücksichtigung von Wertsteigerungsmöglichkeiten und komplexen Situationen. Seit 1994 haben die Mitbegründer von Rockpoint zusammen mit weiteren Beteiligten 19 Investmentvehikel und damit zusammenhängende Co-Investmentvehikel über Rockpoint und ein Vorgängerunternehmen gesponsert und Kapitalzusagen in Höhe von rund 29 Milliarden USD erhalten. Bis zum 31. März 2022 hat das Investmentteam von Rockpoint zusammen mit weiteren Beteiligten in 483 Transaktionen mit einer Gesamt-Spitzenkapitalisierung von ca. 76 Mrd. USD (einschließlich des Eigenkapitals der Fonds, des Eigenkapitals der Co-Investoren und des Fremdkapitals) investiert bzw. sich zu Investitionen verpflichtet. Weitere Informationen über Rockpoint finden Sie unter www.rockpoint.com.
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Ahead of the 2020 elections, Connecticut confronted a bevy of falsehoods about voting that swirled around online. One, widely viewed on Facebook, wrongly said absentee ballots had been sent to dead people. On Twitter, users spread a false post that a tractor-trailer carrying ballots had crashed on Interstate 95, sending thousands of voter slips into the air and across the highway.
Concerned about a similar deluge of unfounded rumors and lies around this year’s midterm elections, the state plans to spend nearly $2 million on marketing to share factual information about voting, and to create its first-ever position for an expert in combating misinformation. With a salary of $150,000, the person is expected to comb fringe sites like 4chan, far-right social networks like Gettr and Rumble, and mainstream social media sites to root out early misinformation narratives about voting before they go viral, and then urge the companies to remove or flag the posts that contain false information.
“We have to have situational awareness by looking into all the incoming threats to the integrity of elections,” said Scott Bates, Connecticut’s deputy secretary of the state. “Misinformation can erode people’s confidence in elections, and we view that as a critical threat to the democratic process.”
Connecticut joins a handful of states preparing to fight an onslaught of rumors and lies about this year’s elections.
ABC/Ipsos poll from January, only 20 percent of respondents said they were “very confident” in the integrity of the election system and 39 percent said they felt “somewhat confident.” Numerous Republican candidates have embraced former President Donald J. Trump’s falsehoods about the 2020 election, campaigning — often successfully — on the untrue claim that it was stolen from him.
Some conservatives and civil rights groups are almost certain to complain that the efforts to limit misinformation could restrict free speech. Florida, led by Republicans, has enacted legislation limiting the kind of social media moderation that sites like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter can do, with supporters saying the sites constrict conservative voices. (A U.S. appeals court recently blocked most aspects of the law.) On the federal level, the Department of Homeland Security recently paused the work of an advisory board on disinformation after a barrage of criticism from conservative lawmakers and free speech advocates that the group could suppress speech.
“State and local governments are well situated to reduce harms from dis- and misinformation by providing timely, accurate and trustworthy information,” said Rachel Goodman, a lawyer at Protect Democracy, a nonpartisan advocacy group. “But in order to maintain that trust, they must make clear that they are not engaging in any kind of censorship or surveillance that would raise constitutional concerns.”
Connecticut and Colorado officials said that the problem of misinformation had only worsened since 2020 and that without a more concerted push to counteract it, even more voters could lose faith in the integrity of elections. They also said they feared for the safety of some election workers.
“We are seeing a threat atmosphere unlike anything this country has seen before,” said Jena Griswold, the secretary of state of Colorado. Ms. Griswold, a Democrat who is up for re-election this fall, has received threats for upholding 2020 election results and refuting Mr. Trump’s false claims of fraudulent voting in the state.
“We have to have situational awareness by looking into all the incoming threats to the integrity of elections,” said Scott Bates, Connecticut’s deputy secretary of the state.
Other secretaries of state, who head the office typically charged with overseeing elections, have received similar pushback. In Georgia, Brad Raffensperger, a Republican who certified President Biden’s win in the state, has faced fierce criticism laced with false claims about the 2020 election.
In his primary race this year, Mr. Raffensperger batted down misinformation that there were 66,000 underage voters, 2,400 unregistered voters and more than 10,350 dead people who cast ballots in the presidential election. None of the claims are true. He won his primary last week.
Colorado is redeploying a misinformation team that the state created for the 2020 election. The team is composed of three election security experts who monitor the internet for misinformation and then report it to federal law enforcement.
Ms. Griswold will oversee the team, called the Rapid Response Election Security Cyber Unit. It looks only for election-related misinformation on issues like absentee voting, polling locations and eligibility, she said.
“Facts still exist, and lies are being used to chip away at our fundamental freedoms,” Ms. Griswold said.
Connecticut officials said the state’s goal was to patrol the internet for election falsehoods. On May 7, the Connecticut Legislature approved $2 million for internet, TV, mail and radio education campaigns on the election process, and to hire an election information security officer.
Officials said they would prefer candidates fluent in both English and Spanish, to address the spread of misinformation in both languages. The officer would track down viral misinformation posts on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and YouTube, and look for emerging narratives and memes, especially on fringe social media platforms and the dark web.
“We know we can’t boil the ocean, but we have to figure out where the threat is coming from, and before it metastasizes,” Mr. Bates said.
WASHINGTON, May 27 (Reuters) – The U.S. Army said on Friday it has awarded a contract worth $625 million to Raytheon Technologies Corp (RTX.N) for anti-aircraft Stinger missiles in order to replenish stocks sent to Ukraine.
The shoulder-fired anti-aircraft Stinger missiles made by Raytheon were in hot demand in Ukraine, where they have successfully stopped Russian assaults from the air, and in neighboring European countries which fear they may also need to beat back Russian forces.
U.S. troops have limited use for the current supply of Stingers – a lightweight, self-contained weapon that can be deployed quickly to defend against helicopters, airplanes, drones and even cruise missiles – but the United States needs to maintain its supply on hand while it develops the next generation of a “man-portable air defense system.” read more
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Since February, the United States has shipped about 1,400 Stingers to Ukraine. U.S. allies also want to restock the weapons they shipped to Ukraine in recent months.
The contract for up to 1,468 Stingers was awarded on Wednesday, according to a document reviewed by Reuters, and was worth up to $687 million with options added in. There was no timeline for completion of the work, but it was estimated delivery could take up to 30 months.
The president of Raytheon Missiles & Defense, Wes Kremer, said the order will help “fulfill our current foreign military sale order, while replenishing Stingers provided to Ukraine and accelerating production.”
Separately, the Pentagon is searching for Stinger missiles that are already in inventory, but need to be refurbished, according to the document.
On May 6 the Pentagon’s chief weapons buyer, Bill LaPlante, said he had aimed to sign a contract by the end of May and that the intent was to replace the Stinger missiles sent to Ukraine one-for-one.
The Pentagon and Raytheon did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The Stinger production line was closed in December 2020, the Pentagon has said. In July 2021, Raytheon won a contract to manufacture more Stingers, but mainly for international governments, according to the U.S. Army. read more
Raytheon Chief Executive Greg Hayes told analysts during an April 26 conference call that the U.S. Department of Defense has not purchased a Stinger in 18 years.
“Some of the components are no longer commercially available, and so we’re going to have to go out and redesign some of the electronics in the missile of the seeker head. That’s going to take us a little bit of time.”
The sole Stinger facility, in Arizona, only produces at a low rate.
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Reporting by Mike Stone in Washington; Editing by Jonathan Oatis and Matthew Lewis
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
TEMPE, Ariz.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Institutional Property Advisors (IPA), a division of Marcus & Millichap (NYSE:MMI), announced the sale of Hudson on Farmer, a 171-unit boutique apartment asset in Downtown Tempe, Arizona. The property traded for $96 million, which represents $561,404 per unit.
“Hudson on Farmer is supported by a highly educated population of over 620,700 working professionals throughout 16 major employment corridors within a 10-mile radius,” said Steve Gebing, IPA executive managing director. “Tempe’s outstanding demographics include average and median annual household incomes of $85,200 and $61,500, respectively.” Gebing and IPA executive managing director Cliff David represented the seller, 8th & Farmer Owner LLC, and procured the buyer, Ideal Capital Group. “Tempe is one of the best suburbs in Arizona for young professionals and this ambitious demographic has long been a key source of the city’s success,” added David.
Hudson on Farmer’s Mill Avenue District location places it in the geographical center of Greater Phoenix, close to ASU and steps from the city’s only Whole Foods Market. Downtown Tempe has a mix of treelined walkways and large office developments, including 20-acre, 2-million-square-foot Marina Heights, and Hayden’s Ferry Lakeside, a master-planned mixed-use development with 1.6 million square feet of office, retail and residential space. Major employers near Hudson on Farmer include State Farm, ADP, Silicon Valley Bank, and Microsoft. There is 18.5 million square feet of lifestyle amenities in close proximity, namely Tempe Marketplace, Mesa Riverview, and Sloan Park, the spring training home of the Chicago Cubs.
Completed in 2021, six-story Hudson on Farmer has open-concept apartment homes with full-size front-load washers and dryers, walk-in showers, and private balconies. The exclusive sixth floor has distinctive cabinetry with undermount lighting, premium closets, and reserved parking. The property’s common area accommodations include a resort-inspired, heated swimming pool and spa and second-story resident lounge with social space, a conference room, and workspaces accented by modern art and natural wood décor. The landscaped courtyard, with a covered outdoor dining area, barbecue grills, firepit, desert vegetation and misting system gives residents an added venue for entertaining. Additional community amenities include a fitness center, bike parking room and electric vehicle charging stations.
About Institutional Property Advisors (IPA)
Institutional Property Advisors (IPA) is a division of Marcus & Millichap (NYSE: MMI), a leading commercial real estate services firm in North America. IPA’s combination of real estate investment and capital markets expertise, industry-leading technology, and acclaimed research offer customized solutions for the acquisition, disposition and financing of institutional properties and portfolios. For more information, please visit www.institutionalpropertyadvisors.com.
About Marcus & Millichap, Inc. (NYSE: MMI)
Marcus & Millichap, Inc. is a leading brokerage firm specializing in commercial real estate investment sales, financing, research and advisory services with offices throughout the United States and Canada. As of December 31, 2021, the company had 1,994 investment sales and financing professionals in 82 offices who provide investment brokerage and financing services to sellers and buyers of commercial real estate. The company also offers market research, consulting and advisory services to clients. Marcus & Millichap closed 13,255 transactions in 2021, with a sales volume of approximately $84.4 billion. For additional information, please visit www.MarcusMillichap.com.
PHOENIX–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Institutional Property Advisors (IPA), a division of Marcus & Millichap (NYSE: MMI), announced the $201.75 million portfolio sale of three multifamily properties in the Southwest. The asset includes The Villages at Metro Center, 296 units in Phoenix, Arizona; Crystal Creek, 273 units in Phoenix; and Indigo Park, 216 units in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
“The combined operational strengths of the Phoenix and Albuquerque multifamily markets provide our buyer with significant upside opportunity identifiable through the implementation of a programmatic common area and apartment interior renovation,” said Steve Gebing, IPA executive managing director. Gebing and Cliff David, IPA executive managing director, represented the seller, JB Partners, and procured the buyer, Bridge Investment Group. Ryan Sarbinoff, first vice president and regional manager, is Marcus & Millichap’s broker of record in New Mexico.
The Villages at Metro Center was built in 1979 on 11.5 acres and is proximate to the Deer Valley and I-17 employment corridors. Crystal Creek is also proximate to Deer Valley and nearby Bell Road Retail Corridor. The property was constructed in 1985 on eight acres. Accessible from Interstate 25, Indigo Park was built in 1974 on 7.5 acres, eight miles from Downtown Albuquerque.
About Institutional Property Advisors (IPA)
Institutional Property Advisors (IPA) is a division of Marcus & Millichap (NYSE: MMI), a leading commercial real estate services firm in North America. IPA’s combination of real estate investment and capital markets expertise, industry-leading technology, and acclaimed research offer customized solutions for the acquisition, disposition and financing of institutional properties and portfolios. For more information, please visit www.institutionalpropertyadvisors.com
About Marcus & Millichap, Inc. (NYSE: MMI)
Marcus & Millichap, Inc. is a leading brokerage firm specializing in commercial real estate investment sales, financing, research and advisory services with offices throughout the United States and Canada. As of December 31, 2021, the company had 1,994 investment sales and financing professionals in 82 offices who provide investment brokerage and financing services to sellers and buyers of commercial real estate. The company also offers market research, consulting and advisory services to clients. Marcus & Millichap closed 13,255 transactions in 2021, with a sales volume of approximately $84.4 billion. For additional information, please visit www.MarcusMillichap.com.
Ukrainian officials acknowledged Friday that Russian forces had taken more than three dozen small towns in their initial drive this week to seize eastern Ukraine, offering the first glimpse of what promises to be a grinding brawl by the Kremlin to achieve broader territorial gains in a new phase of the two-month-old war.
The fighting in the east — along increasingly fortified lines that stretch across more than 300 miles — intensified as a Russian commander signaled even wider ambitions, warning that the Kremlin’s forces aimed to take “full control” of southern Ukraine all the way to Moldova, Ukraine’s southwest neighbor.
While it seemed unlikely that the commander, Maj. Gen. Rustam Minnekayev, would have misspoken, his warning still drew skepticism, based on Russia’s probable difficulty in starting another broad offensive and the general’s relatively obscure role in the hierarchy. But his threat could not be ruled out.
The broader war aims that he outlined at a defense industry meeting in a Russian city more than 1,000 miles away from the fighting would be far more ambitious than the downscaled goals set out by President Vladimir V. Putin in recent weeks, which have focused on gaining control of the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine.
Some political and military experts suggested the general’s statement could have been part of Russia’s continuing efforts to distract or confuse Ukraine and its allies. General Minnekayev’s official job involves political propaganda work and does not typically cover military strategy.
Ukrainian soldiers on Friday in the Zaporizhzhia region, in Donbas, in an area about two to three miles from where Russian soldiers are fighting.Credit…Lynsey Addario for The New York Times
On Friday, fierce fighting was underway across a band of southeastern Ukraine, engulfing communities on the banks of the Dnipro River. While Ukrainian officials acknowledged that Russia had taken control of 42 small towns and villages in recent days, they said those same places could be back in Ukrainian hands before long.
Western analysts said Russia’s forces, in both the slow but largely successful fight for the southern city of Mariupol and the unsuccessful battle for Kyiv, had been battered and weakened. But rather than resting, reinforcing and re-equipping the forces, Moscow is pressing forward in the east.
The Russian military appears to be trying to secure battlefield gains — including capturing all of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, or oblasts — ahead of May 9, when Moscow holds its annual celebration of its World War II victory.
“They’re not taking the pause that would be necessary to re-cohere these forces, to take the week or two to stop, and prepare for a wider offensive,” said Mason Clark, an analyst at the Institute for the Study of War in Washington. “They’ll likely be able to take some territory. We do not think they’re going to be able to capture the entirety of the oblasts in the next three weeks.”
In his remarks on Friday, General Minnekayev asserted that one of Russia’s goals was “full control of the Donbas and southern Ukraine.”
He said that would allow Russia to control Ukraine’s Black Sea ports, “through which agricultural and metallurgical products are delivered” to other countries. Still, despite repeated attacks, Russia has failed to seize those ports, including Odesa, a fortified city of 1 million people.
“I want to remind you that many Kremlin plans have been destroyed by our army and people,” Andriy Yermak, chief of staff to Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, wrote on social media in response to General Minnekayev’s remarks.
General Minnekayev also issued a veiled warning to Moldova, where Moscow-backed separatists seized control of a 250-mile sliver of land known as Transnistria in 1992.
“Control over the south of Ukraine is another connection to Transnistria, where there is also evidence of oppression of the Russian-speaking population,” the general said, echoing false claims of a “genocide” against Russian speakers in eastern Ukraine that Mr. Putin used to help justify the Feb. 24 invasion.
Transnistria has never been recognized internationally — not even by Russia. But Russia keeps 1,500 soldiers there, nominally to keep the peace and guard a large Soviet-era munitions cache.
Russian troops at the entrance of the village of Varnita, part of a 1,500-member force in Transnistria ostensibly for peacekeeping.Credit…Laetitia Vancon for The New York Times
Moldova had no immediate response to the general’s statement. A poor country of 2.6 million, Moldova is considered vulnerable to further Russian incursions. It is not a member of NATO or the European Union, but it hastily applied for E.U. membership last month.
Yuri Fyodorov, a Russian military analyst, said that the broader aims detailed by General Minnekayev “from the military standpoint are unreachable.”
“All of Russia’s combat-ready units are now concentrated in the Donbas, where Russia failed to achieve any significant advances over the past five days,” Mr. Fyodorov said in an interview. General Minnekayev’s rank, he said, would generally not allow him to make such sweeping policy statements that also contradict what has been said by the country’s top leaders.
Dmitri S. Peskov, the Kremlin’s spokesman, declined to comment on General Minnekayev’s remarks.
As Western allies race to arm Ukraine with increasingly heavy, long-range weapons, Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain, on a visit to India on Friday, said his country was considering sending tanks to Poland so that Warsaw could then send its own tanks to Ukraine. The Biden administration said this month that it would also help transfer Soviet-made tanks to Ukraine.
The Russian Defense Ministry, in its first statement on casualties from the April 14 sinking of the Moskva, the flagship of Russia’s Black Sea fleet, said that one crew member had died, 27 were missing and 396 had been evacuated. Relatives of at least 10 Moskva crew members had voiced frustration over the Kremlin’s silence, which was turning into a test of its strong grip on information that Russians receive about the war.
Ukraine said it had sunk the Moskva with two missiles — an assertion corroborated by U.S. officials — while Russia claimed that an onboard fire had caused a munitions explosion that doomed the ship.
This photograph provided by the Russian military shows the missile cruiser Moskva near the Syrian coast in 2015.Credit…Russian Defense Ministry Press
As Russia hardened its crackdown on any domestic opposition to the war, it opened a criminal case against Vladimir Kara-Murza, a Russian pro-democracy activist and a contributing columnist for The Washington Post, for spreading “false information,” his lawyer said Friday.
Mr. Kara-Murza, 40, arrested earlier this month, faces 10 years in prison, according to the official decree against him posted online by his lawyer, Vadim Prokhorov.
It said he was being investigated for remarks he had made before Arizona lawmakers on March 15. Mr. Kara-Murza told a local news outlet in Phoenix that month that Russia was committing “war crimes” in Ukraine but that “Russia and the Putin regime are not one and the same.”
“Americans should be infuriated by Putin’s escalating campaign to silence Kara-Murza,” Fred Ryan, the publisher of The Post, said in a statement.
Mr. Putin, who has become increasingly vilified in the West over the war, has not completely rejected diplomatic engagement. On Friday, he agreed to meet with the United Nations secretary general, António Guterres, in Moscow next week, a stark change from his refusal to even take Mr. Guterres’s phone calls. Still, the meeting did not signal a softening of Mr. Putin’s views on Ukraine, a former Soviet republic that he has said should not even be a sovereign country.
Ukraine’s government said the fighting had made it too dangerous to organize any evacuations from a war that Michelle Bachelet, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, called a “horror story of violations perpetrated against civilians.”
After another attack on the northeastern city of Kharkiv on Friday, residents watched as smoke rose over shops. In the ruined port of Mariupol, hundreds of civilians and the last organized Ukrainian fighters remained trapped in a sprawling steel plant, issuing urgent pleas for help from underground bunkers. Newly released satellite images of the city showed hundreds of hastily dug graves, lending credibility to Ukrainian claims that Russia was trying to cover up atrocities.
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And in the Zaporizhzhya region of south-central Ukraine, Ukrainian troops were dug in about two miles from Russian forces that were trying to push north in an effort to fortify a land bridge connecting Russian territory with the Crimean Peninsula, which Mr. Putin annexed in 2014.
Lt. Olena Petyak, second in command of the 128th Separate Mountain Assault Brigade, near the front lines in the Zaporizhzhya region.Credit…Lynsey Addario for The New York Times
The Ukrainian army’s 128th Separate Mountain Assault brigade, armed with anti-tank missiles provided by the Americans and the British as well as other advanced weapons systems, claimed to have destroyed two Russian T-72 tanks that had strayed too close to its positions.
“We are on our own land,” Captain Vitaliy Nevinsky, the brigade’s commander, said. “We are defending ourselves and knocking out this horde, this invasion of our territory.”
Anton Troianovski reported from Hamburg, Germany, Ivan Nechepurenko from Tbilisi, Georgia, and Michael Levenson from New York. Reporting was contributed by Marc Santora from Krakow, Poland, Michael Schwirtz from Zaporizhzhya, Ukraine, Tyler Hicks from Kharkiv, Ukraine, Nick Cumming-Bruce from Geneva, Julian E. Barnes from Washington, Farnaz Fassihi from New York and Sameer Yasir from New Delhi.
Starbucks Chairman and CEO Howard Schultz delivers remarks at the Starbucks 2016 Investor Day in Manhattan, New York, U.S. December 7, 2016. REUTERS/Andrew Kelly
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April 15 (Reuters) – Starbucks Corp (SBUX.O) Chief Executive Officer Howard Schultz said there have been “a lot of false promises over the last few years” and assured his employees that those “days are over” in a video addressed to the company’s employees on Monday.
“We are going to make promises that we will keep, promises that are real and going to solve the problems that exist in your stores,” Schulz said in the video released to Reuters on Friday.
Schultz, who returned to lead the company for the third time last month, is in the midst of dealing with a growing union drive at U.S. cafes. read more
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He added that he plans to focus on issues raised by employees in their “co-creation sessions” such as need for more training, need for guaranteed hours, problems with ice machines breaking, maintenance and repairs not coming in a timely manner.
“I have realized there have been many short term decisions that have had an adverse affect. We are going to reverse that,” the CEO who has been practically synonymous with the company he took over in 1987 said.
Baristas at more than 170 U.S. Starbucks locations have asked the NLRB for union elections since August, with at least 10 locations voting in favor of the Workers United union. read more
Last month, a federal labor board accused Starbucks of unlawfully retaliating against two employees in a Phoenix, Arizona, cafe for trying to unionize their store.
The same day, a group of investors with $3.4 trillion under management urged the company to stop sending anti-union communications to its employees and to adopt a neutral policy towards unions.
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Reporting by Kannaki Deka in Bengaluru
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Some feature more than 50 billion tiny transistors that are 10,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair. They are made on gigantic, ultraclean factory room floors that can beseven stories tall and run the length of four football fields.
Microchips are in many ways the lifeblood of the modern economy. They power computers, smartphones, cars, appliances and scores of other electronics. But the world’s demand for them has surged since the pandemic, which also caused supply-chain disruptions, resulting in a global shortage.
That, in turn, is fueling inflation and raising alarms that the United States is becoming too dependent on chips made abroad. The United States accounts for only about 12 percent of global semiconductor manufacturing capacity; more than 90 percent of the most advanced chips come from Taiwan.
Intel, a Silicon Valley titan that is seeking to restore its longtime lead in chip manufacturing technology, is making a $20 billion bet that it can help ease the chip shortfall. It is building two factories at its chip-making complex in Chandler, Ariz., that will take three years to complete, and recently announced plans for a potentially bigger expansion, with new sites in New Albany, Ohio, and Magdeburg, Germany.
Why does making millions of these tiny components mean building — and spending — so big? A look inside Intel production plants in Chandler and Hillsboro, Ore., provides some answers.
What chips do
Chips, or integrated circuits, began to replace bulky individual transistors in the late 1950s. Many of those tiny components are produced on a piece of silicon and connected to work together. The resulting chips store data, amplify radio signals and perform other operations; Intel is famous for a variety called microprocessors, which perform most of the calculating functions of a computer.
Intel has managed to shrink transistors on its microprocessors to mind-bending sizes. But the rival Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company can make even tinier components, a key reason Apple chose it to make the chips for its latest iPhones.
Such wins by a company based in Taiwan, an island that China claims as its own, add to signs of a growing technology gap that could put advances in computing, consumer devices and military hardware at risk from both China’s ambitions and natural threats in Taiwan such as earthquakes and drought. And it has put a spotlight on Intel’s efforts to recapture the technology lead.
How chips are made
Chip makers are packing more and more transistors onto each piece of silicon, which is why technology does more each year. It’s also the reason that new chip factories cost billions and fewer companies can afford to build them.
In addition to paying for buildings and machinery, companies must spend heavily to develop the complex processing steps used to fabricate chips from plate-size silicon wafers — which is why the factories are called “fabs.”
Enormous machines project designs for chips across each wafer, and then deposit and etch away layers of materials to create their transistors and connect them. Up to 25 wafers at a time move among those systems in special pods on automated overhead tracks.
Processing a wafer takes thousands of steps and up to two months. TSMC has set the pace for output in recent years, operating “gigafabs,” sites with four or more production lines. Dan Hutcheson, vice chair of the market research firm TechInsights, estimates that each site can process more than 100,000 wafers a month. He puts the capacity of Intel’s two planned $10 billion facilities in Arizona at roughly 40,000 wafers a month each.
How chips are packaged
After processing, the wafer is sliced into individual chips. These are tested and wrapped in plastic packages to connect them to circuit boards or parts of a system.
That step has become a new battleground, because it’s more difficult to make transistors even smaller. Companies are now stacking multiple chips or laying them side by side in a package, connecting them to act as a single piece of silicon.
Where packaging a handful of chips together is now routine, Intel has developed one advanced product that uses new technology to bundle a remarkable 47 individual chips, including some made by TSMC and other companies as well those produced in Intel fabs.
What makes chip factories different
Intel chips typically sell for hundreds to thousands of dollars each. Intel in March released its fastest microprocessor for desktop computers, for example, at a starting price of $739. A piece of dust invisible to the human eye can ruin one. So fabs have to be cleaner than a hospital operating room and need complex systems to filter air and regulate temperature and humidity.
Fabs must also be impervious to just about any vibration, which can cause costly equipment to malfunction. So fab clean rooms are built on enormous concrete slabs on special shock absorbers.
Also critical is the ability to move vast amounts of liquids and gases. The top level of Intel’s factories, which are about 70 feet tall, have giant fans to help circulate air to the clean room directly below. Below the clean room are thousands of pumps, transformers, power cabinets, utility pipes and chillers that connect to production machines.
The need for water
Fabs are water-intensive operations. That’s because water is needed to clean wafers at many stages of the production process.
Intel’s two sites in Chandler collectively draw about 11 million gallons of water a day from the local utility. Intel’s future expansion will require considerably more, a seeming challenge for a drought-plagued state like Arizona, which has cut water allocations to farmers. But farming actually consumes much more water than a chip plant.
Intel says its Chandler sites, which rely on supplies from three rivers and a system of wells, reclaim about 82 percent of the freshwater they use through filtration systems, settling ponds and other equipment. That water is sent back to the city, which operates treatment facilities that Intel funded, and which redistributes it for irrigation and other nonpotable uses.
Intel hopes to help boost the water supply in Arizona and other states by 2030, by working with environmental groups and others on projects that save and restore water for local communities.
How fabs are built
To build its future factories, Intel will need roughly 5,000 skilled construction workers for three years.
They have a lot to do. Excavating the foundations is expected to remove 890,000 cubic yards of dirt, carted away at a rate of one dump truck per minute, said Dan Doron, Intel’s construction chief.
The company expects to pour more than 445,000 cubic yards of concrete and use 100,000 tons of reinforcement steel for the foundations — more than in constructing the world’s tallest building, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai.
Some cranes for the construction are so large that more than 100 trucks are needed to bring the pieces to assemble them, Mr. Doron said. The cranes will lift, among other things, 55-ton chillers for the new fabs.
Patrick Gelsinger, who became Intel’s chief executive a year ago, is lobbying Congress to provide grants for fab construction and tax credits for equipment investment. To manage Intel’s spending risk, he plans to emphasize construction of fab “shells” that can be outfitted with equipment to respond to market changes.
To address the chip shortage, Mr. Gelsinger will have to make good on his plan to produce chips designed by other companies. But a single company can do only so much; products like phones and cars require components from many suppliers, as well as older chips. And no country can stand alone in semiconductors, either. Though boosting domestic manufacturing can reduce supply risks somewhat, the chip industry will continue to rely on a complex global web of companies for raw materials, production equipment, design software, talent and specialized manufacturing.
After war began last month, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine turned to Mykhailo Fedorov, a vice prime minister, for a key role.
Mr. Fedorov, 31, the youngest member of Mr. Zelensky’s cabinet, immediately took charge of a parallel prong of Ukraine’s defense against Russia. He began a campaign to rally support from multinational businesses to sunder Russia from the world economy and to cut off the country from the global internet, taking aim at everything from access to new iPhones and PlayStations to Western Union money transfers and PayPal.
To achieve Russia’s isolation, Mr. Fedorov, a former tech entrepreneur, used a mix of social media, cryptocurrencies and other digital tools. On Twitter and other social media, he pressured Apple, Google, Netflix, Intel, PayPal and others to stop doing business in Russia. He helped form a group of volunteer hackers to wreak havoc on Russian websites and online services. His ministry also set up a cryptocurrency fund that has raised more than $60 million for the Ukrainian military.
The work has made Mr. Fedorov one of Mr. Zelensky’s most visible lieutenants, deploying technology and finance as modern weapons of war. In effect, Mr. Fedorov is creating a new playbook for military conflicts that shows how an outgunned country can use the internet, crypto, digital activism and frequent posts on Twitter to help undercut a foreign aggressor.
McDonald’s have withdrawn from Russia, with the war’s human toll provoking horror and outrage. Economic sanctions by the United States, European Union and others have played a central role in isolating Russia.
Mr. Zelensky was elected in 2019, he appointed Mr. Fedorov, then 28, to be minister of digital transformation, putting him in charge of digitizing Ukrainian social services. Through a government app, people could pay speeding tickets or manage their taxes. Last year, Mr. Fedorov visited Silicon Valley to meet with leaders including Tim Cook, the chief executive of Apple.
Russia invaded Ukraine, Mr. Fedorov immediately pressured tech companies to pull out of Russia. He made the decision with Mr. Zelensky’s backing, he said, and the two men speak every day.
“I think this choice is as black and white as it ever gets,” Mr. Fedorov said. “It is time to take a side, either to take the side of peace or to take the side of terror and murder.”
On Feb. 25, he sent letters to Apple, Google and Netflix, asking them to restrict access to their services in Russia. Less than a week later, Apple stopped selling new iPhones and other products in Russia.
Russia damaged the country’s main telecommunications infrastructure. Two days after contacting Mr. Musk, a shipment of Starlink equipment arrived in Ukraine.
Since then, Mr. Fedorov said he has periodically exchanged text messages with Mr. Musk.
were put on pause following the invasion. Russia, a signatory to the accord, has tried to use final approval of the deal as leverage to soften sanctions imposed because of the war.
But while many companies have halted business in Russia, more could be done, he said. Apple and Google should pull their app stores from Russia and software made by companies like SAP was also being used by scores of Russian businesses, he has noted.
In many instances, the Russian government is cutting itself off from the world, including blocking access to Twitter and Facebook. On Friday, Russian regulators said they would also restrict access to Instagram and called Meta an “extremist” organization.
Some civil society groups have questioned whether Mr. Fedorov’s tactics could have unintended consequences. “Shutdowns can be used in tyranny, not in democracy,” the Internet Protection Society, an internet freedom group in Russia, said in a statement earlier this week. “Any sanctions that disrupt access of Russian people to information only strengthen Putin’s regime.”
Mr. Fedorov said it was the only way to jolt the Russian people into action. He praised the work of Ukraine-supporting hackers who have been coordinating loosely with Ukrainian government to hit Russian targets.
“After cruise missiles started flying over my house and over houses of many other Ukrainians, and also things started exploding, we decided to go into counter attack,” he said.
Mr. Fedorov’s work is an example of Ukraine’s whatever-it-takes attitude against a larger Russian army, said Max Chernikov, a software engineer who is supporting the volunteer group known as the IT Army of Ukraine.
“He acts like every Ukrainian — doing beyond his best,” he said.
Mr. Fedorov, who has a wife and young daughter, said he remained hopeful about the war’s outcome.
“The truth is on our side,” he added. “I’m sure we’re going to win.”
Daisuke Wakabayashi and Mike Isaac contributed reporting.
An article of faith in global sports — that athletes should not be punished for the actions of their governments — crumbled on Monday, when executives worldwide moved to banish Russians from competitions and deepen the country’s isolation for its invasion of Ukraine.
The International Olympic Committee recommended that athletes from Russia and Belarus, which has allowed Russian troops to use its territory, be barred from events. FIFA, soccer’s international governing body, effectively blocked Russia from qualifying for this year’s men’s World Cup. And ice hockey associations in the Czech Republic, Finland and Sweden suspended Russia from a tournament they had staged jointly for decades.
Although there were loopholes and scattered uncertainties, the penalties amounted to a bracing rebuke of Moscow and Minsk by a sports world that has long labored furiously, if sometimes unconvincingly, to depict competition as separate from politics.
The International Paralympic Committee will decide on Wednesday whether to allow Russian and Belarusian athletes to compete in the Paralympic Games, which are scheduled to open in Beijing on Friday.
But the day’s events left little doubt that Russia and Belarus, which had already drawn scrutiny for doping violations and oppression, would become further separated from the wider athletic world.
“This will continue to be a contest of two different visions of what sport is and who is allowed to participate in and control sport,” said Andrés Martinez, a research scholar at Arizona State University’s Global Sport Institute. “I think this is a bit of a reset, though, in that it does set an important precedent and a standard that sporting federations cannot continue to act with impunity and just let the highest bidder dictate what happens in sport, oblivious to other considerations, including the behavior of those highest bidders.”
The most potentially far-reaching effort on Monday came from the I.O.C., which cited “the integrity of global sports competitions” and “the safety of all the participants” when it recommended that Russian and Belarusian athletes be blocked from competitions.
“While athletes from Russia and Belarus would be able to continue to participate in sports events, many athletes from Ukraine are prevented from doing so because of the attack on their country,” the I.O.C. said in a statement, which noted that it issued its recommendation “with a heavy heart.”
It will fall to event organizers and the federations that administer individual sports to decide how, or if, to adopt the I.O.C.’s recommendation, which the committee suggested might not be enforced “on short notice for organizational or legal reasons.”
That qualifier appeared to be a nod to the imminence of the Paralympic Games, which have been expected to draw more than 70 athletes from Russia and about a dozen from Belarus.
The International Paralympic Committee did not immediately respond to a request for comment, nor did Belarusian officials or the Russian Paralympic Committee. But Stanislav Pozdnyakov, the president of the Russian Olympic Committee, said in a statement that he and other Russian officials “strongly” objected to the I.O.C. recommendation, which he said contradicted “the spirit of the Olympic movement, which should unite and not divide.”
The I.O.C.’s recommendation came hours before FIFA announced that it had suspended Russia and its teams from all competitions and ejected the country from qualifying for the 2022 World Cup only weeks before it was to play for one of Europe’s final places in this year’s tournament.
FIFA, which had come under pressure for its initial hesitance to bar Russia from competition, and its European counterpart, UEFA, said the ban on Russia would be in place “until further notice.”
“Football is fully united here and in full solidarity with all the people affected in Ukraine,” FIFA said in a statement. Ukraine’s team, which is set to play Scotland in its own World Cup playoff in March, will remain in the competition.
UEFA, which has decided to move this year’s Champions League final to St.-Denis, France, from St. Petersburg, Russia, then went a step further in breaking its deep ties to Russia: It announced that it had ended a sponsorship agreement with the Russian energy giant Gazprom. The deal was worth a reported $50 million a year to European soccer.
It was unclear whether FIFA’s decision to bar Russia would face a court challenge. Russia and some its athletes have successfully fought exclusion from other events, including the Olympic Games, by getting punishments watered down through appeals to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.
Any efforts to keep Russian athletes out of other competitions could also spark legal battles. Pozdnyakov, the Russian Olympic Committee chairman, said Russian officials intended to “consistently defend the rights and interests of Russian athletes and provide all necessary assistance to our national sports federations to challenge discriminatory decisions.”
Some penalties could prove harder to fight than others.
Hockey executives in the Czech Republic, Finland and Sweden said Monday that Russia would not be allowed to participate in this year’s Euro Hockey Tour, and executives signaled that they were looking to replace Russia permanently.
“The Russian invasion of Ukraine is a terrible situation, and we in the ice hockey world are completely behind the people of Ukraine,” said Anders Larsson, the Swedish Ice Hockey Association’s chairman. “Inviting a Russian national ice hockey team to the Euro Hockey Tour tournaments in Stockholm, Helsinki and Prague is therefore completely unthinkable at the moment.”
The application of the I.O.C.’s recommendation could also be particularly thorny in individual sports and competitions in which athletes are competing more for themselves than for their nations.
In cross-country skiing, Natalia Nepryaeva of Russia holds the top spot in the World Cup standings but could lose that ranking if she cannot participate in several coming races.
Tennis has the complexity of seven ruling organizations. On the same day the I.O.C. recommended the ban, Daniil Medvedev, a Russian, took over the top sport in the men’s world rankings.
The ATP Tour heralded the achievement on its website with a picture of Medvedev next to the Russian flag. However, Medvedev moved to Monaco years ago and has campaigned for peace on his social media channels.
The ATP Tour made no immediate announcement about whether it would follow the I.O.C. recommendation, nor did the WTA, which manages the women’s professional tour and has three players from Russia and Belarus in the top 20, including Victoria Azarenka, who is on the organization’s board.
On Monday, Elina Svitolina, a top player from Ukraine and the top seed this week in a tournament in Mexico, announced that she would not play her first-round match against Anastasia Potapova of Russia. In a Twitter post, Svitolina urged the governing bodies of tennis to follow the I.O.C.’s guidance.
Although Monday’s maneuvers against Russia were particularly forceful, the country has clashed with sports executives in recent years over its reliance on a state-run doping operation. Still, Russian athletes and teams had faced the most marginal of consequences. At the Beijing Olympics, which ended Feb. 20, Russian athletes appeared as members of the “Russian Olympic Committee,” and did not formally compete under the Russian tricolor flag or hear the Russian national anthem at medal ceremonies.
And in December, Olympic officials barred the Belarusian president, Alexander Lukashenko, from I.O.C. events, including the Beijing Games. Olympic officials complained at the time that Belarusian athletes were “not appropriately protected” from what they described as “political discrimination.”
Monday’s wave of condemnation, though, proved far broader and came after days of swelling anger among sports executives and demands from political leaders and athletes alike. Last week, Olympic executives pressed federations to cancel or move competitions from Belarus and Russia.
Vladimir V. Putin, the president of Russia, who has long heralded the role of sports in his own life and the role of athletics in his country’s ambitions, has also increasingly come under personal pressure. The International Judo Federation recently suspended him from his role as its honorary president, and World Taekwondo rescinded the honorary black belt it gave him in 2013.
On Monday, the I.O.C. withdrew its highest honor from Putin, who received it in 2001. He attended the opening ceremony of the Beijing Games on Feb. 4, when his forces were massing at the Ukrainian border ahead of their invasion.
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