KYIV, Dec 17 (Reuters) – Basic services were being restored in Ukraine’s capital Kyiv on Saturday after the latest wave of Russian air strikes on critical infrastructure, as residents navigated a city gripped by fog and girded for a holiday season marked by uncertainty.
Mayor Vitali Klitschko said a quarter of Kyiv remained without heating but that the metro system was back in service and all residents had been reconnected to water supply by early morning.
Only around one-third of the city remained without electricity, he said, but emergency outages would still be implemented to save power. “Because the deficit of electricity is significant,” he wrote on the Telegram messaging app.
Ukrainian officials said Russia fired more than 70 missiles on Friday in one of its heaviest barrages since the Kremlin’s Feb. 24 invasion, forcing emergency blackouts nationwide.
Ukraine has managed to restore power to almost 6 million people in the last 24 hours, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said in a video address.
“Repair work continues without a break after yesterday’s terrorist attack. … Of course, there is still a lot of work to do to stabilize the system,” he said.
“There are problems with the heat supplies. There are big problems with water supplies,” Zelenskiy added, saying Kyiv as well as Vinnytsia and Lviv further to the west were experiencing the most difficulty.
Earlier this month, Kyiv Mayor Klitschko had warned of an “apocalypse” scenario for the capital if Russian air strikes on infrastructure continued, though he also said there was no need yet for people to evacuate.
“We are fighting and doing everything we can to make sure that this does not happen,” he told Reuters on Dec. 7.
In a gloomy winter haze on Saturday, officials reopened a popular pedestrian bridge that had been damaged during an earlier air strike and were setting up a smaller-than-usual Christmas tree in a central square.
The vast space in front of the centuries-old St. Sophia Cathedral is traditionally anchored by a hulking evergreen at Christmas. But officials this year opted for a 12-metre (40-foot) artificial tree festooned with energy-saving lights powered by a generator.
Orthodox Christians make up the majority of Ukraine’s 43 million people.
Klitschko said the tree was funded by donors and businesses, and that no public celebrations would take place.
“I doubt this will be a true holiday,” said Kyiv resident Iryna Soloychuk, who arrived with her daughter to see the tree just hours after another round of air-raid alerts wailed across the country.
“But we should understand that we’re all together, that we should help one another.”
Additional reporting by Yurii Khomenko and David Ljunggren
Editing by Frances Kerry
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Nov 25 (Reuters) – The Biden administration has banned approvals of new telecommunications equipment from China’s Huawei Technologies (HWT.UL) and ZTE (000063.SZ) because they pose “an unacceptable risk” to U.S. national security.
The U.S. Federal Communications Commission said on Friday it had adopted the final rules, which also bar the sale or import of equipment made by China’s surveillance equipment maker Dahua Technology Co (002236.SZ), video surveillance firm Hangzhou Hikvision Digital Technology Co Ltd (002415.SZ) and telecoms firm Hytera Communications Corp Ltd (002583.SZ).
The move represents Washington’s latest crackdown on the Chinese tech giants amid fears that Beijing could use Chinese tech companies to spy on Americans.
“These new rules are an important part of our ongoing actions to protect the American people from national security threats involving telecommunications,” FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said in a statement.
Huawei declined to comment. ZTE, Dahua, Hikvision and Hytera did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Rosenworcel circulated the proposed measure, which effectively bars the firms from selling new equipment in the United States, to the other three commissioners for final approval last month.
The FCC said in June 2021 it was considering banning all equipment authorizations for all companies on the covered list.
That came after a March 2021 designation of five Chinese companies on the so-called “covered list” as posing a threat to national security under a 2019 law aimed at protecting U.S. communications networks: Huawei, ZTE, Hytera Communications Corp Hikvision and Dahua.
All four commissioners at the agency, including two Republicans and two Democrats, supported Friday’s move.
Reporting by Diane Bartz and Alexandra Alper in Washington and Ismail Shakil in Ottawa; Editing by Caitlin Webber, Alexandra Alper and Lisa Shumaker
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Thomson Reuters
Focused on U.S. antitrust as well as corporate regulation and legislation, with experience involving covering war in Bosnia, elections in Mexico and Nicaragua, as well as stories from Brazil, Chile, Cuba, El Salvador, Nigeria and Peru.
WASHINGTON, Oct 13 (Reuters) – The U.S. Federal Communications Commission is set to ban approvals of new telecommunications equipment from China’s Huawei Technologies and ZTE (000063.SZ) in the United States on national security grounds, according to an agency document.
FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel last week circulated the proposed ban to the other three commissioners for final approval. The companies would not be able to sell new equipment in the United States without equipment authorizations.
“The FCC remains committed to protecting our national security by ensuring that untrustworthy communications equipment is not authorized for use within our borders, and we are continuing that work here,” Rosenworcel said in a statement Thursday.
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The FCC faces a mid-November congressional deadline to act.
In June 2021, the FCC voted to advance the plan to ban approvals for equipment in U.S. telecommunications networks from Chinese companies deemed national security threats, including Huawei and ZTE.
That came after a March 2021 designation of five Chinese companies on the so-called “covered list” as posing a threat to national security under a 2019 law aimed at protecting U.S. communications networks: Huawei, ZTE, Hytera Communications Corp (002583.SZ), Hangzhou Hikvision Digital Technology Co (002415.SZ) and Zhejiang Dahua Technology Co (002236.SZ).
Senate Intelligence Committee chair Mark Warner said he was glad to see the FCC “finally take this step to protect our networks and national security.”
The FCC said in June 2021 it was considering banning all equipment authorizations for all companies on the covered list.
This year, the FCC added Russia’s AO Kaspersky Lab, China Telecom (Americas) Corp (0728.HK), China Mobile International USA (0941.HK), Pacific Networks Corp and China Unicom (Americas) to the covered list.
FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr said in 2021 the FCC had approved more than 3,000 applications from Huawei since 2018.
In 2019, the United States placed Huawei, Hikvision and other firms on its economic blacklist.
Also in 2020, the FCC designated Huawei and ZTE as national security threats to communications networks – a declaration that barred U.S. companies from tapping an $8.3 billion government fund to purchase equipment from the companies.
Earlier this year, the Chinese embassy in Washington said the FCC “abused state power and maliciously attacked Chinese telecom operators again without factual basis.”
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Reporting by David Shepardson in Washington and Jyoti Narayan in Bengaluru; Editing by John Stonestreet, Jonathan Oatis and Marguerita Choy
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SHANGHAI, Oct 10 (Reuters) – Shares in Chinese tech giants Alibaba Group (9988.HK) and Tencent (0700.HK) as well as in chipmakers slumped on Monday, as investors were spooked by new U.S. export control measures aimed at slowing Beijing’s technological and military advances.
The Biden administration published a sweeping set of export controls on Friday, including a measure to cut China off from certain semiconductors made anywhere in the world with U.S. equipment.
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The raft of measures, some of which take immediate effect, could amount to the biggest shift in U.S. policy toward exporting technology to China since the 1990s.
Experts said the new rules will have a broad impact, slowing China’s efforts to develop its own chip industry and advance commercial and state research involving military weapons, artificial intelligence, data centres and many other areas that are powered by supercomputers and high-end chips.
The new controls also come at a time when the global chip industry is already facing major headwinds from tumbling demand post-COVID in computers, smartphones and other electronic devices and has warned of weak revenue.
The most immediate impact is likely to be felt by Chinese chipmakers, they said.
Under the new regulations, U.S. companies must cease supplying Chinese chipmakers with equipment that can produce relatively advanced chips – logic chips under 16 nanometers (nm), DRAM chips below 18 nm, and NAND chips with 28 layers or more – unless they first obtain a license.
That’s set to affect China’s top contract chipmakers – Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp (SMIC) (0981.HK) and Hua Hong Semiconductor Ltd (1347.HK) – as well as state-backed leading memory chipmakers Yangtze Memory Technologies Co Ltd (YMTC) and Changxin Memory Technologies (CXMT).
“The measures will hobble the Chinese chip sector and will scupper numerous growth plans and potentially set back innovation in both the East and the West,” said Danni Hewson, an analyst at AJ Bell.
“There will be plenty of boardrooms hosting top level meetings over the next few days considering the implications of U.S. export controls.”
Chinese foundries have a fraction of the global contract chip market, which is dominated by Taiwan’s TSMC (2330.TW), but they control about 70% of the domestic market, underscoring Beijing’s efforts to boost self-sufficiency in chips.
In memory chips, industry watchers have pegged YMTC and CXMT as China’s best hopes for breaking into the global market, going neck and neck with top players such as Samsung Electronics (005930.KS) and Micron Technology (MU.O).
The new regulations will now pose major hurdles for the two Chinese memory chipmakers, analysts said.
“The advancement of memory will be limited as there is no opportunity to upgrade process equipment, no opportunity to expand production, and the market will be lost,” Gu Wenjun, who leads research at Shanghai-based consultancy ICWise, wrote in a research note.
The blocking of equipment supplies for high-end chip production could also have a cascading impact on simpler chips, analysts said.
Stewart Randall, who tracks China’s semiconductor sector at Shanghai-based consultancy Intralink, said that for NAND chips, the same equipment used to produce 128-layer NAND can also produce simpler 64-layer NAND.
China’s foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning on Saturday called the move an abuse of trade measures designed to reinforce the United States’ “technological hegemony”.
U.S. toolmakers now required to halt shipments to wholly Chinese-owned factories producing advanced logic chips include KLA Corp (KLAC.O), Lam Research Corp (LRCX.O) and Applied Materials Inc .
Shares of Lam Research and Applied Materials fell 1.3% and 0.6%, respectively, in U.S. premarket trading.
In advanced AI chips – Nvidia Corp (NVDA.O) and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD.O) – which are among the major vendors supplying to China, slipped about 1%, each.
“This could hardly come at a worse time for Nvidia given that it’s already faced a highly challenging period due to supply chain snarl-ups and slowing demand for gaming consoles,” said Susannah Streeter, an analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown.
SUPERCOMPUTERS, DATA CENTERS
The rules also include blocking shipments of a broad array of chips for use in Chinese supercomputing systems which can be used to develop nuclear weapons and other military technologies.
Some industry experts say the ban could also hit commercial data centres at Chinese tech giants. Shares in e-commerce company Alibaba and social media and gaming company Tencent, both of which rely on data centres extensively, dropped 3.3% and 2.5%, respectively.
A steep decline in tech shares led China’s market down on its first post-Golden Week holiday trading on Monday.
An index measuring China’s semiconductor firms (.CSIH30184) tumbled nearly 7%, and Shanghai’s tech-focused board STAR Market (.STAR50) declined 4.5%.
SMIC dropped 4%, chip equipment maker NAURA Technology Group Co (002371.SZ) sank 10% by the daily limit, and Hua Hong Semiconductor plunged 9.5%.
Shares in AI research firm SenseTime (0020.HK) and surveillance equipment maker Dahua Technology (002236.SZ), which will be cut off from chips made using U.S. technologies, tumbled 5.7% and 10%, respectively.
The impact on tech shares outside of China was limited on Monday as financial markets in South Korea, Japan and Taiwan were closed for separate holidays.
European tech index (.SX8P) slipped 0.8%, while New York-listed shares of Chinese firms Alibaba , JD.com and Pinduoduo (PDD.O) fell nearly 1.5% each.
Analysts expect the impact on TSMC, the world’s top contract chipmaker, to be limited as most of its advanced chip orders comes from U.S.-based customers such as Apple (AAPL.O) and Qualcomm (QCOM.O), although it generates around 10-12% of its revenue from China.
South Korea on Saturday also expected no significant disruption to equipment supply for Samsung and SK Hynix’s (000660.KS) existing chip production in China.
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Reporting by Josh Horwitz and Jason Xue; Additional reporting by Anisha Sircar and Medha Singh in Bengaluru; Writing by Miyoung Kim; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman
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Oct 7 (Reuters) – The Biden administration on Friday published a sweeping set of export controls, including a measure to cut China off from certain semiconductor chips made anywhere in the world with U.S. tools, vastly expanding its reach in its bid to slow Beijing’s technological and military advances.
The rules, some of which go into effect immediately, build on restrictions sent in letters earlier this year to top toolmakers KLA Corp (KLAC.O), Lam Research Corp (LRCX.O) and Applied Materials Inc (AMAT.O), effectively requiring them to halt shipments of equipment to wholly Chinese-owned factories producing advanced logic chips.
The raft of measures could amount to the biggest shift in U.S. policy toward shipping technology to China since the 1990s. If effective, they could set China’s chip manufacturing industry back years by forcing American and foreign companies that use U.S. technology to cut off support for some of China’s leading factories and chip designers.
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In a briefing with reporters on Thursday previewing the rules, senior government officials said many of the measures sought to prevent foreign firms from selling advanced chips to China or supplying Chinese firms with tools to make their own advanced chips. They conceded, however, that they have not yet secured any promises that allied nations will implement similar measures and that discussions with those nations are ongoing.
“We recognize that the unilateral controls we’re putting into place will lose effectiveness over time if other countries don’t join us,” one official said. “And we risk harming U.S. technology leadership if foreign competitors are not subject to similar controls.”
The expansion of U.S. powers to control exports to China of chips made with U.S. tools is based on a broadening of the so-called foreign direct product rule. It was previously expanded to give the U.S. government authority to control exports of chips made overseas to Chinese telecoms giant Huawei Technologies Co Ltd (HWT.UL) and later to stop the flow of semiconductors to Russia after its invasion of Ukraine.
On Friday, the Biden administration applied the expanded restrictions to China’s IFLYTEK, Dahua Technology, and Megvii Technology, companies added to the entity list in 2019 over allegations they aided Beijing in the suppression of its Uyghur minority group.
The rules published on Friday also block shipments of a broad array of chips for use in Chinese supercomputing systems. The rules define a supercomputer as any system with more than 100 petaflops of computing power within a floor space of 6,400 square feet, a definition that two industry sources said could also hit some commercial data centers at Chinese tech giants.
U.S. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer welcomed the announcement, arguing the rules would “protect our country’s innovations from China’s predatory actions.”
The Semiconductor Industry Association, which represents chipmakers, said it was studying the regulations and urged the United States to “implement the rules in a targeted way – and in collaboration with international partners – to help level the playing field.”
Earlier on Friday, the United States added China’s top memory chipmaker YMTC and 30 other Chinese entities to a list of companies that U.S. officials cannot inspect, ratcheting up tensions with Beijing and taking aim at a firm that has long troubled the Biden administration. read more
The “unverified list” is a potential precursor to tougher economic blacklists, but companies that comply with U.S. inspection rules can come off the list. On Friday, U.S. officials removed nine such firms, including a unit of China’s Wuxi Biologics, which makes ingredients for AstraZeneca Plc’s (AZN.L) COVID-19 vaccine.
The new regulations will also severely restrict export of U.S. equipment to Chinese memory chip makers and formalize letters sent to Nvidia Corp (NVDA.O) and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) (AMD.O) restricting shipments to China of chips used in supercomputing systems that nations around the world rely on to develop nuclear weapons and other military technologies.
Reuters was first to report key details of the new restrictions on memory chip makers, including a reprieve for foreign companies operating in China and the moves to broaden restrictions on shipments to China of technologies from KLA, Lam, Applied Materials, Nvidia and AMD. read more read more
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Reporting by Stephen Nellis in San Francisco and Karen Freifeld in New York
Additional reporting by David Shepardson in Washington
Editing by Alexandra Alper, Chris Sanders and Matthew Lewis
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Sept 7 (Reuters) – Apple Inc (AAPL.O) introduced new iPhone 14 models capable of using satellites to send emergency messages and an adventure-focused Ultra Watch for sports like diving and triathlons.
The sports and outdoor-focused products will test whether Apple’s relatively affluent customer base will keep spending in the face of rising inflation.
Prices of the high-end iPhone 14s are the same as last year’s iPhone 13 models. But Apple dropped its cheapest option, the iPhone mini, meaning the cheapest model now costs $100 more than last year.
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The iPhone 14 will start at $799 and the iPhone Plus at $899 and be available for preorder starting Sept. 9. The iPhone Pro will cost $999 and the iPhone Pro Max $1,099 and be available Sept. 16.
Apple said its satellite SOS will work with emergency responders. It also said that in some situations, users will be able to use its FindMy app to share their location via satellite when they have no other connectivity.
Globalstar said in a filing that it will be the satellite operator for Apple’s emergency SOS service. Globalstar’s stock rose 16% on Wednesday after the announcement of the Apple deal. The stock had gained almost 70% from mid-June to Tuesday’s close, following speculation of working with Apple. read more
Other companies are working on similar functions. SpaceX founder Elon Musk said last month it is working with T-Mobile (TMUS.O) to use its Starlink satellites to connect phones directly to the internet.
Apple’s iPhone 14 Plus model will have a larger screen like Apple’s iPhone Pro models but an A15 processor chip like the previous iPhone 13.
The Cupertino, California-based company also showed a trio of new Apple Watches, including a new Watch Ultra model aimed at extreme sports and diving and designed to challenge sportswatch specialists such as Garmin (GRMN.BN) and Polar.
“Apple is competing for a consumer segment that already has high loyalty towards their existing products and vendors, and it will need to prove itself over time,” said Runar Bjorhovde, an analyst at Canalys.
The Ultra has a bigger battery to last through events like triathlons and better waterproofing and temperature resistance to operate in outdoor environments, as well as better GPS tracking for sports.
The new Watches include an upgraded budget model called the SE and a Series 8 Watch with crash detection and low-power mode for 36 hours of battery life.
The Series 8 with cellular will start at $499 and the SE will start at $299 with cellular. The Ultra, which includes cellular in its base model, will start at $799 and be available Sept. 23.
Apple said the new Series 8 watch has a temperature sensor that will work in conjunction with its previously released cycle tracking app to retroactively detect ovulation. The company emphasized the privacy approach of its cycle tracking. Privacy and reproductive health data has become a focus for tech companies in the wake of a U.S. Supreme Court decision that ended a constitutional right to abortion in the United States.
Apple said it does not have the key to decrypt health data such as cycle tracking.
Apple also touted that its second-generation AirPods Pro will double the amount of noise cancellation over the original version.
But while accessories like the Apple Watch have driven incremental sales from Apple’s existing user base, the iPhone remains the bedrock of its business with 52.4% of sales in its most recent fiscal year.
Apple’s stock was up 0.8% after the presentation, lagging the S&P 500’s gain of 1.8% for the session.
Apple did not give any hints or a preview of its mixed-reality headset on Wednesday. The device is expected to have cameras that pass-through view of the outside world to the wearer while overlaying digital objects on the physical world. Analysts do not expect the device to go on sale until next year at the earliest.
A rival headset called Project Cambria is in the works from Meta Platforms Inc (META.O), which is spending billions of dollars on the project.
(This story corrects first paragraph to messages, not calls)
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Reporting by Stephen Nellis in San Francisco; Additional reporting by Nivedita Balu in Bengaluru; Editing by Peter Henderson and Lisa Shumaker
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