Tag Archives: USAVA

Amazon’s AWS to invest $35 bln in Virginia

WASHINGTON, Jan 20 (Reuters) – Amazon.com Inc’s (AMZN.O) cloud services division said Friday it plans to invest another $35 billion by 2040 to expand data centers in Virginia.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) said the new investment will create 1,000 jobs. Virginia Republican Governor Glenn Youngkin said AWS will establish multiple data center campuses across Virginia.

In 2021, AWS said from 2011 to 2020 it had invested $35 billion in data centers located in northern Virginia and had 3,500 full time employees at its data centers in the state.

Pending approval by state lawmakers, Virginia is developing a new “Mega Data Center Incentive Program,” which would allow the company to receive up to a 15-year extension of Data Center Sales and Use tax exemptions on equipment and software.

AWS also will be eligible to receive a state grant of up to $140 million “for site and infrastructure improvements, workforce development, and other project-related costs.”

Amazon shares closed up 3.8% Friday.

Amazon in 2018 after a long contest announced northern Virginia would be home to its second headquarters known as “HQ2” and eventually employ more than 25,000 employees. As of April, Amazon said its headcount assigned to the site was around 5,000.

Youngkin has faced some criticism for withdrawing from a competition to attract a new Ford Motor (F.N) battery plant expected to be built with China’s Contemporary Amperex Technology Co Ltd (CATL) (300750.SZ), the world’s largest battery producer.

Youngkin defended his decision Friday, telling Bloomberg News that he looks “forward to bringing a great company there. It won’t be one that uses kind of a Trojan-horse relationship with the Chinese Communist Party in order to gain.”

A spokesperson for Youngkin has said that “while Ford is an iconic American company, it became clear that this proposal would serve as a front for the Chinese Communist party.”

Ford declined to comment on Youngkin’s decision to withdraw.

In July, Ford said it plans to localize 40 GWh of battery capacity in North America starting in 2026. It also announced CATL would provide battery packs for Mustang Mach-E models for North America starting in 2023 and would discuss cooperation for batteries in Ford vehicles around the world.

“Our talks with CATL continue – and we have nothing new to announce on either front,” Ford said.

Michigan is also a candidate for the Ford battery plant, sources said, and a decision could be made in the coming weeks.

Reporting by David Shepardson and Akash Sriram in Bengaluru; Editing by Aurora Ellis and Himani Sarkar

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Walmart Chesapeake shooting: Manager kills 6 fellow workers and himself

CHESAPEAKE, Va., Nov 23 (Reuters) – A manager at a Walmart Inc. (WMT.N) store in Virginia entered a break room and opened fire on fellow employees before turning the gun on himself, an eyewitness said on Wednesday, leaving a total of seven dead in the latest mass shooting in the United States.

The gunman, identified as Andre Bing, 31, of Chesapeake, Virginia, said nothing as he began firing on the workers gathered ahead of their shift late Tuesday, Walmart employee Briana Tyler told ABC’s “Good Morning America.”

“I looked up and my manager just opened the door and he just opened fire,” Tyler said. “He didn’t say a word. He didn’t say anything at all.”

At least four people were injured in the shooting, Chesapeake Police Chief Mark Solesky told a news conference. He did not disclose a possible motive for the shooting, but said the suspect died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Bing was armed with a single handgun and carried multiple magazines of ammunition, according to a tweet from Chesapeake, a city of about 250,000 people south of Norfolk.

Coming on the heels of the killing of five people at a Colorado Springs LGBTQ nightclub on Saturday, the latest massacre prompted a fresh round of condemnations by public officials and calls by activists for tighter gun control.

U.S. President Joe Biden on Wednesday called the shooting “yet another horrific and senseless act of violence,” vowing any federal resources needed to aid in the investigation.

“There are now even more tables across the country that will have empty seats this Thanksgiving,” he said in a statement, noting a shooting earlier this month that left three University of Virginia students dead. “We must take greater action.”

Bing worked at the company since 2010, most recently as an overnight team leader at the cavernous Walmart Supercenter just off Battlefield Boulevard in Chesapeake.

“The Battlefield Walmart just got shot up by one of my managers. He killed a couple of people. By the grace of God I made it out,” another employee, Kevin Harper, told CBS.

Jessie Wilczewski told WAVY-TV that she hid under a table and the shooter pointed the gun at her and told her to go home.

“It didn’t even look real until you could feel the pow-pow-pow. You can feel it,” the store employee said. “I couldn’t hear it at first because I guess it was so loud. I could feel it.”

Tuesday’s bloodshed marked the latest spasm of gun violence in the United States, where an average of two mass shootings — defined as an incident killing or injuring four or more people — occur every day, according to GunViolenceArchive.org.

Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin, who was already facing stepped-up calls for policies to address gun violence in the wake of the University of Virginia killings, ordered flags at local, state and federal buildings to be flown at half-staff.

Kimberly Shupe told WAVY-TV that her son Jalon Jones, 24, was stable after being shot in his ear and back. He told her that he arrived for his overnight shift around 10 p.m., and that in their nightly meeting his manager was acting “strange” and “then started shooting,” she told the news station

Dr. Jessica Burgess, a surgeon who treated victims at a Norfolk hospital where two people died, two were in critical condition and one was recovering, said she contacted a colleague in Colorado Springs just two days prior to offer support.

“So it’s very disheartening that I’m now in the same position with my colleagues from across the country checking in on me and my team,” Burgess said. “Sometimes there is only so much we can do when the injuries have already been done.”

It is not the first mass shooting at a Walmart, which has thousands of stores across the country.

At a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, in August 2019, 23 people were killed in a mass shooting near the U.S.-Mexico border in an act described as domestic terrorism by law enforcement. It was also the deadliest attack on the Hispanic community in modern times. Patrick Wood Crusius, then 21, from Allen, Texas, was arrested in the shooting and he left behind a manifesto with white nationalist and anti-immigrant themes.

“The devastating news of last night’s shooting at our Chesapeake, VA store at the hands of one of our associates has hit our Walmart family hard,” Walmart Chief Executive Officer Doug McMillon wrote in a LinkedIn post on Wednesday.

Reporting by Rich McKay, Susan Heavey, Bharat Govind Gautam, Abinaya Vijayaraghavan and Shubham Kalia; Additional reporting by Juby Babu; Editing by Gerry Doyle, Nick Macfie, Gareth Jones and Mark Porter

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U.S. truckers plan pandemic protest, inspired by Canadian counterparts

ADELANTO, Calif., Feb 23 (Reuters) – Taking a cue from demonstrations that paralyzed Canada’s capital city, Ottawa, for weeks, U.S. truckers on Wednesday plan to embark on a 2,500-mile (4,000-km) cross-country drive toward Washington to protest coronavirus restrictions.

Organizers of the “People’s Convoy” say they want to “jumpstart the economy” and reopen the country. Their 11-day trek will approach the Beltway around the U.S. capital on March 5, “but will not be going into D.C. proper,” according to a statement.

The Pentagon said on Tuesday it had approved 400 National Guard troops from the District of Columbia, who would not carry weapons, to help at traffic posts from Saturday through March 7.

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About 50 large tactical vehicles were also approved to be placed at traffic posts.

In addition, up to 300 National Guard troops from outside of Washington were approved to come to the city to assist at traffic posts if needed.

Brian Brase, a truck driver who is one of the organizers, said that, regardless of where the trucks stop, “we’re not going anywhere” until the group’s demands are met. Those demands include an end to COVID-19 vaccine and mask requirements.

Most U.S. states are already easing some restrictions. In California, where the convoy begins, universal mask requirements were lifted last week while masks for vaccinated people are required only in high-risk areas such as public transit, schools and healthcare settings.

Another convoy was expected to leave Scranton, Pennsylvania — President Joe Biden’s hometown — on Wednesday morning and arrive on the Beltway, formally known as Interstate 495, sometime during the afternoon. The Beltway goes through Maryland and Virginia outside the district.

Organizer Bob Bolus of Scranton told Washington television station WJLA that his convoy has no intention of breaking laws or blocking traffic, but warned this could happen if their demands regarding pandemic mandates and the cost of fuel are not meant.

“They are not going to intimidate us and they are not going to threaten us. We’re the power, not them,” said Bolus, a trucker who owns a tow truck company.

As of Wednesday morning, the convoy, which had not yet left Scranton, consisted of a tractor-trailer rig, a dump truck and a handful of pickup trucks.

In Canada, pandemic-related protests choked streets in Ottawa for more than three weeks and blocked the busiest land crossing between Canada and the United States – the Ambassador Bridge connecting Windsor, Ontario, and Detroit — for six days.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau invoked rarely used emergency powers to end the protests, and Canadian police restored a sense of normalcy in Ottawa over the weekend.

“We plan to stay a while and hope they don’t escalate it the way Trudeau did with his disgusting government overreach,” Brase said from Adelanto, California, where the convoy will begin, about 80 miles (130 km) northeast of Los Angeles.

Brase said he expected thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, would participate. Organizers bill the convoy as nonpartisan, trucker-led, and supported by a wide range of ethnic minorities and religious faiths.

Economic growth in the United States — as in other countries — was brought to a juddering halt by the imposition of lockdowns in 2020 to curb the spread of the coronavirus.

The economy has boomed since the federal government pumped in trillions of dollars in relief, growing 5.7% in 2021, the strongest since 1984, albeit from a low ebb in 2020, the Commerce Department reported in January.

Meanwhile, unemployment stands at 4%, close to the 3.5% rate of February 2020, just before the pandemic took hold, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. But headwinds related to strained supply chains and inflation — including soaring fuel costs — remain.

“It is now time to reopen the country,” the protest organizers said in a statement.

Among other demands, the protesters want an immediate end to the state of emergency in California — the most populous U.S. state with one of the world’s largest economies — that Governor Gavin Newsom has extended.

Nationwide, new COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations due to the coronavirus have plummeted from all-time highs hit a month ago, though nearly 2,000 people per day are still dying from the disease and the number of total deaths is closing in on 1 million since the pandemic began.

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Reporting by Omar Youis in Adelanto; Additional reporting and writing by Daniel Trotta in Carlsbad, California; Editing by Rosalba O’Brien, Mark Heinrich and Jonathan Oatis

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Winter storm slams U.S. East Coast, Canada, thousands of flights canceled

WASHINGTON, Jan 16 (Reuters) – A major winter storm slammed much of the eastern United States with snow, ice and high winds on Sunday, causing widespread travel disruptions and power outages on a holiday weekend.

Winter weather alerts stretched more than 1,000 miles (1,609 km) from Alabama to Maine, with the governors of Georgia, Virginia, North Carolina and South Carolina all declaring emergencies due to the storm.

More than 200,000 homes and businesses in North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia reported power outages, according to PowerOutage.US, a website tracking power outages.

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In North Carolina, where some regions saw record snowfalls, two people died Sunday when they lost control of their car in Raleigh.

The highest snowfall totals were expected along the spine of the Appalachians as well as across the lower Great Lakes.

The storm made its way through the Mid-Atlantic region toward New England on Sunday night, bringing snow that is expected to change to ice, sleet and eventually rain, the National Weather Service said.

In Canada, the storm is forecast to dump between 20-40cm (8-16 inches) of snow through Monday morning over parts of southern and eastern Ontario, the Canadian province that shares part of its border with New York state, the government weather agency, Environment Canada, said.

The inclement weather hits just as Ontario schools were set to reopen for in-person classes on Monday after the winter break was extended because of the highly contagious Omicron coronavirus variant.

An American Airlines airplane is seen at John F. Kennedy International Airport during the spread of the Omicron coronavirus variant in Queens, New York City, U.S., December 26, 2021. REUTERS/Jeenah Moon

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More than 3,000 flights within, into or out of the United States were canceled on Sunday, and over 8,000 flights were delayed, according to FlightAware data.

American Airlines Group Inc (AAL.O)saw more than 660 flight cancellations. More than 90% of the flights into and out of Charlotte Douglas International Airport in North Carolina, an American Airlines hub, were canceled, the FlightAware website showed.

American Airlines said it is allowing customers affected by the weather to rebook flights without a fee.

Toronto, home of Canada’s busiest airport, is set to see accumulations of 15 to 20cm of snow.

This was a long weekend for most people in the United States as Monday is Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a federal holiday.

Georgia Governor Brian Kemp said on Sunday people should avoid non-essential travel in areas impacted by the storm.

“If you’re able tonight and tomorrow morning, stay home and off the roads,” Kemp said onTwitter. “It’s going to be treacherous in a lot of parts of our state.”

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Reporting by Jan Wolfe in Washington and Kanishka Singh in Bengaluru; Additional reporting by Steve Gorman and Dan Whitcomb in Los Angeles; Editing by Lisa Shumaker, Kieran Murray and Karishma Singh

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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