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Ben & Jerry’s alleges parent company Unilever removed its CEO over social activism

Ben & Jerry’s says its was unlawfully removed by its parent company, , in retaliation for the maker’s social and political activism.

In a filing late Tuesday, Ben & Jerry’s said Unilever informed its board on March 3 that it was removing and replacing Ben & Jerry’s CEO David Stever. Ben & Jerry’s said that violated its merger agreement with Unilever, which states that any decisions regarding a CEO’s removal must come after a consultation with an advisory committee from Ben & Jerry’s board.

In a statement Wednesday, London-based Unilever said it hoped board would engage in the agreed-upon process.

“Regrettably, despite repeated attempts to engage the board and follow the correct process, we are disappointed that the confidentiality of an employee career conversation has been made public,” Unilever said.

Unilever acquired Ben & Jerry’s in 2000 for $326 million. At the time, Ben & Jerry’s said the partnership would help the progressive Vermont-based ice cream company expand its social mission.

But lately, the marriage hasn’t been a happy one. In 2021, Ben & Jerry’s announced it would stop serving Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank and contested east Jerusalem. The following year, Unilever sold its Israeli business to a local company that said it would sell Ben & Jerry’s under its Hebrew and Arabic name throughout Israel and the West Bank.

Last May, Unilever said it was planning to spin off its ice cream business — including Ben & Jerry’s — by the end of 2025 as part of a larger restructuring. Unilever also owns personal hygiene brands like Dove soap and food brands like Hellmann’s mayonnaise.

But the acrimony continued. In November, Ben & Jerry’s sued Unilever in federal court in New York, accusing it of silencing Ben & Jerry’s statements in support of Palestinians in the Gaza war.

In its complaint, Ben & Jerry’s said Unilever also refused to let the company release a social media post that identified issues it believed would be challenged during ‘s second term, including minimum wages, universal , abortion and climate change.

Tuesday’s filing was an amendment to that .

NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams return to Earth after 9 months stuck in space

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — Stuck in no more, NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams returned to Earth on Tuesday, hitching a different ride home to close out a saga that began with a bungled test flight more than nine months ago.

Their SpaceX capsule parachuted into the Gulf of Mexico in the early evening, just hours after departing the International Space Station. Splashdown occurred off the coast of Tallahassee in the Florida Panhandle, bringing their unplanned odyssey to an end.

Within an hour, the were out of their capsule, waving and smiling at the cameras while being hustled away in reclining stretchers for routine medical checks.

It all started with a flawed test flight last spring.

The two expected to be gone just a week or so after launching on Boeing’s new Starliner crew capsule on June 5. So many problems cropped up on the way to the space station that eventually sent Starliner back empty and transferred the test pilots to , pushing their homecoming into February. Then SpaceX capsule issues added another month’s delay.

Sunday’s arrival of their relief crew meant Wilmore and Williams could finally leave. NASA cut them loose a little early, given the iffy weather forecast later this week. They checked out with NASA’s Nick Hague and Russia’s Alexander Gorbunov, who arrived in their own SpaceX capsule last fall with two empty seats reserved for the Starliner duo.

 

This image taken from video released by SpaceX shows a SpaceX capsule parachuting into the Gulf of Mexico, Tuesday, March 18, 2025. (SpaceX via AP)
This image taken from video released by SpaceX shows a SpaceX capsule parachuting into the Gulf of Mexico, Tuesday, March 18, 2025. (SpaceX via AP)

Wilmore and Williams ended up spending 286 days in space — 278 days longer than anticipated when they launched. They circled Earth 4,576 times and traveled 121 million miles (195 million kilometers) by the time of splashdown.

“On behalf of SpaceX, welcome home,” radioed SpaceX Mission Control in California.

“What a ride,” replied Hague, the capsule’s commander. “I see a capsule full of grins ear to ear.”

Dolphins circled the capsule as divers readied it for hoisting onto the recovery ship. Once safely on board, the side hatch was opened and the astronauts were helped out, one by one. Williams was next-to-last out, followed by Wilmore who gave two gloved thumbs-up.

Wilmore and Williams’ plight captured the world’s attention, giving new meaning to the phrase “stuck at work” and turning “Butch and Suni” into household names. While other astronauts had logged longer spaceflights over the decades, none had to with so much uncertainty or see the length of their mission expand by so much.

Wilmore and Williams quickly transitioned from guests to full-fledged station crew members, conducting experiments, fixing equipment and even spacewalking together. With 62 hours over nine spacewalks, Williams set a record: the most time spent spacewalking over a career among female astronauts.

Both had lived on the orbiting lab before and knew the ropes, and brushed up on their station training before rocketing away. Williams became the station’s commander three months into their stay and held the post until earlier this month.

Their mission took an unexpected twist in late January when asked SpaceX founder to accelerate the astronauts’ return and blamed the delay on the Biden administration. The replacement crew’s brand new SpaceX capsule still wasn’t ready to fly, so SpaceX subbed it with a used one, hurrying things along by at least a few weeks.

After splashdown, Musk offered his congratulations via X. NASA’s Joel Montalbano said the space agency was already looking at various options when Trump made his call to hurry the astronauts home.

Even in the middle of the political storm, Wilmore and Williams continued to maintain an even keel at public appearances from orbit, casting no blame and insisting they supported NASA’s decisions from the start.

NASA hired SpaceX and Boeing after the shuttle program ended, in order to have two competing U.S. companies for transporting astronauts to and from the space station until it’s abandoned in 2030 and steered to a fiery reentry. By then, it will have been up there more than three decades; the plan is to replace it with privately run stations so NASA can focus on moon and Mars expeditions.

“This has been nine months in the making, and I couldn’t be prouder of our team’s versatility, our team’s ability to adapt and really build for the future of human spaceflight,” NASA’s commercial crew program manager Steve Stich said.

With Starliner still under engineering investigation, SpaceX will launch the next crew for NASA as soon as July. Stich said NASA will have until summer to decide whether the crew after that one will be flown by SpaceX or Boeing — or whether Boeing will have to prove itself by flying cargo before people again.

Both retired Navy captains, Wilmore and Williams stressed they didn’t mind spending more time in space — a prolonged deployment reminiscent of their military days. But they acknowledged it was tough on their families.

Wilmore, 62, missed most of his younger daughter’s senior year of high school; his older daughter is in college. Williams, 59, had to settle for internet calls from space to her husband, mother and other relatives.

“We have not been worried about her because she has been in good spirits,” said Falguni Pandya, who is married to Williams’ cousin. “She was definitely ready to come home.”

Prayers for Williams and Wilmore were offered up at 21 Hindu temples in the U.S. in the months leading up to their return, said organizer Tejal Shah, president of World Hindu Council of America. Williams has spoken frequently about her Indian and Slovenian heritage. Prayers for their safe return also came from Wilmore’s Baptist church in Houston, where he serves as an elder.

Crowds in Jhulasan, the ancestral home of Williams’ father, danced and celebrated in a temple and performed rituals during the homecoming.

After returning in the gulf — Trump in January signed an order renaming the body of water Gulf of America — Wilmore and Williams will have to wait until they’re off the SpaceX recovery ship and flown to Houston before reuniting with their loved ones. The three NASA astronauts will be checked out by flight surgeons as they adjust to gravity, officials said, and should be allowed to go home after a day or two.

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AP journalist Deepa Bharath contributed to this report.

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

While Youngkin celebrates Virginia’s labor force gains, economists warn of future unemployment

Gov. Glenn Youngkin says he feels good about the state’s employment landscape.

In an announcement Tuesday, the governor celebrated that Virginia added 7,100 more in January 2025, according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).

“More Virginians are working than ever in the commonwealth as jobs and opportunity continue to expand in Virginia,” Youngkin said in a statement. “This performance underscores the success of our pro-business policies and our ongoing focus on development, which are providing Virginia companies the talent they need to grow and Virginians with the opportunities to succeed.”

However, there are signs of trouble on the horizon, with rampant headlines about federal agencies’ closures and , as well as ‘s proposed tariffs that could upend other industries.

“It’s the calm before the storm,” economist Bob McNab, director of Old Dominion University’s Dragas Center for Economic Analysis and Policy, said this week. He predicts the number of unemployed workers in the commonwealth will grow this year in reaction to federal workers’ layoffs and fewer federal contracts in certain sectors.

Already, the state’s rose a tenth of a point to 3% in January, compared to 2.9% in December 2024 and 2.8% in January 2024, according to data reported this week by the Virginia Department of Workforce Development and Advancement, the state agency also known as Virginia Works. And last week, the number of Virginians filing for unemployment rose more than 40% compared to the week before.

Most economists are waiting to see what comes when February’s numbers come out, which will reflect the Trump effect more clearly, but McNab, who produces statewide and Hampton Roads economic forecasts, is fairly sure what’s coming. “What we’re going to see over the coming months is that the federal layoffs and the reduction in federal contracts are going to accelerate job losses, first in the federal government sector, and then in other sectors as contracts are interrupted or terminated.”

In spite of federal judges pausing some agencies’ closures and federal workforce layoffs, impacted Virginians are on edge.

“Given that some agencies have been shuttered entirely and others are working on reduced staff, and there are reduction in force plans that are being quoted, at some point, one would be reasonably expect that we would see federal employment decrease,” McNab said.

Job, labor force increases — for now

However, the numbers looked fine for January. As usual, Virginia’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate of 3% was below the national rate of 4%. The number of employed Virginians increased to more than 4.28 million in January. The private sector saw an increase of  2,300 jobs to about 3.5 million total, while public sector jobs increased by 4,800 to 770,800. Within that sector, federal government jobs increased by 400 — a bump that’s not likely to last in next month’s reports.

In the governor’s announcement Tuesday, he noted that total nonfarm payroll in Virginia has increased by 276,400 jobs since 2022, “with more than 70,000 future hires expected based on company announcements.”

Education and health services saw the state’s largest gains of 5,000 jobs from December 2024 to January, and construction saw the most losses at 2,900 lost jobs, and trade, transportation and utilities following with 2,100 lost jobs.

Christopher M. Herrington, associate professor of economics at Virginia Commonwealth University, found January’s unemployment report for Virginia to be par for the course.

“It looks pretty stable,” he said. “There’s nothing there that looks surprising or concerning, but that comes with a huge grain of salt, [because] that was the January report.

“I think we all know that a lot of the things that people are anxious about right now, having tariffs and federal layoffs and the associated spillover effects from that, didn’t start till February. So I’m hesitant to read too much into one report. I think I’m much more interested in seeing what happens with with the subsequent unemployment reports over the next few months.”

Eric Scorsone, director of the University of Virginia’s Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service, found the initial unemployment claims filed during the week that ended March 8 to be more interesting than the unemployment rate. Virginia saw 4,036 initial claims filed that week, 40% above the previous week and 81% higher than the same week in 2024.

“I do think that’s more reflective of what’s likely going to happen,” Scorsone said. “Four thousand still isn’t a lot if you compare that to COVID or other times. It’s still a low number, but [it is] up a lot.”

Most of those job losses were in the fields of ; professional, scientific and technical services; administrative and support and waste management; retail, and social assistance, according to Virginia Works’ report March 14.

And yet, the numbers don’t quite capture the feeling of precarity among those whose livelihoods are connected to the federal government, whether in the public or private sector.

“What I’m worried about right now is that there’s this pall of uncertainty that seems to be hanging over everything just because policy levels at the federal level have been so rapid and so back and forth,” says Herrington. “My concern is that both consumers and businesses are getting anxious about all of these policy changes and that they’re going to pull back on spending and investment and take this wait-and-see approach until things settle down and that’s where I think there’s much more potential for the as a whole to slow down.”

And then there are the tariffs.

The president has stayed in the news with his on-and-off tariff wars, while leaving businesses in suspense about their length and potential economic impact.

It’s too early, according to McNab, to say whether Trump’s tariffs will affect Virginia’s manufacturing industry. The United States’ 25% tariffs on steel and aluminum imports went into effect earlier this month. Additional, 25% tariffs on imports from Mexico and are scheduled to go into effect in April, along with a 10% tariff on oil and energy products from Canada. Imports from China face a 20% tariff. Last week, Trump threatened to place a 200% tariff on EU countries’ wines and other alcoholic products, causing worry among retailers.

“Employers see the tariffs are coming and anticipate higher production costs and thus reduce employment in anticipation of those effects, or [this is a] temporary aberration,” McNab said.

David Bieri, an associate professor for Virginia Tech’s School of Public and International Affairs, said Tuesday that implementing the tariffs as they are structured right now is not “going to lead to a tremendous amount of job creation in the United States, simple as that.”

On the other hand, Bieri stressed he’s not pessimistic about the U.S. economy, pointing out that it survived an unprecedented pandemic. “If today’s conditions are the best predictor of tomorrow’s conditions, we can say, “Yeah, things are looking pretty good.'”

Judge rules DOGE’s USAID dismantling likely violates the Constitution

WASHINGTON (AP) — The dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development by billionaire Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency likely violated the Constitution, a federal ruled Tuesday as he indefinitely blocked from making further to the agency.

The order requires the Trump administration to restore email and computer access to all employees of , including those put on administrative leave, though it appears to stops short of reversing firings or fully resurrecting the agency.

In one of the first DOGE lawsuits against Musk himself, U.S. District Judge Theodore Chuang in Maryland rejected the Trump administration’s position that Musk is merely President Donald Trump’s advisor.

Musk’s public statements and social media posts demonstrate that he has “firm control over DOGE,” the judge found pointing to an online post where Musk said he had “fed USAID into the wood chipper.”

FILE - Flowers and a sign are placed outside the headquarters of the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, Feb. 7, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, file)
FILE – Flowers and a sign are placed outside the headquarters of the U.S. Agency for International Development, or USAID, Feb. 7, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, file)

The judge acknowledged that it’s likely that USAID is no longer capable of performing some of its statutorily required functions.

“Taken together, these facts support the conclusion that USAID has been effectively eliminated,” Chuang wrote in the preliminary injunction.

The filed by USAID employees and contractors argued that Musk and DOGE are wielding power the Constitution reserves only for those who win elections or are confirmed by the Senate. Their attorneys said the ruling “effectively halts or reverses” many of the steps taken to dismantle the agency.

The administration has said that DOGE is searching for and rooting out waste, fraud and abuse in the , consistent with the campaign message that helped Trump win the 2024 election. The White House and DOGE did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the ruling.

In February, the Trump administration placed all but a fraction of USAID’s worldwide staff on leave and notified at least 1,600 of its U.S.-based staffers they were being fired. The effort to gut the six-decade-old aid agency was part of a broader push to eradicate the foreign aid agency and most of its humanitarian and development programs abroad.

Trump on Inauguration Day issued an order directing a freeze of foreign assistance funding and a review of all U.S. aid and development work abroad, charging that much of foreign assistance was wasteful and advanced a liberal agenda.

The lawsuit was filed by the State Democracy Defenders Fund. Norm Eisen, the nonprofit’s executive chair, said the ruling is a milestone in pushback to DOGE and the first to find that Musk’s actions violate the Constitution’s Appointments Clause, which mandates presidential approval and Senate confirmation for certain public officials.

“They are performing surgery with a chainsaw instead of a scalpel, harming not just the people USAID serves but the majority of Americans who count on the stability of our government,” he said in a statement.

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Associated Press writers Chris Megerian and Ellen Knickmeyer contributed reporting.

Stock market today: Back down goes Wall Street as Big Tech resumes its slide

NEW YORK (AP) — swung back down on Tuesday, and its former superstars once again led the way.

The dropped 1.1% for its latest swerve in a scary ride, where it tumbled by 10% from its record and then rallied for two straight days. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 260 points, or 0.6%, and the Nasdaq composite sank 1.7%.

Tesla was one of the heaviest weights on the market after falling 5.3%. The electric-vehicle maker’s stock has been struggling on worries that it will lose sales because of anger at its CEO, Elon Musk, who has been leading efforts to cut spending by the U.S. government. EV rivals, meanwhile, continue to chip away at its business. China’s BYD on Monday announced an ultra-fast charging system that it says is nearly as quick as a gasoline fill-up.

sank 2.2% after the owner of Google said it would buy cybersecurity firm Wiz for $32 billion. It would be the company’s most expensive purchase in its 26-year history, and it could boost the giant’s in-house cloud computing amid burgeoning artificial-intelligence growth.

The drop for Big Tech continues a trend that’s taken hold in the market’s recent sell-off: whose momentum had earlier seemed unstoppable have since dropped sharply following criticism they had simply grown too expensive.

Chief among them have been stocks that zoomed higher in the frenzy around . Nvidia fell 3.3% as it hosted an event known as “AI Woodstock.” Super Micro Computer, which makes servers, lost 9.6%. Palantir Technologies, which offers an AI platform for customers, sank 4%.

They’ve been among the biggest losers as Wall Street retrenches amid uncertainty about what President Donald Trump’s trade war will do to the . Trump’s rat -a- tat announcements on tariffs and other policies have created worries that U.S. households and businesses could hold pull on their spending, which would hurt the economy.

It all makes things more complicated for the Federal Reserve, which is beginning its latest meeting on interest-rate policy and will make its announcement on Wednesday.

The Fed could lower its main interest rate, which would make it easier for U.S. businesses and households to borrow. That in turn could boost the economy. But lower interest rates can also push inflation upward, and U.S. consumers have already begun bracing for higher inflation because of tariffs.

Virtually everyone on Wall Street expects the Fed to hold its main interest rate steady on Wednesday, as it waits for clues about how conditions play out. The job market, for the moment at least, appears relatively stable after the economy closed last year running at a solid rate.

More attention will be on the forecasts the Fed will publish after the meeting, showing where officials expect interest rates, inflation and the economy to head in upcoming years. For now, traders on Wall Street are largely expecting the Fed to deliver two or three to rates by the end of 2025.

One of the reasons the U.S. ‘s sell-off in recent weeks has “so far been orderly,” with the epicenter remaining within tech, may be because of faith that the Fed can protect Wall Street, according to strategists at Barclays. If conditions were to deteriorate quickly, the Fed could cut rates to support the economy.

Such faith “crucially could be put to test this week” if the Fed appears to be more concerned about inflation than a weakening economy, at least relative to the market’s expectations, according to the Barclays strategists led by Venu Krishna.

All told, the S&P 500 fell 60.46 points to 5,614.66 Tuesday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped 260.32 to 41,581.31, and the Nasdaq composite fell 304.55 to 17,504.12.

In stock markets abroad, indexes rose across much of Europe and Asia. They’ve been largely doing better than the U.S. stock market this year, flipping a yearslong trend and forcing questions about whether the end has arrived for what was called “U.S. exceptionalism.”

Japan’s Nikkei 225 rose 1.2%. Investors expect the Bank of Japan to keep its benchmark interest rate unchanged at a monetary policy board meeting due to wrap up Wednesday.

Trading on Indonesia’s stock exchange was suspended temporarily as the benchmark JSX tumbled as much as 6%. But it later pared the loss to 3.8%.

Investors have been sending shares of state-owned banks lower after the government launched a sovereign wealth fund, called Danantara, that so far has not proven popular. Worries over U.S. tariffs and other risks have also shaken confidence in the economy of the world’s fourth-most populous nation, said Budi Frensidy, a professor at the University of Indonesia.

In the bond market, the yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury note fell to 4.28% from 4.31% late Monday.

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AP writers Matt Ott, Yuri Kageyama and Niniek Karmini contributed to this report.

Pentagon is cutting up to 60,000 civilian jobs. About a third of those took voluntary resignations

WASHINGTON (AP) — Roughly 50,000 to 60,000 civilian will be cut in the Defense Department, but fewer than 21,000 workers who took a voluntary resignation plan are leaving in the coming months, a senior official told reporters Tuesday.

To reach the goal of a 5% to 8% cut in a civilian of more than 900,000, the official said, the Pentagon aims to slash about 6,000 positions a month by simply not replacing workers who routinely leave.

A key concern is that service members may then be tapped to fill those civilian jobs left empty by the hiring freeze. But the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to provide personnel details, said Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth wants to ensure the don’t hurt military readiness.

The cuts are part of the broader effort by billionaire Trump adviser Elon Musk ‘s Department of Government Efficiency Service to slash the federal workforce and dismantle U.S. agencies.

Acknowledging that “some” military veterans will be among the civilians let go, the official would not estimate how many but agreed it could be thousands.

The department is using three ways to accomplish the workforce cuts: voluntary resignations, firing probationary workers and cutting jobs as employees routinely leave. The official said the military services and Pentagon officials are going over the personnel on a case-by-case basis to ensure cuts don’t affect critical national security jobs.

Officials would not say how many Defense Department civilians requested the voluntary resignation plan — also known as the “Fork in the Road” offer — but said more requested it than the number who eventually were approved.

The defense official said the “vast majority” were allowed but that in some cases, people were denied for national security reasons or to make sure that too many people in one office didn’t all leave.

He added that Hegseth also has given the secretaries of the military branches and Defense Department personnel leaders the authority to grant exemptions to the hiring freeze.

An average of 70,000 civilians are hired each year, which amounts to about 6,000 a month, he said. Because the services have a good of latitude in determining which jobs should not be subject to the freeze, it’s not clear what portion of those 70,000 would actually be eliminated.

Plans to cut probationary workers, which the Pentagon said targeted about 5,400 of the roughly 54,000 in the department, are already on hold due to court challenges. Federal judges ordered the administration to rehire thousands, if not tens of thousands, of probationary workers that had been let go, finding problems with the way the mass terminations were carried out.

The official added that Hegseth is confident the staffing cuts can be done without negatively affecting military readiness. The Pentagon chief last month in Germany noted that he was planning to welcome to the Pentagon, adding that “there are waste, redundancies and headcounts in headquarters that need to be addressed.”

Across the government, about 75,000 federal workers are being let go through “deferred resignation program” buyouts. And at least 24,000 probationary employees were initially let go in the now-paused mass firings across multiple agencies since Trump took office, according to lawsuits challenging the firings. The government has not confirmed that number.

The personnel reductions come as top Democrats on the House Judiciary and House Oversight committees have filed a lengthy Freedom of Information Act request questioning whether the Trump administration’s DOGE Service is operating “outside the bounds of federal ,” The Associated Press has learned.

In addition, has ordered a large-scale reduction in force to cut jobs and reduce the overall size of the government. Defense officials could not provide any details on what that would do at the Pentagon or what proposed cuts are being discussed.

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Associated Press broadcast writer Sagar Meghani contributed to this report.

Huge data center campus planned for Charles City County

Kansas-based development company is planning a massive data center campus in , about 20 miles outside of Richmond, that is estimated to create 50 to 100 full-time .

The company has submitted an application to the county’s and board of supervisors to rezone five properties totaling about 515 acres to light industrial for the development of the Roxbury Park campus. The site, which is about three-fifths the size of New York’s Central Park, is bordered by Charles City, CC and Roxbury roads.

A project representative said that the cost of the project is still to be determined and that an end user hasn’t been selected yet.

The application says noteworthy businesses and industrial facilities near the project include the Chaney Enterprises Concrete Plant, Tire Recycling Solutions, Davis Autosports, Charles City Timber and Mat, Bruce Howard Contracting and the Dominion Energy Chickahominy Substation.

Charles City County Director of Community Development Gary Mitchell said the county’s planning commission will hold a public hearing and vote on the rezoning application on April 10, with the Charles City County Board of Supervisors likely to take up the matter in May.

County staff recommended that the planning commission approve the project as long as some of the proffers were voluntarily adjusted. The staff report described digital commerce as “the next industrial revolution,” saying it was “vitally important” that the county be included in the new digital .

“This industry offers highly paid and skilled for the residents of Charles City County,” the report says. “It also offers the opportunity to attract more traditional commercial projects. The center does not negatively impact schools, fire and rescue, public safety, parks and recreation. In fact, it boosts the ability of these organizations to effectively and efficiently respond to county residents and businesses.”

Proffers listed in the project prohibit the use of the site for purposes such as intensive agriculture, automobile graveyards, junkyards and mining. They also establish building setbacks from boundary lines, groundwater uses and ways to mitigate noise.

County staff gave various recommendations for how to improve the proffers, including amending the hours of construction on Sundays and establishing a maximum sound (decibel) level at the property line.

If the board grants approval, Diode says it will work with local utilities and permitting agencies before proceeding with site plan approval and building permits. The company notes the project is in the “early stages of development.” According to the application, Diode estimates that design and engineering will take eight to 12 months, construction permitting approval will take four to six months and construction will take seven to 10 or more years.

In its application, the company argues tax revenue generated from the project can help expand county resources and “stimulate business and industry growth.” The project is expected to generate between 800 to 1,200 construction jobs during peak construction, according to Diode’s website. The website also says that the project will create between 50 to 100 full-time permanent jobs once operational.

Diode describes Charles City County as “an ideal location for a data center” due to land availability, overhead transmission lines, proximity to fiber networks and available .

Diode says it is working with a local traffic engineer and the Virginia Department of Transportation to study traffic impact but expects minimal traffic impacts once the are operational.

Founded in 2017, Diode Ventures is headquartered in Overland Park, Kansas. It develops infrastructure for commercial, industrial and technology sectors, specializing in clean energy and data centers. Its parent company is global engineering and construction company Black & Veatch.

Google to buy cybersecurity firm Wiz for $32B in largest deal in company’s history

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Google has struck a deal to buy firm for $32 billion in what would be the giant’s biggest-ever acquisition at the same time it’s facing a potential breakup of its internet empire.

The proposed takeover announced Tuesday is part of ‘s aggressive expansion into cloud computing during an artificial intelligence boom. The frenzy is driving demand for that provide the computing power for and intensifying the competition in that among Google and two other tech powerhouses, Microsoft and Amazon.

If the all-cash transaction is approved by regulators, Wiz will join Google Cloud — an increasingly important part of its business separate from the search and advertising operations that account for most of the $350 billion annual revenue at Google’s parent company, .

With the advent of AI, however, the cloud division has become a rising star at Google. Annual revenue in the division was $26.3 billion in 2022, and soared 64% to $43.2 billion last year.

Wiz, a five-year-old startup founded by four longtime friends who met in the Israeli army when they were still teenagers, is on track for an estimated $1 billion in revenue this year. After getting its start in Israel in 2020, Wiz now oversees an operation that makes security tools protecting the information stored in data centers from its current headquarters in New York.

“Wiz and Google Cloud are both fueled by the belief that cloud security needs to be easier, more accessible, more intelligent, and democratized, so more organizations can adopt and use cloud and AI securely,” Wiz CEO Assaf Rappaport wrote in a blog post.

In a Tuesday conference call, Google CEO Sundar Pichai predicted Cloud division’s addition of Wiz will result in even better security at a lower cost than can be provided now. That prediction may have been aimed as much at regulators likely to scrutinize how the deal will affect competition and pricing, as much as at prospective customers.

Google had been courting Wiz for some time before finally settling on a price that’s much richer than a reported $23 billion bid that was rejected last July. At that time, Wiz signaled it would instead pivot back to a previously-planned initial public offering. But recent volatility in the stock market has chilled the IPO market, and now Rappaport said Wiz expects to “innovate even faster” by becoming a part of Google.

Wedbush analysts called Google’s move to buy Wiz “a shot across the bow” at other tech giants, particularly Microsoft and Amazon, who have already made big bets on cyber security as the fight to dominate cloud computing intensifies. Google had fallen behind its competition in the cloud space, Wedbush said, but the acquisition of Wiz could alter the parameters.

The bid Tuesday easily eclipses the current largest acquisition in Google’s 26-year history — a $12.5 billion takeover of Motorola Mobility in 2012 that didn’t pay off the way that the Mountain View, California, company had hoped. The $32 billion purchase of Wiz would also go down as the biggest-ever cybersecurity acquisition and rank among the 20 most expensive takeovers of a software company in history, according to Mergermarket, a financial intelligence service.

As often happens with high-priced acquisitions, investors reacted coolly to Tuesday’s news. Alphabet’s shares declined 2% to close at $160.67.

Some of Google’s other acquisitions have turned into gold mines, most notably its $1.76 billion purchase of online video pioneer YouTube in 2006 and its $3.1 billion takeover of advertising technology platform DoubleClick in 2008. A $5.4 billion purchase of another security firm, Mandiant, in 2022 also helped fuel the recent growth of Google’s Cloud division, which posted an operating profit of $6.1 billion last year.

Google’s DoubleClick deal is now part of an antitrust case filed by the U.S. Justice Department targeting Google’s technology for distributing ads across the internet. A ruling in that case, involving allegations that Google illegally abused its power to manipulate digital ad prices, is expected this year.

Regulators in the U.S. and abroad are targeting Google on other fronts, too.

Last year, a federal in another case brought by the Justice Department last year concluded Google had turned its ubiquitous search engine into an illegal monopoly. The penalization phase of that trial begins next month.

The Justice Department is seeking a rebuke that would include a requirement for Google to sell its Chrome web browser and would ban the company from making agreements with Apple and other companies to make its search engine the default tool for finding online information on the iPhone and other devices.

The Wiz deal will also get a close look from antitrust regulators. While many expect the Trump administration to welcome more dealmaking than occurred during the previous years, it has also expressed leeriness about Big Tech getting any bigger. Andrew Ferguson, the Trump administration’s Federal Trade Commission Chairman, has been particularly outspoken about his resolve to keep Big Tech on a short leash.

The deal raises antitrust concerns due to the potential impact on standalone cyber security vendors, as well as potential disruption for bigger rivals. Still, Wedbush’s analysts note the industry is “ripe for consolidation” — which could pose “massive growth opportunities on the horizon heading into this AI Revolution.”

Antitrust worries were also believed among the reasons Wiz called off sales talks with Google last year while President Joe Biden’s administration was seeking to block a variety of tech deals. Agreeing to a sale now indicates both Google and Wiz are more confident the deal will gain U.S. approval under the Trump administration, Mergermarket analysts Kevin Ketcham and Kevin McCaffrey wrote in a Tuesday note.

“The two sides likely wouldn’t have struck the deal if they didn’t at least see a potential path to closing,” Ketcham and McCaffrey wrote.

But the business watchdog group Demand Progress Education Fund urged the Trump administration to block Google’s takeover attempt. “It’s time to show the public whether they have the guts to step in and stop a big fish from being gobbled up by one of the biggest fishes in the pond,” said Emily Peterson-Cassin, the group’s director of corporate power.

If they get the regulatory greenlight and meet several conditions spelled out in their agreement, Google and Wiz expect the deal to close in 2026.

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Grantham-Philips reported from New York.

Furniture manufacturer shuts down Canadian operations, moves production to N.Carolina

DELTA, British Columbia — Canadian ready-to-assemble supplier Prepac has reportedly shut down its operations in Delta, British Columbia, shifting all production to its facility in instead.

According to Unifor, the union that represents Prepac’s workers, are to blame. More than 170 workers will be laid off.

“Our union has been warning about lost investment and production since Trump began his economic war on and Canadian workers,” said Unifor National President Lana Payne. “In this case, Prepac and its equity owners are using the tariffs as an excuse to redirect all their production to the U.S. It’s pure greed.”

Prepac has not confirmed that the closure and production shift were done as a response to tariffs or the , nor as it returned a request for comment to Furniture Today. Company Nick Bozikis told publications The Daily Hive and Business Intelligence for B.C. that the decision “was the product of many months of consideration and analysis, and began long before any tariff risks to Prepac’s business arose.”

He said that the past several years have been challenging for many North American furniture manufacturers, that the Delta closure “is a necessary step that reflects the realities of Prepac today,” and that the company’s North Carolina facility is located closer to its largest customer base.

Prepac was founded in Canada 45 years ago and locally owned until it was acquired by Canadian private equity firm TorQuest in 2019. The company invested $27 million to build its 260,000-square-foot facility in Whitsett, N.C., in 2021, a move that added 200 .

Unifor says it’s calling for a boycott of Prepac products.

“It’s a slap in the face to Canadian workers and Canadian consumers who have made this company a success since 1979,” said Unifor Western Regional Director Gavin McGarrigle. “It’s another example of equity firms stripping companies for profit with no regard for jobs, community or, frankly, decency.”

Kaufman & Canoles names executive director

Chris Smythe has been named director of , the -headquartered announced Monday.

In the role, Smythe will oversee the day-to-day operations of the firm and report directly to Jason R. Davis, its president and .

Previously, Smythe was president of Tycon Medical Systems, a Norfolk home medical equipment and complex rehab supplier, according to his LinkedIn page. He joined that company in 2009. Smythe also worked as vice president of content at TotalVid.com, an aggregator and on-demand distributor of instructional video content, and as new ventures director for what was then .

After earning a degree from the , Smythe clerked for John A. MacKenzie in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia and later practiced law at Parker Poe in Charlotte, . In 2001, Smythe earned an MBA from U.Va.

“Chris has strong skills in all aspects of running a business, and as a former attorney has an understanding of lawyers and the law firm environment,” Davis said in a statement.

Created by the merger of two law firms in 1982, Kaufman & Canoles has offices in Chesapeake, Newport News, Norfolk, Richmond, Tysons, Virginia Beach and Williamsburg, and in Raleigh, North Carolina.