A departures board at Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey displaying the blue screen of death on Friday. PHOTO: BING GUAN/REUTERS
The blue screen of death has been a dreaded symbol of technological failure since Microsoft’s Windows became the world’s dominant operating system in the 1990s.
On Friday, it showed up on millions of computers around the world at once, highlighting both Microsoft’s continued ubiquity in workplaces and decades-old design choices that allowed the actions of a little-known software company to disable millions of Windows machines. Some security professionals also say MicrosoftMSFT -0.74%decrease; red down pointing triangle hasn’t taken the vulnerability of its software seriously enough.
Microsoft said in a blog post Saturday that 8.5 million Windows machines were hit, or less than 1% of its global footprint. That number was enough to bring down the operations of major businesses across industries including healthcare, media and restaurants.
The effects continued to reverberate in airports Saturday, as U.S. carriers canceled close to 2,000 flights, compared with 3,400 Friday. Delta, which accounted for more than half the canceled flights Saturday, has been trying to make sure it has crews to cover flights and told pilots at hub airports to depart when planes are fully boarded and ready to safely go, no matter the scheduled departure time.
Friday’s outage was caused by a buggy update sent to corporate clients by CrowdStrikeCRWD -11.10%decrease; red down pointing triangle, one of hundreds of cybersecurity firms that have built a business promising to make Windows more secure. Microsoft has its own competing product, called Windows Defender.
CrowdStrike’s chief executive took responsibility for the problem Friday and said the company was working to restore operations for its customers.
Microsoft says 8.5 million Windows machines, or less than 1% of its global footprint, were hit by Friday’s bug. PHOTO: BLOOMBERG NEWS
Many people who showed up at work Friday morning knew only one thing though: Their PCs had the blue screen of death, while Macs and Chromebooks were still working. Searches for “Microsoft outage” outranked “CrowdStrike outage” on Google consistently from Friday morning through Saturday morning.
Friday’s meltdown brought a trade-off inherent to Windows into sharp relief. Its open design gives developers the freedom to design powerful software that interacts with the operating system at a very deep level. But when things go wrong, the results can be catastrophic, as millions discovered on Friday.
Because Apple runs a closed ecosystem, the company has a “much healthier balance between forcing people to upgrade, forcing applications to maintain good security practices or they pull them off of the App Store,” said Amit Yoran, chief executive of cybersecurity firm Tenable.
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Security issues have long been Microsoft’s Achilles’ heel, as computers and servers running its software have been the target of repeated hacks by criminal groups, as well as state-sponsored actors in Russia and China. Top company executives have been brought in front of Congress to explain why Windows is so vulnerable.
Ironically, CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz raised the issue publicly in January. “What you’re seeing here is systemic failures by Microsoft, putting not only their customers at risk, but the U.S. government at risk,” he said on CNBC after Microsoft disclosed a Russian hack of systems used by its senior leadership.
Two months later, a report by the Department of Homeland Security’s Cyber Safety Review Board found that, “Microsoft’s security culture was inadequate and requires an overhaul, particularly in light of the company’s centrality in the technology ecosystem.”
Microsoft said the CrowdStrike crash was unrelated to the issues raised by federal officials about the company’s lapses in security.
Blue screens remained on displays Saturday at Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental Airport. PHOTO: DAVID PAUL MORRIS/BLOOMBERG NEWS
Security professionals critical of the company’s practices say as Microsoft pivoted to cloud computing, it has neglected the development of its more traditional products such as Windows and its email and corporate directory service products, all of which have been the targets of attacks. That neglect has made security software—like the kind provided by CrowdStrike—more necessary, the professionals said.
“If they have a security-first culture, it would either be safer for products like these to exist or these products wouldn’t be needed at all,” said Dustin Childs, a former Microsoft cybersecurity specialist who is currently the head of threat awareness at cybersecurity firm Trend Micro, which competes with Windows Defender and CrowdStrike.
Pavan Davuluri, Microsoft’s corporate vice president of Windows and devices, said the move to the cloud has been good for software reliability because the operating system is live and constantly updating. But he said the company has unique challenges in the tech industry dealing with an array of customers, many of whom use old versions of Windows running on outdated hardware.
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“In Windows we do have a pretty broad range of responsibilities,” Davuluri said. “We definitely have to meet our customers in terms of where they’re at—the product itself, its use, its life cycle.”
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CrowdStrike’s bug was so devastating because its security software, called Falcon, runs at the most central level of Windows, the kernel, so when an update to Falcon caused it to crash, it also took out the brains of the operating system. That is when the blue screen of death appeared.
In 2020, Apple told developers that its MacOS operating system would no longer grant them kernel-level access.
That change was a pain for Apple’s partners, but it also meant that a blue screen-style problem couldn’t happen on Macs, said Patrick Wardle, the chief executive of Mac security maker DoubleYou.
“What it meant was that a lot of third-party developers, ourselves included, had to rewrite our security software,” he said.
A Microsoft spokesman said it cannot legally wall off its operating system in the same way Apple does because of an understanding it reached with the European Commission following a complaint. In 2009, Microsoft agreed it would give makers of security software the same level of access to Windows that Microsoft gets.
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For more than 200 pro athletes, the boutique investment firm Patricof Co is opening the door to the private equity market.
The retired football player Jason Kelce is not only a pitchman for Ole Smoky Moonshine, he is also an investor in the company.Credit…William DeShazer for The New York Times
In Orchard Park, N.Y., this past January, just as the tight end Travis Kelce caught a touchdown pass to help the Kansas City Chiefs take the lead in a playoff game against the Buffalo Bills, the real action for many fans watching at home was high above the field. There, in a crowded luxury box, Mr. Kelce’s brother, the burly Philadelphia Eagle offensive lineman, Jason Kelce, was dancing shirtless and chugging from a beer, as Travis’s girlfriend, Taylor Swift, looked on in a combination of amusement and astonishment.
But since retiring from the N.F.L. in March, what happens for Jason off-mic and off-camera has become increasingly important. He is one of more than 200 professional athletes who have invested anywhere from $50,000 to half a million dollars in consumer brands like Bazooka, Cholula and Top Golf through a private equity firm called Patricof Co. Since 2019, Mr. Kelce has personally invested in 20 companies, including some of the ones he represents in ads.
That’s why in May, Mr. Kelce, 36, woke before dawn at his home in Philadelphia and flew to Nashville to film a commercial where he played a mock quality control manager for a moonshine brand that Mr. Kelce is an investor in. Wearing an Ole Smoky distillery T-shirt with the sleeves cut off, he tossed jars of moonshine to employees whom he pretended to train. A crew from Shadow Lion, the film company part owned by the retired quarterback Tom Brady, followed Mr. Kelce to a table, where he barked instructions at employees labeling bottles. “Pick up the pace,” he said before leading them in a chant: “Mash, ferment, condense, distill!”
Mr. Kelce gets ready for his close-up on the set in Nashville.Credit…William DeShazer for The New York Times
An Unlikely Partnership?
Private equity firms, which usually require investors to pony up $1 million or more, and professional athletes, who have not always been the best stewards of their wealth, may not seem the most natural of partners. While some superstar athletes like Mr. Brady, Shaquille O’Neal and Serena Williams are wealthy enough to get access to private equity deals, many professional athletes park most of their money in traditional investments like stocks and bonds. Some also make riskier bets on startups, restaurants and family businesses that can quickly turn sour.
Mark Patricof learned this during his two seasons as a co-host of M.V.P., or “Most Valuable Partner,” a streaming series with Rob Gronkowski, the former New England Patriots and Tampa Bay Buccaneers tight end. A “Shark Tank” for sports, the show featured entrepreneurs pitching their products to a panel of athletes, hoping they would become brand ambassadors. Mr. Patricof would chat with the panelists and discovered that they were steered away from private equity by advisers who, he believed, didn’t fully understand its benefits.
“These guys had money and should be putting some percent of their net worth into private equity, so why were they so overexposed to these crazy deals,” Mr. Patricof recalled in an interview at his office in Manhattan. “What I got back was, ‘My wealth adviser doesn’t really want me to do any private deals.’ I figured out pretty quickly that in sports, you have the agent, the wealth manager and the best friend. You don’t have business managers.”
Mark Patricof, a former media executive and investment banker and the son of the pioneering venture capitalist Alan Patricof, opened his firm in 2018.Credit…Anna Watts for The New York Times
Mr. Patricof, a former media executive and investment banker and the son of the pioneering venture capitalist and private equity investor Alan Patricof, decided there was a market opportunity there. His new firm targeted athletes who wanted to put 10 to 30 percent of their wealth into private equity deals. Wealth advisers and sports agencies have done this before, but often on a case-by-case basis. Patricof Co appears to be the first private equity firm dedicated entirely to this line of business.
“We’re a strategic investor, not a financial investor,” Mr. Patricof said.
Since 2018, Patricof Co has teamed up on deals with KKR, Bain and other large firms to buy into consumer brands that dovetail with the athletes’ interests and that they believe have the potential to go public or be acquired in just a few years. The 250 athletes on the firm’s roster range from the football stars Joe Burrow and J.J. Watt to the N.B.A. standouts CJ McCollum and Blake Griffin. (From 40 to 100 of those athletes have taken part in each deal put together by Patricof Co; some have invested in just a handful.)
For private equity firms, some of which have had a reputation for milking profits from troubled companies they have acquired before selling them or taking them public (and were once popularly known as corporate raiders), the athletes represent relatable celebrities who can also provide marketing muscle.
Like most investments, private equity is not immune to market forces, and in the past two years, high interest rates and a slow initial public offering market have hurt firms trying to invest in and exit from companies. Consumer brands — an area that Patricof Co has focused on — have been hit so hard that Carlyle, one of the biggest players in private equity, decided in October to stop investing in U.S. consumer and retail companies.
Still, Mr. Patricof said the involvement of pro athletes distinguishes his investments. He recruited Matt Siegel from Roc Nation, the sports agency, to connect with athletes. Daniel Magliocco, who specializes in mergers and acquisitions, was hired to make the deals. Amy Curtis-McIntyre, after marketing jobs at JetBlue, Airbnb and Old Navy, joined to find ways the athletes could promote the companies Patricof Co invested in, including pitching Mr. Kelce as part of Ole Smoky’s ad campaign.
Mr. Siegel helped recruit some of the first athletes to join, including Travis Kelce, the retired basketball players Carmelo Anthony and Dwyane Wade and the retired New York Yankee C.C. Sabathia. The athletes receive emails describing each offering, and Mr. Siegel, Mr. Magliocco and others follow up by phone or Zoom to walk them through the details. Players are reminded that their money will be held for about five years and that returns are never guaranteed. They are invited to share the offer sheets with their financial advisers, who sometimes join the calls.
Mr. Patricof recruited Matt Siegel from Roc Nation, the sports agency, to connect with athletes.Credit…William DeShazer for The New York Times
“I glance over everything and then I run it by my financial people and get the green light or the red light,” said Adam Ottavino, a pitcher on the Mets who learned about Patricof Co from his teammates when he was on the Yankees. “Nobody’s pushing you either way, but there’s a lot of resources at your fingertips, so it seemed like a no-brainer.”
The 25 deals that Patricof Co has closed so far include stakes in Goldin, an online auction site for trading cards and collectibles; Kodiak, a healthy pancake company; and Sweetwater, an e-commerce marketplace for musical instruments. The firm has exited part or all of five of its deals. Terms are confidential, but generally, Patricof Co invests from $10 million to $25 million. Mr. Patricof puts his own money into every deal, too, as do his partners Mr. Siegel and Mr. Magliocco.
One of the firm’s first stakes was in Cholula, the hot sauce company. Mr. Wade, the former Miami Heat star, promoted the company by hosting a cooking show on Instagram Live with the celebrity chef Aarón Sánchez. This was during Covid, when millions of Americans were stuck at home and cooking more. The show was a hit, thanks to Mr. Wade’s popularity (he has 20.1 million followers on Instagram), and it also bolstered the profile of Cholula, which was later bought by the food giant McCormick, for $800 million. Word quickly spread in the sports world that Mr. Wade, Travis Kelce, Dak Prescott and other stars had tripled their investments in 18 months.
“The Cholula deal put Patricof on the map,” Mr. Siegel said. “At the beginning, we worked with agents and wealth managers. Now, it’s the locker rooms and word of mouth.”
Patricof athletes have marketed an array of deals. In 2021, Patricof invested in Real Truck, which makes accessories for pickups and jeeps, and George Kittle, the San Francisco 49ers tight end who played college football at Iowa, invested and promoted the company. When Patricof bought a stake in the clothing company Bombas, Venus Williams, another investor, was part of a social media campaign.
“Athletes are, if not the most important, one of the most important modern-day classes of people,” said Matt Leeds, who worked with Patricof Co on the Cholula deal when he worked at L Catterton, a private equity firm.. “You have a society where people’s attention is so fragmented, yet Sundays are one of the few times where you have 75, 100, 125 million Americans all thinking about the same thing. Sports matter more than they used to.”
‘We’re Not Making Crazy High-Octane Bets’
Patricof Co’s list of athletes has expanded to include college stars who received payments for their names, images and likenesses, and younger athletes like Corbin Carroll, the Arizona Diamondbacks center fielder. He contacted Patricof Co while in the minor leagues because as a high draft pick, he wanted to explore how to invest his $3.7 million signing bonus.
“I want to be as educated as I can,” said the baseball player Corbin Carroll, center, meeting with Mark Patricof, left, and Matt Siegel.Credit…Anna Watts for The New York Times
“I want to be as educated as I can,” said Mr. Carroll, 23, who visited the Patricof office in May but has yet to invest in any deals. “You’ve got this amount of money that you sign for and you view as a nest egg. After transitioning to the big leagues and pretty quickly signing an extension, it was a little bit more of my understanding that this is the world that I’m going to be in.”
Mr. Magliocco said the athletes are told that fluctuations in interest rates, the I.P.O. market and other factors could delay a sale or public offering of stock. But, he said, Patricof Co looks for stable, growing businesses, not high-flying crypto or A.I. companies. Its portfolio companies have a median revenue of $200 million, and 17 of the 22 consumer-based companies were profitable when purchased, Mr. Magliocco said. On average, the portfolio companies have grown at least 20 percent since being purchased.
“We’re not making crazy high-octane bets,” Mr. Magliocco said. “We’re trying to compound our clients’ wealth over time.”
While Mr. Carroll is getting his feet wet, others, like the Washington Wizards forward Kyle Kuzma, wanted to meet private equity investors to learn about investing in food and beverage companies. So Patricof Co held a cocktail party at Zero Bond, an exclusive social club in Manhattan, with about 15 investment bankers.
Kyle Kuzma, center, with Mr. Siegel and the model Winnie Harlow, at an event at Zero Bond organized for Mr. Kuzma for Patricof Co.Credit…Josh Gallo/Patricof
“As athletes, obviously we have a short time frame of making money, and the big checks don’t last forever,” said Mr. Kuzma, who has invested in one Patricof Co deal so far. “It’s always good to have an extra set of eyes and people that are seeing certain things that you may not be seeing and sharing companies and deals and adding more to the pot.”
Some Patricof athletes speak directly to company management. The Seattle Seahawks wide receiver DK Metcalf was given the nickname “Candyman” for a reason: He gobbles three or four bags of candy a day. When he learned that Patricof Co had bought a stake in Bazooka, Mr. Metcalf not only joined around 60 other athletes on the firm’s roster in investing in the company, he created a presentation that he delivered to Bazooka executives at their office in New York.
“I didn’t want to show up empty-handed,” Mr. Metcalf said. “It’s already an established brand and very well known across the world, but I was just trying to throw in my two cents, or put my spin on things to try to show my value to the company besides just investing in it.”
His presentation included ideas for publicizing the company — including his own potential role — and how to improve products and create new ones. During a 90-minute meeting, Mr. Metcalf evaluated some Bazooka products. The company is now reviewing all his suggestions.
Seattle Seahawks wide receiver D.K. Metcalf, who is nicknamed “Candyman,” created a presentation for Bazooka executives at their office in New YorkCredit…Callen Morris/Patricof Co
“My only experience with celebrities and athletes has been one-off relationships when you go in and pay them,” said Tony Jacobs, Bazooka’s chief executive. But Mr. Metcalf “is truly a candy connoisseur. And the PowerPoint, he really owned that.”
‘Some Will Be Singles and Some Will Be Triples’
No investment, of course, is without risk, including the companies that Patricof Co buys into. But the size and profile of the companies are more stable than venture funds and other investments often pitched to athletes. And while private equity firms have a reputation for gutting companies to increase profits, this tends to occur more in industries where the benefits of a product or the service provided are harder to quantify, like in nursing homes or for-profit colleges, according to Sabrina T. Howell, a professor of finance at New York University’s Stern School of Business who studies the impact of private equity investment.
By contrast, research has shown that private equity can have a positive effect on food, health and wellness brands, where consumers buy the products directly and there are many alternatives. “This is a sector where athletes, if they believe in the product, can add value to the company and there’s no reason to think they are exploiting their consumers,” she said.
Some financial advisers are recommending Patricof Co to their clients because the athletes can invest relatively small amounts in deals, which are vetted by larger private equity firms.
“I want our clients to have a diversified portfolio of private equity companies,” said Geoff Marsh, financial adviser at Octagon Financial Services Wealth, a wealth management firm that works with more than 300 athletes, including several who invest in Patricof. “Some will be singles and some will be triples. Not everyone is LeBron James and can throw $250,000 at every deal.”
As a free service, Patricof Co also evaluates outside deals that athletes receive. Michelle Wie West, the star golfer, gets pitched dozens of deals and says she has neither the time nor expertise to analyze them all.
“I can ask really great big picture questions and ideology and where they want to go,” she said. “But Patricof, obviously they specialize in investment and money, so they know what to look for.”
So many athletes are pitched offers to invest in restaurants that last month, Patricof Co created a $100 million fund that will invest in franchise restaurants. Industry experts will build a portfolio of restaurants and the athletes can buy into the fund, which is safer for them than investing in individual restaurants.
Mr. Patricof said the fund is part of an expansion that could include the firm financing acquisitions on its own. And this summer, Patricof Co got a boost when BellTower Partners, the holding company led by Kewsong Lee, the former chief executive of the Carlyle Group, bought the share of the firm owned by J.P. Morgan. Mr. Lee will advise Patricof on how to expand.
“I’ve been in the private equity business for a long time, and at a time when you’ve got a lot of capital floating around, everyone’s trying to figure out how you derive returns and how you find special, interesting proprietary deals,” Mr. Lee said. “Here you have Patricof, and they have a special sauce.”
One of the last classes Mr. Kelce took when he was a student at the University of Cincinnati was on influencer marketing. He said his career feels like “it has come full circle.”Credit…William DeShazer for The New York Times
For now, companies like Ole Smoky say Patricof Co’s investment has been beneficial.
“For me as a business owner, it’s a level of authenticity,” said Joe Baker, Ole Smoky’s founder, said after Jason Kelce’s shoot ended. “It’s not paying somebody to say they like your brand, it’s partnering with somebody who’s investing in the brand because they believe in it in the first place.”
Ken Belson is a Times reporter covering sports, power and money at the N.F.L. and other professional sports leagues. More about Ken Belson
A version of this article appears in print on July 21, 2024, Section BU, Page 6 of the New York edition with the headline: Athletes Find A New Arena To Build Wealth. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
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The rotation into value stocks may finally be underway. GETTY IMAGES
Referenced Symbols
Last week may have been the start of something that investors have been warned about — or have looked forward to — for some time.
This would be a change of direction for the U.S. stock market, away from the handful of technology giants that have dominated the S&P 500’s SPX performance for the past couple of years and toward other pockets of the market that have been overlooked.
Below is a screen of the Russell 1000 Value Index RLV, showing which stocks are most favored by analysts working for brokerage firms. Another list shows the companies with the highest weightings in the index.
A real rotation?
The big driver of this new thinking was the first decline in the consumer-price index in four years, reported on Thursday. This led to the usual speculation that the Federal Reserve may soon begin a cycle of cuts to the federal-funds rate, which is currently in a target range of 5.25% to 5.50%.
Now take a look at last week’s performance of several exchange-traded funds:
The table provides some insight into investors’ moves last week, with price changes excluding dividends.
The $559 billion SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust SPY tracks the S&P 500, which is weighted by market capitalization. This means the ETF and the U.S. large-cap benchmark index are dominated by a handful of companies. The largest 10 holdings of SPY make up 37.5% of the fund’s portfolio. The largest three — Microsoft Corp. MSFT, -0.74%, Apple Inc. AAPL, +0.06% and Nvidia Corp. NVDA, -2.61% — make up 20.9% of the portfolio.
The market-cap weighting has worked out well for investors in many index funds. But the table points to a change in thinking — investors’ interests broadened last week. The Invesco S&P 500 Equal Weight ETF RSP rose 3% last week, while the cap-weighted SPY rose 3%. Among the S&P 500, 422 stocks rose last week, according to data provided by FactSet. Through the previous week ended July 5, only 292 of the S&P 500 were up for 2024.
Looking again at the table, it includes three exchange-traded funds that track the Russell 1000 Index RUI and its Value RLV and Growth RLG subsets. Last week, the iShares Russell 1000 Value ETF IWD was the best performer of the three, by far.
Value-stock screen
The Russell 1000 Index is made up of the 1,000 largest companies in the Russell 3000 Index RUA, which itself is designed to capture 98% of the U.S. market for publicly traded common stocks. According to FTSE Russell, the Russell 1000 represents about 93% of the Russell 3000’s market value.
There are 872 companies in the Russell 1000 Value Index. This large subset of the full Russell 1000 includes companies with relatively low price-to-book ratios, lower growth estimates for the next two years and lower sales-growth figures over the past five years. You can read more about FTSE Russell’s selection and weighting methodology for the index here.
Before screening the Russell 1000 Value Index, here is a list of the 10 largest holdings of the iShares Russell 1000 Value ETF:
Together these stocks make up 17% of the IWD portfolio, showing how much less concentrated it is at the top when compared with the S&P 500.
The table includes a summary of ratings among analysts working for brokerage firms polled by FactSet, along with consensus price targets and the 12-month upside potential implied by the targets. The table also includes dividend yields, based on payouts over the past 12 months.
For this first set of large companies in the Russell 1000 Value Index, sentiment among analysts tends to be favorable, but only four of the companies have consensus price targets that are at least 10% higher than Friday’s closing prices.
Here is a screen of the Russell 1000 Value Index based on sentiment among analysts. First we cut the list to companies covered by at least five analysts polled by FactSet. Then we narrowed the list to 98 stocks rated “buy” or the equivalent by at least 80% of the analysts.
Here are the 20 remaining stocks with the highest upside potential implied by the consensus price targets:
A stock screen can only tell you so much — you should do your own research and form your own opinion about a company’s long-term business strategy before buying an individual stock. One way to begin this process is to click on the tickers for more about each company.
There are many ways to screen stocks from within a subset, and later this week we will screen the Russell 1000 Value Index for dividend stocks and for those with the highest expected growth rates for revenue and earnings over the next two years.
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Children sing at Russia Day festivities in Kirov, in western Russia, on June 12. Behind them is a statue of Vladimir Lenin, first ruler of the Soviet state. (Nanna Heitmann/Magnum Photos for The Washington Post)
The Post visited Kirov, in western Russia, where residents say President Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine is a fight for Russia’s survival against the U.S. and NATO.
KIROV, Russia — In Kirov, a small city in the heart of western Russia, about 1,000 miles from the front lines in Ukraine, the war that initially few people wanted continues to fill graves in local cemeteries. But most residents now seem to agree with President Vladimir Putin that the bloodshed is necessary.
“The U.S. and NATO gave us no choice,” said Vlad, the commander of a Russian storm unit who has been wounded three times since signing a contract to join the military a year ago. He spoke on the condition he be identified only byfirst name becausehe is still an active-duty soldier.
After fighting in Ukraine this spring left him with 40 pieces of shrapnel in his body, Vlad was sent home to recover. Once healed, he plans to return to battle. “I’m going back because I want my kids to be proud of me,” he said. “You have to raise patriotism. Otherwise, Russia will be eaten up.”
Elena Smirnova, whose brothers have been fighting in Ukraine since they were conscripted in September 2022, said she is proud they “serve the motherland” rather than sit on the couch at home.
Nina Korotaeva, who works every day at a volunteer center sewing nets and anti-drone camouflage blankets, said that she feels “such pity” for the young men dying but thattheir sacrifice is unavoidable. “We don’t have a choice,” Korotaeva said. “We have to defend our state. We can’t just agree to being broken up.”
A glimpse of a Russian city grieving and patriotic
The Post’s Francesca Ebel reported in June from Kirov, Russia, where even far from the front lines the war has visibly changed the fabric of life. (Video: Francesca Ebel, Zoeann Murphy/The Washington Post)
A visit to Kirov last month revealed that manyRussians firmly believe that their country is fighting an existential war with the West, which has sent Ukraine more than $100 billion in military aid, including sophisticated weapons, to defend against Russia’s invasion — assistance that has sharply increased Russia’s casualties.
Interviewsshowed that the Kremlin has mobilized public support for the war while also masking the full, horrific consequences of it. Some residents of Kirov said they still find the war incomprehensible, while others who have lost relatives insist that the fighting must be serving a higher purpose.
Olga Akishina, whose boyfriend, Nikita Rusakov, 22, was killed with at least 20 other soldiers when a U.S.-provided HIMARS missile slammed into their base this spring, said she found it too difficult to speak about him. Instead, she spoke for nearly an hour in an unbroken torrent about NATO bases in Ukraine and “the extermination” of Russian-speakers there — echoing the Kremlin’s unfounded justifications for the war, which are repeated frequently on state television.
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“Of course, if he hadn’t died, it would certainly be much more pleasant for me and his family,” Akishina said. “But I am aware that this was a necessary measure — to protect those people.”
Washington Post journalists traveled to Kirov at the invitation of Maria Butina, a Russian citizen who served 15 months in a U.S. federal prison after being convicted of operating as an unregistered foreign agent. Butina had been an advocate for gun rights and other conservative causes during her years in the United States. Deported after her release, she was embraced as a hero in Russia and now represents Kirov in the State Duma, Russia’s lower house of parliament.
Butina’s office organized interviews with soldiers on leave from active duty, wounded servicemen, soldiers’ families, volunteers, local medical staff and young police cadets. Butina insisted that one of her assistants, Konstantyn Sitchikhin,sit in on most of the conversations, which meant some people may have felt unable to speak freely. At times, Sitchikhin interrupted, telling young cadets, for example, to speak “carefully and patriotically.”
The Post also interviewed several people independently, in person or by phone.
Butina said she extended the invitation because she still believes in dialogue with the West and wanted The Post to report “the truth.” But she insisted that Sitchikhin’s presence in interviews was necessary. “We need to feel that we can trust you,” Butina said. “I advise you to build bridges, not walls.”
The Post accepted Butina’s invitation because it allowed access to a city outside Moscow where reporting might otherwise have proved risky. Since the invasion, Russian authorities have outlawed criticism of the war or the military and have arrested and charged journalists with serious offenses including espionage. Journalists also are routinely put under surveillance.
Sitchikhin, Butina’s aide, cited a climate of fear. “You need to understand that we are at war and people here see you as the enemy,” he said. “I am just trying to protect the people I care about.”
A day after speaking to The Post, Akishina, whose boyfriend was killed in the missile strike, sent a text message saying that she regretted talking to an American newspaper.
“You will most likely be asked to present the material in the article in a way that will be beneficial to the newspaper’s editors,” she wrote.
“I would not want there to be a headline under my story and our photographs that would blame our country and our President for the death of our military,” she wrote, adding that the 78 percent of Russians who voted to reelect Putin in March were proof of widespread public support for the war. (Independentobservers said the Russian election failed to meet democratic standards, with genuine challengers blocked from running and Putin controlling all media.)
“The truth is that the United States and the European Union countries that supply weapons to Ukraine are to blame for the death of our guys, as well as civilians in Donbas and Belgorod,” Akishina wrote.
On Wednesday, June 12, thousands of people crammed onto Kirov’s main square to celebrate Russia Day, swaying to patriotic rock songs in thewarm sunshine. Among them was Lyubov, tears streaming down her face as she cradled a portrait of her son, Anton, in uniform.
“I cry every single day,” Lyubov said of Anton, 39, who was confirmed dead this spring.
Lyubov said she had joined the festivities hoping to take her mind off her grief. But the dancing, happy families, and rousing music that at times drowned out her words proved too much. “I don’t want everyone to join us in our sadness,” she said, “but I can’t take this.”
Anton was killed by machine-gun fire near Avdiivka, a city in eastern Ukraine that Russia captured in February after months of fierce fighting. Anton called her the night before the assault and told her that he was “on a one-way ticket” — a suicide mission. When she finally got her son’s body back, she was warned not to open the coffin.
Lyubov said she did not understand the reasons for the war, who Russia is fighting or why her son volunteered to join the army. But she insisted that his death was not in vain. “He did it for us,” she said, smiling a bit, “and for Russia.”
The Post arranged the interview with Lyubov independently by contacting her through a social media page for soldiers’ families. The Post is identifying her and her son by first name only because of the risk of backlash from the authorities.
The interviews — with Lyubov, and more than a dozen others in Kirov — highlighted a striking duality: Many Russians are struggling with the deaths of loved ones or their return with grievous injuries, and some are deeply engaged in volunteer efforts, but many others are largely untouched by the war, which has killed thousands of Ukrainian civilians and destroyed entire cities.
At the entrance to the Church of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, a pamphlet written by Kirov’s chief bishop, Mark Slobodsky, tells worshipers that this is not a fight over territory but a war to defend Orthodox Christian values. “It is a sacred and civilizational conflict,” Slobodsky wrote. “No one can stand to the side of these events.”
Inside, priests blessed an icon that Butina’s office had commissioned by an artist from Donetsk, in Russian-occupied eastern Ukraine, to honor Kirov’s soldiers. The icon bore an odd combination of images: Czar Nicholas II, Russian Prince Alexander Nevsky and the former head of the Russian-backed Donetsk People’s Republic, Alexander Zakharchenko, standing in various positions of piety before the slag heaps of Ukraine’s coal-mining Donbas region.
At a small concert organized by a local volunteer group, people sang patriotic songs about victory and love for the motherland. Three men, the fathers of soldiers either killed or still fighting in Ukraine, were awarded medals for raising “heroes of Russia.”
“Each fighter is a hero for us, and today we wish them the fastest victory,” the concert’s host proclaimed. “It’s thanks to them that we are able to hold such events like this today.”
Public unity behind the war was fully on display in Kirov, including a little girl, whose father is fighting in Ukraine, in a T-shirt that said: “I am the daughter of a hero.”
Several elderly residents said they donate their pensions to the war effort. Many are children of soldiers who fought in World War II and now view Russia as fighting a new war against fascism.
Young cadets in their teens and early 20s, who are training to be police officers and emergency workers, spoke eagerly of volunteer stints they had just completed in occupied Ukraine. One cadet said: “Young people shouldn’t stay on the sidelines.” Asked how they would explain the war in Ukraine, they requested to skip the question.
Some young people who joined the fight, however, are disillusioned by it. Denis, 29, a former Wagner mercenary whose left foot was amputated because of a war injury and who participated in a short-lived mutiny last year when Wagner fighters marched toward Moscow, said he was still enraged at “the corrupt and decaying” Defense Ministry.
Post journalists encountered Denis by chance, independently of Butina’s office, and he agreed to meet to talk about his experiences in the war on the condition that he be identified only by first name because criticizing the military is now a crime in Russia.
Speaking as fireworks marked the end of Russia Day, Denis complained that there was “not enough truth about the war and not enough real, organic involvement.”
“Why are people still partying? Why are they spending money on fireworks and this concert?” he said. “It’s as if nothing is going on. Everyone should be helping, but most people do not feel the war concerns them, and politicians are using it to cleanse themselves and increase their ratings.”
Denis said he planned to return to Ukraine once he is fitted with a prosthesis.
“We have to end this, otherwise the West will see us as weak,” he said. “I thought this war would be short, that it would last six months maximum. We have really been screwed. And I’m disappointed that everyone who tells the truth about the war, about the Russian Defense Ministry, is immediately jailed.”
Meanwhile, Kirov’s social media pages are flooded daily with funeral notices and pleas to help find missing fathers, sons or husbands.
At the cemetery outside Kirov where Lyubov’s son is buried, there are about 40 graves of soldiers killed since 2022, adorned with wreaths and flags. Thirty freshly dug graves await bodies.
Next to one grave, a family gathered to say a few words and raise a glass. “Thank you, Seryoga, for defending us,” said a man, who gave his name only as Mikhail. “You were only there for three days, but at least you tried your best.”
The 2024 election is seriously stressing Americans out. An attempted assassination, a fierce debate over the mental fitness of the president (who happens to have COVID-19) – and that’s just this month.
As the language in fundraising emails and the barrage of campaign phone calls and texts becomes increasingly urgent, both sides are framing this presidential contest as existential for the country. That’s not even factoring in the independent candidates encouraging voters to toss out either major party nominee.
It’s hard to deny that the temperature of American politics has grown almost unbearably high. Whether you’re a seasoned politico or not, the cacophony surrounding Trump v. Biden Round Two is hard to escape.
If that means more anxiety than usual, you’re not alone. The American Psychiatric Association’s annual mental health poll, released in May, reported that 73% of Americans are feeling “particularly anxious” about the 2024 election.
In the spirit of Pixar’s summer blockbuster Inside Out 2, we’ve created a guide to help you navigate the new emotions you may feel this election season.
Election anxiety
Election-specific anxiety is on the rise, so if you get heart palpitations anytime you see a news notification, you’re in good company. A Yahoo News/YouGov survey conducted in May found that 60% of the 1,800 respondents reported feeling either “very” or “somewhat” anxious about the election.
“It’s similar to other kinds of anxiety in that there is a focused source of concern – the election – although that’s pretty broad,” Lynn Bufka, a clinical psychologist and the deputy chief of professional practice for the American Psychological Association says. Election anxiety is a bigger bucket, she explains, containing anything from stressors about the contest’s outcome to nerves generated by combative campaign rhetoric.
From the beginning of time, humans have had to develop a mental system that responds to threats, Bufka says. That’s the physiological basis for some of our election-related stress. “We’re trying to make sense both of what our bodies are doing and what’s out there in the world and that gives us this experience of feeling anxious,” she explains.
Expert tip: Try to get more comfortable with the unknown. “Learning to be more comfortable with uncertainty is a great skill to have,” Bufka says. She also advises getting involved with a campaign or social cause, which can alleviate anxiety by giving a sense of agency and making you feel you’re contributing or working towards a goal.
Hyper-partisanship
One nation, indivisible? Not so much. America has become increasingly partisan over the last few decades. Congressional gridlock and eroding political norms suggest the spirit of compromise in Washington is languishing. Throughout the nation, Americans divide themselves by political affiliation − both socially and geographically, even down to the neighborhood.
Through the lens of a fractured media environment and antagonistic campaign rhetoric, it can be hard not to feel genuine ire toward members of the other party.
There is long-standing research on the idea of “in-groups” and “out-groups,” Bufka says − we like the people who are like us, and we shun the ones who aren’t. “Hyperpartisanship has really amped up those differences,” she says, “it makes it easy to say they are not like me, therefore I don’t like them.”
In designating people with other viewpoints as the “other,” it’s easier to dehumanize and attack them which creates further division, Bufka points out. “Fundamentally what’s happening is that we are not seeing ways in which we might be similar,” she says.
A lofty idea in spirit, in the everyday, unpacking hyperpartisanship can be difficult, especially if another party’s platform feels like it poses significant risk to your safety or that of the country.
Expert tip: Try to remember any shared aims and goals you may have with people who disagree with you − like safety for your loved ones, or access to education, healthcare and jobs. This helps if you know some of these people.
“Trying to continue relationships with people that you might know have different points of view than you on things may help temper some of that distress about the others never having my own interest at heart,” Bufka says, acknowledging it is a challenge.
News-cycle exhaustion
Gone are the days of the morning paper and the 6 o’clock news. The advent of the smartphone has brought the 24-hour news cycle to our pockets and if hurricanes and wars weren’t enough, the contentious race between Biden and Trump only adds fuel to the fire.
You don’t have to be a news junkie to be feeling fatigued by the constant drip of poll numbers, op-eds, and push notifications. Bufka advises cutting the line. “Most of the time the news is not changing that radically that we need to be plugged in 24/7,” she says.
An onslaught of information combined with no possible way to address it all can make for a dangerous cocktail. Being over-informed won’t necessarily give you the tools you need to address the issues you care about, she warns.
“Recognizing that and making decisions about when, where, and how to get news updates becomes something within our control which is always a great way to help master some of our anxiety,” she advises.
Expert tip: Shut off the news for a bit. Reconnect with nature. Sometimes seeing the trees that survive for hundreds of years or the cycle of life that continues from season to season can help us zoom out, Bufka says.
Existential dread
A warming climate, a democracy at risk and a general public so distrustful of one another that either side feels a win by the other spells disaster − not a super cheery picture.
“There’s a lot of uncertainty – and many people are projecting pretty negative potential outcomes for whatever we’re facing,” Bufka says, “It doesn’t matter whether you’re red or blue or purple, your perspective is if things don’t go the way I think they’re gonna go it’s gonna be bad so I think there’s a lot of potential for dread on either side of it.”
Expert tip: Get involved. Volunteering for a cause you care about that is at risk during this election or encouraging neighbors to get out and vote can help give you back a sense of control. It can also foster social connections with like-minded people, an essential tool in easing anxiety.
“Social connection and support make a huge difference,” Bufka advises.
The bottom line
There’s nothing wrong with a little election-related stress, it’s probably an indicator you care − which is a good thing.
“We don’t want to get rid of our emotions, because our emotions can be a good indicator for helping us to act,” Bufka says. But when those emotions become unbearably loud, it can be hard to get anything done and your well-being can suffer.
As the last 100 days of the election cycle close in, be sure to take these tips to heart, and put taking care of yourself first.
Politburo Standing Committee members, including Chinese leader Xi Jinping (center), attend the third plenary session of the 20th Communist Party of China Central Committee, in Beijing on July 18, 2024. Xie Huanchi/Xinhua/APHong KongCNN —
China’s ruling Communist Party has set ambitious long-term policy goals at its most important political meeting on reform, but offered little detail on how to pull the world’s second-largest economy out of a worsening downturn.
In a behind-closed doors meeting known as the third plenum, more than 360 members of the party’s Central Committee — including the most senior political and military leaders and heads of state-owned enterprises — held talks from Monday to Thursday at a hotel in Beijing.
According to a communique released Thursday, discussions at the plenum — traditionally held every five years — centered on how to deepen reforms in a wide range of areas and advance “Chinese-style modernization,” a broad ideal for the country’s development backed by Chinese leader Xi Jinping.
Xi, who hosted the meeting, has laid out a longterm vision to build a more equitable, innovative, and greener economy — under the tight control of the party — by 2035.
But while the communique outlined broad goals such asboosting technology self-sufficiency, improving social welfare and deepening reforms of the fiscal, taxation and financial systems, global investors were left disappointed by a lack of detail on how China would address the most pressing issues plaguing its economy — from sluggish consumer spending and a persistent property slump to a mounting debt crisis facing municipalities around the country.
“There are few signs that the just concluded third plenum marks a major change in the direction of policymaking,” said Julian Evans-Pritchard, head of China economics, at Capital Economics on Friday.
While it offered few clues on how to tackle economic difficulties, the meeting did provide further insight into a shake-up of high-level personnel over the past year.
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Qin Gang, China’s former foreign minister who was ousted after only months in the job, was removed from the Central Committee after a “resignation,” but retained his Communist Party membership.
By contrast, the meeting confirmed the expulsion from the party of former Defense Minister Li Shangfu, who was sacked last year and investigated for corruption, as well as two People’s Liberation Army Rocket Force figures Li Yuchao and Sun Jinming.
Their removal – part of a sweeping purge within the top ranks of the military – came after the committee heard a report on their “grave violations.”
‘History of paying lip service’
Shortly after he came to power, Xi promised at the plenum in 2013 to give market forces a “decisive role” to play in the economy. But in the years since, his government has prioritized state-owned enterprises, implemented stricter regulations and overseen a sweeping crackdown on private businesses and wealthy individuals, as part of a wider campaign to curb the “excesses of capitalism” and fix “income inequality.”
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In the communique, officials pledged to ensure “security,” which means national security concerns could still drive policymaking, said Evans-Pritchard.
They also vowed to give “better play to the role of the market,” while noting that market forces need to be better managed, and retained a previous promise to “unswervingly” develop the state sector.
“The current leadership has a history of paying lip service to the idea of allowing greater market dynamism but failing to follow-through in practice,” Evans-Pritchard said.
If past sessions are a guide, a more detailed report may be released in the following days, but for now, “the plenum communique is light on specifics,” Evans-Pritchard added.
Long-term reform plans
The third plenum names “high quality development” as China’s “top priority” and lays out structural reforms to be completed by 2029.
Beijing has been pushing for self-sufficiency in core technologies as the United States and its allies curb the exports of key products like advanced chips to China. It has also viewed technology innovation as a new growth engine that could help the economy transition from the old model fueled by infrastructure investment and debt expansion.
Policymakers also pledged to “improve people’s livelihoods” at the plenum, which is essentially a continuation of Xi’s “common prosperity” agenda.
While previous leaders in post-Mao China were content to let some get rich first, Xi appears to believe the time has come to share the fruits of China’s development more widely among its population, Evans-Pritchard said.
“This is arguably one of the most promising parts of the reform agenda, since channeling a greater share of income to households would help to advance a much-needed rebalancing toward consumption,” he said.
The leadership also vowed to revamp the fiscal, taxation and financial systems, which signal their concerns about how to address the debt crises faced by local governments.
Debt has piled up at China’s municipal governments, after three years of pandemic controls drained their coffers and the property slump led to a sharp decline in land sales, which they rely on for income. That poses risks to the country’s banking system and economic growth.
Policy advisers and market analysts have been calling on Beijing to reform its fiscal system, allowing local governments to retain more revenues and reduce their dependence on land sales. There have also been calls for an overhaul of consumption tax to broaden local governments’ source of income.
But the communique gave little detail on what measures could be rolled out on those fronts.
“It will be key to watch for further development over the next two to three months,” said Bank of America analysts on Friday.
Short-term economic goals
Besides the long-term structural reform priorities, policymakers also vowed to achieve short-term economic goals, including a 5% GDP growth target for 2024.
That came days after China released disappointing economic data for the second quarter of this year.
GDP grew 4.7% year-on-year in the April-to-June period, marking the weakest growth since the first quarter of last year, according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics on Monday. The figure slowed from 5.3% in the previous three months and missed the 5.1% increase forecast in a Reuters poll of economists.
To achieve the annual goals, “[we] will proactively expand domestic demand” and develop “new-quality productivity forces,” the communique said.
That could mean channeling resources to favored sectors, such as high-tech manufacturing, while gradually curbing the role of sunset industries like property development, according to Evans-Pritchard from Capital Economics.
Analysts say that the coming months could offer more details on how Xi plans to revive the economy.
Emphasizing short-term economic policies is rare in the history of the third plenums, said Larry Hu, chief China economist for Macquarie Group.
As a result, policy stance could turn more expansionary in the second half of this year as policymakers have to defend the annual growth target, he said.
By Laura Kuenssberg, @bbclaurak, Presenter, Sunday with Laura
Reeves: There is ‘a cost to not settling’ public sector pay
The chancellor has hinted that she may give public sector workers above-inflation pay rises this summer.
Rachel Reeves’ comments come after independent pay review bodies recommended an increase of 5.5% for teachers and some NHS workers.
In her first interview from No 11 Downing Street, she said: “I really value public service workers, in our schools, in our hospitals, in our police as well…
“There is a cost to not settling, a cost of further industrial action, and a cost in terms of the challenge we face recruiting.”
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But Ms Reeves told Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg that “we will do it in a proper way and make sure the sums add up” – emphasising that her spending rules are “non-negotiable”.
The new chancellor promised a decision on public pay this month, saying “people won’t have long to wait”.
Speaking in an interview to be broadcast on Sunday morning, Ms Reeves also accused the Conservative Party of calling the election because “they weren’t willing to make tough decisions, and they just ran away”.
She said the decision about teachers’ pay had sat on the former education secretary’s desk, and that the Conservatives had allowed an unacceptable situation to build up in prisons.
The estimated cost of pay rises of 5.5% for teachers and certain NHS staff could reach £3bn, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS). That would be significantly more than the 2.5-3% the Treasury had expected.
IFS director Paul Johnson said paying for such an increase would require the government to either increase borrowing or taxes, or cut spending elsewhere.
The most recent figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) put inflation at 2% in May and June – suggesting a pay offer above 2% would count as being above inflation.
But Mr Johnson told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Saturday that the 5.5% figure was “roughly what pay is rising by across the economy”.
Traditionally, governments follow the recommendations of the independent bodies – but ministers are not obliged to stick to their suggestions.
Recommendations for other sectors are yet to be received, but the chancellor does plan to announce the settlements before the end of July.
Ms Reeves also told the BBC that the government will carry out a landmark review of pensions as part of a “big bang for growth”.
“People who make sacrifices and save every month to put something aside for their retirement, they deserve better than the returns they’re getting on those savings today.”
The chancellor also wants to change industry rules so that billions of pounds sitting in pension funds can be used more easily to invest in UK companies to stimulate the economy.
She continued: “If we could unlock just 1% of the money in defined contribution schemes – and invest that in more productive assets [and] fast-growing British companies – that’d be £8bn to help finance growth and prosperity and wealth creation here in Britain.
“That’s why there’s an urgency here from this government, unlocking that investment for our economy and delivering for working people who make big sacrifices but at the moment are being let down by the pensions industry.”
The full interview will be broadcast on Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg at 09:00 BST on BBC One and iPlayer. Shadow chancellor Jeremy Hunt will also be on the programme.
July 20 (Reuters) – Berkshire Hathaway sold about 33.9 million shares of Bank of America for around $1.48 billion over multiple transactions this week, a regulatory filing showed.
After the sale, Berkshire owned about 999 million BofA shares.
Berkshire is one of the Charlotte, North Carolina-based lender’s largest shareholder. It also invests in several other banks, including Wells Fargo & Co (WFC.N), opens new tab and JPMorgan Chase (JPM.N), opens new tab
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The conglomerate, owned by Warren Buffett, began investing in Bank of America in 2011, purchasing $5 billion of preferred stock plus warrants to buy 700 million common shares, at a time many investors worried about the bank’s capital needs.
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Reporting by Chandni Shah and Surbhi Misra in Bengaluru; Editing by Sam Holmes and Tomasz Janowski
