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Polio at high risk of spreading within Gaza Strip
Geneva — A senior World Health Organization official expressed alarm Tuesday at the high risk of polio spreading within the Gaza Strip because of dire sanitary conditions in the war-wracked enclave, and that the paralytic disease it causes could spill across borders without prompt action to stem the outbreak.
“I am, like, super worried,” Dr. Avadil Saparbekov, team lead for health emergencies at the WHO in the occupied Palestinian territory, told journalists from Jerusalem. “I am extremely worried about an outbreak happening in Gaza … and that it may spill over internationally at a very high point.”
Saparbekov, who recently returned from a weeklong visit to Gaza, confirmed that “circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus type 2” has been identified in samples of Gazan sewage assessed by researchers and that an epidemiological probe “to identify the potential source of this importation” is underway.
“Based on the results of the assessment, WHO and the GPEI (Global Polio Eradication Initiative) partners will consolidate a set of recommendations, including the need for a mass vaccination campaign,” he said.
On July 16, the Global Polio Laboratory Network isolated the virus in six environmental surveillance samples collected from sewage on June 23 in Khan Younis and Deir al Balah in Gaza.
The WHO reports that further genomic sequencing of the samples by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicates that they are related to environmental samples that were circulating in Egypt during the second half of last year.
“It is important to note that poliovirus has been isolated from environmental samples only at this time; no associated paralytic cases have been detected,” Saparbekov stressed.
Circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus is transmitted from person to person mainly through the fecal-oral route. It can invade a person’s nervous system and cause paralysis and death.
“We have not yet collected the human samples to identify any viruses because of the lack of equipment to collect those and lack of capacity to test those samples,” Saparbekov said, noting that WHO and UNICEF teams entering Gaza on Thursday will bring up to 50 sample collection kits “so we will be able to collect human samples, stool samples from humans.”
The samples, he said, will be sent to a lab in Jordan to confirm any cases of infection.
“Until that is done, I cannot say that there are any humans that are affected with this circulating vaccine-derived poliovirus,” he said.
The WHO said that wild poliovirus was eliminated more than 25 years ago in the Palestinian territories. Before the start of the war in Gaza, following a vicious attack on Israel by Hamas militants on October 7, the U.N. health agency says 89% of the population was vaccinated against polio, primarily conducted through routine immunization.
Last Sunday, Israel’s military said it would offer polio vaccinations to soldiers serving in Gaza to protect against the paralytic disease.
Saparbekov said the WHO will be reaching out to COGAT, the Israeli authority responsible for the coordination of government activities in the Palestinian territories, “to see how they can facilitate” the response to the outbreak. One way to do that, he added, is to have vaccines available for Gazans in case “there is a decision to conduct a mass campaign.”
“We have so far received assurances that this will be done,” he said.
The WHO official expressed hope that the epidemiological investigation and risk assessment would be completed by the end of the week, such that his team “will have a joint recommendation from the GPEI network about what to do with this particular outbreak” by Sunday.
In the meantime, he said, aid workers are doing their best to inform the population as to health measures they must take to prevent a polio outbreak.
“Given the water and sanitation limitations in Gaza, it will be very difficult for the population to follow the advice to wash their hands, to drink safe water,” he said.
“Unfortunately, the majority that live in shelters with one toilet for 600 people and maybe 1.5 liters of water per person, will definitely not be able to follow the recommendations that we are providing,” he said.
While reiterating concerns about polio spreading in the Palestinian enclave, WHO health emergency chief Saparbekov said he also is very worried about the possible outbreak of other communicable diseases.
“We had Hepatitis A confirmed last year and now we may have a polio outbreak,” he said. “So, with the crippled health system, lack of water and sanitation, as well as lack of access of the population to health services, specifically primary health services, this is going to be a very bad situation that will happen in Gaza.
“We may have more people dying from communicable diseases than from injuries and related conditions,” he warned.
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LogOn: Device may help disabled vocal cords speak again
Some people who have lost the ability to speak can still move their vocal cords. California researchers are working to transform those muscle movements into audible speech. Genia Dulot reports from Los Angeles in this week’s edition of LogOn.
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UN: Nearly 40 million had HIV in 2023, many died due to lack of treatment
United Nations — Nearly 40 million people were living with the HIV virus that causes AIDS last year, over 9 million weren’t getting any treatment, and the result was that every minute someone died of AIDS-related causes, the U.N. said in a new report launched Monday.
While advances are being made to end the global AIDS pandemic, the report said progress has slowed, funding is shrinking, and new infections are rising in three regions: the Middle East and North Africa, Eastern Europe and Central Asia, and Latin America.
In 2023, around 630,000 people died from AIDS-related illnesses, a significant decline from the 2.1 million deaths in 2004. But the latest figure is more than double the target for 2025 of fewer than 250,000 deaths, according to the report by UNAIDS, the U.N. agency leading the global effort to end the pandemic.
Gender inequality is exacerbating the risks for girls and women, the report said, citing the extraordinarily high incidence of HIV among adolescents and young women in parts of Africa.
The proportion of new infections globally among marginalized communities that face stigma and discrimination – sex workers, men who have sex with men, and people who inject drugs also increased to 55% in 2023 from 45% in 2010, it said.
UNAIDS Executive Director Winnie Byanyima said: “World leaders pledged to end the AIDS pandemic as a public health threat by 2030, and they can uphold their promise, but only if they ensure that the HIV response has the resources it needs, and that the human rights of everyone are protected.”
As part of that pledge, leaders vowed to reduce annual new HIV infections to below 370,000 by 2025, but the report said in 2023 new infections were more than three times higher at 1.3 million.
Last year, among the 39.9 million people globally living with HIV, 86% knew they were infected, 77% were accessing treatment, and for 72% the virus was suppressed, the report said
Cesar Nunez, director of the UNAIDS New York office, told a news conference there has been progress in HIV treatments — injections that can stay in the body for six months, but the two doses cost $40,000 yearly, out of reach for all but the richest people with the virus.
He said UNAIDS has been asking the manufacturer to make it available at lower cost to low and middle-income countries.
Nunez said there have also been seven cases where people with HIV who were treated for leukemia emerged with no sign of the HIV virus in their system.
He said injections and the seven cases will be discussed at the 25th International AIDS Conference which began Monday in Munich.
At present, he said, daily treatment with pills costs about $75 per person per year. It has allowed many countries to increase the number of people with HIV to receive treatment.
Nunez said UNAIDS will continue advocating for a vaccine to prevent AIDS.
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CrowdStrike: More machines fixed as customers, regulators await details on what caused meltdown
AUSTIN, Tex. — Cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike says a “significant number” of the millions of computers that crashed on Friday, causing global disruptions, are back in operation as its customers and regulators await a more detailed explanation of what went wrong.
A defective software update sent by CrowdStrike to its customers disrupted airlines, banks, hospitals and other critical services Friday, affecting about 8.5 million machines running Microsoft’s Windows operating system. The painstaking work of fixing it has often required a company’s IT crew to manually delete files on affected machines.
CrowdStrike said late Sunday in a blog post that it was starting to implement a new technique to accelerate remediation of the problem.
Shares of the Texas-based cybersecurity company have dropped nearly 30% since the meltdown, knocking off billions of dollars in market value.
The scope of the disruptions has also caught the attention of government regulators, including antitrust enforcers, though it remains to be seen if they take action against the company.
“All too often these days, a single glitch results in a system-wide outage, affecting industries from healthcare and airlines to banks and auto-dealers,” said Lina Khan, chair of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission, in a Sunday post on the social media platform X. “Millions of people and businesses pay the price. These incidents reveal how concentration can create fragile systems.”
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Ukraine’s largest music festival returns with break from inescapable reality of war
Kyiv, Ukraine — This year, Ukraine’s largest music festival struck a different chord. Gone were the international headliners, the massive performance halls and the hundreds of thousands of visitors.
Instead, beloved local artists graced the stage this past weekend at the Atlas Festival — the first since Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022 — for a smaller but still ebullient crowd. The stage was erected in a shopping mall parking lot, the only option with a shelter large enough to contain the 25,000 people expected in the event of an air raid.
Carefree youth danced, romanced and sang along, rubbing shoulders with hardened military commanders as famous singers who crooned lyrics imbued with national pride. Music was the main goal, but so was shattering the illusion that the capital is invulnerable to the bloody battles hundreds of miles away.
“Such kind of festivals can’t be separated from the life of the country. The country is at war. The core issues here should relate to the war,” said Vsevolod Kozhemyako, a businessman and one of the founders of the 13th “Khartia” Brigade, now a part of Ukraine’s National Guard and defending the front line in Kharkiv.
“People who are still young and who don’t join (the fight) should understand that they cannot live in a bubble,” he said.
And yet, a bubble is precisely how it feels to be in Kyiv, as the war approaches its third year. While Ukrainian soldiers are killed and wounded every day along the 1,000-kilometer (620-mile) front line in the east, the capital is a contrast with its busy bars and clubs.
Every so often, Kyiv comes face to face with the war. Two weeks ago, a barrage of Russian missiles destroyed a children’s hospital and a private clinic, in one of the deadliest attacks since the full-scale invasion. Residents have grappled with power cuts caused by Moscow’s targeted destruction of Ukrainian energy generation at the height of a summer heat wave.
In every corner of the music festival, visitors were confronted with the inescapable reality that theirs is a country trapped in a bloody war of attrition. Festival organizers hoped to raise $2.2 million (2 million euros) to help soldiers purchase supplies for the front line.
In the mall’s basement parking lot, various military units, from Khartia to the 3rd Assault, offered interactive games to lure donations and possible recruits. A first-person shooter game offered visitors a chance to improve target practice by gunning down shadowy virtual infantrymen. In another corner, medics brandished severed plastic limbs and offered emergency medical training.
The festival concluded Sunday with a much-anticipated performance from Serhii Zhadan and his band Zhadan and the Dogs. Zhadan, a celebrated artist dubbed the poet of the Donbas, recently joined Khartia.
“It’s just a small break, an opportunity to take a breath,” said Zhadan, minutes before he took to the stage for a roaring crowd. “The most important things, they are happening over there, at the front line.”
On stage, Zhadan started with one of his most beloved songs “Malvi” or “Mallow.” The crowd sang along, word for word. “But what can you do with my hot blood,” they chanted. “Who will come at us.”
18-year old Viktoriia Khalis was excited to see his performance. She had been to the Atlas festival once before in 2021. The difference is stark, she said.
“The main thing that has changed, unfortunately, now the festival is connected with donations,” she said. But she also felt more connected to her homeland. “I feel this entire crowd is related to me. I feel unity.”
She was scared there would be another Russian air attack — a music festival with thousands of attendees would be a prime target — but said she couldn’t miss a chance to see her favorite artists.
For Nadiia Dorofeeva, one of Ukraine’s most famous singers, every concert feels different. “Before, when I entered a stage I was thinking only about if I looked good, sang well and if the people got what they came for. But now, I dream of having no air alarms, I am seeing how people cry at my concerts.”
One of Dorofeeva’s songs, “WhatsApp,” is about a girl waiting for her beloved to return from war. “She washed the phone with tears/Like rainy glass,” often moves listeners to tears.
Among the attendees was Lt. Gen. Serhii Naiev, an assistant deputy chief in Ukraine’s General Staff.
“There are well-known artists on stage, they are performing their concerts and there are a lot of Ukrainians around who are donating their money, much-needed money for the armed forces of Ukraine,” he said.
“We understand that our partners are supporting us, but we also understand that we could do a lot by ourselves, to be stronger,” he said.
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India ed-tech firm Byju’s founder faces reckoning as startup implodes
NEW DELHI — Byju Raveendran, an Indian mathematics whiz who soared from teacher to startup billionaire before his education-technology company imploded this year, now faces his biggest test.
The future of Raveendran’s eponymous Byju’s online coaching firm rests with India’s courts after the country’s biggest startup, once loved by global investors who valued it at $22 billion, crashed below $2 billion in valuation.
The 44-year-old founder last week lost control of the company as a tribunal kick-started an insolvency process.
Accused of “financial mismanagement and compliance issues,” the son of a family of teachers from a small village in south India faces a reckoning that will test the ingenuity that made him a poster child for India’s startups.
His formerly high-flying company was eventually brought low when it could not pay $19 million in sponsorship dues to India’s cricket federation, prompting a tribunal to suspend Byju’s board and make Raveendran report to a court-appointed restructuring expert.
An appeals tribunal is expected to hold a hearing on Monday on whether Byju’s insolvency process should be quashed after the former billionaire argued in court his company is solvent and that insolvency could shut it down and cost the jobs of 27,000 staff, including teachers. Insolvency also would not bode well for Byju’s backers, such as Dutch technology investor Prosus.
Raveendran denies the allegations of mismanagement and wrongdoing at his firm, which has in recent months faced lawsuits over unpaid loans and boardroom battles with foreign investors that went public.
Potential insolvency is a dramatic turn of events for an entrepreneur described by one person who has worked with him as an extremely passionate and goal-oriented person who might adopt “an abrasive approach” in a crisis.
Raveendran presented a “suave, nice and polished” image, appearing to heed advice, but “eventually there was a trust deficit,” said another executive who quit last year as a Byju’s senior vice president.
“He said things are improving, don’t worry, we have the money,” the former executive said.
Raveendran and a Byju’s spokesperson did not respond to requests for comment.
Byju’s downfall: ‘Our fair share of mistakes’
An engineer by training, he started Byju’s in 2011 with physical classes after friends urged him to go into teaching.
Raveendran, who aced a premier Indian management exam “with a score of 100 percentile, not once but twice,” according to the company website, started what would become his empire with his wife Divya Gokulnath, 38, a former student of his.
In education-obsessed India, Raveendran hit gold by offering online teaching programs priced from $100 to $300. He got a mammoth boost when the COVID-19 pandemic sent students indoors. At the height of his fame in 2021, he and his wife had a net worth of $4 billion, Forbes reckoned.
Now all that is in tatters.
Behind the reversal of Byju’s meteoric success, say executives and advisers who worked with Raveendran, is that he overruled associates and expanded the business through expensive acquisitions, splurging on marketing and being slow to address problems such as sales agents adopting aggressive tactics to mis-sell courses that damaged the company’s reputation.
With the backing of investors like General Atlantic, Prosus and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg’s philanthropy venture, Raveendran spent millions on acquisitions, and the company says it has 150 million students in over 100 countries.
“While growing fast, as I’ve accepted multiple times, we’ve made our fair share of mistakes,” Raveendran told an interviewer last year at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
As he battled crises, the CEO also said decisions to lay off some of its then-50,000 employees and slash branding expenses would help strengthen loss-making Byju’s and turn its cashflow positive.
“Every country needs a Byju’s,” he said.
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India’s battery storage industry grows
BENGALURU, India — At a Coca-Cola factory on the outskirts of Chennai in southern India, a giant battery powers machinery day and night, replacing a diesel-spewing generator. It’s one of just a handful of sites in India powered by electricity stored in batteries, a key component to fast-tracking India’s energy transition away from dirty fuels.
The country’s lithium ion battery storage industry — which can store electricity generated by wind turbines or solar panels for when the sun isn’t shining or the wind isn’t blowing — makes up just 0.1% of global battery storage systems. But battery storage is growing fast, with around a third of India’s total battery infrastructure coming online just this year.
“Our orders are growing exponentially,” said Ayush Misra, CEO of Amperehour Energy, the company that installed the batteries at the Chennai factory. “It’s a really exciting time to be a battery storage provider.”
Businesses invest in industry
India currently has around 100 megawatts of storage capacity from batteries, with another 3.3 gigawatts of clean energy storage coming from hydropower. The Indian government estimates that the country will need about 74 gigawatts of energy storage from batteries, hydropower and nuclear energy by 2032, but experts think the country actually needs closer to double that amount to meet the country’s energy needs.
Some customers are still wary of using battery technology for storage, and the storage systems can be seen as more expensive than the more commonly used coal. The supply chain of batteries is also concentrated in China, meaning the sector is vulnerable to geopolitical volatility.
But markets don’t think customers will be hesitant about batteries for long, with major Indian businesses announcing significant investments in the industry.
In January this year, energy giant Reliance Industries said it will build a 5,000-acre factory in Jamnagar, Gujarat. And in March, Goodenough Energy said it will spend $53 million by 2027 to set up a 20 million kilowatt-hour battery factory in the northern region of Jammu and Kashmir.
Alexander Hogeveen Rutter, an independent energy analyst based in Bengaluru, said upping storage capacity should be done alongside ramping up renewables.
“Clean energy combined with adequate storage can be an alternative to coal. Not in the future but right now,” he said. He added that it’s a “myth” that clean energy is more expensive than coal, as current prices of renewable energy combined with storage is cheaper than new coal.
Global battery costs are declining faster than expected, and experts say that if costs continue to plummet, energy storage systems can better compete with both coal and clean energy sources like hydropower and nuclear energy that can also control their supply to meet demand.
“Battery storage is now the largest resource to meet California’s evening peak electricity requirements. It’s more than gas, nuclear or coal,” he said. This is being replicated in the U.K., China and even smaller nations like Tonga. “There’s no reason why this can’t happen in India too,” he said.
India’s energy needs grow
One of India’s unique challenges is that energy needs are growing more rapidly than most nations: the population is increasing and extreme heat fueled by climate change means more and more people are using energy-guzzling air conditioning. India’s electricity demand grew by 7% last year and is expected to grow by at least 6% every year for the next three years, according to the International Energy Agency.
“The country needs to quadruple its renewable energy deployment just to meet demand growth,” said Hogeveen Rutter.
Ankit Mittal, co-founder of Sheru, a software company that offers energy storage and management solutions, said that making battery storage sites more flexible can help the industry ramp up quickly.
Mittal said battery storage sites should be more accessible to the national energy grid, so they can provide electricity to whichever regions need the extra boost of energy most. Currently, battery storage sites in India only power up more local sites.
To encourage further growth of the battery sector, the Indian government announced last year a $452 million effort to support an additional four gigawatts of battery storage by 2031. But the government also provides subsidies for coal plants, making the electricity generated there a cheaper bet for some utility companies.
Future government policy could level the playing field. The country is set to announce a new national budget later in July that industry leaders hope will contain incentives for clean energy storage.
Akshat Singhal, co-founder of the Bengaluru-based battery tech startup Log 9 Materials, thinks that better government support can help the country meet growing energy demands “the right way,” with clean energy.
“One significant policy change can kickstart the entire ecosystem,” he said.
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Australia warns of ‘malicious websites’ after cyber outage
sydney — Australia’s cyber intelligence agency said on Saturday that “malicious websites and unofficial code” were being released online claiming to aid recovery from Friday’s global digital outage, which hit media, retailers, banks and airlines.
Australia was one of many countries affected by the outage that caused havoc worldwide after a botched software update from CrowdStrike.
On Saturday, the Australian Signals Directorate — the country’s cyber intelligence agency — said “a number of malicious websites and unofficial code are being released claiming to help entities recover from the widespread outages caused by the CrowdStrike technical incident.”
On its website, the agency said its cyber security center “strongly encourages all consumers to source their technical information and updates from official CrowdStrike sources only.”
Cyber Security Minister Clare O’Neil said on social media platform X on Saturday that Australians should “be on the lookout for possible scams and phishing attempts.”
CrowdStrike — which previously reached a market cap of about $83 billion — is a major cybersecurity provider, with close to 30,000 subscribers globally.
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Malaysia honors new king in coronation marked by pomp
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia — Traditional pomp and cannon fire Saturday marked the coronation of Malaysia’s billionaire King Sultan Ibrahim Iskandar, who pledged to govern fairly during the five-year term he will serve under a unique rotating monarchy system.
Ibrahim, 65, was sworn in on January 31. Saturday’s coronation at the national palace formalized his role as Malaysia’s 17th king in a ceremony steeped in Malay culture and pageantry.
Nine ethnic Malay state rulers take turns as Malaysia’s king for five-year terms under the country’s rotating monarchy, which began when Malaysia gained independence from Britain in 1957. Malaysia has 13 states but only nine have royal families, some which trace their roots to centuries-old Malay kingdoms that were independent states until they were brought together by the British.
Donned in black and gold traditional ceremonial outfit and headgear, Ibrahim and Queen Raja Zarith Sofiah were greeted by military salute before they proceeded to the throne. The heads of the other royal families, Brunei Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah and Bahrain King Hamad Isa al Khalifa were seated on a stage beside the throne.
At the start of the proceedings, a copy of the Quran was presented to Ibrahim, who kissed it. The monarch received a gold dagger, a symbol of power. Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim then pledged his government’s loyalty and said the royal institution was a pillar of strength for the nation. He then proclaimed Ibrahim as Malaysia’s new king.
“God willing, I will discharge my duties faithfully and honestly, and to rule fairly,” Ibrahim said in his coronation speech. He also urged Anwar’s government to step up efforts to improve the livelihood of the people and bolster the nation’s development. After the sultan took his oath, guests in the hall chanted “Long live the king” three times.
Ibrahim, from southern Johor state bordering Singapore, is one of the country’s richest men, with a business empire spanning from telecoms to real estate. He is known for his collection of luxury cars and motorbikes and is the only state ruler with a small private army — a concession granted to his state when it joined modern-day Malaysia.
He is vocal about Malaysian politics and has spoken out about corruption and racial discrimination.
Known as the Yang Di-Pertuan Agong, or He Who Is Made Lord, the king plays a largely ceremonial role, with administrative power vested in the prime minister and Parliament. The monarch is the nominal head of the government and armed forces and is regarded as the protector of Islam and Malay tradition.
All laws, Cabinet appointments and the dissolution of Parliament for general elections require his formal assent. The king has the power to proclaim an emergency and pardon criminals.
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Airlines resume services after global IT crash wreaks havoc
Paris — Airlines were gradually coming back online Saturday after global carriers, banks and financial institutions were thrown into turmoil by one of the biggest IT crashes in recent years, caused by an update to an antivirus program.
Passenger crowds had swelled at airports Friday to wait for news as dozens of flights were canceled and operators struggled to keep services on track, after an update to a program operating on Microsoft Windows crashed systems worldwide.
Multiple U.S. airlines and airports across Asia said they were now resuming operations, with check-in services restored in Hong Kong, South Korea and Thailand, and mostly back to normal in India and Indonesia and at Singapore’s Changi Airport as of Saturday afternoon.
“The check-in systems have come back to normal [at Thailand’s five major airports]. There are no long queues at the airports as we experienced yesterday,” Airports of Thailand President Keerati Kitmanawat told reporters at Don Mueang airport in Bangkok.
Microsoft said the issue began at 1900 GMT on Thursday, affecting Windows users running the CrowdStrike Falcon cybersecurity software.
CrowdStrike said it had rolled out a fix for the problem, and the company’s boss, George Kurtz, told U.S. news channel CNBC he wanted to “personally apologize to every organization, every group and every person who has been impacted.”
It also said it could take a few days to return to normal.
U.S. President Joe Biden’s team was talking to CrowdStrike and those affected by the glitch “and is standing by to provide assistance as needed,” the White House said in a statement.
“Our understanding is that flight operations have resumed across the country, although some congestion remains,” a senior US administration official said.
Other industries
Reports from the Netherlands and Britain suggested health services might have been affected by the disruption, meaning the full impact might not yet be known.
Media companies were also hit, with Britain’s Sky News saying the glitch had ended its Friday morning news broadcasts, and Australia’s ABC similarly reporting major difficulties.
By Saturday, services in Australia had mostly returned to normal, but Sydney Airport was still reporting flight delays.
Australian authorities warned of an increase in scam and phishing attempts following the outage, including people offering to help reboot computers and asking for personal information or credit card details.
Banks in Kenya and Ukraine reported issues with their digital services, while some mobile phone carriers were disrupted and customer services in a number of companies went down.
“The scale of this outage is unprecedented and will no doubt go down in history,” said Junade Ali of Britain’s Institution of Engineering and Technology, adding that the last incident approaching the same scale was in 2017.
Flight chaos
While some airports halted all flights, in others airline staff resorted to manual check-ins for passengers, leading to long lines and frustrated travelers.
The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration initially ordered all flights grounded “regardless of destination,” although airlines later said they were reestablishing their services and working through the backlog.
India’s largest airline, Indigo, said operations had been “resolved,” in a statement posted on social media platform X.
“While the outage has been resolved and our systems are back online, we are diligently working to resume normal operations, and we expect this process to extend into the weekend,” the carrier said Saturday.
A passenger told AFP that the situation was returning to normal at Delhi Airport by midnight on Saturday with only slight delays in international flights.
Low-cost carrier AirAsia said it was still trying to get back online and had been “working around the clock toward recovering its departure control systems” after the global outage. It recommended passengers arrive early at airports and be ready for “manual check-in” at airline counters.
Chinese state media said Beijing’s airports had not been affected.
In Europe, major airports, including Berlin’s, which had suspended all flights earlier on Friday, said departures and arrivals were resuming.
‘Common cause’
Companies were left patching up their systems and trying to assess the damage, even as officials tried to tamp down panic by ruling out foul play.
CrowdStrike’s Kurtz said in a statement his teams were “fully mobilized” to help affected customers and “a fix has been deployed.”
But Oli Buckley, a professor at Britain’s Loughborough University, was one of many experts who questioned the ease of rolling out a proper fix.
“While experienced users can implement the workaround, expecting millions to do so is impractical,” he said.
Other experts said the incident should prompt a widespread reconsideration of how reliant societies are on a handful of tech companies for such an array of services.
“We need to be aware that such software can be a common cause of failure for multiple systems at the same time,” said John McDermid, a professor at York University in Britain.
He said infrastructure should be designed “to be resilient against such common cause problems.”
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Back to the Moon – Part 2
After the Apollo program ended, the US took a long hiatus from lunar exploration. What happened during this time, and what has NASA been doing? This documentary by the Voice of America’s Russian service focuses on the details of the NASA’s Artemis program and plans to further explore the Moon and Mars.
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Widespread technology outage disrupts flights, banks, media outlets and companies around the world
WELLINGTON, New Zealand — A global technology outage grounded flights, knocked banks offline and media outlets off air on Friday in a massive disruption that affected companies and services around the world and highlighted dependence on software from a handful of providers.
Cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike said that the issue believed to be behind the outage was not a security incident or cyberattack.
The issue affected Microsoft 365 apps and services, and escalating disruptions continued hours after the technology company said it was gradually fixing it.
The website DownDectector, which tracks user-reported internet outages, recorded growing outages in services at Visa, ADT security and Amazon, and airlines including American Airlines and Delta.
News outlets in Australia reported that airlines, telecommunications providers and banks, and media broadcasters were disrupted as they lost access to computer systems. Airlines in the U.K., Europe and India reported problems and some New Zealand banks said they were offline.
Microsoft 365 posted on X that the company was “working on rerouting the impacted traffic to alternate systems to alleviate impact in a more expedient fashion” and that they were “observing a positive trend in service availability.”
The company did not respond to a request for comment. It did not explain the cause of the outage further.
CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz posted on social media platform X that the company “is actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts.”
He said: “This is not a security incident or cyberattack. The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed.”
New Zealand’s acting prime minister, David Seymour, said on X that officials in the country were “moving at pace to understand the potential impacts” of the global problem.
“I have not currently received any reporting to indicate these issues are related to malicious cyber security activity,” Seymour wrote. The issue was causing “inconvenience” for the public and businesses, he added.
Israel’s Cyber Directorate that it was among the places affected by the global outages, attributing them to a problem with Crowdstrike. The outage also hit the country’s post offices and hospitals, according to the ministries of communication and health.
Meanwhile, major disruptions reported by airlines and airports grew.
In the U.S., the FAA said the airlines United, American, Delta and Allegiant had all been grounded. Travelers at Los Angeles International Airport slept on a jetway floor, using backpacks and other luggage for pillows, due to a delayed United flight to Dulles International Airport early on Friday.
Airlines, railways and television stations in the United Kingdom were being disrupted by the computer issues. The budget airline Ryanair, train operators TransPennine Express and Govia Thameslink Railway, as well as broadcaster Sky News are among those affected.
“We’re currently experiencing disruption across the network due to a global third party IT outage which is out of our control,” Ryanair said. “We advise all passengers to arrive at the airport at least three hours before their scheduled departure time.”
Edinburgh Airport said the system outage meant waiting times were longer than usual. London’s Stansted Airport said some airline check-in services were being completed manually, but flights were still operating.
Widespread problems were reported at Australian airports, where lines grew and some passengers were stranded as online check-in services and self-service booths were disabled. Passengers in Melbourne queued for more than an hour to check in, although flights were still operating.
Airline operations in India were disrupted, affecting thousands.
The privately-owned IndiGo airlines told the passengers on X that the Microsoft outage on Friday impacted airline operations in India, inconveniencing thousands of passengers.
Several airlines made statements on X saying that they were following manual check-in and boarding processes and warned of delays due to technical problems.
Hong Kong’s Airport Authority said in a statement that the outage was affecting some airlines at the city’s airport and they had switched to manual check-in.
Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport said on its website that the outage was having a “major impact on flights” to and from the busy European hub. The outage came on one of the busiest days of the year for the airport, at the start of many people’s summer vacations.
In Germany, Berlin Airport said Friday morning that “due to a technical fault, there will be delays in check-in.” It said that flights were suspended until 10 a.m. (0800GMT), without giving details, German news agency dpa reported.
Zurich Airport, the busiest in Switzerland, suspended landings on Friday morning but said flights headed there that were already in the air were still allowed to land. It said that several airlines, handling agents and other companies at the airport were affected, and that check-in had to be done manually in some cases, but that the airport’s own systems were running.
At Rome’s Leonardo da Vinci airport, some US-bound flights had posted delays, while others were unaffected.
Australia appeared to be severely affected by the issue. Outages reported on the site DownDetector included the banks NAB, Commonwealth and Bendigo, and the airlines Virgin Australia and Qantas, as well as internet and phone providers such as Telstra.
Hospitals in Britain and Germany also reported problems.
Several practices within the National Health Service in England reported that the outage had hit their clinical computer system that contains medical records and is used for scheduling.
“We have no access to patient clinical records so are unable to book appointments or provide information,” Church Lane Surgery in Brighouse in Northern England said on the social media platform X. “This is a national problem and is being worked on as a high priority.”
The NHS did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
In northern Germany, the Schleswig-Holstein University Hospital, which has branches in Kiel and Luebeck, said it had canceled all elective surgery scheduled for Friday, but patient and emergency care were unaffected.
News outlets in Australia — including the ABC and Sky News — were unable to broadcast on their TV and radio channels, and reported sudden shutdowns of Windows-based computers. Some news anchors broadcast live online from dark offices, in front of computers showing “blue screens of death.”
In South Africa, at least one major bank said it was experiencing “nationwide service disruptions” as customers reported they were unable to make payments using their bank cards at grocery stores and gas stations.
The New Zealand banks ASB and Kiwibank said their services were down.
An X user posted a screenshot of an alert from the company Crowdstrike that said the company was aware of “reports of crashes on Windows hosts” related to its Falcon Sensor platform. The alert was posted on a password-protected Crowdstrike site and could not be verified. Crowdstrike did not respond to a request for comment.
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