عربي English Türkçe اردو فارسى
Logo
Latest News
World

Global Cyber Outage Disrupts Flights, Hits Media, Banks, Telecoms

Passengers wait at Barajas Airport, as Spanish airport operator Aena on Friday reported a computer systems "incident" at all Spanish airports which may cause flight delays, in Madrid, Spain July 19, 2024. REUTERS/Elena Rodriguez
Passengers wait at Barajas Airport, as Spanish airport operator Aena on Friday reported a computer systems "incident" at all Spanish airports which may cause flight delays, in Madrid, Spain July 19, 2024. REUTERS/Elena Rodriguez
TT
TT

Global Cyber Outage Disrupts Flights, Hits Media, Banks, Telecoms

Passengers wait at Barajas Airport, as Spanish airport operator Aena on Friday reported a computer systems "incident" at all Spanish airports which may cause flight delays, in Madrid, Spain July 19, 2024. REUTERS/Elena Rodriguez
Passengers wait at Barajas Airport, as Spanish airport operator Aena on Friday reported a computer systems "incident" at all Spanish airports which may cause flight delays, in Madrid, Spain July 19, 2024. REUTERS/Elena Rodriguez

Major US airlines ordered ground stops on Friday citing communications issues, while other carriers, media companies, banks and telecoms firms around the world also reported system outages were disrupting their operations.
American Airlines, Delta Airlines, United Airlines and Allegiant Air grounded flights less than an hour after Microsoft said it resolved its cloud services outage that impacted several low-cost carriers.
It was not immediately clear whether the call to keep flights from taking off were related to an earlier Microsoft cloud outage.
In Australia, media, banks and telecoms companies suffered outages, which the government said appears to be linked to an issue at global cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike.
Crowdsourced website Downdetector showed outages at several banks and telecoms companies.
Crowdstrike ran a recorded phone message on Friday when Reuters contacted its technical support saying it was aware of reports of crashes on Microsoft's Windows operating system relating to its Falcon sensor, without mentioning Australia.
There was no information to suggest the outage was a cyber security incident, the office of Australia's National Cyber Security Coordinator Michelle McGuinness said in a post on X.
The outages rippled far and wide, with Spain reporting a "computer incident" at all its airports, while Ryanair, Europe’s largest airline by passenger numbers, warned passengers of potential disruptions which it said would affect “all airlines operating across the Network," though it did not specify the nature of the disruptions.
AWS cloud service provider said in a statement that it was "investigating reports of connectivity issues to Windows EC2 instances and Workspaces within AWS."
It was not immediately clear whether all reported outages were linked to Crowdstrike problems or there were other issues at play.

Most Viewed

 
 
World

Trump Tariffs Torch Chances of Meeting with China's Xi

With his storm of tariffs, President Donald Trump has torched ties with Beijing and likely wrecked any hope of meeting his counterpart Xi Jinping in the near term, analysts say. Brendan Smialowski / AFP/File
With his storm of tariffs, President Donald Trump has torched ties with Beijing and likely wrecked any hope of meeting his counterpart Xi Jinping in the near term, analysts say. Brendan Smialowski / AFP/File
TT
TT

Trump Tariffs Torch Chances of Meeting with China's Xi

With his storm of tariffs, President Donald Trump has torched ties with Beijing and likely wrecked any hope of meeting his counterpart Xi Jinping in the near term, analysts say. Brendan Smialowski / AFP/File
With his storm of tariffs, President Donald Trump has torched ties with Beijing and likely wrecked any hope of meeting his counterpart Xi Jinping in the near term, analysts say. Brendan Smialowski / AFP/File

With his storm of tariffs on Chinese goods, US President Donald Trump has torched ties with Beijing and likely wrecked any hope of meeting his counterpart Xi Jinping in the near term, analysts say.

Since taking office in January, Trump's maelstrom of import duties against friend and foe alike has rattled diplomats and pushed global markets to the brink of financial meltdown, said AFP.

A screeching halt on further levies for most countries has calmed nerves -- for now at least -- but there has been no reprieve for China, accused by the US leader of trying to "screw" Washington.

Adding to the tensions, talks between the two superpowers on international issues like climate change and opioid addiction seem to have stalled.

"Under Trump, China-US ties have sunk to the worst state of affairs short of a fairly large armed conflict," Shi Yinhong, director of the Center for American Studies at Beijing's Renmin University of China, said.

"Trump has unsheathed his dagger against China at a speed that exceeded many people's imaginations," he said.

After a flurry of tit-for-tat hikes, the United States now charges tariffs of 145 percent on many products imported from China, with cumulative duties on some goods reaching a staggering 245 percent.

A furious Beijing has set a retaliatory toll of 125 percent on goods entering from the United States, and dismissed further rises as pointless.

US-China relations are in "effectively a state of economic war", Susan Thornton, who served as acting top US diplomat for East Asia during Trump's first administration, told AFP.

"China views Trump's stated intent to... erect a 'tariff wall against China' as illegal and an existential threat," Thornton, now a senior fellow at Yale's Paul Tsai China Center, said.

No backing down

Just a few weeks ago, multiple reports suggested Beijing and Washington were mulling a face-to-face meeting to coincide with the two leaders' birthdays in June.

But recent events have effectively left those plans dead in the water.

Trump's "rude and unreasonable" behavior has made any talks in the first half of the year "very unlikely", according to Wu Xinbo, director of the Center for American Studies at Shanghai's Fudan University.

Rosemary Foot, a professor and senior research fellow at Oxford University's politics and international relations department, said Beijing "would want to ensure that there would be some policy deliverables and Xi would be treated with respect".

Trump has approached the trade conflict with a typical mixture of flattery, denigration and bombast -- slamming China's "lack of respect" while hailing Xi as a "smart guy" and talking up a prospective trade deal.

Ali Wyne, a senior research and advocacy adviser focusing on US-China ties at the International Crisis Group think tank, said neither Trump nor Xi "will want to convey that he has yielded to the other".

The "likeliest impetus" for talks, he said, would be a scenario where both could claim victory -- Trump by his willingness to keep ratcheting up economic pressure, and Xi by showing China's resilience.

Rana Mitter, a professor of US-Asia relations at the Harvard Kennedy School, said a Trump-Xi summit was "still quite possible", citing the mercurial US leader's dizzying pivot from threatening war against North Korea in 2017 to meeting Kim Jong Un the following year.

"Beijing will not agree to meet if it looks as if they are conceding to the US, so behind-the-scenes diplomacy will likely be necessary," Mitter said.

Back door shut

Other analysts said Trump's fiery rhetoric and crippling tariffs had likely laid waste to backdoor talks.

Under his predecessor Joe Biden, Washington and Beijing maintained dialogue on the fentanyl crisis, climate change and other issues.

Those channels "are moribund now, as far as I can tell, and that makes it difficult to prepare the ground for such a summit", Oxford's Foot said.

Wu, of Fudan, said Trump's out-of-hand dismissal of Chinese efforts to curb fentanyl precursor exports and his climate change denial meant the space for lower-track dialogue "has, in practice, already disappeared".

In official pronouncements, China has mocked Trump's tariffs as a "numbers game" and a "joke" with no economic benefits.

Beijing has also sought to cast itself as a defender of fair trade and stability in the face of unwarranted US "bullying".

Experts said China may yet scent opportunity in the face of Trump's economic carnage.

"Trump's colossally ill-conceived mass alienation of other countries may mean more receptivity for China's outreach," said Yale's Thornton -- adding that Beijing was likely conducting "economic triage".