Online systems around the world are crashing in what appears to be a global technical crash.
The London Stock Exchange’s RNS Service, airlines, telecoms companies, banks and media organisations went down in the early hours of Friday, reportedly due to a failure in Microsoft 365 and Azure services.
Some airlines including Ryanair have reported disruption, with many flights grounded and, in the UK, railway companies are experiencing “widespread IT issues”.
In the UK, Sky News said it was unable to broadcast live on Friday morning. Sky News sports presenter Jacquie Beltrao posted on X: “We’re obviously not on air – we’re trying.”
Across the world, so-called blue screens of death are appearing on online servers, blocking many businesses’ ability to work.
Australians began reporting issues early on Friday afternoon AEST, with India, New Zealand, some parts of Asia and the US also affected.
Microsoft, which says it is taking action to fix the problem, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The US tech giant said its outage started at about 18:00 ET (00:00 BST) on Thursday.
On social media, the tech crash has been blamed on on an update to the Crowdstrike security software, causing an issue with Windows software.
Cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike says the cause is currently under investigation.
City A.M. has approached the London Stock Exchange Group for comment.
More to follow