Category Archives: headline

headline

What caused last night's 'mass web outage'?

A number of high-profile websites including the BBC, the New York Times, Reddit, The Sydney Morning Herald and Twitch went offline on Tuesday evening during a mass web outage.

The outage was connected to a San Francisco-based website service provider named Fastly and lasted for about an hour.

At 8.44pm AEST, Fastly reported it had identified the issue and a fix was being implemented.

READ MORE: Suspected Chinese hackers spied on US, European targets

Users had reported receiving "Error 503 Service Unavailable" pages when attempting to log on to a number of websites.

Others received a "fastly error" saying the domain of a significant website such as the BBC was "unknown".

The outage also impacted a number of Australian websites, including 9Now, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.

https://twitter.com/Channel9/status/1402211766679990278

Fastly is one of four companies that provide CDN (Content Delivery Network) services to some of the internet's biggest sites.

Because of the nature of CDNs, which involve servers located in multiple locations, not every website that was impacted came back online immediately.

Fastly said it had identified a service configuration that triggered disruptions, meaning the outage appeared to be caused internally.

Brief internet service outages are not uncommon and are only rarely the result of hacking or other mischief.

Still, major futures markets in the US dipped sharply minutes after the outage, which came in wake of cyberattacks hitting Nine, the publisher of this website, and major meat processor JBS, whose operations were impacted in Australia and the US.

Some of the websites hit by major web outage

  • 9Now
  • Reddit
  • SMH
  • CNN
  • Age
  • Gov.uk
  • NY Times
  • Twitch
  • Pinterest
  • The Guardian
  • AFR
  • BBC
  • Financial Times

What is Fastly?

Fastly describes itself as an "edge cloud platform." It provides vital behind-the-scenes cloud computing services to many of the web's high-profile sites, by helping them to store, or "cache," content in servers around the world so that it's closer to users.

The company says its services mean a European user going to an American website can get the content 200 to 500 milliseconds faster.

"It is serious because Fastly is one of the world's biggest CDNs and this was a global outage," said Doug Madory, an internet infrastructure expert at Kentik.

READ MORE: US has recovered ransom payment made after pipeline hack

Fastly stock jumped more than 6 per cent after the outage as investors shrugged off the problem.

The impact highlights the relative fragility of the internet's architecture given its heavy reliance on big tech companies — such as Amazon's AWS cloud services — as opposed to a more decentralised array of companies.

"Even the biggest and most sophisticated companies experience outages. But they can also recover fairly quickly," Mr Madory said.

– wIth Associated Press

headline

French President slapped in the face by stranger

French President Emmanuel Macron has been slapped in the face by a man in a crowd while speaking to the public during a visit to south-east France, video of the incident posted on social media shows.

The footage showed Macron walking up to a metal fence and clasping the arm of a man in the crowd as he began to greet onlookers in the village of Tain-l'Hermitage, in the Drôme region of France.

The man, while gripping Macron's arm, then slapped the President across his left cheek while yelling for the end of "Macronie" — a pejorative term used in the French press for Macron's presidency.

READ MORE: What Notre Dame looks like two years after devastating fire

https://twitter.com/AlexpLille/status/1402237903376367627

The President's security detail quickly intervened, tackling the man while pulling the Mr Macron away from the metal barrier.

"A man indeed tried to hit the President of the Republic," the Elysee said in a statement to CNN.

"We have no further comments at this point. Exchanges with the crowd and handshakes resumed. The trip continues."

Moments before slapping Mr Macron, the perpetrator also shouted, "Montjoie! Saint-Denis!", a medieval battle cry used by the Capetian royal dynasty, which ruled France from the 10th to the 18th century.

The motto is also widely known in France for being a line from 1993 fantasy comedy film Les Visiteurs, in which a 12th-century knight and his squire magically travel in time to the 90s and find themselves adrift in modern society.

Two 28-year-old men, including the man who slapped Macron and another accompanying him, were placed in police custody at 1.45pm (9.45pm AEST) for alleged violence against a person holding public authority, the prosecutor's office of the city of Valence told CNN.

Far-right leader Marine Le Pen, who is Macron's biggest political opponent, said physically attacking the President was "unacceptable."

"We can attack him politically" but any violence against him should be condemned in a democracy, she added, during a Tuesday press conference.

Mr Macron was in the area to meet restaurant owners, ahead of Wednesday's easing of Covid-19 restrictions in France.

He is currently on a charm offensive, with France's presidential elections less than a year away and the country just weeks from regional elections on June 20 and June 27.

At the end of April, the President told regional press he wanted to "go to the regions to take the pulse of the country, to get in contact with people."

His political opponents say these presidential outings are actually campaign trips.

Mr Macron is not the first French politician to be slapped in the face while shaking hands.

In January 2017, former Prime Minister Manuel Valls, who was at the time the left-wing candidate in the presidential primary, was visiting Lamballe in Brittany when a young man struck him before being overpowered by the security services.

Mr Valls was Prime Minister between 2014 and 2016 under President François Hollande.

headline

Cruise Ships Return to Barbados with Vaccinated Tourists

By Amelia Robinson, CNW Reporter

 
Photo: Associated Press

Barbados welcomed back cruise ships to its shores starting with all passengers on board being fully vaccinated against COVID-19. This was disclosed by tourism Minister Lisa Cummins on Saturday.

“We are preparing…to welcome back for the first time in over 15 months’ cruise ships to Barbados.

“It has been over a year of discussions, negotiations, and engagement at the level of the Centre for Disease Control (CDC), the European Union (EU) healthy sail guidelines, working through the Americas Crews Task Force, …chaired by the President and CEO of Royal Caribbean, Michael Bailey, and Prime Minister Mia Mottley of Barbados.”

Cummins pointed out that all arriving passengers must have a valid negative PCR test three days prior to arrival.

“There is testing that is going to be taking place on board the ships that will make sure that people are continually kept safe, but there are multiple different scenarios, and we want to spend some time just talking you through what that looks like.  So, everybody’s comfortable that we have been robust and rigorous in the assessment of what the parameters need to be, what the risk is going to be, what risks are going to be posed, and what measures need to be put in place,” she stated.

The minister also outlined the plans in place to receive cruise ships and passengers to the island.

“There are at least three different types of parameters that we needed to consider for cruising …people are going to be flying in; they’re going to have to meet the requirements first for boarding an aircraft, which would be a negative PCR test before they land in Barbados, and they’ve taken via sterile corridor directly to the port, where they then have to be subjected to further screening in order to embark on the ship, which is homeported here in Barbados,” she said.

She said that bubble tours will be made available for passengers.

“What that means is that we’re restricting what types of activity can be undertaken at this stage because despite our best efforts, and despite the level of rigour that we have put into developing these protocols, this is still the first ship.  We need to take small, confident but careful steps,” the tourism minister said.

The Celebrity Millennium will set sail from St. Maarten, visiting the islands of Aruba, Barbados and Curacao.

The post Cruise Ships Return to Barbados with Vaccinated Tourists appeared first on The St Kitts Nevis Observer.

headline

A&B PM Wants Regional Governments to Cut Airline Taxes

CMC- Antigua and Barbuda Prime Minister, Gaston Browne, says the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has provided the Caribbean governments with the opportunity to implement tax cuts for airline tickets across the region.

“Now is the time for us to cut the taxes even by 50 per cent and I do accept that you may not be able to determine the elasticity of pricing on travel demand because naturally regional and intra-regional remain relatively low during this period of COVID,” the prime minister stated.

“But the fact that you are not collecting, or you hardly collecting anything at this time it is not revenue you are giving away. You can’t give away what you are not earning,” said Browne, who intends to his use chairmanship of the regional integration movement, CARICOM, next month to push the initiative.

He said the leaders of the sub-regional Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) are supportive of the initiative since there are other financial benefits to be obtained as a result.

“I have said to my colleagues within the OECS that now is the time. I can tell you that my colleagues are looking at it seriously and I believe we should be able to convince them to do something now,” Browne said, adding that the cut in taxes could be for a temporary period.

“It could even be for a temporary period. If we say, look between now and the end of the year to 12 months I have no doubt that one, it will result in incremental revenue and at the same time it will also give us some idea…maybe the price elasticity of these tickets…that carry a heavy component in terms of government taxes.”

He continued: “I am of the view too that is one of the ways to incentivize fully vaccinated persons. We can have a bubble involving fully vaccinated persons to allow them to check travel intra-regionally and without any quarantine.

“So there are multiple benefits by introducing such a policy. I do accept it is something that should have been done before but I believe that again COVID has given us the opportunity to do it now and we ought not to do so.”

Many regional countries are now reopening their borders as they emerge from the impact of the coronavirus on their respective economies. They had closed down their borders in a bid to prevent the spread of the virus that has killed and infected thousands in the English-speaking Caribbean region.

In May last year, the airline trade group, IATA, urged Caribbean governments to cut passenger taxes if they wanted to benefit from the post-pandemic recovery.

IATA’s regional VP for the Americas, Peter Cerda, said some regional countries risk losing market share when travel resumes and that some airlines will be reluctant to return to some Caribbean destinations if pricing is not competitive.

The post A&B PM Wants Regional Governments to Cut Airline Taxes appeared first on The St Kitts Nevis Observer.