An issue with Amazon Web Services has impacted some of the world's biggest apps and websites.

Users on Down Detector, a website which measures outages, reported difficulties accessing a range of popular services including Snapchat, Roblox, Fortnite, Canva and Duolingo.

The problems appeared to stem from Amazon Web Services (AWS), which provides infrastructure for many major websites and apps.

The technology giant confirmed the underlying issued had been "fully mitigated" by 9.35pm today, with services expected to return to normal despite a backlog.

Which websites went down?

Down Detector showed users reporting errors for a huge list of sites and apps.

Some services confirmed their issue was linked with Amazon Web Services, while Down Detector reported others were likely to be impacted by the issue.

Websites experiencing difficulties included:

• Snapchat
• My Fitness Pal
• Epic Games Store
• Fortnite
• Canva
• Roblox
• Hinge
• Tinder
• Signal
• Duolingo
• PlayStation Network
• XBox
• Steam
• Ubisoft Connect
• Pokemon Go
• Video service Zoom
• Xero
• EA Games
• Strava
• 9Now
• Disney+
• Music service Tidal
• Ring doorbells
• Online game Among US
• Lloyds Bank
• Halifax (UK bank)
• Slack
• Reddit
• Amazon Alexa
• Life360
• Signal
• BT (British Telecom)
• Bank of Scotland
• Virgin Media
• Vodafone
• EE
• 3 (British telco)
• Blink Security
• HM Revenue and Customs
• Microsoft 365
• Microsoft Outlook
• Microsoft Teams
• Just Eat
• Whatsapp

What has Amazon Web Services said?

Just after 8pm, Amazon Web Services said its engineers had "identified a potential root cause" of the outage and services were being restored.

"We continue to observe recovery across most of the affected AWS Services," the company said in a statement.

"We can confirm global services and features that rely on US-EAST-1 have also recovered.

"We continue to work towards full resolution and will provide updates as we have more information to share."

By 9.35pm, AWS said the "underlying DNS issue has been fully mitigated" and that most requests were succeeding normally.

Is Snapchat down right now?

One of the biggest websites affected by the outage was Snapchat, a social media platform with about 900 million active monthly users.

Users reported difficulty logging into Snapchat after being met with error messages.

The company told users on X its team was looking into the issue.

What is Amazon Web Services?

Amazon Web Services provides cloud computing.

AWS is a subsidiary of Amazon, the mega company owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos, one of the world's richest people.

"Instead of buying, owning, and maintaining physical data centres and servers, you can access technology services, such as computing power, storage, and databases, on an as-needed basis," AWS says.

It says its customers are companies "of every type, size and industry".

It provides infrastructure that is used for data backup, disaster recovery, email, virtual desktops, software development and testing, big data analytics, and customer-facing web applications.

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Some of the world's biggest apps and websites appear to have stopped working.

Roblox, Snapchat, Fortnite, Canva and Duolingo are among the services that are down, according to website DownDetector.

The problems appear to stem from an issue at Amazon Web Services (AWS), which provides infrastructure for many major websites and apps.

"We can confirm increased error rates and latencies for multiple AWS services in the US-East-1 region," the company said in a statement.

"We are actively engaged and working to both mitigate the issue and understood the root cause.

"We will provide an update in 45 minutes, or sooner if we have additional information to share."

Amazon Web Services is one of the most popular providers of cloud services in the world.

Popular encrypted messaging service Signal has reports of its service being down.

"We are aware that Signal is down for some people," president Meredith Whittaker said on X.

"This appears to be related to a major AWS outage."

The currency trading app Coinbase confirmed "many" of its users were unable to access its service.

"Our team is working on the issue and we'll provide updates here," the company said.

Graphic design platform Canva said it was experiencing "significantly increased error rates which are impacting functionality".

The software company has about 220 million active monthly users.

"Our team is actively investigating the issue and working to restore full access as quickly as possible," the company said in an update on its website.

More to come…

What is AWS?

Amazon Web Services provides cloud computing.

AWS is a subsidiary of Amazon, the mega company owned by billionaire Jeff Bezos, one of the world's richest people.

"Instead of buying, owning, and maintaining physical data centres and servers, you can access technology services, such as computing power, storage, and databases, on an as-needed basis," AWS says.

It says its customers are companies "of every type, size and industry".

It provides infrastructure that is used for data backup, disaster recovery, email, virtual desktops, software development and testing, big data analytics, and customer-facing web applications.

DOWNLOAD THE 9NEWS APP: Stay across all the latest in breaking news, sport, politics and the weather via our news app and get notifications sent straight to your smartphone. Available on the Apple App Store and Google Play.

Popular buy now, pay later platform Afterpay says it has largely restored services after a global, platform-wide outage left millions of users unable to make payments.

An issue affected the app, consumer and merchant portal, online and in-store services, and shop directory from about 2pm until about 4pm (AEDT) today.

It affected users in Australia, New Zealand, the US and Canada. 

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"We are experiencing an outage at the moment that is affecting services," an Afterpay spokesperson said at the time.

"Our team is working hard to resolve this ASAP and we'll provide another update shortly."

More than two hours later, services were restored in Australia, New Zealand and the US. They went down again about an hour later, but have since been restored for Australia and New Zealand.

Afterpay is still working to restore services in North America. 

It said a third-party vendor was responsible for the tech issues.

Afterpay is a popular buy now, pay later service that lets customers purchase items immediately and pay them off in four interest-free instalments. 

It has about 3.5 million customers in Australia and more than 24 million users worldwide.

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Andrew von Dadelszen lost his seat to Kat Macmillan by 248 votes.

A Chinese plane deployed flares near a Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) aircraft in an "unsafe" incident in the South China Sea, the government says.

The Department of Defence said it has "expressed its concerns" with its Chinese counterparts following an interaction between a People's Liberation Army–Air Force (PLA-AF) aircraft and a Royal Australian Air Force (RAAF) P-8A Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft yesterday.

The PLA-AF aircraft released flares in close proximity to the RAAF aircraft, the department said in a statement.

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"This was an unsafe and unprofessional manoeuvre that posed a risk to the aircraft and its personnel," the statement reads.

"No injuries were sustained by Australian Defence Force (ADF) personnel nor was damage caused to the RAAF P-8A.

"The safety and wellbeing of our ADF personnel continues to be our utmost priority."

Defence Minister Richard Marles said the proximity of the flares during what otherwise was a routine exercise made it an "unsafe" situation.

"As it (the RAAF plane) was doing that, a PLA Air Force [jet] came alongside – that, in and of itself is pretty routine," he told Sky News.

"It released flares, that of itself can be a reasonably standard interaction between two military aircraft.

"But on two occasions, it released flares very close to the [the RAAF plane] and it's really that, the proximity at which the flares were released, which has given us cause to deem this unsafe and unprofessional."

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The government said it expects all countries, including China, to exercise caution and safety when operating its military.

"For decades, the ADF has undertaken maritime surveillance activities in the region and does so in accordance with international law, exercising the right to freedom of navigation and overflight in international waters and airspace," the statement added.

"All maritime claims must be consistent with the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea."

It follows a similar incident earlier this year when another Chinese aircraft dropped flares within 30 metres of an Australian military plane, also in the South China Sea.

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The brand has been praised for “always fronting up” when it increases prices.

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Australian nutritionist and food influencer Stacey Hatfield has died from an "extremely rare complication" during childbirth, her heartbroken husband says.

The 30-year-old from Melbourne, known as @naturalspoonfuls on social media, gained more than 17,100 followers by promoting a toxin-free lifestyle and natural recipes.

She was pregnant and just two months shy of her first wedding anniversary with husband Nathan Warnecke when she went into labour on September 29.

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Hatfield gave birth at home to a healthy baby boy named Axel.

But moments later, the "unimaginable" happened.

Warnecke said an "unforeseen and extremely rare complication" arose.

https://www.instagram.com/p/DP-dHVLEmiw/?hl=en&img_index=1

She was rushed to hospital, where she died.

"Hospital staff were amazing and did the utmost to help, but ultimately nothing could be done despite their best efforts," he said in a social media post yesterday.

"Words can't do justice to how devastating this is for myself and everyone that knew and loved her.

"It was her life's biggest dream to be a mum. She did it. On her terms, exactly the way she always dreamed of doing it.

"She loved being pregnant and over the last 9 months told our son she loved him everyday.

"She held Axel when he was born, nursed him, saw that he was a boy and loved him.

"She loved him so much and still, continues to love him."

READ MORE: Millions affected as Afterpay hit by global outage

Warnecke said her last moments were the "happiest I've ever seen her", as he paid tribute to his "beautiful wife, soul mate and best friend".

"I knew Stace for nine amazing years, she was the light of my life and the reason I got up in the morning. Words can't do justice to how devastating this is for myself and everyone that knew and loved her," he said.

"She was my lighthouse in the storm, and the world is less bright without her in it. As her husband, I couldn't ask for a better partner.

"She was the most beautiful, loving, caring, hardworking, disciplined, intelligent and trustworthy human being I've ever known."

Family, friends and the community have rallied behind Warnecke and Axel, raising more than $20,000 to help support the family pay for the funeral, childcare costs, household bills, and to take time off work.

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NSW residents have been warned to be on the lookout for counterfeit cash after police seized $2600 in fake notes.

The notes were handed to businesses in the state's Hunter Valley region at businesses in Cessnock, Kurri Kurri, Muswellbrook, Scone, Singleton, Blandford, Cliftleigh, Glendon, Merriwa and Middle Falbrook between May and this month.

Police are now investigating the source of the notes.

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Police have urged people to be aware of the signs of a fake note.

If you suspect you have counterfeit cash in your possession, it is important to feel the note as genuine cash is printed on special plastic polymer and is difficult to tear, officers said.

A telltale sign of a fake is if words such as "prop" or "specimen" mark the note.

You should also hold the note to the light and look for the Australian coat of arms.

This is generally located to the left of the clear window or denomination numeral when looking at the front of the note.

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Another way to tell the difference is to compare the background printing, looking for any distortions or less clearly defined patterns.

Feel for slightly raised printing on the main design of the note and look for the seven-pointed star inside a circle.

Check that the note has a clear window and that it has a clear printed image.

The $50 note has the Southern Cross and the $100 note has the lyrebird.

If possible, look under a UV light to locate the serial numbers.

In recent months, counterfeit cash has also been found in other states, including South Australia and Tasmania.

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It comes a week and a half after the Reserve Bank cut the OCR down to 2.5%.