WORLD BRIEFING: July 20, 2024
The boss of the cybersecurity firm responsible for worldwide IT outages admits it could be "some time" before all systems are back up and running. While the software bug has been fixed, experts say the manual reboot of each affected Microsoft computer will take a huge amount of work. Thousands of flights have been cancelled, with banking, healthcare and payment systems all affected. In the UK, GPs have been struggling to access records, pharmacies have been hit and TV channels knocked off air. Around 4,295 flights globally, or 3.9% of all scheduled services, have been cancelled so far today, according to aviation data from Cirium. While the IT outage has caused some flights to be cancelled, this figure also includes those cancelled for other reasons - BBC
A Russian court has found the US journalist Evan Gershkovich guilty of espionage and sentenced him to 16 years in prison, after a trial widely described as a sham. Gershkovich, 32, denied the charges and pleaded not guilty during the secretive court proceedings in Yekaterinburg, mostly held behind closed doors. His employer, the Wall Street Journal, described the verdict as a “disgraceful, sham conviction”. The trial was concluded with unusual haste, raising hopes of a prisoner swap involving the journalist, something that has long been the subject of private discussions between Russian and US officials. Footage from the courtroom showed Gershkovich, dressed in a T-shirt, watching impassively from inside a glass defendant’s box, as the judge read out the sentence of “imprisonment for a term of 16 years in a penal colony with a strict regime”. The court ordered his mobile phone and reporter’s notebook to be destroyed. Earlier on Friday, the prosecution had asked for an 18-year jail term. President Joe Biden said the US government was pushing hard for Gershkovich’s release, adding: “There is no question that Russia is wrongfully detaining Evan. Journalism is not a crime.” The British prime minister, Keir Starmer, called the sentence “despicable”. He was arrested while reporting in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg last March, becoming the first US journalist since the cold war to be accused of spying in Russia. He had been held in Moscow’s notorious Lefortovo prison, but was returned to Yekaterinburg for trial. - WSJ
If Joe Biden did step aside many Democrats say that any process is likelier than ever to quickly end with Vice President Kamala Harris as the nominee. The informal conversations about how a fight to replace Biden at the top of the ticket would play out have been raging for weeks behind the scenes. But uncertainty about the process has been so unclear it’s given multiple Democrats – even those with serious concerns about Biden – pause about coming out against the president’s candidacy, given that what comes next could be even messier. Internal polls that show Harris would at least be more helpful to boosting Democratic enthusiasm and aiding down ballot races are getting passed around. Arguments that she would be fastest to put together a campaign are landing harder. Daydreams of her making a more active and vigorous case against Donald Trump are taking root. - CNN
After several days of ‘hellishly hot’ temperatures across southern Europe, people are looking for some respite from July’s heatwaves. There’s little relief to be had in the very short term, with peaks of up to 43 degrees Celsius for parts of Italy and Greece on Thursday. The extreme heat that has afflicted many southern and eastern countries this month is partly driven by a wave of hot air from north Africa. Multiple people are reported to have died in Italy, and extreme heat-death warnings continue to be issued for countries from Portugal to Romania and Cyprus. But the lethal heat is finally expected to abate for many places over the weekend and into next week. It all has to do with a fairly persistent large-scale weather pattern,” explains Lars Lowinski, a meteorologist at the Weather & Radar weather service. “Southern and eastern parts of Europe have been under what we call a high-pressure ridge [also known as a heat dome], basically a large area of high pressure with plenty of very warm air that does not move much.” - Euronews
MSNBC host Joe Scarborough was seriously not happy with the way Morning Joe was taken off the air Monday, delivering a scathing on-air screed against the network’s handling of the episode and even threatening to quit if it happened again. The popular political roundtable show did not air Monday, with a post on the Morning Joe X account explaining that the network would instead be showing continued coverage of the attempted assassination of Donald Trump. The decision to sideline one of the network’s leading news shows at a time of such historic importance came as a surprise to some—apparently including Scarborough. - Newsketh
