<figure></figure>French rail company SNCF has warned that disruption from Friday's sabotage against the country's train network could last until the end of the weekend and affect hundreds of thousands more passengers.Coordinated arson attacks on three lines of the high-speed TGV network on Friday caused chaos for travellers, hours before the opening ceremony for the Paris Olympics. A fourth attack was thwarted by rail workers. Prime Minister Gabriel Attal described the attacks as "acts of sabotage".About a quarter of international Eurostar trains were also cancelled, with UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer among those affected. In a statement issued on Friday evening, SNCF said traffic "would improve" on affected lines on Saturday thanks to the work of thousands of rail workers. It said: The company added that customers whose trains are delayed or cancelled will be contacted by email or text message. Eurostar said it expected about a fifth of services over the weekend would be cancelled, while all trains would face delays of around 1.5 hours. Eurostar services use the northern high-speed line.SNCF said surveillance of the rail network had been strengthened "on land and in the air," using 1,000 workers and 50 drones.Junior Transport Minister Patrice Vergriete said around 250,000 people had been affected on Friday, while up to 800,000 could face delays and cancellations by Monday.He added that disrupting holiday travel, rather than Friday's Olympic opening ceremony, was the most likely aim of the saboteurs. "There is not necessarily a link" with the Olympics, he said in an interview.The last weekend of July is traditionally a busy period for holiday travel.No group has yet claimed that it was behind the attacks. A source linked to the investigation told the AFP news agency that the operation was "well-prepared" and organised by "a single structure". Mr Attal said security forces were searching for those responsible. At around 04:00 on Friday, saboteurs cut and set on fire specialised fibre optic cables essential for the safe functioning of the rail network, government officials said.One site was at Courtalain, 150km (93 miles) south-west of Paris. A picture posted online purportedly showed burnt-out cables in a shallow gulley with its protective SNCF paving stones discarded.The SNCF spoke of a "massive, large-scale attack aimed at paralysing" its services, not just at Courtalain but at Pagny-sur-Moselle, a village outside the eastern city of Metz and Croisilles, not far from the northern city of Arras.Another attempted attack in Vergigny, south-east of Paris, was foiled by SNCF workers who were carrying out maintenance on site in the early hours of Friday.Prosecutors have opened an investigation into attacks on "the fundamental interests of the nation". <figure></figure>

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France travel disruption expected to last all weekend

<figure></figure>Airbus, the global aircraft manufacturer, has admitted the company is falling behind on its orders.Guillaume Faury, the company’s chief executive officer, said there are “bottlenecks” in the supply chain.“We have more demand than the ability to supply,” he said.Mr Faury was speaking at the Farnborough International Airshow, the biggest gathering of aviation professionals of the year. Airbus has major bases in the UK just outside of Bristol and in Broughton.<figure></figure>There are civilian airlines and military jet pilots. Technologists showing the latest kit and environmentalists trying to make flying greener. The new British Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, turned up. He made a speech, and met the Airbus CEO. For the UK government, aviation is an important industry.Every Airbus plane flies on wings designed by 3,000 engineers at Filton, near Bristol. The centre also designs and tests landing gear and fuel systems, and manufactures some wing components.The wings are then completed at Broughton, Flintshire, where another 6,000 people work. Thousands more work for small firms in the supply chain.<figure></figure>Behind the scenes, the Airbus sales team has been busy, signing orders for 139 new aircraft. Virgin Atlantic bought seven new widebody A330 aircraft, with a list price of around $800m (£620m).Another big order came from Japan Airlines for 20 long haul A350-900 jets, and 11 single aisle A321neo planes, worth just over $3bn (£2.3bn).To any normal industry, these would be huge numbers.But aviation is a one-off. The market is dominated by Airbus and Boeing, who sell the vast majority of big passenger jets the world over.And they like doing it in style at the big airshows.The Airbus deal with Virgin was actually signed on board a brand new A330 jet, painted in Virgin colours and named “Ruby Rebel”, in a nod to Virgin founder Sir Richard Branson.<figure></figure>Yet this has actually been a fairly quiet year for deals at Farnborough. In 2018, the last show before the pandemic grounded the world’s airlines, Airbus racked up a total of 431 firm orders and commitments. This year, that figure is just 139.Why? Because at the moment selling planes looks a lot easier than making them.Airbus boss Guillaume Faury was candid that his suppliers are often late delivering vital components. He said: “We have thousands of suppliers, and when you have just a couple of them that are late on the ramp-up, that’s slowing down everybody.”<figure></figure>The company now has a backlog of 8,585 jets that have been ordered but not yet manufactured. To give an idea of the scale of that queue, last year Airbus made and delivered 735 planes.Order one of the sparkling new A321 fuel efficient jets for £90m, and you will have to wait until 2031 at least to fly it."We are focussing our efforts on those bottlenecks," said Mr Faury.While the sales teams are in the spotlight this week, it is Airbus engineers and production managers facing the biggest challenges. They are trying to speed up manufacturing of these hugely complex aircraft, relying on hundreds of specialist suppliers who face their own problems."We are sending our own people," said Mr Faury. "Trying to provide help, anticipate the situation. And we have increased our buffer stocks to react to a crisis in the supply chain."<figure></figure>On the last day of the show, some aviation executives showed their patience, allowing Airbus to end on a high. Low-cost Saudi airline, ‘flynas’, signed a provisional deal to buy 90 new aircraft, worth around $12bn.The man buying the planes, flynas CEO Bander Almohanna, explained that the 75 A320neo aircraft he had just ordered had “exceptional efficiency”, which is vital for a low cost airline.<figure></figure>The other 15 planes are the long haul A330neo, which the airline says will “support our growth plans and Saudi Arabia’s pilgrim program."In Filton, just north of Bristol, around 4,000 people work for Airbus and its partner GKN, designing and making wings. They will have cheered the news that Airbus finally won the annual tussle with their big rival Boeing, selling 21 more aircraft than the Americans.But it also means that in four days at Farnborough, another 139 planes have been added to their 'to do' list.Follow BBC Bristol on Facebook, X and Instagram. Send your story ideas to us on email or via WhatsApp on 0800 313 4630.

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Airbus boss admits long delays in making aircraft

<figure></figure>A week after a faulty update caused a global IT outage that grounded flights and knocked TV stations off-air, the boss of CrowdStrike has revealed nearly all systems are back online.In a post on LinkedIn, George Kurtz said "over 97%" of systems running its software were back online as of 25 July. Microsoft previously estimated 8.5 million machines had been disabled by a bug in CrowdStrike's software.That figure, and Mr Kurtz's estimate of the percentage fixed, suggests approximately 250,000 devices remain offline. The CrowdStrike chief executive thanked the "tireless efforts" of customers and staff as he apologised again for the incident."While I can’t promise perfection, I can promise a response that is focused, effective, and with a sense of urgency," he wrote.However, he acknowledged the company's work to fix devices "is not yet complete" and said the firm was "committed to restoring every impacted system".The BBC has asked CrowdStrike for more details about the systems that remain offline, and why they have not yet been fixed.Bringing systems back online has proved to be a time consuming process. On Friday last week, solutions were shared online both by CrowdStrike and Microsoft within 24 hours of the problem being first reported.But the remedies, which included restarting machines in safe mode and deleting the faulty file, required people to be able to physically access devices, which proved difficult in some cases.Microsoft has since released a tool to speed up the process, and Mr Kurtz said the development of automated recovery tools had "enhanced" recovery efforts.CrowdStrike has since provided more detail about how the issue arose in a Preliminary Incident Review - and has committed to a number of measures designed to ensure it is not repeated. But the company's efforts to make amends have also been criticised for missteps.CrowdStrike faced fresh backlash after giving staff and firms they work with a $10 UberEats voucher to say sorry for the disruption."To express our gratitude, your next cup of coffee or late night snack is on us!" CrowdStrike wrote, directing people to use a code to access the $10 credit.But some felt short-changed by the token of thanks, with one Reddit user writing: "I literally wanted to drive my car off a bridge this weekend and they bought me coffee. Nice."According to insurance firm Parametrix, the top 500 US companies by revenue, excluding Microsoft, suffered $5.4bn (£4.1bn) in financial losses from the outage.

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CrowdStrike boss says 97% of crashed systems fixed

<figure></figure>The economy expanded at an annual rate of 2.8% over the three months to June, lifted by brisk consumer spending, the Commerce Department said Thursday.The pace was faster than expected, but still marked a slowdown from 2023.The strong figures arrive during a heated presidential campaign, in which voters have regularly named the economy as their top concern. The country's steady growth - far outstripping its international peers - would usually typically favour Democrats as the incumbent party.But the current mix of conditions has made for a puzzle. Unemployment, at 4.1%, is low but rising. Growth is solid, but has slowed from the boom that came as the economy reopened after Covid. And though price inflation has significantly subsided, economic discontent remains elevated, as households grapple with a 20% leap in prices since 2021 and high borrowing costs.President Joe Biden's decision to drop out of the race has scrambled the picture further."There's a lot of crosscurrents here, in terms of voters thinking about the economy," said Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics. "At this point, I don't think it's a headwind or a tailwind."Forecasters had been predicting growth this quarter of about 2%. But Thursday's figures showed the economy bouncing back from a slowdown at the start of the year, when gross domestic product (GDP) grew just 1.4%. In a statement, Mr Biden said the report "makes clear we now have the strongest economy in the world".But University of Iowa professor Michael Lewis-Beck, who is known for a model that predicts popular vote outcomes based on economic growth and presidential approval, said growth did not appear to have been strong enough in the first half of this year to overcome Mr Biden's steep unpopularity.His model had predicted a narrow loss for Mr Biden based on the start of the year growth. He warned that Democrats would face even stiffer odds now that the president is off the ballot, as they lose any incumbent advantage.The election remains close and complicated, he added, noting that the three elections since 1948 that his model has been wrong - in 1960, 1968 and 1976 - took place in "turbulent times", like today's."Not that the economy wasn't relevant in those times, but there were other huge things going on," he said, describing the current race as a "nail biter".Some other analysts said they thought Mr Biden's decision to quit the race could make it easier for Democrats to pick the parts of his legacy they want to promote, while separating themselves from negatives such as inflation."I see upside with vice president [Kamala] Harris taking over the ticket because she can put distance between herself and President Biden" on inflation, said Danielle Deiseroth, executive director of the progressive pollster Data for Progress.The administration's signature economic policies - including investments in roads, bridges, advanced technology and clean energy - are otherwise popular, she noted."It's an opportunity for a reset on the economic narrative," she said.Until Mr Biden bowed out, Mr Zandi said he had been "very uncomfortable" with the Democratic victory that his firm has been forecasting for the presidential election, using a model that takes into account things like gas prices and unemployment rates.Now, he said he felt better "sticking with the model"."I think it's a game-changer politically," he said of Mr Biden's move, while noting that small changes to non-economic factors such as turnout could "easily" deliver a win to Trump."It's going to be very close," he said. "It's very much on a razor's edge."What happens to the economy in the months ahead could make a difference.Most analysts do not expect major changes to economic conditions between now and November, though some weakening is anticipated. They are widely expecting the US central bank to cut interest rates in September, in an effort to head off further slowdown.Those in favour of cutting soon say the Federal Reserve needs to act before borrowing costs, which stand at a roughly two-decade high, send the economy into a recession. But the strong GDP showing could weaken that case.For the Fed, which prizes its political independence, it is an uncomfortable position to be in, especially since a cut, which would provide relief to households with credit card debt and businesses looking to borrow, might boost Democrats, Mr Zandi said."What the Fed does or does not do here matters," he said.

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US economy picks up amid heated presidential campaign

<figure></figure>Financial markets in the US and Asia have fallen sharply as investors sell off shares in technology companies, with artificial intelligence (AI) stocks hit particularly hard.In Wednesday's trading in New York, the S&amp;P 500 lost 2.3% and the tech-heavy Nasdaq fell 3.6%, in their biggest one-day falls since 2022. The Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped by 1.2%.The losses were driven by major firms including Nvidia, Alphabet, Microsoft, Apple and Tesla.On Thursday, Japan's Nikkei index led declines in Asia as it fell by 3%.Shares in technology companies, especially those related to AI, have driven much of this year's stock market gains.AI chip giant Nvidia, which has been one of the main beneficiaries of the AI boom, saw its shares drop 6.8%. It has lost about 15% of its value in the last two weeks.The company is set to report financial results at the end of August.Shares in multi-billionaire Elon Musk's electric car maker Tesla dropped by more than 12% after its latest financial results disappointed investors.Google and YouTube parent company Alphabet's stock price was 5% lower. Earlier this week, the company reported financial results that beat analyst expectations but said its spending would stay high for the rest of 2024.Alphabet, like many of its competitors, has been pumping billions of dollars into the development and adoption of AI technology.In Asia, chip makers Renesas Electronics and Tokyo Electron in Japan and South Korea's SK Hynix were amongst the big fallers."Investors are now becoming more concerned about all this expenditure with AI without the revenue benefit," said Jun Bei Liu, Portfolio Manager at Tribeca Investment Partners."I don’t think this will mark the start of the disbelief in AI... it just simply means investors will focus more on returns in this space than just buying the whole sector," she added.Investors are also wary after major surprises in the US presidential election campaign and the timing of an interest rate cut by the US central bank.

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Shares drop in US and Asia as AI stocks slide

<figure></figure>China's economic slowdown and a crackdown by Beijing on displays of wealth are taking a toll on some of the world's top luxury brands.LVMH says its sales in Asia, which include China but not Japan, fell by 14% in the three months to the end of June, worsening from a 6% decline in the first quarter.The Paris-based firm is not alone, as many of its competitors are also seeing sales slow in the world's second largest economy.It comes as Chinese shoppers cut back on expensive purchases and government censors shut down social media accounts of influencers who have shown off their luxury goods online.LVMH, which is the world's largest luxury group, also said its overall revenue growth had slowed to 1% for the period.Still, the group's chairman and chief executive Bernard Arnault remained cautiously optimistic.“The results for the first half of the year reflect LVMH’s remarkable resilience... in a climate of economic and geopolitical uncertainty.""While remaining vigilant in the current context, the Group approaches the second half of the year with confidence," he told investors.Shares in the the company - home to 75 high-end brands including Louis Vuitton, Dior and Tiffany &amp; Co - have fallen by almost 20% over the last year.LVMH is not the only big name feeling a slowdown of luxury goods sales in China.In its latest financial figures, upmarket British fashion label Burberry said its sales in mainland China had fallen by more than 20%, compared to a year earlier.Richemont, which owns Cartier, saw sales in China, Hong Kong and Macau, fall 27% year-on-year in the quarter ending on 30 June.And German fashion giant, Hugo Boss, downgraded its sales forecasts for the year on concerns about weak consumer demand in markets like China and the UK.Other major luxury goods industry players, including Hermes and Gucci-owner Kering, are due to report their latest financial results this week.Recent data out of China suggest the economy is still struggling to recover from the pandemic downturn, as both second quarter growth and June retail sales figures came in below expectations.Flaunting luxury brands online has also come under the scrutiny of Chinese authorities.In May, state-controlled newspaper Global Times reported that an internet celebrity called Wanghongquanxing was banned from social media "amid a crackdown on online wealth show-offs."His account on Douyin, China's equivalent of TikTok, had more than four million followers.Several other popular influencers have also seen their accounts deleted in a campaign that China's internet watchdog has said was aimed at banning "vulgar" and deliberately ostentatious content.

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Luxury brands suffer as Chinese shoppers hold back

<figure></figure>The US has opened an investigation into Delta Airlines as problems continue to plague the company five days after it was hit in a global IT outage.Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said Delta must provide passengers with refunds and other compensation for disrupted travel as required by law. A day earlier, Delta, which has cancelled more than 5,000 flights since Friday, signalled it could take several more days for its operations to recover from the outage. Meanwhile, CrowdStrike's chief executive George Kurtz, whose cybersecurity firm sparked the chaos with a faulty overnight update, has also been called to testify in Congress.The House Committee for Homeland Security said in a letter: "While we appreciate CrowdStrike’s response and coordination with stakeholders, we cannot ignore the magnitude of this incident.It added: "Recognising that Americans will undoubtedly feel the lasting, real-world consequences of this incident, they deserve to know in detail how this incident happened and the mitigation steps CrowdStrike is taking.”CrowdStrike said it was working on ways to make it easier and faster to fix the issue, which downed an estimated 8.5 million Microsoft Windows devices globally, hitting airlines, health systems and other services. In many cases, IT teams had to reboot computers manually.Delta, which appears to have had more difficulty recovering than other airlines, said that its crew-staffing system had been affected by the incident. As of Tuesday morning, it had already cancelled more than 400 flights and delayed hundreds of others, following more than 1,150 cancellations a day earlier, according to tracking firm Flight Aware. "All airline passengers have the right to be treated fairly, and I will make sure that right is upheld," Mr Buttigieg wrote on social media."While you should first try to resolve issues directly with the airline, we want to hear from passengers who believe that Delta has not complied with USDOT-enforced passenger protection requirements during the recent travel disruptions. We will follow up."The Biden administration in April finalised a rule requiring that airlines promptly and automatically refund passengers for significant changes to their travel, and other issues. It is part of a broader effort to step up policing of airlines after a series of major travel meltdowns. Last year, Southwest Airlines agreed to pay $140m (£108m) resolve a Department of Transportation investigation launched after a storm disrupted service and set off a cascade of cancellations during the busy 2022 holiday travel period.

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Delta faces probe as CrowdStrike disruption lingers

<figure></figure>Two top executives at Japanese drugmaker Kobayashi Pharmaceutical are stepping down as an investigation continues into 80 deaths that could be linked to some of its products.The company says president Akihiro Kobayashi and chairman Kazumasa Kobayashi, both members of the firm's founding family, have resigned.The decision was made "to clarify executive responsibility" over the issue involving its beni kōji fermented rice products, Kobayashi Pharmaceutical said.In March, the company recalled five of its products, saying it had received reports of kidney problems from customers.The company began an investigation after a doctor alerted them to reported health problems in January. It also opened a hotline for customers seeking advice.Affected customers reported symptoms such as changes in the colour of their urine, swelling in their limbs and fatigue.Kobayashi Pharmaceutical later said it had found a potentially toxic acid produced by the mould at one of its factories.Separately, the company's board of directors said it would "pray for those who died and offer condolences to the bereaved families.""We would also like to once again deeply apologise to our customers and business partners," the statement added.The company's head of sustainability policy Satoshi Yamane will be its new president.Akihiro Kobayashi, who has said he wants to take responsibility for any harm done to customers, will remain at the company to deal with any compensation arrangements.Beni kōji is rice fermented with monascus purpureus, a species of reddish-purple mould. While advertised as a health supplement for high cholesterol and blood pressure, it is also widely used as a traditional dye for food products.

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Japan drugmaker bosses quit as firm probes deaths

<figure></figure>Shares in cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike have plunged more than 13% as the company reckons with the aftermath of causing a global IT outage.Chief security officer Shawn Henry said the incident had been a "gut punch" for the firm, which had previously been one of the most trusted names in the industry."We let down the very people we committed to protect, and to say we’re devastated is a huge understatement,“ he said.Many businesses are still recovering after a faulty "content update" last week crashed 8.5 million Microsoft Windows computers around the world. The issue has required manual reboots in some cases. Mr Henry, a former FBI executive assistant director, said the weekend had been “the most challenging 48 hours” of his 12 years at the company.He promised it would use the incident as an opportunity to “emerge better and stronger than ever”.“The confidence we built in drips over the years was lost in buckets within hours, and it was a gut punch,” he said in a LinkedIn post on Monday.“But this pales in comparison to the pain we've caused our customers and our partners."That was far more than any other airline.A day earlier, Delta Airlines boss Ed Bastian apologised to customers, as US Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg warned the government had received complaints about "continued disruptions and unacceptable customer service" at the firm. Other entities, such as the UK's National Health Service, have said their systems were operating more normally.Speaking to the House of Commons on Monday, Cabinet Office Minister Ellie Reeves said that the majority of sectors affected by the CrowdStrike bug had mostly recovered, including aviation, railroads, and maritime systems.But she warned that some “minor disruption" would continue, including at the NHS.She added that the government would work with the National Cyber Security Centre and other partners “to review the lessons learned”.The incident showed how dependent the modern world is on “complex and interconnected IT systems and how essential preparedness for such events is”, the minister told MPs.Founded in 2011, CrowdStrike boasts some 29,000 customers around the world, including government agencies in the US and UK and some of the world's biggest companies.Shares in the firm were up nearly 40% this year before the incident hit. It said on Sunday that "a significant number" of devices that were impacted by a global IT outage on Friday were back online.But the hit to CrowdStrike shares on Monday followed an 11% drop on Friday, reflecting the severity of the incident.Some investors are betting that the firm's rivals will benefit from its current struggles, which have exposed the world's dependence on one big player, drawing attention from anti-monopoly regulators. Sentinel One, for example, saw shares surge more than 8% on Monday.Analysts said despite the current hit to CrowdStrike's shares, they did not foresee long-term damage to the business."The reality is despite CrowdStrike's epic failure last week, there are few alternatives to CrowdStrike and the switching costs are high," Gene Munster, managing partner at Deepwater Asset Management, which is known for its tech investments, wrote on social media."In other words, when the company reports its July quarter late in August, I expect the commentary to suggest unknowns about near-term customer retention. That said, I expect there will be few customer defections long-term."Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives said it would be critical for CrowdStrike to resolve its issues this week."This will take some time to settle down but does not change our positive long term view of CrowdStrike or the cyber security sector," he wrote in a note on Monday.Reporting contributed by Chris Vallance

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CrowdStrike shares hit again as IT disruption continues

<figure></figure>Ryanair says it expects summer fares will be much lower than last year after profits at the no-frills airline fell by almost 50%. The company said "frugal" passengers were cutting back while the timing of Easter holidays had also hit earnings, with profit before tax slumping 46% to €401m (£338m) in the three months to 30 June when compared with a year ago.Average passenger fares fell by 15% in the period, and the carrier said it would have to offer more discounts in the coming months. "Fares are now moving materially lower than the prior year and pricing... continues to deteriorate," its boss Michael O'Leary said in a presentation announcing its latest results.Shares in Ryanair and other airlines fell sharply as experts questioned whether the wider sector would be affected by customer budgets being squeezed during the peak summer travel period.Ryanair said it now expected fares between July and September to be "materially lower" than last year, rather than "flat to modestly up" as it previously expected.The typical Ryanair fare in June stood at €41.93 in June, down from €49.07 the year before.Chief financial officer Neil Sorahan said he thought that consumers were simply being "a little bit more frugal, a bit more cautious" with their money.He added that after two years of growth in travel demand, "there's a bit of pushback".Despite the slide in profits, Ryanair's passenger numbers increased slightly, limiting the fall in its overall revenue to just 1%.However, the weak results may suggest that a post-pandemic boom in pricing enjoyed by airlines could be coming to an end, with other carriers having recently warned over falling ticket prices.Ryanair said on Monday that its performance over the rest of the summer is "totally dependent" on more last-minute bookings and those in August and September in particular.Customers are typically waiting longer than usual to book summer holidays, which is thought to be partly a result of the ongoing effects of the cost-of-living crisis.Earlier in July, Jet2 said there would only be "modest" price increases this summer amid a wave of later bookings to its European destinations.Lufthansa has also pointed to "negative market trends", while Air France-KLM warned of a financial hit after fewer people than expected booked flights to Paris for the forthcoming Olympic Games.In early afternoon trade in London on Monday, Ryanair's share price fell 12.98%, while other airlines including EasyJet and Wizz Air saw their stock prices drop. Airlines including Ryanair have been battling with a resurgence in air traffic control strikes causing delays and cancellations, said Dan Coatsworth, investment analyst at AJ Bell."Delivering the final punch was the global IT meltdown over the past weekend which affected flights around the world," he added."The more people read about delays and cancellations, the more likely a chunk of potential last-minute bookers aren’t going to bother. They might think it’s all too much hassle so they just have a holiday at home."Mr O'Leary also said on Monday that the aircraft maker Boeing had warned him in recent days that some deliveries of 737 Max planes due by next spring would be delayed until the summer of 2025, potentially straining Ryanair's capacity over the key trading period.

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Ryanair set to slash summer fares as profits drop

<figure></figure>Cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike says "a significant number" of devices that were impacted by a global IT outage on Friday are now back online.In a social media post, the company - whose faulty security update caused Microsoft Windows computers to crash around the world - added it "continues to focus on restoring all systems".Microsoft has estimated that the incident, which is being described as one of the worst IT outages in history, impacted 8.5m computers around the world.Businesses, banks, hospitals and airlines were among the worst-hit, with some still struggling to fully restore their systems."We understand the profound impact this has had on everyone. We know our customers, partners and their IT teams are working tirelessly and we’re profoundly grateful," CrowdStrike said."We apologise for the disruption this has created."The firm also said it is deploying a new fix that it hoped would speed up the recovery of computer systems.However, CrowdStrike did not say how many devices were still being impacted.More than 1,400 flights, into or out of the US, were cancelled on Sunday, according to aviation tracking and data platform FlightAware.Delta and United Airlines were the worst affected US airlines.Health services in Britain, Israel and Germany were also impacted on Friday, with some services cancelled.The massive outage has put a spotlight on the vulnerability of global computer networks, showing how a single glitch can cause global chaos."All too often these days, a single glitch results in a system-wide outage, affecting industries from healthcare and airlines to banks and auto dealers" said the Chair of the US Federal Trade Commission, Lina Khan, in a social media post."These incidents reveal how concentration can create fragile systems."Until this incident the company had been one most trusted brands in the cybersecurity industry.According to CrowdStrike's website, it has 29,000 customers around the world, including some of the biggest companies in the US.One major economy largely unscathed by the outage was China, as CrowdStrike is not widely used in the country.China is also not as reliant on Microsoft as the rest of the world.

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'Significant number' of devices fixed - CrowdStrike

<figure></figure>The EU has become the second major global economy to cut its lending rate this week.The European Central Bank (ECB) announced a cut in its main interest rate from an all-time high of 4% to 3.75%.That follows Canada's decision on Wednesday to cut its official lending rate.The ECB's move comes as voters head to the polls for EU-wide elections over the next four days, with the outcome expected to reflect people's unhappiness over cost-of-living pressures.Central banks have kept rates high for the past two years to bear down on the rate at which prices are rising, with most targeting an annual inflation rate of 2%. But higher interest rates tend to dampen economic growth.A cut in interest rates should boost economic activity by making it cheaper for consumers and businesses to borrow.Meeting in Frankfurt on Thursday, the EU's rate-setting body decided to cut rates, despite a slight uptick in inflation in May. Inflation rose to 2.6%, from 2.4% in April in the 27-nation bloc.The ECB's decision followed Canada's rate cut on Wednesday which brought its headline rate down from 5% to 4.75%, after inflation there fell to 2.7%. Sweden and Switzerland have also trimmed rates.Katherine Neiss, Chief European Economist at investment firm PGIM said she was "reasonably confident" that the ECB would cut rates further over the summer or autumn, resulting in eurozone rates that were at 3.5% or lower by the end of the year."Growth is encouragingly recovering from the recession that the euro area went through towards the end of last year, but it's still sluggish," she told the BBC's Today Programme. That factor, combined with slowing inflation and easing wage growth, would justify another rate cut, she said.UK rates have yet to start coming down, although speculation is mounting that the Bank of England could trim them as early as this month. UK inflation has fallen to 2.3%, a long way down from its peak of over 11% in late 2022.Last month the International Monetary Fund suggested the Bank of England should cut rates from their current 5.25% to 3.5% by the end of the year.However, George Godber from Polar Capital said the upcoming election in the UK would "complicate" the Bank of England's next decision on 20 June. The Bank is politically independent, but the Conservative government had made falling interest rates part of their promise to voters, which could influence "mindsets", Mr Godber said."If they cut it'll be political, if they don’t cut it'll be political," he said.The US Federal Reserve is also expected to cut rates in the coming months, although the latest US inflation figure is higher, at 3.4%. The Fed was likely to make its first move on rates ahead of the immediate run-up to voting in November, Mr Godber said.