A major worldwide IT outage affects airports, media organisations, banking and healthcare 29:14

Hello, this is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service, with reports and analysis from across the world. The latest news seven days a week. BBC World Service podcasts are supported by advertising. Hey, I'm Ryan Reynolds. At Mint Mobile, we like to do the opposite of what Big Wireless does. They charge you a lot, we charge you a little. So naturally, when they announced they'd be raising their prices due to inflation, we decided to deflate our prices due to not hating you. A

Did you know that it's 50 years this week since Richard Nixon became the first U.S. president in history to resign from office? To

To mark this monumental moment, Witness History brings you five programs about influential events in U.S. presidential history. And with all the amazing twists and turns in the current race for the White House, what a time to bring you them. You'll hear about the closest U.S. election in history and from the man who was in the Situation Room during the raid on Osama bin Laden. That's Witness History from the BBC World Service. Listen and subscribe wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

This is the Global News Podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Andrew Peach and at 13 hours GMT on Friday the 19th of July, these are our main stories. A software update by a cyber security firm, CrowdStrike, has caused major computer problems worldwide. Hundreds of flights have been cancelled, banks, broadcasters and hospitals are among the others affected.

A court in Russia has found the American journalist Evan Gershkovich guilty of espionage and sentenced him to 16 years in prison. Also in this podcast, Donald Trump describes Saturday's assassination attempt to Republicans in Milwaukee. I'm not supposed to be here tonight.

I stand before you in this arena only by the grace of Almighty God. And the most powerful man in Vietnam has died at the age of 80. MUSIC

Let's start the podcast with a software defect which has caused computer chaos around the world. It sounds like a small thing, but it's brought flights to a standstill, stopped stock exchanges from trading and disrupted everything from hospitals to supermarkets. The fault is due to a cyber security company CrowdStrike. Its chief executive, George Kurtz, told NBC News, they know what the issue is, they've fixed it, but it could take some time for systems to recover. He said they were deeply sorry for the impact on customers. I'm going to go to the next one.

I've been talking to our business correspondent in Singapore, Nick Marsh. George Kurtz at CrowdStrike is going to be a very relieved man now that they've actually finally found that problem and they've deployed that fix. But that's only the start of it. Identifying it as one thing, but actually making sure that each individual end point is the jargon computer, basically, is effectively rebooted, turned off and turned on again, so they can actually, as it were, absorb information

that update to the defective software, that is going to take a lot of time. You know, the jargon is hands on keyboards. So, you know, if you're a small business, OK, maybe you can sort that up pretty quickly. But, you know, given the fact that CrowdStrike have 24,000 customers and customers means an organization. So you multiply that by how many computers they have. We're talking a sort of very, very long reboot process before the world starts getting back

to normal. And we're seeing some firms manage to do this really quickly. American Airlines is an obvious example of a company that was badly affected, had to ground all its flights and then told us things are back to normal. Is that just because of the quality of IT support that a huge corporation like that is going to have compared to the rest of us?

Yeah, it's hard to say with certainty, but a big organisation, on the one hand, yes, they do have a lot of terminals and they have a lot more rebooting to do, but they are going to have a good level of IT support, dedicated in-house support. Smaller businesses, smaller organisations, they'll probably outsource their IT support and they're going to be pretty overwhelmed, these IT services now, aren't they? I do think, though, it is slightly part of the uncertainty and the mystery as to why certain systems were hit in

and why others weren't, why others managed to get theirs up so quickly and others weren't. That's probably all going to be part of the post-mortem once this is completely fixed. And in terms of assessing the disruption, we know that there's chaos at airports all over the place. Some airlines have still got their planes on the ground. That's one of the most obvious examples of this kind of thing. But it's playing out in hospitals, supermarkets, cafes, at ports. The list is endless of places that are affected by this.

Yeah, it is. I mean, hospitals, emergency services, they're naturally the most concerning sectors that have been hit because we are talking about matters of life and death ultimately there. We don't seem to have heard any really, really serious cases of disruption when it comes to that. But even something as mundane as an advertising screen in a shopping centre will have that blue screen. So we're talking everything in our society that uses technology

and that uses this CrowdStrike Falcon server update, which is there designed to stop cyber attacks, but it's actually ended up causing a huge problem. All of that has been affected. And just one thing that's interesting, though, Andrew, I've just been looking on Chinese social media and reports of what's happening there.

China seems to be largely unaffected. And the reason is that China has made a really big push to become what they call self-sufficient. So not use foreign software like Microsoft. And they have basically escaped pretty much unscathed. Nick Marsh with me from Singapore. Let's hear from some of our correspondents around the world about how different regions have been affected, starting with Shaima Khalil, who's in Japan. I am.

in Shibuya, in the heart of Tokyo, famous, of course, for its neon lights, its many, many signs all around, and its huge screens. And I'm looking at one right now, Andrew, and it seems to be working fine. No blue screens of death around me. The effect seems to be localized to certain parts of the country, namely in Narita Airport, one of the country's biggest airports. And

specifically Jetstar Japan, this budget airline, they have had to cancel dozens of their domestic flights because of a system malfunction having to do with checking people in. So we've been seeing pictures of people being checked in manually. And of course, the knock-on effect of that, the delays, the cancellations. One thing to say, of course, this is the height of the tourism season here in Japan, but also it's school holidays. You know, it's

Kids are out and many, many families have been planning their travels. Japan Airlines have also reported a glitch in the reservation management that has to do with their apps. So if you were changing or if you're making new reservation on an app, that has been stopped as well. Train lines, we're keeping an eye on because, of course, they're the main artery of transportation here, especially the Shinkansen, the

The bullet train, that hasn't been affected as of yet, but we're keeping an eye on that. We did hear from JR West in Osaka, a train line that has been affected in terms of screens of where people should go to catch their trains. The trains themselves are working. One last thing that we've heard has been affected was this big tourist destination in Osaka, Universal Studios Japan, a huge park.

They have been reporting glitches in their cashiers and registers. So their shops and restaurants have been affected. But we've also heard that some of their ACs, their air conditioner systems, have been affected. And it is boiling hot here. So people have been giving water just to manage...

the heat. Generally, I feel like looking around me, there's so many tourists, so many people walking around. It feels like it's business as usual here, but there have been specific areas that have been affected, affecting hundreds and hundreds of people. And from Shima Halil in Tokyo to Samira Hussain, who's been at Delhi Airport in the Indian capital. She says they've gone manual with flight information written up in green pen on a whiteboard. Hello.

We were in these very long queues, lots of chaos, people jostling, trying to get information. Then we were handed blank boarding cards, and we were meant to fill out our information onto these boarding cards. So you would write your name, if you were already assigned a seat number, you were meant to write down your seat number, because you couldn't even print boarding passes, even if you had them, and they weren't accepted.

anything on phones because nothing could be scanned. And so you wrote down all of your information manually. Once you finally get to an agent, they then assign you sort of a zone kind of in which that you're going to be able to board. And then they give you your baggage tags. And those are also blank. And so you're manually entering your baggage tags and then sticking it onto your suitcases. So

It's anyone's guess whether or not I'm going to come to my final destination with any of our things. I spoke with another pilot who is flying to another city, and I asked, you know, well, I mean, this is just a remarkable situation. You know, what do you think? And her answer was remarkable in that she said, well, look, you know,

what are we going to do? I mean, we can't use the machine, so we're going to have to enter everything manually. Yes, it's going to be a lot slower, but things are still happening. Of course, I asked quite selfishly whether it's still safe to fly, to which she said, of course. You know, the flights

systems here have nothing to do with the outages. That shouldn't be an issue. She said really it has to do with passenger information, registering that people are getting onto the right planes and that they have the correct boarding passes and all that information.

And from Samir Hussain in Delhi to Damien McGuinness in Berlin. When we arrived here a few hours ago, the queues were huge. The whole main terminal was absolutely rammed with people trying to figure out what to do, looking at the boards, realising their flights were cancelled, and then trying to figure out an alternative route. That situation's slightly eased off now. So when we arrived, I would say most of the flights were cancelled. Now, only a couple of the flights are cancelled. So the situation's definitely got better, but...

There are a lot of people here who have been here for six or seven hours trying to figure out what flight they can get. And that's really the problem, because I think what we're going to see now, all this morning the flights were disrupted or cancelled.

And of course, that takes a lot of catching up to do. Planes might be in the wrong place. Crews might be in the wrong place. And also people need to find replacement flights. You know, some people are connecting to Frankfurt to go on to Asia or to the States. So these are quite complicated travel arrangements sometimes. And I think what I can see here, the scene is everyone is on a phone, looking anxious, looking at apps, trying to get through to call centers, trying to organize how to move forward now. So, you know, it's a shame for people because this is...

for a lot of people their once in a year holiday the summer holiday has just begun and so people definitely look disappointed here no one wants it to be disrupted and also it makes it a very very busy traveling day in many countries today what about health care because i know health care has been affected in germany as well yeah there have been a few problems i think we haven't seen as as it hasn't been as bad as in other countries but certainly in northern germany

There have been a few hospitals that have cancelled pre-planned procedures. Emergency care is still going on as normal, but certainly some hospitals have reported that they're going to have to reschedule things. And I think what we've seen here generally, the main issue for Germany has been

and I think that situation will resolve over the next day or two. The other situations with other services hasn't been as bad really as, say, in Britain or Australia for certain. Damien McGuinness with the story from Germany. Damien mentioned Australia. These passengers at Sydney Airport described the chaos there. It was so busy. We didn't know what was happening. So now we are trying to book another ticket for tonight, but it's $600.

So, I give up. It was very chaotic. So, whoever arrived here, they had no idea what's going on. I mean, this is the first time I experienced something like this. Our flight's been cancelled, so now we're trying to find accommodation in Sydney, which is not easy. Then we'll have to try and get a flight home somehow, somewhere, sometime, don't know. Our correspondent Simon Atkinson was on a flight from Sydney to Brisbane and spoke to us when he arrived.

Here in Brisbane, things seem to be getting back to normal. I look up at the departure boards. Most flights have got some delays. There's only one cancellation. Some passengers are looking at three or four hour delays for their flights. But there is a sense that things are getting back to normal. The local airline Jetstar seems to be the one which is struggling the most. It was when I was in Sydney just a few hours ago that...

I first became aware of this situation was an announcement from Jetstar when they were telling their passengers they would be unable to check them in, they wouldn't be able to board any of their passengers onto planes. But look, planes did get up in the air fairly quickly, I'm proof of that. I've travelled here from Sydney this evening. But the sense here is that things are certainly a little bit delayed and we've had supermarkets where people haven't been able to use cards for payments, have had reports of people abandoning their shopping because they couldn't buy it, they didn't carry cash.

So, look, you know, it's kind of minor inconveniences on the whole. We had similar situations, screens going blank in Sydney Airport, all the information screens went down, which is one of the main causes of confusion, really. We haven't got that situation in Brisbane. Everything seems to be looking OK. So, look, it does seem that things are getting, you know, back to normal, as I said, but certainly, you know, Australia is one of the first countries

countries along with New Zealand to really pick up on this because everyone of course was awake and seeing their sort of daily routines disrupted. Simon Atkinson in Australia. All the latest for you at bbc.com slash news.

Still to come in this podcast. In Shanghai, school students are being influenced by their parents and drinking coffee. Some grannies send their kids to school and then also pop in for coffee. The Chinese city of Shanghai could become a new contender as the cafe capital of the world as people there develop a taste for coffee. Ryan Reynolds here from Intmobile.

With the price of just about everything going up during inflation, we thought we'd bring our prices down. So to help us, we brought in a reverse auctioneer, which is apparently a thing. Mint Mobile, unlimited premium wireless. How did it get 30, 30, how did it get 30, how did it get 20, 20, 20, how did it get 20, 20, how did it get 15, 15, 15, 15, just 15 bucks a month? Sold! Give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch. $45 up front for three months plus taxes and fees. Promote it for new customers for a limited time. Unlimited more than 40 gigabytes per month. Slows. Full terms at mintmobile.com.

This is the story of a man who killed so many people, he lost count. But despite his shocking death toll, he only served 12 years in jail. And the families of his victims...

That justice system ultimately ignored all of those bodies and all of the families. From the BBC World Service, World of Secrets, Season 3, The Apartheid Killer. Search for World of Secrets wherever you get your BBC podcasts.

A Russian court has found the US journalist Evan Gershkovich guilty of spying and sentenced him to 16 years in a high-security penal colony. Mr Gershkovich, who works for the Wall Street Journal, had pleaded not guilty. His employer and the White House have described the closed-door trial in the city of Yekaterinburg as a sham. Our Russia editor Steve Rosenberg was in the courtroom. Evan Gershkovich's trial had been held behind closed doors, but journalists were allowed into the courtroom for the verdict.

The Wall Street Journal reporter was standing in a glass and metal cage, what passes as the dock in a Russian courtroom. The judge entered and pronounced the US journalist guilty of espionage. He sentenced him to 16 years in a high-security penal colony. Evan Gershkovich's supporters, his employer and US officials have dismissed the trial as a sham. The

The Wall Street Journal has accused Moscow of stockpiling American citizens in Russian jails to trade them for Russians jailed abroad. The Israeli military has identified Yemen as the most likely source of a deadly drone attack on the city of Tel Aviv. One person died, several more were injured. On social media, Yemen's Houthi militants suggested they were responsible. Here's Rescue Service paramedic Rowie Klein giving a statement to reporters. When we arrived at the scene, we found four...

patients suffering from penetrating trauma and blunt force trauma. All of them were

Our reporter Barbara Pletusher is in Jerusalem. I began by asking Barbara how this device had got through. It was detected according to the Israeli military. A military official said it had been seen, but there had been a human error involved.

so they didn't try to shoot it down. Some reports suggest that when it was detected, it wasn't defined as a hostile projectile, like a hostile drone, so maybe misidentified. That part isn't particularly clear, but the military did say that they had seen it, they just hadn't tried to fire it down. The Houthis in Yemen are saying it was them, they're claiming responsibility. Can we verify that yet? The claim from the Houthi militants or the military spokesmen of the Houthi movement was quite specific.

He said that they had used a new drone, which they call Jaffa, which had a longer range and could be fired without detection. This is why the question was raised with the Israeli military and that they were going to make Tel Aviv a primary target going forward.

It should be said that the Houthis have fired dozens of missiles and rockets at Israel over the past months, I think since about November after the Hamas attack in Israel and then the Israeli war in Gaza. But most of those missiles, in fact, almost all of them have been intercepted either by the Israelis or by the Americans.

There was at least one that hit in an open area near the southern port of Eilat. But if this is a Houthi missile, it would be the first time to hit in a residential area in a city like Tel Aviv. Barbara Platt-Husher with me from Jerusalem. Donald Trump has told the Republican convention he wants to heal discord in society and govern for all Americans if he wins the White House in November.

To loud cheers, he formally accepted the nomination as the party's presidential candidate. It was Mr Trump's first speech since a gunman tried to assassinate him last weekend, and he described that shooting in detail, suggesting he survived because he had God on his side. Our North America correspondent, Nomia Iqbal, was there. The Republican Party is very much the party of Trump. I proudly accept your nomination for President of the United States.

Walking out on stage, Donald Trump again sported that thick bandage on his right ear, signifying how he cheated death. He received this rapturous applause and from the excitement on the faces of the audience, the adulation. It really felt like being in one of those mega churches that you find in America, with Mr Trump receiving treatment as if he were a messiah. I'm not supposed to be here tonight. Not supposed to be here. Not supposed to be here.

But I'm not. And I'll tell you, I stand before you in this arena only by the grace of Almighty God.

The former president said he would only talk about his assassination attempts the once because it was too painful. Following the events of Saturday, he had indicated he wanted to focus on unity, that he'd changed his speech because he wants to bring people together. And he did do that, sort of. He soon fell into the usual themes of political persecution without evidence. We are...

One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. And we must not criminalize dissent or demonize political disagreement. In that spirit, the Democrat Party should immediately stop weaponizing the justice system and labeling their political opponent as an enemy of democracy.

Especially since that is not true. In fact, I am the one saving democracy for the people of our country.

All week, the Republican Party convention's agenda has been about making America wealthy, safe, strong and great again. And Mr. Trump used those themes to talk about key policies such as inflation, illegal immigration, and he made bold promises regarding foreign policy. I will end every single international crisis that the current administration has created, including the horrible war.

with Russia and Ukraine, which would have never happened if I was president, and the war caused by the attack on Israel, which would have never happened if I was president. Earlier in the evening, just before he gave his speech, he was sat in the family and friend box with his sons, and the wrestling legend Hulk Hogan fired up the crowd, ripping off his shirt. Let Trumpomania rule again! Let Trumpomania make America!

And that combative message was echoed by Donald Trump and his supporters constantly throughout the speech. They seem to have taken on a new slogan born out of that assassination attempt. I raised my right arm, looked at the thousands and thousands of people that were breathlessly waiting and started shouting, fight, fight, fight.

For the Trump faithful, it was everything and more. What did you think of Mr. Trump's speech? Warm, winsome, personal, relational...

Powerful. Everything you expected it to be? Yes, and more. His tone, his spirit was great. Did you find a different side to him? Do you think there was a different tone? 100%. There was definitely a different side to him. I thought that it was... I think he's softer, he's stronger, he's compassionate, he's driven. It was invigorating.

It's been nearly a decade of Donald Trump ever since he came down the elevator to announce he was running to be president. And after he lost the election in 2021, the January 6th riots happened. It seemed it was over for him with the Republican Party trying to move away from him. But with a criminal conviction, other indictments, including accusations of trying to overturn democracy and an assassination attempt,

He has now advanced one of the most stunning political comebacks in American political history. And as Mr Trump appears to gather momentum, the Democrat campaign remains in disarray. Joe Biden is isolating at home in Delaware with Covid, with pressure from his closest allies mounting for him to consider dropping out of the race altogether. Here's our North America correspondent, David.

David Willis. As Donald Trump was rounding off one of the most extraordinary weeks of his political career, his rival was recuperating at his home in Delaware, isolated and still suffering from the respiratory symptoms that prompted his abrupt departure from the campaign trail.

Joe Biden's political health is also in jeopardy, and it's been reported that senior members of his party, among them the former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, have met the president in recent days, armed with polling data that suggests Donald Trump could be on track for a landslide victory in November's election, with correspondingly dire implications for Democratic candidates lower down the ticket.

Yet the 81-year-old president has shown no sign of a willingness to make way for someone younger. The most powerful man in Vietnam, the head of the Communist Party Nguyen Phu Trong, has died at the age of 80. Besides overseeing the fast growth of the Vietnamese economy, the 80-year-old was known for what he called his blazing furnaces anti-corruption campaign. Our Asia-Pacific editor Michael Bristow told me more. Nguyen Phu Trong, he'll be remembered as...

primarily for perhaps breaking a system in Vietnam in which power was divided amongst the top leaders. Traditionally in Vietnam, over the last few years, it's been divided between four senior leaders. He has managed to accrue a lot of power, or he did accrue a lot of power to himself as General Secretary of the Communist Party, also for a time he was the president. And so that's perhaps one of his notable achievements.

Perhaps you might call it. Also, he launched a campaign against corruption. Lots of one party states, including Vietnam, have problems with corruption. He launched this blazing furnace. He called it corruption campaign in 2017. And that's netted a lot of businessmen, even a lot of senior leaders in the Communist Party, a lot of cabinet ministers involved.

And perhaps so he was quite a skillful politician and perhaps that show nowhere more than in his foreign relations. He managed to walk a very delicate line between China and the United States. For example, last year, President Biden visited Vietnam and a few months later, you had Xi Jinping from China. This year, you had President Putin from Russia.

Not many countries in the world where you could say those three leaders would go within a year of each other and be welcomed. We're talking yesterday about a new division of responsibilities of the Vietnamese government. It was supposed to be a temporary thing. What happens next?

Yeah, what happens next? That's a good question. Well, what happened on Thursday was that the president of Vietnam, a man called Tho Lum, he only took the position as president in May. He assumed the caretaker responsibilities of Mr. Trong. Now he's going to obviously take over those for some time. We're not quite sure if he'll be made president again.

permanently. Mr Lum is a protege of Mr Truong, the general secretary who's died. Perhaps the fear is amongst lots of people inside Vietnam, people who criticise the government, the

The fear is that he will accrue the power that Mr. Truong accrued for himself to himself. So perhaps Tho Luong will become the paramount leader in Vietnam. But we're not sure yet if that's going to transpire because that's a little way down the line.

Michael Bristow with me. You may think of Rome or Paris when asked about the cafe capital of the world, but China's financial capital is a new contender. At least that's what Shanghai's local government is claiming. But the vast number of cafes has led to fierce competition. As Stephen McDonald reports. The coffee grinders are going into overdrive. And the orders just keep coming.

In a country renowned for its tea, an explosion of new cafes has engulfed its financial capital, Shanghai. Cafe owner Wu Zhengyan says that while the growth has been breakneck of late...

An appreciation of coffee has been building here for years, and that she's getting customers of all ages in her place called Dou. In Shanghai, school students are being influenced by their parents and drinking coffee. Some grannies send their kids to school and then also pop in for coffee. We asked one of her customers how many cups of coffee she normally drinks every day. As many as I want.

Given the scale of this transformation, you can believe it. The Shanghai government says that there are over 8,000 cafes in this city. Now, that may sound like a lot, but when you go for a walk around the streets, it becomes easier to believe. There's one, and around the corner, another, another next to it. In fact, I've counted them in this street, and...

Over a stretch of a couple of hundred metres, there are 18 cafes, and today they're all filled with people. Where Shanghai differs from most other Chinese cities is that elsewhere large global coffee chains have been making inroads. Here it's the small independent outlets that are dotted all through the old heart of town. But most people you speak to in the industry don't think that all these cafes can survive.

The overheads can be high, and with competition so fierce, there's not enough income to cover them.

I asked Dong Xiaoli, the owner of the cafe Hidden Track, what advice she'd give to a friend who was considering opening a cafe here. Don't do it. The investment versus returns is awful. You need to buy very expensive machines and put a lot of money into decorating. You're earning very small amounts of money compared to other industries. Nearby, Wang Xi, who runs the Flower Cafe and Bar,

says he's under no illusions as to how tough it might be to survive in this market. But he says he can feel a turnaround when it comes to people's enthusiasm to get together with their friends over a drink or a coffee post-COVID crisis. I'm quite optimistic. I hope the Chinese economy will quickly return to pre-pandemic levels. And that's certainly what Beijing is also counting on.

With major parts of the Chinese economy stuck in the doldrums, the government says it's pushing for a domestic consumption-led recovery. Well, perhaps the sight of customers sitting at little tables and chairs staring down Suzhou Creek towards a gleaming Shanghai skyline is at least a step in the right direction.

Stephen Macdonald in Shanghai. And that's all from us for now. There'll be a new edition of Global News to download later. If you'd like to comment on this podcast, drop us an email, globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk or on X, we are at globalnewspod. This edition was mixed by Vladimir Mizechka. The producer was Stephanie Tillotson. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Andrew Peach. Thanks for listening. And until next time, goodbye.

This is the story of a man who killed so many people, he lost count. But despite his shocking death toll, he only served 12 years in jail. And the families of his victims...

That justice system ultimately ignored all of those bodies and all of the families. From the BBC World Service, World of Secrets, Season 3, The Apartheid Killer. Search for World of Secrets wherever you get your BBC podcasts.