TRANSCRIPT
- An apology from CrowdStrike's CEO for the global IT outage
- The United States says it's working to negotiate the release of journalist Evan Gershkovich
- Tadej Pogacar looks almost certain to claim his third Tour de France title
A major technology outage continues to affect companies and people worldwide.
It was caused by a defect in a update delivered by cyber security company CrowdStrike for Windows users.
CrowdStrike has a significant share of the market globally and the outage is thought to be the biggest ever recorded
CrowdStrike C-E-O George Kurtz says the company has now fixed the bug in the software, but it may take some time before systems are operating normally again.
He apologised in an interview on the Today Show in the U-S.
"We're deeply sorry for the impact that we've caused to customers, to travellers, to anyone affected by this including our companies. So, the system was sent an update and that update had a software bug in it and caused an issue with the Microsoft operating system. And we identified this very quickly and remediated the issue and as systems come back online as they're rebooted, they're coming up and they're working and now we are working with each and every customer to make sure that we can bring them back online."
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The International Court of Justice (ICJ) has ruled that Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories is against international law and the country should stop settlement activity in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem.
Presiding judge Nawaf Salam says Israel should end what it calls its illegal occupation of those areas and the Gaza Strip as soon as possible.
"These policies and practices as are designed to maintain in place indefinitely, and to create irreversible effects on the ground. Consequently, the Court considers that these policies and practices amount to annexation of large parts of the occupied Palestinian territory."
Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says the court has made a ''decision of lies".
The ICJ is based in The Hague in the Netherlands and its opinion is not legally binding.
The court's findings will now go to the UN General Assembly for its consideration, including the option of adopting a resolution.
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U-S journalist Evan Gershkovich has been sentenced by a Russian court to 16 years in a high-security penal colony on espionage charges.
The Wall Street Journal reporter was arrested in March last year while on a reporting trip in the city of Yekaterinburg.
Prosecutors accused him of working for the Central Intelligence Agency, which Mr Gershkovich, the Journal and the U-S deny.
It marks the first conviction of a U-S journalist for espionage in Russia since the Cold War ended more than 30 years ago.
Secretary of State Anthony Blinken says the U-S is trying to negotiate for Mr Gershkovich to be released.
"All I can tell you is this, we're working it. We're working it as we speak. And we're not going to stop until we get Evan home, Paul Whelan home, until we get others home."
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A top staffer for U-S President Joe Biden insists he will stay in the race, even as pressure mounts from within his own party to end his bid for re-election.
More than one in ten congressional Democrats have now publicly called on the 81-year-old to drop out.
But Jen O'Malley Dillon, head of the Biden-Harris campaign, told M-S-N-B-C that Mr Biden is not going anywhere.
"Absolutely the president's in this race. You've heard him say that time and time again. Joe Biden is more committed than ever to beat Donald Trump. And we believe on this campaign we are built for the close election that we're in and we see the path forward."
Mr Biden paused campaigning earlier this week after testing positive for COVID-19.
He is currently isolating at his home in Delaware.
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In cycling,
Tadej Pogacar looks almost certain to claim his third Tour de France title.
The Slovenian won another tough mountain stage on Friday, pulling away from reigning champion Jonas Vingegaard to put himself five minutes and three seconds ahead.
He says the day went according to plan.
"I'm super happy that I had good legs today. We were here training for a whole month between Giro and Tour, it was a hard period of time... we were speaking already in training camp how we want to race this day and we did it exactly like we said, to the point where I attack and it was really 100% perfect."
Saturday's 20th and penultimate stage stays in the southern Alps and features three hard category-one ascents.
The Tour ends on Sunday on the French Riviera with a time trail from Monaco to Nice, and not in Paris as it usually does, because of the Olympic Games.
