A widespread technology outage on Friday grounded flights, disrupted banking operations, and took media outlets off the air, highlighting the global dependence on a few key software providers.

CrowdStrike, a cybersecurity firm at the heart of the global outage, identified a defect in its Falcon software update as the cause but stressed that the incident was not due to a security breach or cyberattack.

"CrowdStrike is actively working with customers impacted by a defect found in a single content update for Windows hosts. Mac and Linux hosts are not impacted," the firm said in a statement. "The issue has been identified, isolated and a fix has been deployed."

According to Paris Olympics organizers, the outage has delayed the arrival of some Olympic delegations, impacting the delivery of uniforms and accreditations.

However, ticketing and the torch relay have not been impacted. "Our teams have been fully mobilized to ensure the continuity of operations at optimum levels," the statement added.

Britain's National Health Service (NHS) reported that the global outage caused issues at most doctors' offices across England.

NHS England said in a statement that the glitch was affecting the appointment and patient record systems used throughout the public health system. While the outage impacted the majority of family doctors' practices, it did not affect the 999 emergency number used for ambulance services.

The state-funded NHS provides healthcare for the majority of people in the UK.

Several German airports, including the capital's airport BER, have been hit by a global IT glitch, which caused delays, cancellations, and disruptions.

"Please contact your airline to find out whether your flight is affected by the worldwide disruption," BER Berlin Brandenburg Airport said via platform X. "If your flight has been canceled, please do not come to the airport."

Passengers at Stuttgart Airport and Baden-Airpark are facing longer waiting time because check-in systems are not working, but there were no flight cancellations.

More than 21,000 flights were delayed globally, though American Airlines and other major U.S. carriers reported that some flights have started to resume.

CrowdStrike's shares plunged more than 14 percent on Friday due to the global ripple effects of the glitch. 

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En este mundo actual donde las fuerzas armadas son preponderantes escribir sobre sistemas políticos, o economías, lamentablemente queda en segundo plano. La industria armamentística está en su mejor momento, los países en lugar de madurar y mejorar la calidad de vida de los ciudadanos del mundo siguen con ideas imperialistas y colonialistas.  El hambre causa el 45% de las muertes en niños menores de 5 años.  Qué lideres hemos conseguido que; 8.500 niños mueren cada día de desnutrición, y según las estimaciones de Unicef, el Banco Mundial, la Organización Mundial de la Salud (OMS) y la División de Población de Naciones Unidas se calcula que; 6,3 millones de niños menores de 15 años murieron en 2017 por causas, en su mayoría, prevenibles.

Debemos entender de una buena vez que no son los sistemas los que fallan, el que falla es el hombre. Qué antepone siempre los intereses personales, de grupo, étnicos, nacionales, a los comunitarios. Claro Europa eso lo entendió, pero cómo comunidad cerrada, cómo manera de defender los intereses comunes, pero en detrimento del resto. Las grandes corporaciones hacen lobby, depredan a los países con grandes riquezas naturales, pero sin economías fuertes que permitan ser ellos mismos quienes usufructúen esas riquezas. Claro en las ecuaciones monetarias luego de la caída del patrón oro, se contempla cómo contraparte el mercado de producción de bienes que beneficia a los países con economías ya desarrolladas. Sin embargo, las riquezas del subsuelo, la minería, por ejemplo, que son un potencial de riqueza no se las cuenta. Muy diferente sería la ecuación si contara en el cálculo las riquezas naturales. Incluso la agricultura y la ganadería dependen de un sistema de commodities manejado desde las grandes corporaciones.

Los más ricos del mundo tienen patrimonios promedio de más de cincuenta mil millones de dólares. Por lógica pura la clase media debería tener patrimonios promedio de veinticinco mil millones de dólares. ¡Somos todos pobres!

Cuando se entienda esto, la burguesía actual tendrá que cambiar su concepción para generar lideres con una visión completa del bienestar mundial. Que entiendan que las guerras son una pérdida total. Es la destrucción de bienes, la muerte de personas y niños, por territorios que pertenecen a toda la humanidad no solo al grupo de personas que lo habita. Por otro lado, las grandes inmigraciones que obligan a millones de personas a dejar sus hogares y vivir en paupérrimas condiciones, incluso a veces con la esperanza de cambiar el cruel destino, solo por habitar en un territorio donde hay guerras, o por no existir un futuro de seguridad económica.

No pierdo la fe en que algún día el mundo despertara a una nueva concepción del prójimo, cuando los políticos tengan la convicción de que duplicarse las dietas es un despropósito, frente al hambre y la necesidad del pueblo.

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Fondos de Ayuda

El Senado de Estados Unidos votó este martes a favor de aprobar un paquete de ayuda exterior que incluía ayuda en espera durante mucho tiempo para Israel y Ucrania.

La medida, por un importe total de 95.000 millones de dólares, se aprobó por 79 votos contra 18. Tras ser aprobada por la Cámara el sábado, la legislación pasará ahora al presidente Joe Biden, quien ha indicado que la promulgará.

La mayor parte del fondo contenido en la legislación apoyará a Ucrania con un total de casi sesenta y un mil millones de dólares, según un resumen de la legislación. El paquete también proporcionaría más de veintiseis mil millones de dólares en ayuda a Israel.

El proyecto de ley también proporcionará asistencia militar por valor de ocho mil ciento veinte millones de dólares a los llamados "aliados de Estados Unidos" en la región de Asia y el Pacífico, incluida la región china de Taiwán.

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Stone tools in Ukraine offer oldest evidence of humans in Europe

March 6 (Reuters) - A dating method based on cosmic rays has identified stone tools found in western Ukraine as the oldest-known evidence of human occupation in Europe - 1.4 million years ago - showing that the peopling of the continent occurred hundreds of thousands of years earlier than previously known.

Korolevo quarry in western Ukraine, surrounded by archaeological sites is pictured in Korolevo, Ukraine. Korolevo stone artefacts dating to about 1.4 million years ago are considered the earliest-known evidence of human presence in Europe.

Researchers said on Wednesday the stone tools - the most primitive kind known - were initially unearthed in the 1970s near the town of Korolevo in the Carpathian foothills along the Tysa river, close to Ukraine's borders with Hungary and Romania. But their age had remained unclear.

The new method determined the age of the sediment layer containing the stone tools, making this site critical for understanding how humans first spread into Europe during warm spells - called interglacial periods - that interrupted the Ice Age's grip on the continent.

The researchers concluded that the maker of the tools likely was Homo erectus, an early human species that arose roughly 2 million years ago and spread across Africa, Asia and Europe before disappearing perhaps 110,000 years ago.

"No bones were found at Korolevo, only stone tools. But the age suggests that Homo erectus was the only possible human species at the time. We know very little about our earliest ancestors. They used stone tools for butchery and probably used fire," said Czech Academy of Sciences archeologist Roman Garba, lead author of the research published in the journal Nature.

Homo erectus was the first member of our evolutionary lineage with body proportions similar to our species, Homo sapiens, though with a smaller brain.

The tools, made of volcanic rock, were fashioned in what is called the Oldowan style. While quite simple - flaked tools such as choppers, scrapers or basic cutting instruments - they represent the dawn of human technology.

Until now, the oldest-known evidence of humans in Europe was about 1.2-1.1 million years old from a site called Atapuerca in Spain.

The Korolevo findings provide insight into the route of the first human expansion into Europe. Homo erectus fossils from 1.8 million years ago are known from a Caucasus site in Georgia called Dmanisi. Coupled with Korolevo, this suggests Homo erectus entered Europe from the east or southeast, migrating along the Danube river, Garba said.

"Korolevo is the northernmost outpost found so far of what we presume to be Homo erectus and is testimony to the intrepidness of this ancestor," Czech Academy of Sciences geoscientist and study co-author John Jansen added.

It has been notoriously difficult to determine the age of Paleolithic sites like Korolevo. The study dated the tools, left by their makers on a river bed, by determining when the layer bearing the artifacts was buried under overlaying sediment.

"Earth is constantly bombarded by galactic cosmic rays. When these rays - mainly protons and alpha particles - penetrate Earth's atmosphere, they generate a secondary shower of particles - neutrons and muons - that, in turn, penetrates into the subsurface," geoscientist and study co-author Mads Knudsen of Aarhus University in Denmark said.

These particles react with minerals in rocks to produce radioactive nuclides, a class of atoms. The sediment was dated based on the ratio of two nuclides, thanks to their differing pace of radioactive decay.

Europe was later colonized by other now-extinct human species including Homo heidelbergensis and Neanderthals. Homo sapiens evolved in Africa roughly 300,000 years ago, arriving in significant numbers in Europe perhaps around 40,000-45,000 years ago.

The Homo erectus pioneers encountered a Europe inhabited by large mammals including mammoths, rhinos, hippos, hyenas and saber-toothed cats.

"Most likely they were scavengers, looking for carcasses left by hyenas or other predators, but what attracted them to Korolevo was a source of high-quality volcanic rock, very good for making stone tools," Garba said.

The researchers suspect evidence of European human occupation even older than Korolevo will turn up.

"The question is not 'if' but 'when' we will find a site of similar or older age somewhere else in Ukraine, Romania, Bulgaria or Serbia," Garba said.

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