Amazon says Web Services are recovering after outage hits millions of users – business live

8.52pm BST The disruption did not stop Amazon from continue to promote its upcoming 23 October event on all-things AWS. The company sent an email to AWS customers several hours into the mass outage, reminding them to register for the event intended to solidify the company’s hold on the cloud market. The event encourages clients to use AWS AI features to “modernize” their cloud experience. In the meantime, AWS’s massive disruption was downgraded from “degraded” to just “impacted” as of 12:15pm PST. 8.25pm BST AWS: 'We continue to observe recovery across all AWS services' AWS has issued another update, saying that is continues to “observe recovery across all AWS services.” It added that it is succeeding across multiple “Availability Zones in the US-EAST-1 Regions.” AWS went on to say: “For Lambda, customers may face intermittent function errors for functions making network requests to other services or systems as we work to address residual network connectivity issues. To recover Lambda’s invocation errors, we slowed down the rate of SQS polling via Lambda Event Source Mappings. We are now increasing the rate of SQS polling as we experience more successful invocations and reduced function errors.” 7.52pm BST Meanwhile, Spotify’s Merch Hub is down, with customers reporting blank pages upon accessing the website. Spotify itself remains functional though. Updated at 8.01pm BST 7.35pm BST AWS has issued another update, saying that it is seeing “increased launches of new EC2 instances” as well as a decrease in networking connectivity issues in its US East 1 region, which refers to North Virginia. It added: “We are also experiencing significant improvements to Lambda invocation errors, especially when creating new execution environments (including for Lambda@Edge invocations).” AWS is set to provide another update at around 12pm PST. Updated at 7.39pm BST 7.24pm BST Amazon shopping platform is down Amazon’s online shopping platform is also down, with numerous error messages being reported by customers. Featuring an Amazon dog, the error message says: “Sorry, something went wrong on our end.” It then directs users to try again or visit Amazon’s homepage. Updated at 8.10pm BST 7.06pm BST Several apps and websites appear to have errors that are increasing again, according to DownDetector. Among those include Ancestry.com, Hinge, Adobe Creative Cloud, Zoom, T-Mobile, Microsoft Outlook, Microsoft 365 and DoorDash. It remains unclear whether those errors being reported are a direct result of AWS’s outages. 6.51pm BST AWS has issued another update, saying that its efforts to resolve launch failures for new EC2 instances are progressing. EC2, or Elastic Compute Cloud, is an AWS part that that provides secure and resizable compute capacity in the cloud, essentially allowing users to develop applications without hardware constraints. AWS added that the “internal subsystems of EC2 are now showing early signs of recovering in a few Availability Zones (AZs) in the US-EAST-1 Region. We are applying mitigations to the remaining AZs at which point we expect launch errors and network connectivity issues to subside.” 6.29pm BST AWS released another update a few minutes ago, saying that it is continuing to apply “mitigation stems for network load balancer health and recovering connectivity for most AWS services”. Pointing to its Lambda system – a compute service that runs code without the need to manage servers, AWS said it is “experiencing function invocation errors because an internal subsystem was impacted by the network load balancer health checks.” AWS said it is currently trying to recover the internal Lambda system, adding that it is set to provide another update at around 10:45am PDT. Updated at 6.31pm BST 6.01pm BST Starbucks was hit by the outage earlier but has now confirmed its app is working again, according to reports. It came after more than 1,800 people reported issues with the app earlier today. A spokesperson for the coffee chain told the BBC: “I can confirm that our mobile order ahead app and pay features are all operating normally. We experienced very limited interruption and were back up and running quickly.” Updated at 6.29pm BST 5.55pm BST Interim summary Time for a recap…. Experts have warned of the perils of relying on a small number of companies for operating the global internet after a glitch at Amazon’s cloud computing service brought down apps and websites around the world. The affected platforms included Snapchat, Roblox, Signal and Duolingo as well as a host of Amazon-owned operations including its main retail site and the Ring doorbell company. More than 1,000 companies worldwide were affected, according to Downdetector, a site that monitors internet outages, with 6.5m reports of problems from users including more than 1m reports in the US, 400,000 in the UK and 200,000 in Australia. In the UK, Lloyds bank was affected as well as its subsidiaries Halifax and Bank of Scotland, while there were also problems accessing the HM Revenue and Customs website on Monday morning. Also in the UK, Ring users complained on social media that their doorbells were not working. Here’s the full story: Related: Amazon Web Services outage shows internet users ‘at mercy’ of too few providers, experts warn The latest word from Amazon is that its software engineers are taking “additional mitigation steps” to help its network load balancing recover, following the problems at its Virginia data centre operations. It is also taking steps to mitigate the throttling of new virtual servers, and reports a recovery in its API (application protocol interface) services, which means apps are finding it easier to communicate…. Amazon is due to release a fresh update on the situation at 10am PDT (6pm UK time). UK MPs are demanding to know why Amazon isn’t being treated as a ‘critical third party’ to Britain’s financial sector. Lawyers have warned that AWS customers are unlikely to receive much compensation from the company 5.17pm BST Another update from Amazon has landed! They say their engineers have now taken “additional mitigation steps” to try and get Amazon Web Services up and running properly. The latest update says: We have taken additional mitigation steps to aid the recovery of the underlying internal subsystem responsible for monitoring the health of our network load balancers and are now seeing connectivity and API recovery for AWS services. We have also identified and are applying next steps to mitigate throttling of new EC2 instance launches. Amazon are promising another update by 10:00 AM PDT (6pm UK time). Updated at 5.22pm BST 5.09pm BST The UK’s National Rail website is among the sites caught up in today’s internet problems. The AWS outage led to occasional performance issues with the site, and its app, this morning, with some users experiencing slow response times. It’s understood that services began returning to normal in late morning, UK time. 5.04pm BST Adventure Science Center seeks cash payments due to AWS disruption The Adventure Science Center in Tennessee has told visitors that it would rather they pay in cash, rather than on a credit card, today, due to the Amazon Web Services outage. The Centre says: Cash preferred due to global AWS outage. Credit card payments can be accepted in person, but there will be delays. Thank you for your understanding! Science stops for no outage! ⚡ We’re still open for exploration, but due to the global AWS outage, cash is preferred at this time. Credit card payments can be accepted in person, but there may be delays. Thanks for rolling with us, Nashville!— Adventure Science Center (@adventuresci) October 20, 2025 5.01pm BST Why are Amazon's shares up today? Amazon’s share price is still up around 0.7% today, despite the AWS problem that brought large parts of the internet down. AJ Bell head of financial analysis Danni Hewson says: “It might seem surprising after the massive global disruption caused by today’s AWS outage that Amazon’s shares are actually on the front foot, but for many investors the issues put into perspective exactly how much of the internet relies on its services. Updated at 6.29pm BST 4.49pm BST AWS: We've narrowed down the cause of the issues AWS say they have “narrowed down the source of the network connectivity issues” that are affecting its services. Nearly nine hours (!) after problems were first reported, knocking website and popular apps offline. AWS says it is now “throttling” requests for new virtual servers, to speed up the recovery process, and pointed the finger of blame a subsystem handling load balancing. AWS explains: The root cause is an underlying internal subsystem responsible for monitoring the health of our network load balancers. We are throttling requests for new EC2 instance launches to aid recovery and actively working on mitigations. Updated at 4.56pm BST 4.24pm BST Amazon is still trying to fix the operational problem bedevilling its AWS operations. The company says: We continue to investigate the root cause for the network connectivity issues that are impacting AWS services such as DynamoDB, SQS, and Amazon Connect in the US-EAST-1 Region. We have identified that the issue originated from within the EC2 internal network. We continue to investigate and identify mitigations. [Reminder: EC2 is the service that creates virtual servers for AWS customers to use in the cloud, while DynamoDB is a core database service]. 4.20pm BST Life360 reports technical difficulties and delays The Amazon Web Services outage appears to be affecting location-tracker Life360, a popular app with millions of families worldwide. Life360 provides location history, place alerts (activated when a user arrives at or leaves a certain location), driving information and a ‘stuff tracking’ option. The San Francisco-based company, which reported 88m monthly active users in August, has warned that it experiencing “some technical difficulties” We are currently experiencing some technical difficulties which may cause delays in accessing your Life360 account. We are working hard to resolve this as soon as possible. 🙏— Life360 (@Life360) October 20, 2025 Downdetector shows a jump in reported outages today, and says the problems are possibly related to issues at Amazon Web Services… 4.11pm BST Amazon struggling to fix AWS outages Amazon’s cloud services unit AWS is struggling to recover from a widespread outage that knocked out thousands of websites along with some of the world’s most popular apps - Snapchat and Reddit - and disrupted businesses globally, Reuters reports. After more than six hours of disruptions, some applications were gradually coming back online as of 10:00 a.m. ET (3pm UK time). But AWS acknowledged it was still experiencing elevated errors. In its latest status update, AWS says: “We can confirm significant API errors and connectivity issues across multiple services ... We are investigating,” To aid the recovery, AWS said it was putting in place limits on the number of requests that can be made on its platform. While some apps like Reddit and Roblox had largely stabilised, according to outage tracking website Downdetector, others, including Snapchat and Duolingo, were showing a resurgence in issues seen earlier in the day. Indeed, this chart shows how reports of outages at Snapchat rose an hour ago: Updated at 4.31pm BST 3.59pm BST Treasury Committee: Is government concerned about dependance on overseas IT? UK politicians are demanding answers over the disruption at Amazon Web Services today that has grounded many website and apps today. The House of Commons’ Treasury Committee has written to the Economic Secretary to the Treasury, Lucy Rigby, to ask why the government has not, yet, designated Amazon a “critical third party” to the UK’s financial services sector. Committee chair Dame Meg Hillier points out that Amazon recently told the committee: Financial services customers are choosing to use AWS to support and improve their security and resilience. AWS has a comprehensive approach to resilience that spans multiple layers of protection, ensuring businesses can reliably maintain operations. That claim rings a little hollow, now that Lloyds Bank customers were unable to access their accounts this morning. As such, Dame Meg wants to know…. 1) Why has HM Treasury not designated Amazon Web Services or any other major technology firm as a CTP for the purposes of the Critical Third Parties Regime? 2) How soon can we expect firms to be brought into this regime? 3) There is speculation that the Amazon Web Services outage related to its operations in the United States. Is HM Treasury concerned that seemingly key parts of our IT infrastructure are hosted abroad? 4) HMRC may also have been affected by today’s outage. What work is HM Treasury doing with HMRC to look at what went wrong, and how this may be prevented in future? Updated at 5.28pm BST 3.41pm BST AWS: multiple services experienced network connectivity issues All is not well in the state of Virginia, where it appears today’s disruption is not yet fully fixed. Amazon Web Services have released two new service updates in the last 25 minutes or so, which appear to admit that the problem is not solved. AWS say they are investigating issues involving “multiple services” at its US-EAST-1 Region (its date centres based in North Virginia). It also reports “significant’” errors involving its API services (that’s the Application Programming Interface, which apps use to communicate with each other, and other software). It said: Oct 20 7:14 AM PDT We can confirm significant API errors and connectivity issues across multiple services in the US-EAST-1 Region. We are investigating and will provide further update in 30 minutes or soon if we have additional information. Oct 20 7:29 AM PDT We have confirmed multiple AWS services experienced network connectivity issues in the US-EAST-1 Region. We are seeing early signs of recovery for the connectivity issues and are continuing to investigate the root cause. Updated at 3.46pm BST 3.32pm BST Good news, kids! As Britain’s children pour out of their schools and head home to their computers, they’ll be reassured to learn that Roblox and Fortnite are both working again. Having been disrupted by the problems at Amazon Web Services this morning, they both appear to be back to normal. Roblox reports that “All Systems Operational”, having said early this morning that it was suffering “Widespread outage due to AWS outage”. There’s good news for Fortnite fans too. Epic Games, its owner, reports that Fortnite, Lego Fortnite, Rocket League and its own game store are all working again. 3.09pm BST AWS still experiencing elevated errors Amazon Web Services has reported it is still suffering “elevated errors” when trying to launch new virtual servers on its cloud computing platform. In its 13th service update since today’s problems began, AWS says: We have applied multiple mitigations across multiple Availability Zones (AZs) in US-EAST-1 and are still experiencing elevated errors for new EC2 instance launches. We are rate limiting new instance launches to aid recovery. 2.41pm BST Despite today’s AWS outage making headlines worldwide, it doesn’t seem to have alarmed Wall Street. Shares in Amazon have risen by 0.7% in early trading in New York. 2.31pm BST This chart from Downdetector shows how reports of disruption at Amazon Web Services have dropped back after their spike at around 9.30am UK time (4.30am on the East coast of the US). However, you’ll also note that outage reports are still much higher than before the problems began. Updated at 2.31pm BST 2.18pm BST Downdetector: Total global outage reports exceed 6.5 million Downdetector has revealed that it has received more than 6.5 million reports from users who couldn’t access a web service today. In the first two hours alone, Downdetector received: Over 1 million reports from the United States More than 400,000 from the United Kingdom Over 200,000 each from Australia, the Netherlands, and Germany Around 180,000 from Japan “These figures highlight the global scale of the disruption,” it says. 2.13pm BST Smart doorbell operator Ring has announced that “a fix has been implemented and Ring services are beginning to see recovery. We will continue to monitor the results.” 2.10pm BST Amazon cannot process returns of its own parcels, according to at least one Post Office branch in London today, which refused attempts by customers to send back unwanted items this afternoon. Customers were told that the internet outage meant barcodes used to log returns could not be processed. It means that the problems experienced by Amazon’s business customers, including Lloyds bank and HM Revenue & Customs, also extends to the host company itself. Thousands of Amazon parcels are sent back each day by customers and the ease of sending back unwanted items is a popular service, differentiating Amazon from many high street rivals. All of the phone lines to the Post Office press office rang out when The Guardian called to see how widespread the problem had become. 2.05pm BST AWS’s engineers have been working since early this morning on resolving the problems at its Virginia site. And they report that progress is being made in fixing a problem launching new instances of EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud), which is a web service that provides virtual servers in the cloud to run applications. In a new update, AWS say they are now able to successfully launch new EC2 instances in some of its “Availability Zones”, adding: We are applying similar mitigations to the remaining impacted Availability Zones to restore new instance launches. As we continue to make progress, customers will see an increasing number of successful new EC2 launches. We continue to recommend that customers launch new EC2 Instance launches that are not targeted to a specific Availability Zone (AZ) so that EC2 has flexibility in selecting the appropriate AZ. Updated at 2.06pm BST 1.48pm BST AWS customers may have “limited recourse” to financial compensation from today’s disruption, warns Ryan Gracey, technology lawyer and partner at law firm Gordons. Gracey explain: “AWS customers typically operate under standardised service level agreements, which define uptime commitments and remedies for service failures like today’s outage. While AWS offers service credits for downtime, these are often nominal and do not compensate for losses such as reputational harm or lost revenue. Ultimately, customers will be left with limited recourse. “The outage reinforces the need for robust contractual negotiation, including tailored SLAs and liability provisions, alongside comprehensive business continuity planning. Organisations must therefore adopt a proactive stance, balancing operational reliance on hyperscale providers with legal safeguards to withstand systemic disruptions.” 1.20pm BST AWS outage shows perils of relying on US tech giants By bringing down popular web sites, apps and services across the world, the problem with Amazon’s DynamoDB database service has highlighted just how dependent global businesses and users are on the company’s web services. Cori Crider, executive director of the Future of Technology Institute, has warned that the UK is “dangerously overexposed to foreign Big Tech monopolies”, saying: “The UK can’t keep leaving its critical infrastructure at the mercy of US tech giants. With Amazon Web Services down, we’ve seen the lights go out across the modern economy - from banking to communications. This isn’t just an inconvenience; it’s a strategic vulnerability. Britain is dangerously overexposed to foreign Big Tech monopolies that don’t answer to UK regulators or the public. If we want digital resilience, the answer isn’t just better oversight - it’s digital sovereignty. We need to build and back British cloud infrastructure that secures our economy and safeguards our future.” Britain’s competition watchdog recently conducted an inquiry into cloud computing, which concluded that it could designate both Microsoft and AWS as companies with “strategic market status” in cloud services, which would give the watchdog the power to tackle conduct that could undermine fair competition, or exploit people and businesses. 1.02pm BST Some services are restored, others still report problems Some of the services which were forced offline by the problems at Amazon Web Services are returning to action. The UK’s tax office, HMRC, is now able to process login requests on its site again. Canva, the online design and visual communication platform, reports that “the majority of functionality” has been recovered, but also warns that users may still see issues with downloading designs. [awkwardly, Amazon has promoted Canva as an innovator which uses AWS to “to deliver seamless, personalized design experiences to over 235 million monthly users worldwide”.] However, internet doorbell service Ring is still reporting a ‘partial outage’ on its website and apps. 12.51pm BST Encouragingly, AWS are now rating the severity of today’s outage as “impacted”. Earlier, when apps and websites across the Internet were stricken, it was rated as “degraded” (a more severe situation). 12.29pm BST Expert: Why DynamoDB problems caused global outage We flagged earlier that the disruption at Amazon Web Services involved DynamoDB, one of its core infrastructure services. Mike Chapple, IT professor at the University of Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business, explains why DynamoDB is important, and why its failure has caused so much disruption today: DynamoDB isn’t a term that most consumers know, but it underpins the apps and services that all of us use every single day. It’s a centralized database service that many Internet-based services use to track user information, store key data, and manage their operations. DynamoDB is one of the record-keepers of the modern Internet. It’s fast, it’s cheap, and it’s reliable. But today it stopped working and we saw the effects of that outage ripple across the Internet. We’ll learn more in the hours and days ahead but early reports indicate that this wasn’t actually a problem with the database itself. The data appears to be safe. Instead, something went wrong with the records that tell other systems where to find their data. Amazon had the data safely stored, but nobody else could find it for several hours, leaving apps temporarily separated from their data. It’s as if large portions of the Internet suffered temporary amnesia. This episode serves as a reminder of how dependent the world is on a handful of major cloud service providers: Amazon, Microsoft, and Google. When a major cloud provider sneezes, the Internet catches a cold.” 12.23pm BST "It's always DNS" Marek Szustak, IT Security Officer at online travel agency eSky Group, isn’t surprised to hear that today’s problems relate to the Domain Name System (effectively the internet’s phonebook). Szustak explains: Today’s outage in the AWS US-EAST-1 region shows how even the largest cloud environments can be paralysed by a seemingly minor piece of infrastructure. In this case, the problem concerned DNS, the foundation of network communication. When domain name resolution stops working, entire applications and services can stop responding, no matter how well they are designed. This is a good lesson for companies using the cloud: it is worth designing systems so that a failure in one region or provider does not bring the entire business to a halt. Redundancy, geographical distribution of resources and testing of emergency scenarios should be the norm, not a luxury. And besides, as engineers say, it’s always DNS... 12.20pm BST Although services seem to be coming back online, it appears the problem at AWS isn’t fully fixed yet. In its latest update, the cloud computing operator says: We are continuing to work towards full recovery for EC2 launch errors, which may manifest as an Insufficient Capacity Error. Additionally, we continue to work toward mitigation for elevated polling delays for Lambda, specifically for Lambda Event Source Mappings for SQS. We will provide an update by 5:00 AM PDT [that’s 1pm in the UK]. 12.05pm BST According to TechRadar, the popular word game Wordle was hit by today’s outage. Wordle’s working OK now, though* – an indication that the worst of today’s outages may be over, given AWS’s progress in fixing the problem (* yes I got it, but it took five guesses, so only just…) 11.55am BST A Lloyds Bank spokesperson has asked customers to ‘bear’ with it, while it works to bring services back online, saying: “Issues with Amazon Web Services are affecting some of our services right now. “We’re sorry about this and ask customers to bear with us while we work to bring all our services back online as soon as possible.” 11.49am BST AWS: The underlying DNS issue has been fully mitigated Another update from Amazon Web Services, who report that the underlying issue causing today’s outage has now been “fully mitigated. In an update timestamped at 3:35 AM PDT (or 11.35am UK time), AWS says: The underlying DNS issue has been fully mitigated, and most AWS Service operations are succeeding normally now. Some requests may be throttled while we work toward full resolution. Additionally, some services are continuing to work through a backlog of events such as Cloudtrail and Lambda. The DNS, or Domain Name System (DNS) is used to map addresses on the internet, by translating human-readable domain name (such as www.the guardian.com) into numerical IP addresses that can be read by routers to direct traffic across the web. 11.35am BST Today’s outage does not appear to be caused by a cyber-attack, reports Dr Amro Al-Said Ahmad, a lecturer in computer science at Keele University, who explains: The issue appears to be related to AWS (Amazon Web Services), which hosts the infrastructure that underpins much the internet services. It allows customers to deploy their own servers, databases, and storage without the need to own physical infrastructure. According to AWS’s latest update, they have identified the root cause of the outage. It appears to be significant error rates for requests made to their data storage service, DynamoDB, in the US-EAST region. Therefore, the outage was not caused by cyber-related attacks, as was speculated. Resolving major outages like this presents significant challenges because of the cloud complexity and its dependencies. Furthermore, diagnoses need to see how much third-party platforms are dependent on AWS cloud. The solution and fix will involve thorough diagnostics, testing, and deployment of a reliable fix, which, based on past incidents in the industry, can take anywhere from hours to several days. 11.26am BST UK 'in contact' over Amazon Web Services incident The UK government has said it is in contact with Amazon over today’s internet outage. A government spokesperson says: “We are aware of an incident affecting Amazon Web Services, and several online services which rely on their infrastructure. Through our established incident response arrangements, we are in contact with the company, who are working to restore services as quickly as possible.” 11.23am BST Full story: Amazon Web Services outage hits dozens of websites and apps A major internet outage has hit dozens of websites and apps around the world, with users reporting troubles getting online after problems at Amazon’s cloud computing service. The affected platforms include Snapchat, Roblox, Signal and Duolingo as well as a host of Amazon-owned operations including its main retail site and the Ring doorbell company. In the UK, Lloyds bank was affected as well as its subsidiaries Halifax and Bank of Scotland, while there were also reports of problems accessing the HM Revenue and Customs website on Monday morning. Also in the UK, multiple Ring users took to social media to complaint their doorbells were not working. In the UK alone reports of problems on individual apps ran into the tens of thousands for each platform. More here: Related: Amazon Web Services outage hits dozens of websites and apps 11.16am BST The AFP newswire points out that there have also been reports of disruption at Amazon Prime, Alexa, Reddit, various video streaming platforms such as Hulu and Disney+, as well as messaging app Signal and Delta Air Lines, as well as the services we’ve flagged in this blog already. They also cite Downdetector data showing reports of disruption at Whatsapp (although mine has been working OK this morning) and Tinder (can’t help with this one, sorry). 11.08am BST AWS: global services and features that rely on US-EAST-1 have also recovered. Amazon Web Services has now suggested that the recovery from today’s outage at its US-EAST-1 region in Virginia is on track. Its operational status page now says: We continue to observe recovery across most of the affected AWS Services. We can confirm global services and features that rely on US-EAST-1 have also recovered. We continue to work towards full resolution and will provide updates as we have more information to share. 11.03am BST HMRC: We're hit by global issues affecting Amazon Web Services A spokesperson for HMRC, the UK tax authority, has confirmed that its online service has been disrupted by the problem at Amazon Web Services. An HMRC spokesperson said: “We’re aware that customers are having problems accessing our online services, as part of global issues affecting Amazon Web Services. We’re working urgently with them on this matter. “Our phonelines are currently busy as a result, so for anything that isn’t urgent we recommend calling at a later time.” 10.51am BST AI startup Perplexity, cryptocurrency exchange Coinbase and trading app Robinhood have all attributed outages today to AWS, Reuters reports. Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas said in a post on X: “Perplexity is down right now. The root cause is an AWS issue. We’re working on resolving it.” Perplexity is down right now. The root cause is an AWS issue. We’re working on resolving it.— Aravind Srinivas (@AravSrinivas) October 20, 2025 10.45am BST The technical problem at Amazon Web Services looks like “an IT issue on the database side,” reports Rafe Pilling, director of threat intelligence at security firm Sophos. Pilling explains: “When anything like this happens the concern that it’s a cyber incident is understandable. AWS has a far reaching and intricate footprint, so any issue can cause a major upset. In this case it looks like it is an IT issue on the database side and they will be working to remedy it as an absolute priority.” 10.40am BST AWS: We are seeing significant signs of recovery Just in: Amazon Web Services report that they are seeing “significant signs of recovery” in the operational issue that appears to have disrupted services across the internet today. In an operational update, AWS says: We are seeing significant signs of recovery. Most requests should now be succeeding. We continue to work through a backlog of queued requests. We will continue to provide additional information. That follows an earlier update announcing that some ‘early signs of recovery’ were being detected, with AWS saying: We have applied initial mitigations and we are observing early signs of recovery for some impacted AWS Services. During this time, requests may continue to fail as we work toward full resolution. We recommend customers retry failed requests. While requests begin succeeding, there may be additional latency and some services will have a backlog of work to work through, which may take additional time to fully process. 10.37am BST Update: Duolingo streaks should still be safe despite the technical problems hitting the site today. One user received this ‘quick maintainance break!’ page, which reassures users that their streak is protected today ‘just in case!’. 10.33am BST Problems are also being reported at Depop, the secondhand clothing platform. According to the Down for Everyone or Just Me site, problems have been reported by users in Australia, New Zealand, the US and the UK, highlighting how today’s outage is a global problem. 10.20am BST Some precious Duolingo streaks could be lost unless the internet outage is fixed before the end of the day. There has been a jump in reports of problems at Duolingo since around 8am, according to Downdetector: 11.40am update: Duolingo’s service status page now confirms that the service is “experiencing increased errors”, and that the incident is being investigated. Updated at 11.39am BST 10.06am BST AWS find "potential root cause for error rates" Progress! Amazon Web Services say they may have found the cause of the problem. In an operational update, AWS say: We have identified a potential root cause for error rates for the DynamoDB APIs in the US-EAST-1 Region. Based on our investigation, the issue appears to be related to DNS resolution of the DynamoDB API endpoint in US-EAST-1. We are working on multiple parallel paths to accelerate recovery. This issue also affects other AWS Services in the US-EAST-1 Region. Global services or features that rely on US-EAST-1 endpoints such as IAM updates and DynamoDB Global tables may also be experiencing issues. During this time, customers may be unable to create or update Support Cases. We recommend customers continue to retry any failed requests. We will continue to provide updates as we have more information to share, or by 2:45 AM [10.45am UK time]. 10.04am BST There are also hundreds of reports of problems accessing the website of the UK’s HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) – the UK’s tax, payments and customs authority – this morning. If you try to log into the site, which can be used to submit tax returns or seek advice on tax, you are told “Sorry, there is a problem with the service”. Updated at 10.24am BST 10.00am BST Thousand Eyes shows scale of internet outages Cisco’s Thousand Eyes, a service that tracks internet outages, reports a surge in problems this morning. Many are located at Virginia, the location of Amazon’s US-EAST-1 region where engineers are working now to fix the problem responsible for “increased error rates and latencies” 9.41am BST Ring doorbells brought down by internet outage This morning’s outage also appears to have scuppered some smart doorbells. Several people are reporting problems using their Ring doorbells this morning: @ring All our Ring Services are down, Alarm, Doorbells & Cameras. Seems lots of people reporting on here. So think you need to get some comms out, as your service page is clearly down too! What is happening? #ring #ringdown #ringalarm #ringdoorbell #ringservice #amazonring pic.twitter.com/dMWLayscjJ— Andrew Benjamin (@ukmatrixman) October 20, 2025 @ring_uk your entire system is not working. Not telephone support. No chat. Doorbell online and can’t connect. What the actual F? No messages on socials telling us why?!?— Richard A Morgan (He, Him) (@morgocomics) October 20, 2025 Good morning @ring I'm not getting any notifications/alerts for my doorbell. The history of events is not loading either. The devices on the app seem to be 'loading'. Am I the only person having this problem?— Miss Understood (ツ) (@miss_sahota) October 20, 2025 Ring were bought by Amazon in 2018. 9.37am BST AWS: engineers are actively working to fix the problem Amazon Web Services have updated their services health data, saying engineers have been “immediately engaged” to fix the problem at its services. AWS says: We can confirm significant error rates for requests made to the DynamoDB endpoint in the US-EAST-1 Region. This issue also affects other AWS Services in the US-EAST-1 Region as well. During this time, customers may be unable to create or update Support Cases. Engineers were immediately engaged and are actively working on both mitigating the issue, and fully understanding the root cause. We will continue to provide updates as we have more information to share, or by 2:00 AM [10am UK time]. 9.34am BST Problems at Lloyds, Halifax and Bank of Scotland Some bank customers are reporting problems logging into their accounts this morning. There’s been a surge of reports of problems at Lloyds Bank, Halifax, and Bank of Scotland (which are all part of Lloyds Banking Group), according to Downdetector. 9.29am BST Fortnite investigating log-in problems Fortnite, the popular online gaming platform, has confirmed its services are affected by the Internet outage, saying: An outage affecting several services on the internet is also impacting Fortnite log-ins. We’re investigating this now, and will update you when we have more details. ⚠️ An outage affecting several services on the internet is also impacting Fortnite log-ins. We're investigating this now, and will update you when we have more details.— Fortnite Status (@FortniteStatus) October 20, 2025 9.23am BST Users report major internet outage after AWS suffers 'operational issue' A major internet outage has hit dozens of popular websites, online games and apps. Users have been reporting problems accessing sites such as Amazon, Roblox, Fortnite and Snapchat, for example, this morning. The outage may be related to a glitch at Amazon Web Services (AWS), the e-commerce giant’s on-demand cloud computing platform which underpins many online operations. AWS has reported an ‘operational issue’ at its data centre in North Virginia, known as “us-east-1”. It says: We can confirm increased error rates and latencies for multiple AWS Services in the US-EAST-1 Region. This issue may also be affecting Case Creation through the AWS Support Center or the Support API. We are actively engaged and working to both mitigate the issue and understand root cause. Updated at 9.28am BST 9.02am BST Oil hit by glut predictions Concerns about a global oil glut have hit crude prices this morning. Brent crude is down 0.75% at $60.84 per barrel, approaching a five-month low, following recent forecasts that supply will rise faster than demand. Toshitaka Tazawa, an analyst at Fujitomi Securities, explained: “Concerns about oversupply from increased production by oil- producing nations, coupled with fears of an economic slowdown stemming from escalating U.S.-China trade tensions, are fuelling selling pressure.” 8.42am BST UBS upgrades global equities to 'attractive' Heads-up: UBS have upgraded their view on global equities to ‘attractive’, a sign that they think investors should be putting more money into shares. Despite the angst in parts of the market that valuations have risen too high, UBS reckon share prices have further to climb. Mark Haefele, chief investment officer at UBS Global Wealth Management, says: “We think investors should review current allocations to equities and ensure they are at least consistent with, or modestly higher than, their long-term strategic asset allocation targets. If investors are currently under allocated to equities, we believe they should reallocate excess cash, bond, or high yield credit holdings toward stocks.” “We prefer areas that are exposed to secu­lar growth, like the US, China, (particularly China’s tech sector, which we rate among the Most Attractive sectors globally), as well as global technology, transformational inno­vations (AI, Power and resources, and Longevity), and pockets with clear catalysts that could drive earnings upgrades (Japan and global banks).” 8.20am BST B&M shares slide after admitting accounting blunder Shares in UK discount retailer B&M have slumped by 15% after admitting an embarrassing mistake in its recent financial results. B&M told the City this morning that approximately £7m of overseas freight costs had not been correctly recognised in its calculations for the cost of goods sold, in its recent results for the first half of the financial year. As a ressult, it now expects to report adjusted profits of approximately £191m, compared to the previous guidance of approximately £198m, for the first half of this financial year. For the full year, B&M has slashed its forecast for adjusted profits to between £470m and £520m, down from the previous estimate of £510m - £560m. B&M says it intends to commission a comprehensive third-party review of this matter, addinng that Mike Schmidt is stepping down as its chief financial officer, presumably carrying the can for this blunder. Updated at 8.20am BST 8.15am BST The London stock market has opened higher, as European shares recover some of last Friday’s losses. The FTSE 100 index of blue chip shares has gained 29 points, or 0.3%, to 9,382 points. Banks are among the risers, including Standard Chartered (+2%) and HSBC (+1.6%), having fallen at the end of last week as worries over the health of the US regional banking sector worried investors. That selloff started after Western Alliance Bank and Zions Bank reported problems with bad loans. Stocks did rise off their lows on Friday afternoon after Donald Trump confirmed he will meet soon with president Xi, and appeared to backtrack on his threat of new 100% tariffs. Other European markets are also higher this morning, with Germany’s DAX index rising 0.8% at the open and France’s CAC 40 up 0.6%. Michael Brown, senior research strategist at brokerage Pepperstone, sounds relieved that the regional banking panic may be over, saying: At least participants appear to no longer be pointlessly worrying about insignificant financial institutions that nobody has ever heard of, and re-focusing on what remains a constructive setup for risk assets as we move towards year-end. 8.02am BST Japan’s stock market has surged today, and closed at a new record high. The Nikkei 225 jumped by 3.3% to end the day at 49,185, having risen over the 49,000 point mark for the first time. Japanese stocks were lifted by news the Liberal Democratic Party and the Japan Innovation Party have agreed to form a coalition government, setting the stage for the country’s first female prime minister. Sanae Takaichi is expected to favour fresh measures to stimulate Japan’s economy, and oppose further hikes in interest rates, two things which are good for stock prices. 7.58am BST Chinese leader Xi Jinping has delivered a speech to Communist Party elites on the opening day of a major meeting to approve a draft plan laying out their goals for the country over the next five years. The official Xinhua News Agency report is light on detail, but says: Xi Jinping, general secretary of the CPC Central Committee, delivered a work report on behalf of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and expounded on the Party leadership’s draft proposals for the formulation of the 15th Five-Year Plan (2026-2030) for national economic and social development. 7.37am BST Asia-Pacific stock markets are rallying today, as investors digest the latest economic data from China. China’s CSI 300 index has inched up by 0.25%, while Hong Kong’s Hang Seng has boucned by 2% as traders put last Friday’s markets wobble behind them. 7.28am BST Today’s trade data shows that China’s exports of rare earth magnets fell in September. China’s shipments of rare earth magnets fell 6.1% month-on-month, customs data analysed by Reuters showed on Monday, ending three months of gains. That shows that rare earth exports were falling evern before Beijing tightened up its exports, a move which promted Donald Trump to threaten 100% tariffs on China. Updated at 7.28am BST 7.22am BST Despite slowing in the last quarter, China’s economy still seems to be on track to hit Beijing’s target of 5% growth in 2025. That means there could be less urgency to agree new stimulus policies – something Lynn Song, ING’s chief economist for Greater China, thinks woud be a mistake. Song explains: With China on track to hit this year’s growth target, we could see less policy urgency. But weak confidence translating to soft consumption, investment, and a worsening property price downturn still need to be addressed. The third quarter GDP data keeps China solidly on pace to reach this year’s “around 5%” growth target, and it may reduce the urgency for more immediate action. This could prove to be a mistake, as the underlying trend makes a strong case for more policy support. 7.11am BST China's new home prices fall at fastest pace in 11 months China’s new home prices fell at the fastest pace in 11 months in September, worsening the property sector’s drag on the economy. New home prices fell 0.4% month-on-month, following a 0.3% fall in August, according to calculations by Reuters based on National Bureau of Statistics data. Year-on-year, prices fell 2.2% in September versus a 2.5% drop in August. That is a blow to China’s property sector, which is being dragged back by a large glut of unsold property following the end of the housing boom. Related: China’s glut of idle property causes headache for the government September and October are traditionally the peak season for property buying as developers launch sales campaigns to attract consumers during national holidays. 7.10am BST Introduction: China’s economy expands at slowest pace in a year Good morning, and welcome to our rolling coverage of business, the financial markets, and the world economy. Growth across China’s economy has slowed to its lowest level in a year, as the trade war with the US has dampened activity. China’s GDP expanded by 4.8% year-on-year in the July-September quarter, new data from the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) shows shows, broadly matching expectations. That’s a slowdown from the second quarter of the year, when GDP rose by 5.2%, and also weaker than the 5.4% growth recorded in January-March. The annual slowdown casts something of a shadow over China’s latest four-day “fourth plenum” meeting which starts today, where Communist party leaders are gathering to hammer out the country’s next five-year plan. But on a quarterly basis, GDP grew 1.1% in the third quarter, compared with a forecast 0.8% increase and a revised 1.0% gain in the previous quarter. Today’s data showed that China’s retail sales remained weak while factory output strengthened, a blow to hopes that its economy can rebalance away from exports and towards domestic consumption. Growth in industrial production rose to 6.5% year-on-year in September, up from 5.2%, while retail sales growth slowed to 3% from 3.4% The NSB took a loyally upbeat view of the economic situation, reporting that… The national economy sustained the steady development momentum with progress against the pressure, production and supply grew steadily, employment and prices were generally stable, new growth drivers showed stable development, and the people’s well-being was ensured in a strong and effective manner. The national economy demonstrated strong resilience and vitality. The agenda 10am BST: Eurozone GDP report for Q2 2025 (updated reading) 3pm BST: CB Leading index survey of the US economy Updated at 7.13am BST