Latest news with #serviceDisruption
The National
08-07-2025
- Politics
- The National
Egypt's communications minister defends response to deadly fire
Egypt's Minister of Communications and Information Technology, Amr Talaat, defended his ministry's response to the Ramses Central telecoms hub fire during a parliamentary inquiry on Tuesday, following criticism from politicians over the incident, which left four dead and caused widespread service disruptions. Addressing the parliamentary Communications Committee after being summoned by Speaker Hanafy Gebaly, Mr Talaat explained that the fire began on the seventh floor of the building, in a server room, where smoke detectors triggered an alarm. Employees tried to extinguish the fire, but it spread rapidly through cable conduits, necessitating intervention by civil defence teams, Mr Talaat told the committee. 'The fire suppression system in the building was overwhelmed by the intensity of the flames,' he said. Mr Talaat said Ramses Central is a critical hub but not the only one in the telecoms network, and that contingency plans were enacted to reroute services through other facilities. 'The internet and mobile services were gradually restored, and financial platforms like ATMs and payment gateways are now operational,' he said, adding that technical teams were still addressing minor problems in rural areas. The minister said a thorough technical review would be conducted to identify the cause of the fire and introduce measures to prevent similar incidents in the future. Egypt 's parliament was highly critical of the government's handling of the fire, which broke out on Monday. Earlier on Tuesday, in a televised address during parliament's general session, Mr Gebaly said the decision to summon the minister was taken after a large number of official complaints from MPs. 'It is the minister's responsibility to appear before parliament immediately after such a major incident, to explain what happened,' Mr Gebaly said. He added that Mr Talaat 'should have been the first person' to attend the session and that his failure to do so undermined transparency. During the session, MPs also demanded accountability and urgent action. One MP, Diaa El Din Dawoud, described the response to the fire as a 'catastrophic failure' and accused the government of neglecting Egypt's telecoms infrastructure, despite significant investment in digital transformation projects. 'The entire country came to a halt because of a fire in one telecommunications hub,' Mr Dawoud said. In his address, videos of which were widely shared on social media, he added that the fire exposed the fragility of Egypt's telecoms infrastructure. He questioned what happened to the funding allocated to digital transformation projects. Amr Darwish, another MP, said a parliamentary committee should be set up to investigate the incident, while MP Ahmed Farghaly called for the senior officials to resign. The Ramses fire, which started in a seventh-floor operations room on Monday evening, burnt for six hours before being contained. At least 39 people were injured, including firefighters, civil defence officials said. The fire caused significant disruption to critical services, with internet and phone connectivity across Cairo and parts of Giza severely affected. Financial services were also disrupted. Services began to improve on Tuesday as other telecoms hubs across the country absorbed some of the load. Full restoration of services was expected by Wednesday morning. The scathing response from parliament came amid public criticism on social media. "What happened at Ramses Central exposes significant flaws in the protection and security systems of a sector that has long received substantial funding to maintain its services. It is both astonishing and regrettable that communications could fail and descend into chaos without any ready alternative plans in place," one X user said. While parliament was debating the Ramses fire, a blaze broke out at a sponge factory in the industrial zone of New Damietta City, in the Nile Delta. There were no immediate reports of casualties.
South China Morning Post
04-07-2025
- South China Morning Post
Kuala Lumpur's US$100 million Aerotrain faces fresh setbacks after Anwar's test ride
Malaysia 's long-delayed Aerotrain at Kuala Lumpur International Airport (KLIA) has suffered fresh embarrassment after experiencing two service disruptions within three days, just a week after its US$100 million relaunch and a test ride by Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim The most recent incident occurred on Friday morning, when a flooded tunnel forced Malaysia Airports Holdings Berhad (MAHB) to temporarily halt the 1.2km (0.75 miles) rail service linking the main terminal to its international satellite gates. MAHB blamed pump failure during heavy rainfall for the flooding, saying the line was shut 'as a safety precaution' while workers manually cleared the water. Train operations resumed after about 90 minutes, but not before irate passengers were again shepherded onto shuttle buses – a frustrating return to arrangements that had been in place since the Aerotrain service was suspended in early 2023. A flooded tunnel forced the disruption of Kuala Lumpur International Airport's Aerotrain service on Friday. Photo: Ministry of Transport Malaysia The outage triggered criticism from Malaysia's vocal social media users, who shared photos of their experiences taking buses to travel between terminals. 'I expected it, but so soon?' Ashish Kale wrote in a post from the airport bus terminal.
CTV News
17-06-2025
- Health
- CTV News
Risk of service disruptions again this summer in Quebec health-care network
The emergency waiting room at The Montreal Children's Hospital on Thursday, Sept. 19, 2024 in Montreal. (Christinne Muschi/The Canadian Press) As the summer season begins, Santé Québec has reported that there are 96 'service disruption situations' in the network, 13 of which have yet to be resolved. Historically, the summer season has been synonymous with service disruptions in the healthcare system due to health-care staff taking holidays. Despite this, Santé Québec insists that it is under control and that the 'situation should be relatively stable compared to last year.' 'There will be service reductions, just as there have always been service reductions during the summer period, but this year will be no different from previous years,' assured Santé Québec spokesperson Robin Marie Coleman at a press briefing on Tuesday. It is reported that so far, 80 per cent of the anticipated service disruptions have been avoided. Measures have been put in place to prevent them, including a mobile team for remote regions such as the North Shore, the Outaouais and Abitibi-Témiscamingue. This team, which was set up by the government to compensate for the withdrawal of independent labour, has 246 employees. In addition, Santé Québec indicates that the end or reduction in the use of independent labour in certain regions of Quebec will be an 'additional challenge' this year. It also states that the regions of Mauricie, Centre-du-Québec, Laurentides, Bas-Saint-Laurent and Côte-Nord are 'under surveillance.' Santé Québec was unable to provide the number of beds that will be closed during the summer. Last year, 1,500 beds were closed. This report by The Canadian Press was first published in French on June 17, 2025.
BBC News
16-06-2025
- Business
- BBC News
Blue Islands CEO apologises as new plane joins fleet
The CEO of a Channel Islands airline has apologised to customers for service disruptions whilst introducing a new plane to its Islands said its new aircraft G-ISLP, its first ATR 72-600, was "ready to welcome" passengers on board this company removed 28 flights from its summer schedule in May due to a damaged plane and the new aircraft being delayed. Rob Veron, CEO of Blue Islands, said in a social media post that the past few months had been "challenging for our passengers". He said: "I know many of you feel let down. Aircraft maintenance issues, delayed parts, and weather damage all hit us simultaneously, causing last-minute cancellations and disruption."On top of that, this new aircraft, meant to solve these problems, was delayed by supply chain issues, which only added to the problem." 'Genuinely sorry' Jersey's government said in May that it might take action against the airline if its services did not improve, with particular concern for islanders travelling to hospitals in the UK for health Veron said as an islander he understood the importance of reliable transport."I'm genuinely sorry for the frustration and inconvenience this has caused," he said. "Whether you missed important business meetings, family gatherings, or medical appointments, I know our service disruptions had real impacts on your lives. "The good news is this new aircraft is now here and ready to help us earn back your trust."The new aircraft has additional capacity, Mr Veron said, and the airline was committed to keeping on schedule in future."Over the coming weeks, you can expect fewer cancellations, better resilience, and the dependable service that connects our island communities with each other, the UK and Europe."
Tahawul Tech
13-06-2025
- Business
- Tahawul Tech
Google suffers brief global service outage
Google said it had recently resolved a brief global service disruption on its platforms that affected multiple services within the businesses portfolio. 'The issues have now been resolved for all affected users', the company said. 'We will publish an analysis of this incident once we have completed our internal investigation.' The outage disrupted services on platforms such as Spotify, Snapchat and Discord that rely on the tech giant's cloud managed services and infrastructure. Google Cloud's dashboard said engineering teams were working to resolve a few services still seeing some residual impact. The outage began around 1:50 p.m. ET on 12/6/2025 and there were 14,729 reports of Google Cloud being down in the U.S. around 2:32 p.m. ET, according to tracking website At the peak of the disruption, there were about 46,000 outage reports on Spotify and 10,992 on Discord in the U.S. As of 6:18 p.m. ET, Spotify showed a little over 1,000 reports, while Discord outages had come down to 200. Downdetector's numbers are based on user-submitted reports. The outage might have affected a larger number of users. Source: Reuters Image Credit: Google
