A widespread system failure hit Microsoft on Thursday, leaving large numbers of users worldwide unable to access services including Microsoft 365 and Outlook as recovery efforts dragged on for hours.
The disruption also spilled over into artificial intelligence services provided by OpenAI and Anthropic.
As of 18:00 Eastern Standard Time, Microsoft said it was still working to restore affected servers, with systems showing signs of partial recovery as users slowly reconnected.
In a post on X, the company explained that the disruption stemmed from a number of servers becoming unexpectedly unavailable, which strained the remaining infrastructure rather than any surge in traffic.
Microsoft struggles to bring services back online after major outage
Microsoft struggles to bring services back online after major outage
The nine mainland cities of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area (GBA) recorded 9.46 trillion yuan (around 1.42 trillion U.S. dollars) in foreign trade in the first 10 months, up 26 percent year on year, according to statistics from the Guangdong Sub-administration of the General Administration of Customs on Friday.
As a city cluster, the GBA is one of the most economically open areas in China. It is composed of nine cities in south China's Guangdong Province, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Zhuhai, Foshan, Huizhou, Dongguan, Zhongshan, Jiangmen and Zhaoqing, and the two special administrative regions of Hong Kong and Macao.
The growth was six percentage points faster than the national average, buoyed by the country's strong international trade and the region's vitality as an export hub. The nine cities accounted for 21.1 percent of China's total foreign trade value, up one percentage point from the same period last year.
Exports reached 5.54 trillion yuan (around 830 billion U.S. dollars), up 15.1 percent, while imports rose 45.4 percent to 3.92 trillion yuan (around 590 billion U.S. dollars).
Mainland cities of Greater Bay Area see 26 pct trade growth in first 10 months
