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A global Microsoft outage is stretching into its second day, hitting email and collaboration tools including Outlook and Teams. Portugal's government, schools, and health services have all reported disruptions, and Microsoft shares came under pressure on Friday as traders tried to gauge how deep the damage runs. Recovery is described as progressing, but the scope of the outage is a reminder of just how much critical infrastructure now runs through a single company's cloud.
Shifting to New York City, where Mayor Zohran Mamdani has announced plans to open five city-run grocery stores as a direct response to food inflation. Five stores in a city of eight million won't move the needle much on prices, but the experiment raises a genuinely interesting question about what people expect government to do, and whether public retail can compete with private chains.
And at the COP thirty-one climate summit in Antalya, Greenpeace staged one of its more theatrical protests yet, installing a six-metre Trojan Horse overflowing with plastic waste outside the venue. Built with Danish artist Thomas Dambo, the piece is a pointed message to negotiators that plastic pollution deserves the same urgency as carbon emissions.
That's your briefing for today. Keep surfing. Tech Beat out.
