Pour a Red Bull out for the IT workers of the world: After feverish system rebooting, industries from travel to healthcare are recovering from yesterday’s mass technical blackout, which is being called the largest IT outage ever.

In case you’ve been in the woods…countless organizations around the globe fell to their knees for several hours yesterday after the cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike dispatched a routine software update to Microsoft Windows customers. Oops: It contained a defect inflicting possibly millions of computers with the blue screen of death, giving some workers a surprise long weekend (“Thank you Microsoft for an early vacation” trended on Weibo in China, the Financial Times reported).

CrowdStrike and Microsoft issued a fix that helped businesses begin to get back to normal, but not before the bug caused chaos in:

• Travel: The big three US airlines—United, Delta, and American—grounded flights in the early hours. By 5pm, ~9,200 flights coming into or out of the US were delayed out of 38,000 affected worldwide, and ~2,650 US flights were canceled out of 4,200 globally, per FlightAware data. Some airlines handwrote boarding passes or flight updates.
• Banks: Some traders at JPMorgan Chase, UBS, Bloomberg, and other financial institutions couldn’t execute orders yesterday morning, with one unnamed senior trader telling the FT that it was “the biggest upset in years.”
• Healthcare: Many hospitals—including some of the largest in Europe and the US—were forced to cancel all elective operations, routine appointments, and walk-ins, and online portals for most UK general practitioners went down.
• Governments: The Dutch and UAE foreign ministries reported IT outages. In the US, downed computer systems delayed trials—including Harvey Weinstein’s—by hours, mucked up customs, and temporarily disrupted some 911 services.
• Chain restaurants: Starbucks mobile ordering crashed (Dunkin’ persisted) and McDonald’s Japan closed nearly a third of its stores for the day.

Looking ahead…It’s not yet clear how the supply chain will be impacted by the outage, which caused already-slammed freight hubs to pause shipping operations for a few precious hours. Cargo ports largely resumed operations after a chaotic morning, but experts caution that getting air shipping fully back on track could take days or weeks.—ML

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Biden’s campaign says he’s staying in the race as more Dems tell him to drop out. “Joe Biden has made it more than clear: he’s in this race and he’s in it to win it,” the president’s reelection campaign said in a memo yesterday, noting that there is no plan for an alternative nominee from the Democratic Party. The White House also denied reports that the president and his family are plotting an exit strategy. But the pressure’s on as questions remain about the octogenarian’s age and ability to beat Donald Trump. At least 13 more Democratic members of Congress called on him to step aside yesterday, and donors continue to push for a change.

UN court finds Israel’s presence in the West Bank and East Jerusalem “unlawful.” The International Court of Justice issued an opinion that Israel’s controversial decadeslong occupation of these territories runs afoul of international law and called on Israel to exit and provide reparations. However, the decision is not binding and is more likely to impact international opinion as the war in Gaza continues than Israeli policy. Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas hailed the decision as “historic,” while Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu dismissed it as “lies.”

Protesters and police clash in Bangladesh. Bangladesh’s government imposed a nationwide curfew and deployed the military in an effort to quell deadly protests over how government jobs are distributed. At least 100 people, mostly students, were killed and even more were injured while demonstrating against a recently reinstated job quota system that benefits relatives of those who fought in Bangladesh’s 1971 war of independence against Pakistan, the New York Times reported yesterday. With the country’s economy struggling, university students want the jobs awarded on merit.

CrowdStrike might sound like a straight-to-DVD action movie starring a professional wrestler, but it’s actually one of the world’s foremost cybersecurity firms. Ironically, the software that created all the problems yesterday is used by tech giants like Google and Amazon to prevent breaches that can cause outages.

Before the self-inflicted software malfunction, the company, which says it is used by more than half of the Fortune 500, was best known for its high-profile work helping detect threats and understand breaches.

• In 2014, CrowdStrike investigated the Sony Pictures hack, which released employees’ personal data and executives’ salaries.
• In 2016, it looked into the infiltration of the Democratic National Committee that exposed Hilary Clinton’s emails.

Global systems weren’t the only thing down. CrowdStrike saw its share price plummet yesterday, although it is still up ~24% YTD.

Big picture: At $74.2 billion, CrowdStrike has the second-largest market cap in the IT security industry, behind only Palo Alto Networks ($107.1 billion), and reported $900 million in revenue for the quarter ending in April, per Reuters. It’s got ~29,000 customers, which is part of why the outage caused so much havoc.—DL

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A Russian court sentenced Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich to 16 years in prison for espionage after convicting him during a three-day closed trial in which the charges were widely seen as meritless.

WSJ Publisher Almar Latour and Editor-in-Chief Emma Tucker called it a “disgraceful, sham conviction” in a joint statement. The State Department has designated him as wrongfully detained, while international media NGOs accuse Russia of stifling freedom of expression and geopolitical hostage-taking.

• At the time of his arrest, during a reporting trip to the Russian city of Yekaterinburg in March 2023, he was covering Russia amid its war in Ukraine.
• Gershkovich was indicted on accusations of gathering intel about a Russian defense contractor for the CIA.

What now? President Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that the government will continue working to free Gershkovich, who has been behind bars for over a year. US and Russian officials have said that they are negotiating a deal to send Gershkovich home. President Vladimir Putin has suggested that Russia would consider a prisoner swap involving its security agent Vadim Krasikov, who is serving a life sentence for murder in Germany.

This might be more realistic now, as Russian officials had stressed that a prisoner exchange would be possible only after Gershkovich’s sentencing.—SK

We don’t know why vanilla gets used as a synonym for boring. People love it—as evidenced by data Instacart released recently showing it’s the most popular flavor of ice cream in North America. Last summer from June to August, the flavor showed up in 29% of all Instacart orders. And it’s not just popular in the prime cone-licking months: Vanilla ice cream orders shot up 66% around Thanksgiving (presumably because no pie is complete without it).

Even when Americans stray from that flavor staple, the most-ordered ice creams are ones you could picture in a 1950s malt shop: Chocolate, cookies and cream, strawberry, and mint chip round out the top five. But when people go more exotic, Rocky Road dominates the American West, making it the most popular unique ice cream flavor in 11 states.