Major IT outage hits banks, airlines and train services globally

Planes have been grounded and train services have warned of cancellations.

Flights have been grounded at Sydney Airport, United Airlines has stopped flying, and the London Stock Exchange group’s platform has also been hit by outages.

Sky News has also gone off air due to the outages, and has been unable to broadcast any live coverage on Friday morning, the BBC reports.

Meanwhile, train services in the UK have warned passengers to expect disruption due to "widespread IT issues."

In a posts on social media, Southern, Thameslink, Gatwick Express and Great Northern all wrote: "We are currently experiencing widespread IT issues across our entire network.

"Our IT teams are actively investigating to determine the root cause of the problem.

"We are unable to access driver diagrams at certain locations, leading to potential short-notice cancellations, particularly on the Thameslink and Great Northern networks.

"Additionally, other key systems, including our real-time customer information platforms, are also affected.

"We will provide additional updates when we can. In the meantime, please regularly check your journey before you travel."

Meanwhile, Microsoft has said it is taking "mitigation actions" after being hit by issues, according to AFP.

The company says it is investigating issues with its cloud services, and that several of its apps and services have been hit by an issue.

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