The UK government has formally approved plans for a second runway at London Gatwick Airport, marking a significant expansion for the country's second-largest airport. Transport Minister Heidi Alexander confirmed the approval on Sunday following a "minded to approve" position announced in February. The £2.2 billion project involves moving the airport's existing northern runway by 12 meters to meet safety standards, enabling both runways to operate simultaneously by the end of the decade.

The expansion is expected to handle approximately 100,000 additional flights annually, primarily accommodating narrow-bodied aircraft like Airbus A320s and Boeing 737s. Government officials project the project will boost trade and tourism while creating around 14,000 new jobs. Chancellor Rachel Reeves emphasized that the privately financed initiative would help "kickstart the economy" and bring billions in investment, noting satisfaction with adjustments made regarding noise mitigation and public transport usage.

Environmental groups and opposition politicians have strongly criticized the decision, citing concerns about increased emissions and noise pollution. The Green Party leader called the approval "deeply irresponsible," pointing to contradictions between asking London residents to change driving habits while subsidizing aviation fuel. Critics also highlighted that only 15% of people take 70% of flights, questioning the economic growth argument when more people leave the country than enter.

The Gatwick approval follows the government's recent backing of a third runway at Heathrow Airport, with officials maintaining that sustainable aviation fuel ensures such expansions don't derail net-zero targets. However, the decision faces potential legal challenges from local communities and environmental organizations concerned about the project's environmental impact. The government will need to ensure the expansion plan is legally sound as opposition mounts from various stakeholders.

A major outage at Amazon Web Services has disrupted operations for numerous popular applications and platforms globally, affecting millions of users. The cloud computing infrastructure failure began early Monday morning, with users reporting widespread issues accessing services including Snapchat, Duolingo, Zoom, and various gaming platforms. Amazon confirmed it was investigating increased error rates and latency across multiple AWS services, though the company has not yet identified the root cause of the system failure.

The disruption appears to have originated with servers hosted in the US-EAST-1 region, according to initial reports. This triggered a cascade effect that impacted AWS infrastructure supporting millions of websites and applications worldwide. Downdetector, a platform that monitors service outages, reported receiving over four million problem reports in a single morning—more than double the typical weekly volume—indicating the scale of the disruption across affected services.

Among the services experiencing significant operational problems are communication platforms like Zoom, Signal, and Slack; gaming services including Roblox, Fortnite, and PlayStation Network; social media applications such as Snapchat; and financial services from banks including Lloyds and Bank of Scotland. Streaming platforms Prime Video and Crunchyroll, along with educational tool Duolingo and design platform Canva, have also been affected by the cloud service failure.

The outage has manifested differently across regions, with Amazon's own websites remaining operational in Europe while still experiencing service-specific errors. AWS engineers are actively working to mitigate the issues and restore normal operations. The company has committed to providing regular updates as they work to resolve the widespread service disruption that has highlighted the internet's heavy reliance on cloud infrastructure providers.