An NHS worker has been awarded nearly £30,000 in compensation after a tribunal found that being compared to Star Wars villain Darth Vader in a workplace personality test constituted a 'detriment'. Lorna Rooke, a supervisor in the NHS Blood and Transplant service, was subjected to the comparison during a team-building exercise, which the tribunal ruled caused her harm and contributed to her decision to leave her job.

The incident occurred when Rooke's colleagues participated in a Star Wars-themed Myers-Briggs Type Indicator test. While Rooke was absent from the room, a colleague completed the test on her behalf, resulting in her being categorized under the Darth Vader personality type. Despite arguments that the Darth Vader category described a 'very focused individual who brings the team together', Employment Judge Kathryn Ramsden dismissed these as positive attributes, stating that 'being aligned with his personality is insulting'.

The tribunal heard that the comparison made Rooke feel 'unpopular' and contributed to her experiencing low mood and anxiety in relation to her work environment. Although the tribunal acknowledged that Rooke's decision to leave was influenced by personal circumstances, it upheld her claim for detriment, awarding her £28,989.61 in compensation.

This case highlights the potential for workplace team-building exercises to have unintended negative consequences when not conducted with sensitivity and respect for all participants. The ruling serves as a reminder to employers of the importance of fostering a positive and inclusive work environment.

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.