The Metropolitan Police's Counter Terrorism Command has launched an investigation into the Northern Irish rap trio Kneecap, following the emergence of videos from their concerts that allegedly contain inflammatory statements. The footage, believed to be from performances in London in November 2023 and November 2024, reportedly shows members of the group making remarks about Members of Parliament and expressing support for organizations designated as terrorist groups in the UK.

One of the videos from November 2023 appears to feature a member of Kneecap stating, 'The only good Tory is a dead Tory. Kill your local MP.' Another clip from a November 2024 concert allegedly shows the group shouting 'up Hamas, up Hezbollah,' both of which are banned under UK terrorism laws. The Counter Terrorism Internet Referral Unit assessed the videos and found sufficient grounds for a deeper investigation into potential offenses.

Kneecap has responded to the allegations by issuing an apology to the families of murdered MPs David Amess and Jo Cox, stating they never intended to cause hurt or incite violence. The group has also denied supporting Hamas or Hezbollah, claiming the footage has been 'exploited and weaponised' against them. Their manager has suggested that the band is being unfairly targeted by a coordinated campaign.

The investigation underscores the ongoing challenges authorities face in monitoring and addressing potentially extremist content in the arts and entertainment sectors. As the inquiry continues, the case has sparked a broader debate about the boundaries of free expression and the responsibilities of performers in avoiding language that could be construed as incitement to violence.

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.