Microsoft apologises after thousands report new outage

Technology giant Microsoft has apologised after thousands of people across the world reported issues with its products, ranging from email service Outlook to the hit game Minecraft.

Downdetector, which tracks websites, showed thousands had reported problems on Tuesday afternoon.

The incident comes less than two weeks after a major global IT outage left over eight million computers using Microsoft systems inaccessible, impacting healthcare and travel, after a flawed software update by the cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike.

Microsoft said it had implemented a fix for the problem which "shows improvement", and it will monitor the situation "to ensure full recovery". But it has separately told people it has "no ETA" for how long the issue would take to resolve.