NEW YORK (AP) — Internet disruptions tied to Amazon’s cloud computing service affected people around the world Monday trying to connect to online services used for work, social media and video games.

About three hours after the outage began, Amazon Web Services said it was starting to recover from the problem. But the company later said it was continuing to respond to “significant” errors and connectivity issues across multiple services.

What is Amazon Web Services

Amazon Web Services is a cloud computing provider that hosts many of the world’s most-used online services. AWS provides behind-the-scenes cloud computing infrastructure to many government departments, universities and businesses

Seattle-based Amazon said the problems were centered in its Virginia-based US-EAST-1 data center region, one of its most important cloud hubs around the world. The region is a backbone “for so many services that when things go screwy, domino effects around the internet-as-we-know-it are enormous,” wrote John Scott-Railton, a cybersecurity researcher at Citizen Lab, in a social media post.

What happened?

AWS traced the source of the problem to something called the “DynamoDB endpoint in the US-East-1 Region,” in a pair of jargon-laden updates.

“DynamoDB isn’t a term that most consumers know, but it underpins the apps and services that all of us use every single day,” said cybersecurity expert Mike Chapple.

DynamoDB is a centralized database service that many internet-based services use to track user information, store key data and manage their operations, Chapple said by email.

It’s “one of the record-keepers of the modern internet,” said Chapple, an IT professor at the University of Notre Dame’s Mendoza College of Business. “It’s fast, it’s cheap, and it’s reliable. But today it stopped working and we saw the effects of that outage ripple across the internet.”

Amazon’s updates suggest the problem isn’t with the database itself, but rather that something went wrong with the records that tell other systems where to find their data, he said.

“Amazon had the data safely stored, but nobody else could find it for several hours, leaving apps temporarily separated from their data. It’s as if large portions of the internet suffered temporary amnesia,” Chapple said.

Amazon has attributed the outage to a domain name system issue. DNS is the service that translates internet addresses into machine-readable IP addresses that connects browsers and apps with websites and underlying web services. DNS errors disrupt the translation process, interrupting the connection.

Because so many sites and services use AWS, a DNS error can have widespread results.

Who was affected?

Internet users around the world faced widespread disruption because Amazon’s problem took down dozens of major online services, including social media site Snapchat, the Roblox and Fortnite video games and chat app Signal.

On DownDetector, a website that tracks online outages, users reported issues with Snapchat, Roblox, Fortnite, online broker Robinhood, the McDonald’s app and many other services.

Starbucks experienced “a very limited impact for a very short amount of time” to its app, but all stores were serving customers normally, Starbucks Global Communications Director Jaci Anderson said in an email to The Associated Press.

“Our mobile order ahead and pay app is working normally to serve our customers this morning,” Anderson said midmorning.

DoorDash said its systems were not directly affected but some of its partners “experienced brief disruptions” affecting deliveries.

The risks of centralized cloud services

Some cybersecurity experts have warned for years about the potentially ugly consequences of allowing a handful of big tech companies to dominate key internet operations.

“So much of the world now relies on these three or four big (cloud) compute companies who provide the underlying infrastructure that when there’s an issue like this, it can be really impactful across a broad range, a broad spectrum” of online services, said Patrick Burgess, a cybersecurity expert at U.K.-based BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT.

“The world now runs on the cloud,” and the internet is seen as a utility like water or electricity, as we spend so much of our lives on our smartphones, Burgess said.

And because so much of the online world’s plumbing is underpinned by a handful of companies, when something goes wrong, “it’s very difficult for users to pinpoint what is happening because we don’t see Amazon, we just see Snapchat or Roblox,” Burgess said.

“The good news is that this kind of issue is usually relatively fast (to resolve)” and there’s no indication that it was caused by a cyber incident like a cyberattack, Burgess said.

Has this happened in the past?

This is not the first time a problem with Amazon’s key services has caused widespread disruptions.

Many popular internet services and publishers were down after a brief outage in 2023. AWS’s longest outage in recent history occurred in late 2021, when companies — everything from airline reservations and auto dealerships to payment apps and video streaming services — were affected for more than five hours. Other major outages happened in 2020 and 2017.

Unrelated to Amazon, a faulty software update by cybersecurity company CrowdStrike affecting devices running Microsoft’s Windows also rippled across the world to cause massive disruptions in 2024.

By ERIC TUCKER and ALANNA DURKIN RICHER

WASHINGTON (AP) — Lawyers for former FBI Director James Comey urged a judge Monday to dismiss the case against him, calling it a vindictive prosecution motivated by “personal animus” and orchestrated by a White House determined to seek retribution against a perceived foe of President Donald Trump.

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The lawyers separately called for the indictment’s dismissal because of what they said was the illegitimate appointment of the U.S. attorney who filed the case days after being hastily named to the job by Trump.

The two-prong attack on the indictment, which accuses Comey of lying to Congress five years ago, represents the opening salvo in what is expected to be a protracted court fight ahead of a trial currently set for Jan. 5. The motions take aim not at the substance of the allegations but rather on the unusual circumstances of the prosecution, which included Trump exhorting his attorney general to bring charges against Comey as well as his administration’s abrupt installation of a White House aide to serve as top prosecutor of the elite office overseeing the case.

“Bedrock principles of due process and equal protection have long ensured that government officials may not use courts to punish and imprison their perceived personal and political enemies,” wrote Comey’s defense team, which includes Patrick Fitzgerald, the former U.S. Attorney in Chicago and a longtime Comey friend. “But that is exactly what happened here.”

They said the Justice Department had brought the case because of Trump’s hatred of Comey, who as FBI director in the first months of Trump’s first term infuriated the president through his oversight of an investigation into potential ties between Russia and Trump’s 2016 campaign. Trump fired Comey in May 2017. The two have been open adversaries in the years since, with Comey labeling Trump “unethical” and comparing him to a mafia boss and Trump branding Comey an “untruthful slimeball” and calling for him to be punished because of the Russia investigation.

“The government has singled out Mr. Comey for prosecution because of his protected speech and because of President Trump’s personal animus toward Mr. Comey,” defense lawyers wrote, adding that such a “vindictive and selection prosecution” violates multiple provisions of the Constitution and must be dismissed.

Comey’s defense team had foreshadowed the arguments during his first and only court appearance in the case, where he pleaded not guilty.

Though motions alleging vindictive prosecutions do not often succeed, this one lays out a timeline of events intended to link Trump’s demands for a prosecution with the Justice Department’s scramble to secure an indictment last month just before the statute of limitations was set to lapse.

Last month, for instance, he complained in a Truth Social post directed to Attorney General Pam Bondi that “nothing is being done” on investigations into some of his foes and called for action, specifically referencing inquiries into Comey, New York Attorney General Letitia James and Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff of California.

“JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!” part of the message said.

He installed Lindsey Halligan, a White House aide who had been one of Trump’s personal lawyers but had no experience as a federal prosecutor, to run the Eastern District of Virginia and replace Erik Siebert, who had resigned as U.S. attorney one day earlier amid administration pressure to charge Comey and James. Comey was indicted days later.

Comey’s lawyers argued that that social media post represented an admission that the government was prosecuting Comey for “an impermissible discriminatory purpose.”

“For many years, President Trump has sought to prosecute or otherwise punish Mr. Comey because of overt hostility to Mr. Comey’s protected speech and because of his personal bias against Mr. Comey,” the attorneys said. “But despite President Trump’s yearslong campaign to prosecute Mr. Comey, no career or appointed prosecutor had ever agreed to do so. Thus, Mr. Trump made clear to his Attorney General that the only way to achieve ‘JUSTICE’ against Mr. Comey was by ousting Mr. Siebert and installing Ms. Halligan.”

Defense lawyers in a separate motion argued that the case was “fatally flawed” because Halligan was unlawfully appointed before she signed the indictment late last month.

“The President and Attorney General appointed the President’s personal lawyer as interim U.S. Attorney in violation of a clear statutory command so that the interim U.S. Attorney could indict an outspoken critic of the President just days before the relevant statute of limitations was set to expire,” defense lawyers said.

That motion is expected to be heard by a different judge than the trial judge, U.S. District Court Michael Nachmanoff.

Halligan is not the only U.S. attorney facing a court challenge.

A federal appeals court in Philadelphia heard arguments Monday in a case challenging the tenure of Alina Habba as New Jersey’s top federal prosecutor. A panel of judges did not immediately rule but questioned the propriety of maneuvers meant to keep Habba in her job.

Separately Monday, defense lawyers and prosecutors argued in court papers over a suggestion by the Justice Department that Fitzgerald, might have to step aside. Prosecutors late Sunday asserted in a court filing that Comey’s “lead defense counsel” had earlier been used by Comey to disclose classified information, a claim the defense team called “provably false” and defamatory.

Associated Press writer Mike Catalini in Philadelphia contributed.

Once in a while, P.J. Fleck will see someone wearing a very specific T-shirt in public and feels a need to set the record straight.

Head coach P.J. Fleck of the Minnesota Golden Gophers motions to a referee in the second quarter of a game against the Ohio State Buckeyes at Ohio Stadium on Oct. 4, 2025 in Columbus, Ohio. (Photo by Ben Jackson/Getty Images)

The Gophers’ head coach has come across Iowa Hawkeyes fans donning “It wasn’t a fair catch” shirts and can’t help but approach them. One such scene came on a recent trip he and wife Heather made to Minnesota’s Largest Candy Store in Jordan.

“Hey, I like your shirt,” Fleck will say to the fan. “That was actually a correct call.”

The reference, of course, is to the invalid fair catch signal penalty that was flagged on Iowa punt returner Cooper DeJean’s 54-yard touchdown run in the Floyd of Rosedale rivalry game in October 2023. After review, the decision negated the TD, and Minnesota went on to a 12-10 win over then-No. 24 Iowa at Kinnick Stadium.

Days later, the Big Ten Conference’s coordinator of officials Bill Carollo and NCAA rules editor Steve Shaw told the Pioneer Press and the Des Moines Register the officials’ final decision in Iowa City was the correct enforcement.

Fleck said his off-the-cuff retorts to Hawkeyes fans can catch them off-guard, either from them not expecting him to go there or from them just being surprised to see him in the first place.

“It’s so funny because some people laugh and some people don’t,” Fleck told the Pioneer Press. “… Not everybody here (in Minnesota) graduated from the University of Minnesota. So you just see it different and who their allegiance is to when you see that shirt. I love it.”

That contentious win snapped Minnesota’s 10-game losing skid in Iowa City since 1999 and ended an eight-game overall losing streak in the rivalry since 2014.

While that win remains fresh two years later, Fleck said there is little the Gophers can take from that victory and apply to Saturday afternoon’s road game. The Hawkeyes (5-2, 3-1 Big Ten) are an eight-point favorite over Minnesota (5-2, 3-1) for the 2:30 p.m. kickoff.

“It’s its own entity. This is going to take a completely different effort, different team, different identity than we had before,” Fleck said. “… I think having the ability to win there allows us to say, ‘Hey, we can.’ (Now we’ve) just got to go do.”

The reputation of Kinnick Stadium imprinted Fleck before he came to Minnesota. He played there as a receiver at Northern Illinois (1999-2003) and then as a graduate assistant at Ohio State in 2006.

“I’m not one of those head coaches that doesn’t give anybody credit,” Fleck said. “Somebody asked me a long time ago: What’s the hardest place to play? You’ve got to take where you’re (coaching) at out of it. … And I’ve always told them Kinnick.”

The Buckeyes were ranked No. 1 that year but were tested in a 37-17 win over No. 11 Iowa in late September.

“That was the one, I thought, game on the road we struggled with,” Fleck said of a Buckyes team that would fall to Florida in the BCS Championship Game. “The crowd, the atmosphere, and then you throw the football team of Iowa in there, (which) never beats themselves.”

Fans are only a few feet away from the visiting sideline at Kinnick and are known for trash talking. And the sounds cranked into Gophers’ practices this week will include not only songs from the band and other music, but some colorful comments they might here on game day.

“We have a lot of things piped in to the indoor (practice facility) that they might hear over and over and over,” Fleck said.

Including personal comments? “Oh, one hundred percent,” Fleck said.

Last year at home, the Gophers had a 14-7 lead over Iowa at the half, but the Hawkeyes outscored Minnesota 24-0 the rest of the way. Running back Kaleb Johnson amassed 206 rushing yards and three touchdowns.

“To beat Iowa, you’ve got to play elite in all four quarters,” Fleck said. “We weren’t able to do that. … What the score is at halftime gets too much credit … It’s only 30 minutes. You’ve got 30 more minutes to play. You’ve got to make adjustments, and you’ve got to play better in the second half. Unfortunately, we didn’t play better in the second half. They took advantage of that.”

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NEW YORK (AP) — Disney+ and Hulu subscription cancellations rose during the month that ABC briefly cancelled “Jimmy Kimmel Live!, ” according to data from subscription analytics company Antenna.

Walt Disney Co. owns the streaming platforms and ABC. ABC pulled the show off the air for less than a week in September in the wake of criticism over his comments related the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk.

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Antenna estimates total cancellations in September were 4.1 million for Hulu and 3 million for Disney+. The “churn rate,” or the percentage of customers that cancel their subscriptions in a specific month, jumped from 5% in August to 10% in September for Hulu. That figure jumped 4% in August to 8% in September for Disney+.

However, signups were higher in September for both Hulu and Disney+ than the prior five months.

Antenna is a subscription analytics company that tracks U.S. consumer data. The data excludes subscribers in bundle deals.

In its most recent earnings report for the quarter ended June 28, Disney reported 183 million Disney+ and Hulu subscriptions.

Disney declined to comment.