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Internet users have reported difficulties accessing popular websites and apps including Signal, Coinbase and Robinhood.

Major websites including popular gaming, financial and social media platforms have been facing serious connectivity issues after Amazon’s cloud services unit AWS was hit by an outage.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) confirmed the issue in an update on its status page on Monday, after web users reported difficulties accessing websites.

“We can confirm significant error rates for requests made to the DynamoDB endpoint in the US-EAST-1 Region,” said the AWS status update.

In a subsequent update it said it had “identified a potential root cause for [the] error rates” and was “working on multiple parallel paths to accelerate recovery”.

Major platforms including AI startup Perplexity, trading app Robinhood, messaging app Signal and crypto exchange Coinbase all said their issues were due to the AWS outage.

“Perplexity is down right now. The root cause is an AWS issue. We’re working on resolving it,” Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas said in a post on X.

AWS is one of the giant cloud computing service providers, competing with Google’s and Microsoft’s cloud services to offer on-demand computing power, data storage and other digital services to companies and institutions.

Issues with its servers can wreak havoc on the web, with so many companies relying on its infrastructure to function.

Downdetector, a site where web users report outages, carried a roll call of popular sites where users had experienced access difficulties amid the outage.

Names on the list included Zoom, Roblox, Fortnite, Duolingo, Canva, Wordle and more.

Amazon’s shopping website, PrimeVideo and Alexa were also facing issues, according to the site.

The Reuters news agency reported that Uber rival Lyft’s app was also down for thousands of users in the US, while many UK bank customers were also reporting outages.

SACRAMENTO — State lawmakers approved a bill Monday that would ban online pet dealer websites and shadowy middlemen who pose as local breeders from selling dogs to California consumers — the latest move to curtail the pipeline from out-of-state puppy mills.

Assemblymember Marc Berman (D-Menlo Park) said Assembly Bill 519 will help ensure buyers aren’t misled about where their puppies come from after a Times investigation last year detailed how designer dogs are trucked into California from out-of-state commercial breeders and resold by people claiming to be small, local operators.

“AB 519 would close this loophole that allows this dishonest practice,” Berman said.

California became the first state in the nation with a 2019 law to bar pet stores from selling commercially bred dogs. That retail ban, however, did not apply to online pet sales, which grew rapidly during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Berman’s bill would ban online marketplaces where dogs are sold by brokers, which is defined as any person or business that sells or transports a dog bred by someone else for profit. That would include major national pet retailers such as PuppySpot as well as California-based operations that market themselves as pet matchmakers. AB 519, which now heads to Gov. Gavin Newsom for his consideration, applies to dogs, cats and rabbits under a year old.

Puppy Spot opposed the bill, writing in a letter to lawmakers that it would dismantle a system they say works for families — particularly those seeking specific breeds for allergy concerns. PuppySpot CEO Claire Komorowski wrote to Berman in May that their online marketplace maintains internal breeder standards that exceed regulatory mandates.

“We believe this bill penalizes responsible, transparent operations while doing little to prevent the underground or unregulated sales that put animal health and consumer trust at risk,” PuppySpot CEO Claire Komorowski wrote to Berman in May.

The bill does not apply to police dogs or service animals and provides an exemption for shelters, rescues and 4H clubs.

“This measure is an important step in shutting down deceptive sales tactics of these puppy brokers and lessening the financial and emotional harm to families who unknowingly purchase sick or poorly bred pets,” Attorney General Rob Bonta wrote in a letter of support for the bill. “By eliminating the profit incentive for brokers while preserving legitimate avenues for Californians to obtain animals, AB 519 protects consumers, supports shelters and rescues that are already at capacity, and advances California’s commitment to the humane treatment of animals.”

Two other bills stemming from The Times’ investigation are expected to pass the Legislature this week as lawmakers wrap up session and send a flurry of bills to the governor. The package of bills has overwhelming bipartisan support.

AB 506 by Assemblymember Steve Bennett (D-Ventura) would void pet purchase contracts involving California buyers if the pet seller requires a nonrefundable deposit. The bill would also make the pet seller liable if they fail to disclose the breeder’s name and information, as well as medical information about the animal.

The Times’ investigation found that some puppies advertised on social media, online marketplaces or through breeder websites as being California-bred were actually imported from out-of-state puppy mills. To trace dogs back to mass breeding facilities, The Times requested Certificates of Veterinary Inspection, which are issued by a federally accredited veterinarian listing where the animal came from, its destination and verification it is healthy to travel.

The California Department of Food and Agriculture has long received those health certificates from other states by mistake — the records are supposed to go to county public health departments — and, in recent years, made it a practice to immediately destroy them. Dog importers who were supposed to submit the records to counties largely failed to do so.

The Times analyzed the movement of more than 71,000 dogs into California since 2019, when the pet retail ban went into effect. The travel certificates showed how a network of resellers replaced pet stores as middlemen while disguising where puppies were actually bred. In some cases, new owners discovered that they were sold a puppy by a person using a fake name and temporary phone numbers after their new pet became sick or died.

After The Times’ reporting, lawmakers and animal activists called on the state agriculture department to stop “destroying evidence” of the decepitive practices by destroying the records. The department began preserving the records thereafter, but has so far released the records with significant redactions.

SB 312 by state Sen. Tom Umberg (D-Orange) would require pet sellers to share the travel certificate with the state agriculture agency, which would then make them available without redactions to the public. An earlier version of the bill required the state department to publish information from the certificates online, but that was removed amid opposition.

“Given the high propensity for misleading consumers and the large volume of dogs entering the state, the health certificate information is in the public interest for individual consumers to review to confirm information conveyed to them by sellers and to also hopefully be helpful to humane law enforcement agencieds as they work to investigate fraud and malfeasance,” said Bennet said Monday in support of Umberg’s bill.

WASHINGTON, July 1 (UPI) — The Trump administration has quietly shut down a major federal website that hosted congressionally mandated national climate assessments, which were the U.S. government’s preeminent reports on climate change impacts, risks and responses.

The disappearance Monday of the U.S. Global Change Research Program’s website marked an unexpected loss in public access to the most crucial source for climate-related science.

Also missing was access to previous National Climate Assessments, which are robust scientific evaluations used by lawmakers, scientists and the public to understand and mitigate climate change trends.

Climate scientists condemned the missing access to the vital climate science information, which offered guidance to communities on the climate risks they face, as well as how to plan for and safeguard residents from climate-related disasters like floods and wildfires.

Rachel Brittin, the former deputy director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association’s external affairs office, said the removal of the website “silences scientists” and “blinds decision-makers.”

“Americans deserve facts — not censorship — when it comes to preparing for a changing world,” Brittin, who served during the current Trump administration, said in a statement to Medill News Service.

Patrick Gonzalez, a climate change scientist at UC Berkeley and co-author of the third and fourth National Climate Assessments, criticized the Trump administration for “suppressing the science of human-caused climate change because they are afraid of the facts, which disprove their erroneous opinions.”

None of the five previous iterations of the assessment was available through the Global Change Research Program website as of Tuesday afternoon. Clicking on the 2023 Fifth National Climate Assessment produced an error message.

Archived versions of the assessments were buried deep in the Environmental Protection Agency website, but only via the agency’s search engine. They also could also be accessed through the Wayback Machine, a non-profit Internet archive.

Some climate scientists downloaded copies of past assessments and uploaded them to their own websites after the site went dark.

The White House did not respond to a request for comment concerning whether the assessments would be available again online.

In 1990, Congress passed the Global Change Research Act, which mandated the federal government to create the Global Change Research Program and require a report every four years on the current state of global climate change.

The National Climate Assessment qualified as a Highly Influential Scientific Assessment, which Congress mandated in 2005 be publicly accessible.

President Donald Trump targeted the Global Change Research Program in the past. Trump removed Michael Kuperberg, the former executive director of the program, from the position in November 2020.

Former President Joe Biden reinstated Kuperberg as head of the program in July 2021, where he oversaw the fourth and fifth editions of the National Climate Assessment.

In April, scientists working on the Sixth National Climate Assessment were relieved from their duties. In the dismissal email, the administration said “the scope of the [National Climate Assessment] is currently being re-evaluated.”

On June 23, the Trump administration released a memorandum directing federal agencies to incorporate “Gold Standard Science” tenets into their research. In an executive order in May, Trump decreed that science must be “reproducible” and “skeptical of its findings and assumptions,” among other descriptors.

The administration referenced the memorandum to justify deleting climate.gov, another high-traffic federal website for climate change information. Climate.gov redirected users to the NOAA website as of June 24.

In the same executive order, Trump said previous administrations “promoted scientific information in a highly misleading manner.”

The executive order also said that federal decision-making under this standard would use the “most credible, reliable and impartial scientific evidence available.”

WASHINGTON — Citing the explosion of online porn, the Supreme Court ruled Friday that states may enforce age verification laws in hopes of screening out children and young teens.

By a 6-3 vote, the justices rejected a free-speech claim from the adult entertainment industry.

“The power to require age verification is within a State’s authority to prevent children from accessing sexually explicit content,” said Justice Clarence Thomas for the court.

The free-speech advocates who challenged the law said it would infringe the rights of adults because they could be forced to disclose their identity.

But the court disagreed.

The Texas law “advances the State’s important interest in shielding children from sexually explicit content. And, it is appropriately tailored because it permits users to verify their ages through the established methods of providing government-issued identification and sharing transactional data,” Thomas said.

The court’s three liberals dissented.

Under the Texas law, a website must use “reasonable age verification methods” to confirm visitors are at least 18 years old if more than one-third of its content is “sexual material harmful to minors.”
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More than 21 other Republican-led states have adopted similar laws in recent years.

In defense of the Texas law, Atty. Gen. Ken Paxton said that prior to the internet, the court had upheld laws that required bookstores or magazine stands to “check the age of their customers before selling them pornography.”

He argued that moving their business online should not give pornographers a 1st Amendment right “to provide access to nearly inexhaustible amounts of obscenity to any child with a smartphone.”

State officials also said porn online is increasingly violent and degrading.

“The average child is exposed to internet pornography while still in elementary school,” wrote state attorneys for Ohio and Indiana. “Pornography websites receive more traffic in the U.S. than social media platforms Instagram, TikTok, Netflix, and Pinterest combined.”