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Here's today's free edition. This is the World in Brief from The Economist.

Our top stories. An IT outage caused business around the world to grind to a halt

after thousands of workers were unable to log on to their computers.

The outage has been blamed on an update to software provided by Crowd Strike, an American

cyber security firm which caused problems with Microsoft Windows operating system.

More than 4,000 flights were grounded around the world.

Financial services, retailers and media companies were also affected by the disruption.

Evan Gerschkovich, an American reporter who works for the Wall Street Journal, was convicted

by a Russian court of spying.

Mr Gershkovich, who was arrested during a reporting trip to Yacatraberg in March 2023,

was sentenced to serve 16 years in a penal colony.

America's State Department describes the case as a, quote,

fake sham legal process.

Joe Biden, America's President, vowed to return to the campaign trail next week after self-isulating with COVID.

Meanwhile, more Democrats called on him to abandon his re-election bid.

Four congressmen endorsed Carmeler Harris, the Vice President, as their preferred candidate.

Earlier this week, reports emerged that Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi had joined other high-profile

...