Microsoft apologises after thousands report new outage

Technology giant Microsoft has apologised after thousands in the UK 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 millions of computers inaccessible, impacting healthcare and travel.

Microsoft said it was "investigating reports of issues connecting to Microsoft services globally".

"We sincerely apologise for the inconvenience," it said in a post on X, formerly Twitter.

"Our experts are currently investigating the situation in order to resolve it as soon as possible."

An alert on the technology giant's service status website on Tuesday said it was looking into a "network infrastructure" issue that was impacting access to Microsoft Azure - the cloud computing platform behind many of its services.