Authorities in two Russian regions have restricted the Telegram messenger due to worries that adversaries would use it, the TASS state news agency said on Saturday, according to a regional minister of digital development.
TakeAway Points:
- Authorities in two Russian regions have blocked the Telegram messenger because of concerns that the app could be used by enemies, a regional digital development minister was quoted as saying by the TASS state news agency on Saturday.
- Muslim regions in southern Russia where intelligence services have registered an increase in militant Islamist activity.
- Oracle’s federal electronic health record experienced a nationwide outage on Tuesday, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs confirmed.
Telegram app is blocked in two Russian regions
Dagestan and Chechnya are mainly Muslim regions in southern Russia where intelligence services have registered an increase in militant Islamist activity.
“It (Telegram) is often used by enemies, an example of which is the riots at the Makhachkala airport,” said Yuri Gamzatov, Dagestan’s digital development minister, adding that the decision to block the messenger had been made at the federal level.
Gamzatov was referring to an anti-Israel riot in Dagestan in October 2023, when hundreds of protesters stormed an airport to try to attack passengers arriving on a plane from the Jewish state. No passengers were injured, and authorities have prosecuted several people over the incident.
News of the plane’s arrival had spread on local Telegram channels, where users posted calls for antisemitic violence. Telegram condemned the attack and said it would block the channels.
Telegram did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the blocks in Russia.
Based in Dubai and founded by Russian-born Pavel Durov, the messenger has nearly 1 billion users and is used widely in Russia, Ukraine and other former Soviet republics.
Moscow tried but failed to block Telegram in 2018 and has in the past demanded the platform hand over user data. Durov is under formal investigation in France as part of a probe into organised crime on the app.
Gamzatov, the minister in Dagestan, said Telegram could be unblocked in the future, but encouraged users to switch to other messengers in the meantime.
The federal electronic health record of Oracle experienced a nationwide outage
Oracle’s federal electronic health record experienced a national outage on Tuesday, according to the Department of Veterans Affairs.
The agency said “all users” of the company’s Federal EHR, including the VA, the Department of Defense, the U.S. Coast Guard, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, were impacted. Six VA medical centers, 26 community clinics, and remote VA sites experienced disruptions, the agency said.
“Affected VA medical facilities followed standard contingency procedures during the outage to ensure continuity of care for veterans,” a VA spokesperson said in a statement Thursday.
An electronic health record, or an EHR, is a digital version of a patient’s medical history that’s updated by doctors and nurses. It’s crucial software within the U.S. healthcare system, and outages can cause serious disruptions to patient care.
Oracle is one of the largest EHR vendors thanks to it’s $28 billion acquisition of medical records giant Cerner in 2022.
The outage
The company’s federal EHR initially started experiencing issues at around 8:37 a.m. Eastern time on Tuesday, the VA said. Users reported that the software froze and they were unable to access applications. Access was restored and cleared by 2:05 p.m. ET that day after Oracle restarted the system.
Oracle is carrying out an investigation to determine what caused the outage, the VA said. Oracle did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment.
The outage marks Oracle’s latest stumble in a thorny, yearslong EHR rollout with the VA, which has been marred by patient safety concerns. The agency launched a strategic review of Cerner in 2021, before Oracle’s acquisition, and it temporarily paused deployment of the software in 2023.
Four VA facilities in Michigan are slated to deploy Oracle’s federal EHR in 2026.
In October, Oracle unveiled a brand-new EHR equipped with fresh cloud and artificial intelligence capabilities. The early adopter program for the software begins this year, though it’s not clear if the VA has plans to utilize it.
Oracle is slated to report fiscal third-quarter earnings on Monday.
