Health officials in Los Angeles county now strongly recommend that people wear masks indoors in public places, regardless of their vaccination status, to prevent the spread of the highly transmissible Delta variant of the coronavirus.
Monday’s recommendation by the LA county health department comes as the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) noted that Delta variants are now responsible for about one in every five new infections across the US.
LA county health officials noted that “fully vaccinated people appear to be well protected from infections with Delta variants”. But the department suggests that people wear masks when inside grocery or retail stores, as well as theaters and family entertainment centers and workplaces when people’s vaccination statuses are not known.
“Until we better understand how and to who the Delta variant is spreading, everyone should focus on maximum protection with minimum interruption to routine as all businesses operate without other restrictions, like physical distancing and capacity limits,” the department said in a news release.
The Delta variant was first detected in India and is now circulating widely in many countries. Cases of Covid-19 and the more contagious Delta variant are rising in some parts of the US, particularly where vaccination rates are low. The variant could quickly become the dominant version of the virus in the US, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky has warned.
With more than 10 million residents, Los Angeles county is the most populous county in the United States. Nearly 68% of county residents over the age of 16 have received at least one dose of the coronavirus vaccine, according to county data, and 59% have been fully vaccinated.
The county experienced a massive wave in Covid-19 cases and deaths over the winter. To date, the county has recorded more than 1.2 million cases and more than 24,000 deaths.
The recommendation comes as recent data has shown that the pandemic in LA county continues to have an unequal impact on certain communities of color, with Black residents contracting Covid and requiring hospitalization at more than twice the rate of white residents
If you don’t have your stimulus check, when’s it coming? If you got the the third one, are you sure you got the correct amount? Here’s what you need to know.
Sarah Tew/CNET
A fresh wave of $1,400 stimulus payments continues to roll out this weekend from the IRS, including to people who receive Social Security, SSI and SSDI benefits. Some are reporting their third stimulus check is in the mail or scheduled for later this week via direct deposit. For an official update on your payment, here’s how to track your stimulus check with the IRS and follow your payment to your mailbox. Brush up on stimulus qualifications here.
Most of these payments are expected to arrive in bank accounts on April 7, the IRS said. However, people who receive veterans benefits and don’t file taxes will need to wait to find out for their payment date. If your stimulus check amount was smaller than you think it should be as a result of your 2019/2020 tax situation and a change to your AGI, you might be eligible for a “plus-up” payment the IRS is sending out through direct deposit and by mail — you don’t need to file an amended tax form to receive it. These new catch-up payments are also going out to people missing money for new dependents, like those who had a 2020 baby, on their 2020 tax return, the IRS said.
There’s more to the stimulus check delivery story as well. For example, if your check never arrives (but an IRS letter said it did), you may need to report that or find the rest of your stimulus money or request a payment trace. That’s why it’s critical you know how much money you should expect. We explain what to anticipate below. In the meantime, here’s what we know about a potential fourth stimulus check, and how child tax credit payments will bring more money if you have eligible dependents and qualify for the CTC. This story has been updated.
Stimulus check schedule: The new timeline and scorecard
This weekend through April 7 (and after), SSI and SSDI recipients will finally get their payments, though many veterans will still have to wait. If you receive federal benefits, you’ll get your stimulus money either as an electronic transfer to an existing benefits card, like Direct Express; a transfer to your bank account; or as a payment through the mail. The IRS won’t send EIP cards to this group, the Social Security Administration said.
Many people who don’t receive federal benefits and didn’t get a direct deposit by March 24 will receive a stimulus payment in the mail as a paper check or EIP debit card. However, some folks may see an electronic transfer appear in their bank account, as an adjustment called a “plus-up.” This is primarily for people who received a partial payment based on their 2019 taxes but who are actually due more money based on their 2020 taxes. The people receiving this now have had their 2020 taxes processed by the IRS. The IRS said it will continue to send these plus-up payments on a weekly basis as it processes tax forms and reevaluates payments.
Note that it could take days between the date the IRS or Treasury processes your payment and when you receive it, especially if your check is delivered through the mail. If your life circumstances changed between getting the second stimulus check, which was authorized in December, and now, any complications could hold up your payment. If you moved recently, you need to tell the IRS and USPS.
Here’s how the checks have been sent so far:
Stimulus check scorecard: Payments so far
Direct deposit
Paper checks
EIP card
Direct Express card
First payment batch, March 17
90 million ($242 billion)
150,000 ($442 million)
Not released
Not released
Second payment batch, March 24
17 million ($38 billion)
15 million ($34 billion)
5 million ($11 billion)
Not released
Third payment batch, including Social Security, April 3
2 million, including “plus-up” adjustments ($5 billion)
2 million ($5 billion)
Not disclosed
Not disclosed
You can (and should) track your payment status. Here are two ways
The IRS updates its Get My Payment tracker tool for stimulus checks daily. This online app shows the status of your payment, including when a check is scheduled for delivery. The IRS portal also flags if there’s a problem with your payment that you may need to address, but it doesn’t tell you the amount you’ll receive. The tracker also shows payment status for SSI and SSDI beneficiaries. You can use a free tool from the USPS to track your mailed stimulus payment.
Social Security, SSI, SSDI, veterans and other federal beneficiaries: What to know about stimulus payment timelines
After a weeks-long holdup, the IRS said it’s making payments for SSDI and SSI recipients and retired railroad workers, many of whom automatically qualify for the third check. The first payments started going out the weekend of April 3, with the majority of payments made electronically — either through direct deposit or to existing Direct Express cards (PDF) — by April 7, according to the IRS.
For those who receive veterans benefits, the IRS said it’s reviewing data for Veterans Affairs benefit recipients and expects to determine a payment date soon, with payments possibly going out by mid-April. VA beneficiary payment information will in the future be available in the Get My Payment tool, the IRS said.
Note that you’ll most likely get the electronic payment transfer if this is how you normally receive benefits, and if you didn’t file taxes in 2019 or 2020. But, some in this subset of non-filers could receive an automatic payment sooner if they got a previous check by using the IRS’ Non-Filers tool, which is now closed. The SSA says this group will not receive an EIP debit card. Here’s our complete guide to stimulus checks for people receiving Social Security benefits.
Stimulus check delivery start and end dates
Stimulus bill signed into law
March 11
First direct deposits made
March 12 (provisional), March 17 (official)
First paper checks sent
Week of March 15
First EIP cards sent
Week of March 22
Last day to get direct deposit
March 24, unless you receive a “plus-up” adjustment for 2020 taxes
First Social Security, SSI, SSDI payment sent
Weekend of April 3, most arriving April 7
First plus-up payments
Weekend of April 3
VA benefits for veteran nonfilers
Mid-April, more details to come
IRS deadline to finish sending checks
Dec. 31, 2021 (mandated by the bill)
Last date to receive a check
January 2022 (if mailed checks sent late December)
Final claims for missing stimulus money
2021 tax season likely (in 2022)
What if you’re missing a part of your stimulus check?
There are several reasons the IRS may owe you stimulus money after it sends out the third round of checks.
For example, the agency may have processed your 2019 tax return before it received 2020 tax forms and you’re entitled to a bigger payment. If this is your situation, the IRS said it will automatically evaluate if you qualify for more money after it receives your 2020 tax return. It will then send you a supplemental payment for the difference between what you originally received and the the amount you now qualify for. You don’t need to take any action to receive this supplemental payment, according to the IRS.
If you had a baby or added a dependent in 2020, the IRS said it will also automatically send you a supplement payment once it receives your taxes this year.
But what if a clerical error accidentally left out a new dependent? Or perhaps your payment never arrived or was accidentally garnished? The IRS may provide a way to file for missing stimulus money before the Dec. 31 deadline. If not, you might have to wait a year to claim it, when you file your 2021 taxes in 2022 (even if you’re a non-filer who isn’t typically required to file taxes).
Now playing: Watch this:
Stimulus check 3: How much money you’ll get
2:32
Your payment delivery could be split up or delayed because …
Here’s more information on problems you might encounter with your stimulus check.
If you don’t get all your stimulus check money right away, you may need to address the issue down the road.
Sarah Tew/CNET
Yes, your tax return could cause a snag in your payment delivery date
Taxes are now due May 17. So how will the IRS figure out how much it owes you? It will calculate your total (you can also do that here) based on the most recent tax filing it’s processed at the time it’s ready to tabulate the amount of your stimulus check.
If you filed your 2020 taxes early and you know your tax return was already processed, your total will likely be based on your 2020 adjusted gross income, not on your 2019 AGI. That presents complications if the difference between the two years disqualifies you from getting a third stimulus check.
On the flip side, if the IRS uses your 2019 taxes and you’re owed more money based on your 2020 AGI and dependents, you’ll need to claim the difference at a later date. (Learn more about some of the stimulus check exceptions and catches here.)
How you should report a problem with your payment
The IRS doesn’t want you to call if you have any issue with the delivery or amount of your stimulus check. So what to do instead? Our guide walks you through how to report stimulus check problems, including checks that never arrive (try filing a payment trace), direct deposit payments that go to the wrong account and other issues.
Millions may wind up getting a smaller check than they’re owed, depending on their 2020 taxes.
Sarah Tew/CNET
Stimulus payments could actually arrive through the end of 2021
Although the IRS and Treasury are sending stimulus checks now, the agencies have until Dec. 31 to complete distributing the third payments. That’s good news in the sense they aren’t facing a compressed deadline to send out all the checks, as they did with the second stimulus check in December, which only gave them a 17-day window to get the payments out.
On the other hand, the nearly nine-month delivery window also means some people may find themselves waiting for their payment, for a variety of reasons. We’ll have to wait and see how the IRS deals with any fringe issues that arise, such as the need to claim missing money.
More details you may need to know about your stimulus payment
Stimulus checks aren’t necessarily a one-size-fits-all situation. Here are additional guides for:
And here’s everything you need to know about the third stimulus check, how to calculate your stimulus total and every way the stimulus bill can bring you more money.
Central banks getting nervous about the Fed’s drunken Money Printing and the US Government’s gigantic debt? But still leery of the Chinese renminbi.
By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET.
The global share of US-dollar-denominated exchange reserves dropped to 59.0% in the fourth quarter, according to the IMF’s COFER data released today. This matched the 25-year low of 1995. These foreign exchange reserves are Treasury securities, US corporate bonds, US mortgage-backed securities, US Commercial Mortgage Backed Securities, etc. held by foreign central banks.
Since 2014, the dollar’s share has dropped by 7 full percentage points, from 66% to 59%, on average 1 percentage point per year. At this rate, the dollar’s share would fall below 50% over the next decade:
Not included in global foreign exchange reserves are the Fed’s own holdings of dollar-denominated assets, its $4.9 trillion in Treasury securities and $2.2 trillion in mortgage-backed securities, that it amassed as part of its QE.
The US dollar’s status as the dominant global reserve currency is a crucial enabler for the US government to keep ballooning its public debt, and for Corporate America’s relentless efforts to create the vast trade deficits by offshoring production to cheap countries, most prominently China and Mexico. They’re all counting on the willingness of other central banks to hold large amounts of dollar-denominated debt.
But it seems, central banks have been getting just a tad nervous and want to diversify their holdings – but ever so slowly, and not all of a sudden, given the magnitude of this thing, which, if mishandled, could blow over everyone’s house of cards.
20 years of decline.
Two decades ago, when the dollar had a share of about 70% of reserve currencies, a presumed competitor became day-to-day reality: The euro, which combined the currencies of the member states into one currency, thereby combining their weight as reserve currency. Since then, the dollar’s share has dropped by 11 percentage points.
By contrast, between 1977 and 1991, the dollars share had dropped by 46 percentage points – with huge plunges in 1979 and 1980 possibly linked to US inflation which was threatening to spiral out of control, peaking at nearly 15% in 1980. The plunge bottomed out in 1991, with inflation more or less under control. And the dollar’s share then surged by 25 percentage points until 2000:
The other reserve currencies.
The euro’s share had since been in the range between 19.5% and 20.6%, but it Q4 it broke out of the range and rose to 21.4%, the highest in the data. The ECB’s holdings of euro-denominated assets that it acquired as part of its QE are not included in the euro-denominated foreign exchange reserves.
The rest of the reserve currencies are also-rans – the spaghetti at the bottom in the chart below. This includes the Chinese renminbi, the bold red line at the bottom:
Renminbi a threat to the dollar’s hegemony? Not yet.
The renminbi’s share is still only 2.25%, despite the magnitude and global influence of China’s economy, and despite the hype when the IMF elevated the renminbi to an official global reserve currency in October 2016 by including it in the basket of currencies that back the Special Drawing Rights (SDRs).
But the renminbi’s share has been creeping up ever so slowly. At the rate it has been gaining momentum over the past two years (+0.36 percentage points in two years), it would take the renminbi another 50 years or so to reach a share of 25%.
Clearly, other central banks are still leery of the renminbi and its implications, and are not eager to dump their dollars all at once in exchange for renminbi; easy does it.
Also-rans under the microscope: Rise of the yen.
To see what’s going on with the spaghetti at the bottom of the above chart, I magnified the scale and limited it to the range of 0% to 6%. This takes the dollar and the euro out of the picture, and allows for a detailed look of the other reserve currencies.
What sticks out is the surge of the yen, the third largest reserve currency. This includes a 2.0-percentage point gain since Q4 2016, which blew away the 1.15-percentage point gain over the same period by the renminbi. With regards to the yen, the renminbi is losing ground.
Despite Brexit and all the scary hoopla around it, the pound sterling (GBP), the fourth largest reserve currency, has not given up any share.
The Eurozone has had a large trade surplus – between €200 billion and €275 billion a year in recent years – with the rest of the world after it emerged from the euro debt crisis in 2012. From the US side, the US trade deficit in goods with the Eurozone was $183 billion in 2020.
The Eurozone’s trade surplus shows that it is easily possible for an economic area with a large trade surplus to also have one of the top reserve currencies. There is no requirement that a large reserve currency must be associated with a large trade deficit. But having the dominant reserve currency helps the US in funding its trade deficits and ballooning government debts.
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Brooklyn’s latest addition of LaMarcus Aldridge isn’t just the rich getting richer. It’s a billionaire winning the Powerball – and everybody else getting triggered.
The Nets officially signed Aldridge on Sunday, after the seven-time All-Star was bought out by San Antonio. It came after they’d already inked six-time All-Star Blake Griffin, and traded for three-time reigning scoring champion James Harden in January, moves that have fans and pundits alike crying foul.
And Griffin is chuckling to himself.
“It’s kind of funny to me, because for the last couple years all I’ve heard is how bad I am. You sign with this team and everybody’s like, ‘that’s not fair!’ ” Griffin said when asked by The Post about the strong reactions. “People say whatever they want. I don’t put a whole lot of value in other people’s opinions.
“I trust the people I trust. If I don’t go to you for advice, then I’m probably not going to take your criticism. So I have that circle of people and I have that group of people that I trust, real basketball people; that’s who I listen to. I just think it’s funny. I guess you could say it’s amusing. I can’t speak for LaMarcus; I don’t know what people have been saying about him. That’s how I felt when I came here. I was hearing how bad I was, and now people care for some reason.”
To say they care would be an understatement. NBA Twitter was aflame with comments once the news of Aldridge’s signing broke Saturday evening, painting the Nets as the villains of the NBA, the Darth Vader of the league.
ESPN figure Stephen A. Smith joined in that chorus with a lengthy soliloquy on Twitter.
“What’s going to be next if you’re the Brooklyn Nets? I mean this is almost like buying a championship for crying out loud. Blake Griffin comes. LaMarcus Aldridge has now decided to go,” Smith ranted. “I mean, you want a championship, I got all of that. You should be the favorites. KD, James Harden, Kyrie, Lethal Weapon 3, but damn! I mean, what about competition?
“You’re just going to get everybody now? Everybody? I mean, I’m looking forward to the playoffs; I want competition. But if we’re just going to stockpile and get everybody and everybody running to Brooklyn to try to steal a championship, I mean, c’mon. KD, Kyrie, James Harden — that’s cool. I get all of that. Blake Griffin couldn’t get some place else? LaMarcus Aldridge, you of all people, after all the years you spent in Portland and San Antonio, that’s what we doing now?”
James Harden (l.) and Blake GriffinAP
Griffin pushed back against the narrative of grand theft title, pointing out that the Lakers drew somewhat similar attention when they added current Nets coach Steve Nash and Dwight Howard in 2012-13 to a team that already boasted the late Kobe Bryant and Pau Gasol. That team finished just seventh in the West.
“It’s just kind of crazy how it all comes together. In the beginning of the season if you’d said that James and LaMarcus and I would end up with the Nets, everybody’s betting against that. So it’s just kind of how it all comes together, how it all shakes out,” said Griffin. “That being said, we still have a ton of work to do, and we still have to prove ourselves.
“There’s been so many examples of teams, people forming teams and everybody makes a big deal of it. I remember when the Lakers got Dwight and Steve. Sometimes it doesn’t work out. We realize that. We know we have work to do and we know we have to be great.”
Griffin and Aldridge join Harden, Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving and DeAndre Jordan. All have made at least one All-Star Game appearance, and they have a combined 41 to their names. But as Griffin points out – and as Nash himself learned on that Lakers team – names don’t guarantee rings.
That’ll be up to the Nets. And if Griffin thinks its crazy that he, Aldridge and Harden have all joined Brooklyn this season, it’s probably just as insane that they’re being viewed as the big bullies of the league after five years ago being bullied, just 20-62 in GM Sean Marks’ first full season.
Irina Pavlova was president of Onexim Sports – the Nets’ parent company – at the time. But times have changed, and so has their standing.
“Somehow being hated,” Pavolva tweeted “feels so much better than being laughed at.”
Donald Trump will seek to return to the political spotlight in an address to a major meeting of conservatives, a source familiar with his plans said on Saturday, as the Republican plots his post-White House moves.
Trump plans to speak to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Orlando, Florida, on 28 February, the last day of their meeting, the source told Reuters on condition of anonymity.
“He’ll be talking about the future of the Republican Party and the conservative movement. Also look for the 45th President to take on President (Joe) Biden’s disastrous amnesty and border policies,” the source said.
Trump’s tumultuous four years in the White House ended shortly after he was impeached on a charge of inciting his supporters’ deadly Jan. 6 attack on the US Capitol, where lawmakers were gathering to certify Biden’s victory in the 3 November election.
After spending two months falsely claiming his election loss was the result of widespread fraud, Trump was acquitted in an impeachment trial held in the Senate after he left office. The 57-43 vote fell short of the two-thirds majority needed for a conviction.
Trump has expressed anger at the 17 Republicans in the House of Representatives and Senate who voted to impeach or convict him, and on Tuesday he aimed his rhetorical fire at Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, the nation’s most senior elected Republican.
The loss of both the White House to Biden and control of the Senate – which Democrats picked up in a pair of upset Georgia election runoff victories last month – has left Republicans on edge as they plot how to win back control of Congress in 2022.
Trump and McConnell parted ways in the weeks after the November election, with Trump irked that the Kentucky Republican had recognized Biden as the winner in mid-December. They have not spoken since, a former White House official said this week.
Trump called McConnell “a dour, sullen, and unsmiling political hack” this week and warned that if Republican senators stayed with him “they will not win again.”
The gap between Trump and McConnell widened when the latter declared after the Senate’s acquittal of the former president that Trump was “practically and morally responsible” for the Capitol siege.
A number of top Republicans who are considered possible candidates for the party’s 2024 presidential nomination are also due to speak at CPAC, including Trump’s secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, and Kristi Noem, the governor of South Dakota.
Two notable Republicans from the Trump administration not on the CPAC speaker list are former UN ambassador Nikki Haley and former Vice President Mike Pence.
Another source told Reuters that Trump had rebuffed a request by Haley to meet with him recently after she was critical of him in a Politico article.
Captured as chicks and kept as status symbol pets in the gardens of hotels and private homes, the birds were almost wiped out. Destruction of their habitat for agriculture added to the pressure and by 2012, only around 300 remained in the wild.
Gray crowned cranes dance together as part of their mating ritual and often mate for life.
But the species has undergone a remarkable recovery in Rwanda thanks to local vet and conservationist Olivier Nsengimana. Living in Rwanda’s capital, Kigali, Nsengimana had found it strange to hear cranes calling from people’s gardens, while wild habitats were almost devoid of the birds. “I told myself someone has got to do something about it,” he says. “Someone has got to make a change.”
Gray crowned cranes are still at risk in other parts of Africa. Nsengimana says there’s no “copy and paste” solution for all countries, but lessons can be learned from Rwanda’s success.
An amnesty
The majestic cranes are seen as “a symbol of wealth and longevity” in Rwanda, says Nsengimana. “People love them so much, but (the) lack of awareness is like too much love … it created a threat.” Taking cranes from the wild is illegal in Rwanda but many pet owners weren’t aware they were breaking the law.
In 2014, Nsengimana worked with the Rwandan government to launch an amnesty program encouraging owners to surrender their pets, without fear of prosecution. He broadcast his message on national radio, asking pet owners to call him on his personal phone number. “I said, I know you also love them, we all love them, but if we keep them in our gardens … we are going to lose them.”
Crane owners across the country responded.
Since 2014, 242 gray crowned cranes have been successfully rescued from captivity, says Nsengimana.
Healthy birds were released to a rehabilitation site in Akagera National Park, near Rwanda’s border with Tanzania, where they relearned how to forage in the wild.
However, many pet cranes previously had their feathers clipped or wings broken to prevent them from escaping. Birds that cannot survive in the wild are kept at Umusambi Village — a crane sanctuary in Kigali run by Nsengimana’s organization, the Rwandan Wildlife Conservation Association (RWCA).
Nsengimana says he wants Rwandans to feel “love and ownership and pride” in their country’s wildlife. As well as welcoming visitors at Umusambi Village, he trains local communities to protect the crane’s habitat, plant trees and monitor wildlife as “Marsh Rangers,” and has designed a conservation-themed comic book, in collaboration with the International Crane Foundation, to inspire young Rwandans.
Last year, a census identified 881 gray crowned cranes in Rwanda, says Nsengimana. He is “fairly confident” that no more cranes remain in captivity in the country.
“This is really a huge success story that we share with all Rwandans,” he says. “If we work together, if we can bring everyone on board, we can achieve the unachievable.”
The future for Rwanda’s gray crowned cranes looks much more secure, but can Nsengimana’s success be replicated elsewhere in Africa?
The international crane trade
Gray crowned cranes are found in 15 countries across eastern and southern Africa, with the biggest populations in South Africa, Kenya, Uganda and Zambia.
It’s illegal to capture and trade gray crowned cranes across most of their range, according to Kerryn Morrison, director for Africa at the International Crane Foundation and senior manager for Africa at the Endangered Wildlife Trust.
But legal protection has not saved the birds.
Across Africa, gray crowned crane populations are estimated to have dropped up to 80% in the past 25 years, with only around 25,000 to 30,000 birds remaining, according to Morrison.
Gray crowned cranes are kept as pets throughout the continent says Morrison. Law enforcement is often weak due to a lack of resources, and a greater focus on protecting larger animals like elephants and rhinos, she says.
Additionally, there has been high demand for the striking birds from international zoos and menageries in recent decades. Between 2000 and 2012 (the most recent data available), the United Arab Emirates and China were the biggest importers.
Morrison says demand from the UAE has slowed in recent years, but the country appears to remain a conduit for cranes, supplying them to the Middle East and Asia.
Read: The Guam rail was extinct in the wild for nearly 40 years. Now it’s back
Sadly, Morrison says Rwanda’s amnesty model is unlikely to work in other African countries. “You just don’t see that same adherence to government policies as you do in Rwanda,” she says. However, creating awareness with local communities in Uganda and Kenya, and training them to monitor cranes, has led to some success in reducing poaching.
Cranes are also threatened by destruction of wetlands, collisions with power lines and poisoning — both intentionally, when cranes are perceived to have damaged farm crops, and unintentionally, when the poison is meant for other animals. People and livestock near nesting sites can distract birds from feeding their young.
Nsengimana says that while cranes are not migratory, they do travel across borders and a “huge” joint effort will be needed to remove them from the endangered species list.
“When I was little, I saw cranes really coexisting with people and … I would really like to see that kind of balance coming back,” says Nsengimana. “We want people to see cranes as part of them, as their friends, as a part of their life.”
PlayStation’s PSN network is having connectivity issues right now, with most services for PS4 and PS5 users experiencing severe problems.
Sony’s servers appear to be down for users across the world based on reports from DownDetector.
Problems with the service first began at around 1am GMT this morning, with reports from players on the rise across social media platforms.
The only good news is that Sony appears to be aware of these issues with the official Sony PlayStation Network Service Status page acknowledging the problems.
“Some services are experiencing issues.” a message reads.
At the time of writing ALL services on the official Sony PlayStation Network service status page are showing as red (as in, not working).
This includes: Account Management, Gaming And Social, PlayStation Now, the PlayStation Store.
A message from Sony reads: “You might have difficulty signing in or creating an account for PlayStation Network. We’re working to resolve the issue as soon as possible. Thank you for your patience.
“You might have difficulty launching games, apps, or network features. We’re working to resolve the issue as soon as possible.
For the time being it’s not clear how long the ongoing PSN issues might take to resolve, but with Sony aware of the problems, hopefully, it won’t be too much longer.
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