Well there was a solar flare in the last day.

Also, DTJr. has a point: if you even glance over the science, their story is complete nonsense. Primarily, the MAFF is wrong. Solar flares have a particular particle component that take EIGHT days to traverse the distance from the Sun, and hit the Earth, unlike the regular (light) waves that takes only 8 minutes. Moreover, the sunspot that generates a flare (and it's a big active one, this time) NEEDS to be Earthfacing before we feel anything EIGHT days later. Small geometric error, I am sure.

In any case, it is easy to predict a year, in which this sort of news item comes to the front pages regularly - it is at the solar Maximum that occurs every 11 years, and this year is one of those. So they figured to have a script ready for the wee Mockingbirds. So, any shenanigans involving a national outage can be planned for nicely, they thought.

Problem is: employing diversity hires to release the script when Solar flares are nooticed. They did not get the memo re: waiting a week, or reacting only when a chosen spot is facing the Earth.