Harris, Biden to hit trail for first time since switch-up
Microsoft researchers report Iran hackers targeting US officials before election
Saturday, 10 August 2024
REHOBOTH BEACH (United States), Aug 09 (AFP/Reuters): Kamala Harris and Joe Biden will next week make their first joint campaign trip since the US president's shock decision to drop out of the 2024 White House race against Donald Trump.
Seeking to burnish his legacy in his final months in office and support the new Democratic ticket, Biden will appear alongside his vice president at an event in the state of Maryland near Washington on August 15.
The pair would "discuss the progress they are making to lower costs for the American people", the White House said in a statement Friday, adding that further details would be released later.
Inflation remains a weak spot for Democrats ahead of November's election.
Harris has fired up the Democratic Party since Biden announced he was stepping aside following a disastrous debate against Trump that highlighted concerns about his age and mental acuity.
The first female, Black and South Asian vice president in US history has held a series of packed rallies, pulled in record fundraising and wiped out Republican ex-president Trump's poll lead.
Meanwhile, Microsoft researchers said on Friday that Iran government-tied hackers tried breaking into the account of a "high ranking official" on the US presidential campaign in June, weeks after breaching the account of a county-level US official.
The breaches were part of Iranian groups' increasing attempts to influence the US presidential election in November, the researchers said in a report that did not provide any further detail on the "official" in question.
The report follows recent statements by senior US Intelligence officials that they'd seen Iran ramp up use of clandestine social media accounts with the aim to use them to try to sow political discord in the United States.
Iran's mission to the United Nations in New York told Reuters in a statement that its cyber capabilities were "defensive and proportionate to the threats it faces" and that it had no plans to launch cyber attacks. "The US presidential election is an internal matter in which Iran does not interfere," the mission added in response to the allegations in the Microsoft report.