Billionaire Bezos gave US newspaper instructions on election recommendations

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Lerato Khumalo

2:44 a.m.: Chinese hackers have targeted phone data belonging to Donald Trump and his running mate JD Vance, according to US media reports. But the people surrounding the campaign team of Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris have also come into their sights, report the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. It was unclear in the reports whether the hackers, who were suspected of being linked to Chinese intelligence, were able to steal any data.

Data from mobile phone providers can be used to see, for example, who called whom, when and for how long, and who text messages were exchanged with.

The FBI only says that unauthorized access to the telecommunications infrastructure by actors with ties to China is being investigated. It was discovered weeks ago that a hacker group had broken into the systems of several American mobile phone providers.

11:50 p.m.: The Washington Post’s decision not to support any of the US presidential candidates came at the direction of the newspaper’s owner, billionaire Jeff Bezos. The Washington Post itself reports this on its website. The decision caused criticism among employees. The traditional American newspaper had been in favor of a candidate for 30 years. One of the newspaper’s best-known columnists, Robert Kagan, then announced his resignation.

An election recommendation for Democrat Kamala Harris had already been written in the newspaper’s commentary editorial team, it said, citing anonymous sources. Former editor-in-chief Martin Baron, who led the newspaper through the Trump administration and retired in 2021, criticized the decision as “cowardice.” Trump will take it as encouragement to further intimidate Bezos and other media owners.

9:23 p.m.: More than 80 US Nobel Prize winners have written an open letter in favor of Democrat Kamala Harris as president. “This is the most momentous presidential election in a long time, perhaps ever, for the future of science and the United States,” says the letter, which was published by the New York Times, among others. “We as signatories strongly support Harris.”