The same Russian military intelligence outfit that hacked the Democrats in 2016 has renewed vigorous U.S. election-related targeting, trying to breach computers at more than 200 organizations including political campaigns and their consultants, Microsoft said Thursday.The intrusion attempts reflect a stepped-up effort to infiltrate the U.S. political establishment, the company said.”What we’ve seen is consistent with previous attack patterns that not only target candidates and campaign staffers but also those who they consult on key issues,” Tom Burt, a Microsoft vice president, said in a blog post. U.K. and European political groups were also probed, he added.Most of the hacking attempts by Russian, Chinese and Iranian agents were halted by Microsoft security software and the targets notified, he said. The company would not comment on who may have been successfully hacked or the impact.Although U.S. intelligence officials said last month that the Russians favor President Donald Trump and the Chinese prefer his Democratic challenger, former Vice President Joe Biden, Microsoft noted Thursday that Chinese state-backed hackers have targeted “high profile individuals associated with the election,” including people associated with the Biden campaign.China’s hackers largely gather intelligence for economic and political advantage, while Russia tends to weaponize stolen data to destabilize other governments.Microsoft did not assess which foreign adversary poses the greater threat to the integrity of the November presidential election. The consensus among cybersecurity experts is that Russian interference is the gravest. Senior Trump administration officials have disputed that, although without offering any evidence.”This is the actor from 2016, potentially conducting business as usual,” said John Hultquist, director of intelligence analysis at the cybersecurity firm FireEye. “We believe that Russian military intelligence continues to pose the greatest threat to the democratic process.”Fancy BearThe Microsoft post shows that Russian military intelligence continues to pursue election-related targets undeterred by U.S indictments, sanctions and other countermeasures, Hultquist said. It interfered in the 2016 campaign seeking to benefit the Trump campaign by hacking the Democratic National Committee and emails of John Podesta, the campaign manager for Hillary Clinton, and dumping embarrassing material online, congressional and FBI investigators have found.The same GRU military intelligence unit, known as Fancy Bear, that Microsoft identifies as being behind the current election-related activity also broke into voter registration databases in at least three states in 2016, though there is no evidence it tried to interfere with voting.Microsoft, which has visibility into these efforts because its software is both ubiquitous and highly rated for security, did not address whether U.S. officials who manage elections or operate voting systems have been targeted by state-backed hackers this year. U.S. intelligence officials say they have so far seen no evidence of infiltrations.Thomas Rid, a Johns Hopkins University geopolitics expert, said he was disappointed by Microsoft’s refusal to differentiate threat level by state actor.”They’re lumping in actors that operate in a very different fashion, probably to make this sound more bipartisan,” he said. “I just don’t understand why.”Microsoft said in the past year it has observed attempts by Fancy Bear to break into the accounts of people directly and indirectly affiliated with the U.S. election, including consultants serving Republican and Democratic campaigns and national and state party organizations — more than 200 groups in all.Also targeted was the center-right European People’s Party, the largest grouping in the European Parliament. A party spokesperson said the hacking attempts were unsuccessful. The German Marshall Fund of the United States, a think tank, was another target. A spokesperson said there was no evidence of intrusion.Hurricane PandaMicrosoft did not say whether Russian hackers had attempted to break into the Biden campaign but did say that Chinese hackers from the state-backed group known as Hurricane Panda “appears to have indirectly and unsuccessfully” targeted the Biden campaign through non-campaign email accounts belonging to people affiliated with it.The Biden campaign did not confirm the attempt, although it said in a statement that it was aware of the Microsoft report.Iranian state-backed hackers unsuccessfully tried to log into accounts of Trump campaign and administration officials between May and June of this year, the blog said.”We are a large target, so it is not surprising to see malicious activity directed at the campaign or our staff,” Trump campaign deputy press secretary Thea McDonald said. She declined further comment.Tim Murtaugh, the campaign’s communications director, said: “President Trump will beat Joe Biden fair and square and we don’t need or want any foreign interference.”In June, Google disclosed that Hurricane Panda had targeted Trump campaign staffers while Iranian hackers tried to breach accounts of Biden campaign workers. Such phishing attempts typically involve forged emails with links designed to harvest passwords or infect devices with malware.Although both Attorney General William Barr and National Security Adviser Robert O’Brien have said China represents the greatest threat to U.S. elections, Microsoft’s only mention of a Trump administration official targeted by Chinese hackers is “at least one prominent individual formerly associated” with the administration.Disinformation campaignsGraham Brookie, director of digital forensic research at The Atlantic Council, disputes the claim made by Barr and O’Brien that China poses the greater threat to this year’s election. Brookie’s lab is at the forefront of unearthing and publicizing Russian disinformation campaigns.Brookie confirmed that his employer was among targets of Hurricane Panda but said there was no evidence the hacking attempts, which he said were unsuccessful, had anything to do with the 2020 election.”We have every indication that this was an instance of cyber-espionage, information gathering, as opposed to electoral interference,” he said.By contrast, Brookie said, “it’s pretty evident that the Russian attempts (Microsoft disclosed) were focused on electoral processes and groups working on that.”Microsoft noted a shift toward greater automation in Fancy Bear methods for trying to steal people’s log-in credentials, which previously largely relied on phishing. In recent months, the group has employed so-called brute-force attacks that barrage an account login with short rapid bursts of potential passwords. It has also used a different method that makes only intermittent login attempts to avoid detection.Fancy Bear has also stepped up its use of the Tor anonymizing service to hide its hacking, Microsoft said.  
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More than 500,000 people in Oregon — more than 1 in 10 Oregonians — have been forced to evacuate their homes and towns because of one of the 100 major wildfires burning across the state, the Oregon Office of Emergency Management said.In the U.S. West Coast state of Oregon, wildfires have left at least four people dead in the past 48 hours, destroyed thousands of homes and burned 365,000 hectares. Several towns were destroyed in Oregon and one in Washington state.Police have opened an arson investigation into the Almeda Fire, which started in Ashland, Oregon, near the state line with California, said Ashland Police Chief Tighe O’Meara. The fire raced north and destroyed an estimated 600 homes in the towns just north of Ashland.Dora Negrete is consoled consoled by her son Hector Rocha after seeing their destroyed mobile home at the Talent Mobile Estates, Sept. 10, 2020, in Talent, Ore., as wildfires devastate the region.Two of Oregon’s largest fires are expected to merge southeast of Oregon’s largest city, Portland. Chief Deputy State Fire Marshal Mariana Ruiz Temple said she discussed the possibility of evacuating some parts of the Portland metro area with local authorities. She said everything would depend on wind direction and force.“We have never seen this amount of uncontained fire across the state,” Oregon Gov. Kate Brown said at a news conference.In California, wildfires continued to sweep across the state Thursday, killing at least three people and destroying hundreds of homes and burning more than a million hectares, significantly more than what was burned last year.Authorities said hundreds, if not thousands, of homes have been damaged or destroyed by the fire in the western state’s northern Sierra Nevada range. They said some 20,000 people in Butte, Plumas and Yuba counties were under evacuation orders or warnings.Many homes in the Butte County hamlet of Berry Creek, with a population of 525, were incinerated.The so-called North Complex near the small Northern California city of Oroville that had been burning for weeks was 50% contained until wind gusts up to 72 kilometers per hour on Tuesday and Wednesday caused the fire to expand sixfold.The fire, which killed three people, was 24% contained on Wednesday after the winds subsided, but officials warn it is still a threat. 
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The United States on Thursday sanctioned four Russian-linked operatives, accusing them of trying to meddle in the upcoming U.S. presidential election.The sanctioned individuals are Andrii Derkach, a Ukrainian member of Parliament tied to Russian intelligence, and three other Russian-based operatives connected to the Internet Research Agency troll farm based in St. Petersburg.FILE – U.S. President Donald Trump listens to a question as he answers reporters questions during a news conference at the White House in Washington, Sept. 4, 2020.The sanctions come even as U.S. President Donald Trump and some of his top intelligence officials have insisted that China, not Russia, represents the biggest threat to the November 3 vote.But in a statement Thursday, the U.S. Treasury Department singled out Derkach, calling him “an active Russian agent for over a decade, maintaining close connections with the Russian Intelligence Services.”The assessments echo warnings put out last month by the nation’s top counterintelligence official that Derkach was actively working to undermine the campaign of the Democratic presidential candidate, former Vice President Joe Biden.FILE – President Donald Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani smiles as he arrives at Trump’s campaign rally in Manchester, New Hampshire, Aug. 15, 2019.Derkach met with Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani in Ukraine in December, as Giuliani attempted to collect derogatory information on Biden’s and his son Hunter’s business relationships in Ukraine.He becomes the second person to be sanctioned under Trump’s September 2018 executive order, aimed at pushing back against foreign interference in U.S. elections.The only other person to be sanctioned under that executive order is Yevgeniy Prigozhin, who has been described as the financier of Russia’s IRA.U.S. officials say the other three Russians sanctioned Thursday — Anton Andreyev, Darya Aslanova and Artem Lifshits — were all employees of the Russian troll factory. Additionally, the Justice Department identified one of them, Lifshits, as a manager of IRA’s “Project Lakhta,” previously described by U.S. officials as a Russian influence operation that has been active since 2014.The Justice Department charged Lifshits, 27, of conspiring to use the stolen identities of Americans to open fraudulent accounts at banking and cryptocurrency exchanges.Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin speaks with reporters at the White House, July 23, 2020, in Washington.Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Thursday, “Derkach and other Russian agents employ manipulation and deceit to attempt to influence elections in the United States and elsewhere around the world. The United States will continue to use all the tools at its disposal to counter these Russian disinformation campaigns and uphold the integrity of our election system.”The U.S. sanctions block U.S. financial and property interests of the four individuals, and Americans are prohibited from conducting any business transactions with them.
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Private consultants to the federal official who oversees Medicare billed taxpayers almost $6 million in less than two years to bolster her personal image, including efforts to win awards, place her on lists of powerful women and arrange meetings with influential people, a report by congressional Democrats said Thursday.Medicare is a U.S. government program that pays most health care costs incurred by senior citizens.The consultants, many with Republican Party ties, billed taxpayers up to $380 per hour on work largely aimed at polishing the profile of Medicare administrator Seema Verma, the investigators wrote. The contractors were “handpicked” by Verma’s aides, the report said, creating “a shadow operation” that sidelined the communications staff of the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.The consultants’ work often had nothing to do with running Medicare, Medicaid and other massive health programs that the agency operates, said the 56-page report, which was backed by more than 1,700 pages of documents. Verma has run the agency since 2017. “Congress did not intend for Administrator Verma or other senior CMS officials to use taxpayer dollars to stockpile CMS with handpicked consultants or promote Administrator Verma’s public profile and personal brand,” the report said.  “Given the reckless disregard she has shown for the public’s trust, Administrator Verma should reimburse the taxpayers for these inappropriate expenditures,” it said. Agency officials did not immediately respond to emails and phone calls placed to them seeking comment. ‘Deep concerns’ from Verma When similar findings were unveiled by the inspector general of the Department of Health and Human Services in July, Verma said she had “deep concerns” with the conclusions and said that report mischaracterized the contractors’ jobs.  The report released Thursday was prepared by the Democratic staffs of two Senate and two House committees.  It said that besides burnishing Verma’s image, the consultants took the lead fashioning agency communications strategies and had access to sensitive internal information that could affect financial markets.  Marcus Barlow, a consultant who’d previously worked for Verma at a firm in Indiana, billed the Medicare agency for hours comparable to those of full-time workers and had decision-making powers over some federal workers, the report said.  Consultants arranged for private meetings between Verma and hosts of conservative Fox News and editors of Woman’s Day and Women’s Health magazines, the investigators wrote. VOA contributed to this report.
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China and the United States traded attacks about who best understands press freedom as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo criticized the official newspaper of China’s ruling Communist Party for refusing to carry an op-ed by the U.S. ambassador.The strongly worded comments from both sides come amid rapidly deteriorating relations between the world’s two largest economies ahead of November’s U.S. presidential election, with arguments over trade, human rights and the COVID-19 pandemic.”The People’s Daily’s response once again exposes the Chinese Communist Party’s fear of free speech and serious intellectual debate – as well as Beijing’s hypocrisy when it complains about lack of fair and reciprocal treatment in other countries,” Pompeo said in a statement late on Wednesday.The refusal by the People’s Daily comes after a U.S. decision to revoke more than 1,000 visas of Chinese nationals this week, and as both countries restrict or revoke visas for each others’ journalists.Titled “Resetting the Relationship Based on Reciprocity,” Ambassador Terry Branstad’s article referred to an imbalance in the U.S.-China relationship, noting that U.S. companies, journalists, diplomats, and even civil society suffered unequal access in China.”While U.S. journalists face restrictions on reporting and even entering China, Chinese state media workers have long enjoyed open access in the United States,” Branstad wrote.Issuing its response in a letter, the People’s Daily said the U.S. envoy’s article failed to meet its standards.”In our opinion, the op-ed in the name of Ambassador Branstad is full of loopholes and seriously inconsistent with facts,” the paper said, in a letter released by the State Department.In a statement on Thursday, the paper said it had the right, like U.S. media, to decide what it publishes and to make necessary edits, decrying Pompeo’s remarks as a vicious attack on Chinese media.”It is extremely ironic that on the one hand the U.S. side rudely and unreasonably suppresses Chinese media like the People’s Daily as Communist Party ‘propaganda machines’, and on the other demands they disseminate wrong points of view for the United States.”Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said China’s ambassador in Washington, who frequently appears in U.S. media, has never smeared his host country and is committed to promoting friendly exchanges and cooperation.Pompeo said China must respect the free press.”Their refusal to do so shows just how much China’s unelected Party elites fear their own people’s free-thinking and the free world’s judgment about their governance practices inside China.”
 
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Some of the world’s richest countries are struggling to make ends meet as energy prices continue to fall. Some analysts think oil production might still be profitable at $40 a barrel, but they say that none of the Arab states, except Qatar, likely could balance their budgets at this level.It’s believed the largest oil producer, Saudi Arabia— reliant on oil for 70% of its budget—needs an oil price of $80 a barrel to balance its books.
Safwan Masri, executive vice president of Columbia University’s Global Centers, told an online seminar from Amman that the economies of the Gulf Arab oil exporters have been greatly affected by the pandemic.
“When you look at some of the GCC (Gulf Cooperations Council) countries you find that many are insulated, but they certainly are not immune,” Masri said. “Fitch downgraded Oman’s credit rating for the second time this year, as just as one example. In Kuwait, you have a $46 billion budget shortfall, and they may have to begin borrowing internationally to pay the public sectors salaries of Kuwaiti employees. Other GCC countries are tapping into foreign currency reserves, potentially undermining (taxes) against the dollar.”
While economists point to Kuwait’s $550 billion in assets stashed in the country’s Future Generations Fund, which is designed to guarantee prosperity after the oil runs out, depleting that resource is controversial. Some Kuwaitis said now is the time to start drawing it down, while others warn that without taking concrete steps to diversify the economy and create jobs, such a safety net could run out in 15 to 20 years.Other Arab countries, like Jordan, do not have the financial cushion that oil producers can draw on at this time. Masri points out Jordan’s first quarter revenues plunged by nearly $1 billion dollars compared to the previous year.Ziad Fariz, Jordan’s Central Bank governor, told the seminar that all of Jordan’s sectors have been affected, including its lucrative tourism industry, which suffered a 75% loss.
“This coronavirus came while we were about to move in growth after a very slow period,” Fariz said. “We were hoping that growth would resume by 2020. This drama came, this shock which got everybody by surprise. The impact was huge. The assessment is always moving in a negative direction. We were expecting growth of more than 2% this year, now the expectation is that growth will be negative 4.6%.Fariz says the challenge for Jordan and other countries is how to reduce their debt levels to something sustainable.
 
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За два тижні долар подорожчав на 44 копійки, свідчать дані на сайті Національного банку України.

Довідкове значення курсу гривні до долара встановлене на рівні 27 гривень 83 копійок (такий же офіційний курс на 10 вересня).

Долар почав своє поступове зростання 27 серпня. Тоді він коштував 27 гривень 39 копійок.
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Veteran Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward’s new book, Rage, is shining more light on the unlikely relationship between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.  
 
The book won’t be released until next week, but several U.S. media outlets on Wednesday published excerpts, including portions of personal letters that Trump and Kim exchanged over the past two years.  
 
In the letters, the young North Korean leader showers Trump with extravagant praise, repeatedly addressing him as “Your Excellency” and hailing their “deep and special friendship,” even as the wider U.S.-North Korea nuclear talks were breaking down.  
 
“Even now I cannot forget that moment of history when I firmly held Your Excellency’s hand at the beautiful and sacred location as the whole world watched,” Kim told Trump after their first meeting in Singapore in June 2018. It was one of two Kim letters published by the U.S.-based cable news network CNN.
 
Following their second summit in Vietnam, Kim told Trump “every minute we shared 103 days ago in Hanoi was also a moment of glory that remains a precious memory,” according to CNN, which says it obtained transcripts of the two letters.  
 
Trump often returned the praise. After their Singapore meeting, Trump described Kim as “far beyond smart,” according to the Post. The paper said Trump boasted to Woodward that Kim “tells me everything,” including a graphic description of how he killed his uncle, Jang Song Thaek. The powerful Jang was executed in late 2013 for treason.
 
Those comments mirror an interview Trump gave to VOA immediately after his Singapore summit, when Trump said Kim was “smart, loves his people, [and] he loves his country.”
 Excessive praise?  
 
For the book, Woodward says he obtained access to 25 Trump-Kim letters, although it’s not clear how much of the correspondence will be included.
 
So far, the excerpts contained no huge surprises about the Trump-Kim relationship, parts of which Trump has already made public. However, analysts say the correspondence reveals important insights about each man’s personality and negotiating style.
 
“It’s interesting to see how you can see Kim’s personality refracted through these letters,” said Jung Pak, a former CIA analyst who now works at the Washington-based Brookings Institution.  
 
“Surrounded by sycophants his entire life and as an observer and student of excessive displays of admiration that enveloped his father and grandfather, Kim Jong Un almost certainly understands how to weaponize praise and prey on one’s insecurities and desire for greatness,” said Pak, who recently wrote the book Becoming Kim Jong Un.  
 Unlikely friendship
 
Trump and Kim didn’t always get along. In 2017, the two regularly exchanged insults, with Trump calling Kim “Little Rocket Man” and Kim slamming Trump as a “mentally deranged U.S. dotard.” At one point, Trump threatened to “totally destroy” North Korea.
 
The tensions dissipated after Trump, a former real estate developer and reality television host who often claims an unmatched deal-making ability, became the first sitting U.S. president to meet a North Korean leader. Trump later claimed the two “fell in love.”  FILE – In this photo taken June 12, 2018, and released by North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un (R) walks with U.S. President Donald Trump (L) during a break in talks at their summit in Singapore.The relationship has held firm, even after North Korea last year resumed short-range ballistic missile tests and walked away from nuclear negotiations.  
 
If he wins reelection in November, Trump has said he will reach a deal “very quickly” with Kim. Trump’s opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden, has said he will not continue Trump’s personal outreach to Kim, signaling a return to a more traditional U.S. posture.
 Impact on future talks
 
Some now fear the publication of the private Trump-Kim letters risks offending North Korean sensitivities and upsetting future talks.
 
“That’s privileged diplomatic communication,” said Mark P. Barry, a veteran Korea observer and associate editor of the International Journal on World Peace.
 
The matter is also tricky, Barry said, because Kim’s words are typically treated with the utmost respect in authoritarian North Korea.  
 
“The worst that could happen is that internally Kim could appear to be a supplicant to Trump,” he says.  
 
North Korea has not responded to the release of the correspondence, but Pyongyang may not be too surprised, since Trump previously tweeted out one of Kim’s letters in July 2018.  
 
“It won’t affect Kim Jong Un’s attitude that much,” Lee Sang-sin of the Korean Institute for National Unification, said. “Kim understood the possibility of leaking,” he said.
 
Kathryn Botto, a research analyst in the Asia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said she wouldn’t be surprised if Kim cited the release of the letters as a reason for refusing to hold talks.
 
“More evidence of disrespect from the U.S. or something like that,” she said of a possible North Korean response.
 
“But in reality [Kim’s] willingness to hold future talks is based on the potential of securing sanctions relief or other changes in the U.S. negotiating position, and of course this doesn’t change that.”
 Cracks emerge?
 
North Korea has for months boycotted the talks, which began to break down after the February 2019 summit in Hanoi ended without a deal. Trump and Kim met once more in June 2019 at the demilitarized zone separating the two Koreas, briefly raising hopes the negotiations could be revived.  
 
A month after the DMZ meeting, though, Kim wrote to Trump “with a new tone,” apparently upset that the U.S.-South Korea joint military exercises had not been fully stopped, CNN reports.  
 
“I am clearly offended and I do not want to hide this feeling from you,” Kim told Trump. “I am really, very offended.”
 
In recent months, North Korean officials have repeatedly said that while the Trump-Kim relationship remains strong and has likely prevented tensions from spiraling out of control, it is not enough to ensure progress in the nuclear talks.   
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The U.S. says it has revoked the visas of more than 1,000 Chinese citizens considered “high risk” to U.S. security because of alleged ties with the Chinese military. A statement issued Wednesday by the State Department said the revocation of the visas was authorized by a proclamation signed by President Donald Trump on May 29.  The proclamation was aimed at students who had previously studied at colleges and universities in China that have ties to the People’s Liberation Army. The Trump administration has charged that Chinese students have come to the United States to steal intellectual property to advance China’s economic and military sectors.   A State Department spokeswoman said the 1,000-plus “high-risk graduate students and researchers” whose visas have been cancelled since June 1 make up just a “small subset” of the more than 360,000 Chinese nationals currently studying in the United States. “We continue to welcome legitimate students and scholars from China who do not further the Chinese Communist Party’s goals of military dominance,” the spokeswoman  said. China Thursday accused Washington of “political persecution and racial discrimination.” The visa cancellations are among many back-and-forth retaliatory actions that represent worsening relations between the world’s two largest economies. The two sides have clashed over issues such as trade, technology, Beijing’s harsh, new national security law imposed on Hong Kong and its increasingly aggressive behavior toward a self-ruled Taiwan, and the COVID-19 pandemic, which was first detected late last year in the central Chinese city of Wuhan. 
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The Mexican National Guard said Wednesday that two people had died in a gunfight with military police near a protest at a dam that diverts water away from an area hit by drought to the United States.Mexican officials said farmers were upset over water from La Boquilla dam being transferred across the border of Chihuahua state and initially threw rocks and Molotov cocktails at officers Tuesday night.The National Guard said officers were shot at when suspects allegedly possessing tear gas and gun ammunition were being arrested and taken in for processing.The statement said the National Guard “repelled the aggression” and one person died at the scene and a second person died at the hospital.During a news conference Wednesday, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador called in the incident “regrettable,” saying he would ask the Attorney General’s Office to investigate the case.Farmer Irma Gandara said the water transfer will create a significant economic problem for the state.Gandara said they are not going to allow the biggest dam in Chihuahua, Boquilla, to be emptied.The protest comes amid plans to divert more to the United States due to a “water debt” Mexico has accrued under a 1944 water-sharing treaty between the countries.Lopez Obrador also said, he is asking the attorney general to investigate his country’s responsibilities but warned that Mexico could face sanctions if it did not divert water, after accumulating a deficit by receiving more water than it has provided.
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