“Harris holds slight lead over Trump in new poll, as Biden withdraws from the 2024 US presidential election…”

Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris hit the campaign trail this week after President Joe Biden dropped out of the race.

Vice President Kamala Harris opened up a marginal two-percentage-point lead over Republican Donald Trump after President Joe Biden ended his re-election campaign and passed the torch to her, a Reuters/Ipos found.

That compares with a marginal two-point deficit Biden faced against Trump in last week’s poll before his Sunday exit from the race.

The new poll, conducted on Monday and Tuesday, followed both the Republican National Convention where Trump on Thursday formally accepted the nomination and Biden’s announcement on Sunday he was leaving the race and endorsing Harris.

Harris, whose campaign says she has secured the Democratic nomination, led Trump 44% to 42% in the national poll, a difference within the 3-percentage-point margin of error.

Harris and Trump were tied at 44% in a July 15-16 poll, and Trump led by one percentage point in a July 1-2 poll, both within the same margin of error.

While nationwide surveys give important signals of American support for political candidates, a handful of competitive states typically tilt the balance in the U.S. Electoral College, which ultimately decides who wins a presidential election.

A pollster with Trump’s campaign played down any polling showing an increase in Harris’ support, arguing that she was likely to see a temporary rise in popularity because of widespread media coverage of her new candidacy.

“That bump is likely to start showing itself over the next few days and will last for a while,” pollster Tony Fabrizio said in a memo circulated to reporters by Trump’s campaign.

Candidates often expect a bump after formally accepting their party’s nomination at stage-managed, televised conventions such as the one that Trump had last week. But the poll showed no sign of that.

Bump or not, the most recent Reuters/Ipsos poll underscored the rationale for Biden dropping out of the race and for Harris replacing him on the ticket.

Some 56% of registered voters agreed with a statement that Harris, 59, was “mentally sharp and able to deal with challenges,” compared to 49% who said the same of Trump, 78.

Only 22% of voters assessed Biden that way.

Biden, 81, ended his re-election effort after a debate with Trump in which he often stammered and failed to aggressively challenge attacks by Trump that included falsehoods.

Microsoft says about 8.5 million of its devices affected by CrowdStrike-related outage

A global tech outage that was related to a software update by cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike affected nearly 8.5 million Microsoft  devices, Microsoft said in a blog post on Saturday.

“We currently estimate that CrowdStrike’s update affected 8.5 million Windows devices, or less than one percent of all Windows machines,” it said in the blog.

A software update by global cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike, one of the largest operators in the industry, triggered systems problems that grounded flights, forced broadcasters off air and left customers without access to services such as healthcare or banking.

“While the percentage was small, the broad economic and societal impacts reflect the use of CrowdStrike by enterprises that run many critical services,” Microsoft said in its blog post.

CrowdStrike has helped develop a solution that will help Microsoft’s Azure infrastructure accelerate a fix, Microsoft said, adding that it was working with Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud Platform, sharing information about the effects Microsoft was seeing across the industry.

The air travel industry was recovering on Saturday from the outage that caused thousands of flights to be cancelled, leaving passengers stranded or grappling with hours of delays as airports and airlines were caught up in the IT outage.

Delta Air Lines, one of the hardest-hit airlines, said that as of 10 a.m EDT (1400 GMT) on Saturday, more than 600 flights had been canceled, adding that additional cancellations were expected.

Malta Company Announcements:

Mercury Projects Finance plc

Mercury Projects Finance plc on Friday announced that it has submitted an application to the Malta Financial Services Authority (MFSA) requesting approval for the listing of a €20 million bond issue.

The bonds will mature in 2034 and will have a nominal value of €100 per bond issued at par. They will carry a coupon rate of 5.3% per annum and will be guaranteed by Mercury Towers Ltd.

BMIT Technologies plc

The Board of Directors of the Company is scheduled to meet on Tuesday 6th August 2024 to discuss the Group Interim Unaudited Financial Statements for the six-month period ended 30th June 2024.

GO plc

The Board of Directors of the Company is scheduled to meet on Friday 9 August 2024 to discuss the Group Interim Unaudited Financial Statements for the six-month period ended 30 June 2024. At the same meeting the Board of Directors will also consider the payment of an interim dividend.

Lombard Bank Malta p.l.c.

The Board of Directors of Lombard Bank Malta p.l.c. will be meeting on Wednesday, 28 August 2024 to consider and approve the Group’s and the Bank’s interim financial statements for the half year ended 30 June 2024.

Malta Properties Company plc

The Board of Directors of the Company is scheduled to meet on Thursday 8 August 2024 to discuss the Group Interim Unaudited Financial Statements for the six-month period ended 30 June 2024.

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