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Hurricane Helene was a dangerous Category 4 storm when it made landfall over Florida’s Big Bend area late Thursday night but weakened rapidly as it raced inland early Friday and was downgraded to a tropical storm in mere hours, the National Hurricane Center said. Still, Helene was bringing a “life-threatening” storm surge, strong winds and heavy rain, the center said.

As of 5 a.m. EDT, Helen was approximately 40 miles east of Macon, Georgia and 100 miles southeast of Atlanta and was racing north at 30 mph, the Miami-based hurricane center said. It was packing maximum sustained winds of 70 mph, 4 mph below the threshold for a storm to have hurricane status and half what they were when Helene moved ashore over the Big Bend area of Florida’s Gulf Coast.

Helene made landfall about 10 miles west of Perry, Florida, at 11:10 p.m. Eastern Time, according to the hurricane center, with maximum sustained winds of 140 miles per hour.

As of 2 a.m. EDT, its winds had already diminished to 90 mph, making Helene a Category 1 hurricane at the time, the center said.

Some 1.2 million customers in Florida were without power early Friday morning, according to utility tracker PowerOutage.us, along with approximately 734,000 in Georgia and 363,000 in South Carolina. Those numbers were growing rapidly. What’s more, about 87,000 homes and businesses were in the dark in North Carolina, for a total of almost 2.4 million in the four states.

So far, there have been at least three weather-related deaths attributed to Helene. Two people were killed in Wheeler County, Georgia, the county coroner, Ted Mercer, told CBS New by phone. No further details were provided.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis confirmed in a late-night news conference that at least one person was killed in the Tampa area when a traffic sign fell on a vehicle. 

DeSantis said about 3,500 National Guardsmen were standing by to respond to emergencies.

Several airports closed because of the storm, and airlines canceled nearly 1,300 flights Thursday, according to FlightAware. More than 600 U.S. flights were already canceled as of 5:30 a.m.  

Vice President Kamala Harris is set to visit Douglas, Arizona, on Friday, marking her first trip to the U.S.-Mexico border since becoming the Democratic presidential nominee. Harris will deliver remarks to call for tougher border security measures as part of her efforts to address border issues, according to a senior campaign official. 

Harris plans to say that American sovereignty requires setting rules at the border and enforcing them, stressing that Border Patrol agents need more resources.

The vice president will make combating the flow of fentanyl a focal point of her remarks and refer to it as a “top priority” for her presidency. Harris will propose adding fentanyl detection machines to ports of entry along the border and will call on the Chinese government to crack down on companies that make the precursor chemicals utilized in the making of fentanyl. 

While Harris will stress the need for border security and address the lack of current resources, the vice president will also advocate for an immigration system that is “safe, orderly and humane” according to campaign officials granted anonymity to speak freely on the prepared remarks. 

As Harris is set to make her case on the border, the Biden administration will soon move to cement the asylum restrictions it enacted at the southern border over the summer, officials told CBS News. The planned amended proclamation would make it less likely for the asylum restrictions to be lifted in the near future, according to two U.S. officials who requested anonymity to discuss internal government plans. Officials have credited the stringent measure for a sharp drop in illegal border crossings in recent months.

Harris’ first border trip as the Democratic nominee comes as the vice president is looking to make gains on her opponent, former President Donald Trump, on border issues. According to a recent CBS News poll, 58% of likely voters consider the U.S.-Mexico border a major factor in deciding who they will vote for. The poll also found 53% of likely voters would support Trump starting a national program to find and deport all immigrants who are in the U.S. illegally. 

Trump and Republicans have long campaigned on the need for strong border security and have attempted to place blame on Harris for the influx of illegal crossings during the Biden administration. 

During a Thursday press conference in New York, Trump denounced Harris’ border visit, telling reporters “she should save her airfare.”

“She should go back to the White House and tell the president to close the border,” Trump said. “He can do it with the signing of just a signature and a piece of paper to the border patrol.”

Harris will argue, according to a senior campaign official, that Trump was responsible for scuttling a bipartisan border bill that would have enacted permanent asylum restrictions and authorized additional border agents and resources. Trump urged his allies in Congress to reject the bill earlier this year.

“The American people deserve a president who cares more about border security than playing political games,” Harris plans to say, according to excerpts previewed by CBS News.

While Harris has been pushing for Congress to pass the bill from the campaign trail, Trump on Thursday referred to the legislation as “atrocious.”

“It would allow people to come in here at levels that would be incredible and would allow them to get citizenship” Trump told reporters. “It was not a border bill. It was an amnesty bill.”

The measure that failed to garner enough support from Senate Republicans in the spring also included executive authority to turn away migrants during spikes in illegal immigration and would have expanded legal immigration levels. 

KYIV, Ukraine – Ukraine’s air defences battled an overnight Russian aerial attack on the capital Kyiv for five hours, officials said Thursday, as missiles and drones again hammered the Ukrainian power grid.

The Kyiv attack injured at least two people, Ukraine’s Emergency Service said. A kindergarten, a gas pipe and around 20 cars were damaged in the city, said the Kyiv Military Administration.

In western Ukraine, the air force said, Russia fired three Kinzhal hypersonic ballistic missiles — one of Russia’s most advanced weapons — “in the direction of” Starokostiantyniv, a city in the Khmelnytskyi region, on Thursday morning. The air force said it could not make further information public, suggesting the missiles were aimed at a sensitive site.

Long-range strikes have been a hallmark of Russia’s military campaign in Ukraine, now deep in its third year, often hitting civilian areas. Attacks on the electricity network have knocked out around 70 per cent of Ukraine’s energy generation capacity, according to the United Nations, bringing blackouts as winter approaches.

Air defence systems are a critical need for Ukraine, and President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was due to meet President Joe Biden in Washington on Thursday in an effort to ensure continuing U.S. military support for his country.

Energy infrastructure was hit in Ukraine’s western Ivano-Frankivsk region, causing a blackout in parts of the regional capital of the same name, regional Gov. Svitlana Onyshchuk said.

The power grid was also targeted in the southern Mykolaiv region, local authorities said without immediately providing further details.

Russia launched six missiles and 78 Shahed drones at Ukraine overnight from Wednesday to Thursday, Ukraine’s air force said. Defences destroyed four of the missiles and 66 drones in the air, it said.

In the south, a missile killed a 62-year-old woman in the Odesa region, where homes and cars were damaged, regional Gov. Oleh Kiper said.

In the city of Zaporizhzhia, at least eight people were injured in the overnight attack, including a 14-year-old, said regional governor Ivan Fedorov. He published photographs of houses with their windows blown out and walls riddled with shrapnel. The Emergency Service said 12 residential buildings were damaged in the city and 18 people were evacuated.

Meanwhile, in the northeastern Sumy region ordnance experts defused a 500-kilogram (1,100-pound) glide bomb that landed without exploding next to a bridge over the River Psel.

Federal prosecutors have secured criminal charges against multiple Iranian hackers for allegedly targeting members of former President Donald Trump’s presidential campaign as part of a malicious cyber scheme, multiple sources familiar with the investigation confirmed to CBS News. 

The Iranian hackers were indicted by a grand jury on Thursday and the charges could be announced as early as Friday, the sources said. The nature of the allegations and the names of the defendants were unknown as charging documents remain under seal. The exact number of people charged was also not confirmed. 

ABC News and Politico first reported on elements of the charges. 

A Justice Department spokesperson declined to comment on CBS News’ reporting. A spokesperson for the Trump campaign also did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Once publicly announced, the charges will mark an escalation in the federal government’s work to combat Iran’s alleged efforts to interfere in the 2024 presidential election. Federal officials have warned Iran is seeking to undermine Trump’s campaign. 

The FBI launched probes earlier this summer after both the Trump and then-Biden campaigns experienced attempted phishing schemes targeting people associated with the candidates, sources told CBS News in August.  

Last week, federal officials with the FBI and other intelligence agencies released a statement confirming, “Iranian malicious cyber actors in late June and early July sent unsolicited emails to individuals then associated with President Biden’s campaign that contained an excerpt taken from stolen, non-public material from former President Trump’s campaign as text in the emails. There is currently no information indicating those recipients replied.”  

The statement went on to say that “Iranian malicious cyber actors have continued their efforts since June to send stolen, non-public material associated with former President Trump’s campaign to U.S. media organizations…Foreign actors are increasing their election influence activities as we approach November.” 

Iran’s United Nations mission previously denied it had plans to interfere or launch cyberattacks in the U.S. presidential election, telling CBS News in a statement last week that “the Islamic Republic of Iran does not engage in the internal uproars or electoral controversies of the United States,” adding that “Iran neither has any motive nor intent to interfere in the U.S. election; and, it therefore categorically repudiates such accusations.”

Trump’s campaign revealed last month that it had been hacked and said Iranian actors were involved in stealing and distributing sensitive internal documents to members of the press. 

FBI agents worked with both Google and Microsoft — two major tech firms and providers of email services — to dig into the apparent spearphishing attacks targeting those close to both presidential campaigns, according to two people familiar with the probe. A report published by Microsoft earlier this summer revealed Iran is evolving its tactics to affect the upcoming election. 

Trump and former members of his administration have been increased targets of Iranian actors following the killing of Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani in 2020. Some former officials received increased protection because of death threats, and in July, federal prosecutors filed charges against a Pakistani national with ties to Iran for allegedly planning to assassinate American politicians, including possibly Trump. 

Iran is not the only foreign adversary that U.S. officials say is seeking to undermine the upcoming presidential election. Intelligence agencies have warned Russia and China have launched cyber campaigns of their own to sew chaos, with Russia allegedly seeking to damage Vice President Kamala Harris’ bid for the White House. 

Speaking at an event hosted by the Atlantic Council on Thursday, Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said, “We are seeing more threat actors, more threat actors getting into the game” of election interference, exacerbated by advancements in artificial intelligence. 

The goal, according to Monaco, is to “sow discord, sow distrust in our election system and undermine confidence in our democratic process.”