Election Day is nearly upon us, drive-thru Texas votes, Johnny Depp’s libel suit: 5 things to know Monday
Tomorrow is Election Day #TomorrowisElectionDay
One day before the most anticipated presidential election in recent history, President Donald Trump and Democratic nominee Joe Biden plan to make their final push for votes on Monday. Trump has another long day ahead, revisiting North Carolina and Michigan, and also making stops in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. Trump appears to need another last-minute surge to win Michigan with a new poll showing him 7 percentage points behind Biden. Meanwhile, Biden and his running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris, will “fan out across all four corners” of Pennsylvania on Monday, according to the campaign. The state is among the most important of a half-dozen battlegrounds because its 20 electoral college votes could be the decisive tipping point for either candidate to reach the 270 needed to win the White House, according to political experts. Biden is also scheduled to stop in Cleveland, Ohio, as polls indicate a tight race in the state.
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Federal hearing determines fate of drive-thru Texas votes
A federal judge is scheduled to hold an emergency hearing on Monday to review a bid by Texas GOP figures seeking to discard drive-thru votes, arguing that the voting method is prohibited by state law. The group, consisting of three Texas Republican candidates and a GOP activist, had a similar bid rejected Sunday by the Texas Supreme Court, which turned away an effort to toss out almost 127,000 votes cast in drive-thru lanes in Harris County, an emerging Democratic stronghold. Democrats have argued the GOP lawsuit, which was filed two weeks after early voting began and three months after the county announced plans for drive-thru voting, could disenfranchise voters who voted legally.
Eta intensifies into the season’s 12th hurricane
Eta, which swirled to life over the weekend in the Caribbean, intensified into the 12th Atlantic hurricane of 2020 on Monday. Eta is the 28th named storm of a historic season, which has tied 2005 for most storms on record. The slow-moving system, which is expected to hit Nicaragua on Tuesday, could cause life-threatening flash flooding over portions of Central America, the National Hurricane Center said. Eta’s path after it lashes Central America is uncertain. The storm could dissipate, according to weather.com, or linger and move back over the western Caribbean and re-intensify later this week.
Biloxi, Mississippi pier destroyed by Hurricane Zeta
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Johnny Depp loses libel suit against UK tabloid
A 2018 article in British tabloid The Sun that branded Johnny Depp a “wife beater” was not libelous, a judge ruled Monday morning. British judge Andrew Nicol delivered his verdict in writing without a hearing – due to the coronavirus – at the High Court in London, dismissing Depp’s complaint against The Sun. “The Claimant has not succeeded in his action for libel,” read a court summary released Monday to USA TODAY. “Although he has proved the necessary elements of his cause of action in libel, the Defendants have shown that what they published in the meaning which I have held the words to bear was substantially true.” In July, Depp and his ex-wife Amber Heard had a dramatic three-week legal showdown that exposed ugly accusations of verbal and physical assault, drug and alcohol abuse and tumultuous private life for the celebrity couple, who met on the set of 2011 comedy “The Rum Diary,” married in Los Angeles in 2015, separated the following year and divorced in 2017.
6.5-foot asteroid may ‘buzz-cut’ Earth
A refrigerator-sized asteroid will likely zoom past Earth on Monday — just before Election Day. Never fear, the 6.5-foot space rock is “not big enough to cause harm,” said astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson. “So if the World ends in 2020, it won’t be the fault of the Universe,” Tyson said. NASA has been tracking the asteroid since it was discovered in 2018 by the Zwicky Transient Facility at Palomar Observatory in California.The asteroid has only a 0.41% chance of entering Earth’s atmosphere, NASA said, “but if it did, it would disintegrate due to its extremely small size.”
Near-Earth asteroid fly-bys and impacts, exploring our apocalypse prevention
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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Election Day is nearly upon us, drive-thru Texas votes, Johnny Depp’s libel suit: 5 things to know Monday