Monday, October 19 top news briefs
It is Monday, October 19. Hope your weekend was good. Here’s today’s top news briefs.
In southern Peru, archaeologists said they found a “drawing” of a cat carved into a hillside. It is 121 feet long and from about 100 B.C. to 200 B.C. which makes it about 2,000 years old. The type of drawing is called a geoglyph, which is a large design etched on the ground. The cat is located among the Nazca Lines, a historic site with many geoglyphs. CBS News said the cat was unnoticed until archaeologists found lines between 11 to 16 inches wide and cleared up erosion.
NBC News reported that on Sunday, it was the first time the TSA airport security screened a million passengers since March. The million figure from Sunday suggests Americans are now more confident about traveling during the coronavirus pandemic. The worst month for travelers was in April, when there were fewer than 100,000 people screened a day. Although Sunday had a million passengers screened, it is still far lower than the exact same day last year — in 2019 on the same day, there were 2.6 million passengers. The airline industry has been especially hit hard during the pandemic.
Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson tweeted an image of an asteroid that is hurtling towards Earth at almost 25,000 mph. Tyson said the rock is the size of a refrigerator and that it may buzz-cut Earth on November 2, the day before the election. Tyson said the asteroid is not big enough to cause harm. He joked that if the world ends in 2020, you can’t blame it on the universe. NASA said the asteroid has less than 1% chance of striking the Earth, so it’s likely to hurl past us.
About 30 million people have voted so far in early voting. There are twice as many registered Democrats voting when compared with registered Republicans, but those with no party affiliation are voting at the same rate as Republicans. That means that half of the early voters are Democrats, 1/4 are registered Republicans, and 1/4 has no party affiliation, so they could vote either way. Texas leads the nation with 4 million votes.
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Axios reported that coronavirus hospitalizations in the U.S. are rising in 39 states. Sixteen states are at or near their all-time peak for hospitalizations. The worst-affected state is Wisconsin with 9 percent of the state’s beds occupied with Covid-19 patients.
Dr. Anthony Fauci said on Saturday in an interview that he is not surprised that President Trump became infected with the coronavirus.
This morning President Trump during a call with his campaign staff said Fauci was an “idiot” and said if he listened to his advice, there would be 700,000 or 800,000 deaths instead of the current toll of almost 220,000 deaths.
Trump warned at a rally in Nevada on Sunday that if Joe Biden wins the election, there would be more coronavirus lockdowns because Biden would listen to the scientists and that this would cause a massive economic depression.
The Biden campaign responded by criticizing Trump for tanking the strong economy he inherited from the Obama administration and pinned it on the Trump administration not listening to scientific and medical experts.
The Justice Department announced it has indicted six Russian GRU intelligence officers with hacking and sending malware to interfere and destabilize Ukraine, Georgia, elections in France, the 2018 Olympic Games in Korea, and international efforts to punish Russia for using the Novichok nerve agent.
That is all the top news briefs for today. See you tomorrow and stay with the light.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cat-2000-years-oldperu-nazca-lines-geoglyph/
https://electproject.github.io/Early-Vote-2020G/index.html
https://www.the-sun.com/news/1655736/donald-trump-dr-fauci-coronavirus-idiot/