Tuesday, October 15
It is Tuesday, October 15. Here are today’s top stories.
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Kmart to close its final U.S. store in mainland
Kmart will be closing its last large store in the mainland U.S. The store is in Bridgehampton, New York and it will shutter its doors on October 20.
There is one small Kmart store in Miami and a few Kmart stores in U.S. territories Guam and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Kmart used to be a popular store, similar to Walmart or Target. There were once 2,000 stores, but it declined when it struggled to compete with Walmart’s low prices and Target’s more “cool” things.
Kmart filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in early 2002. It closed 250 stores and the company was bought out by an investor who also bought the struggling Sears brand. AP said the 2008 recession and the rising dominance of Amazon derailed that mission and Sears has only a few stores left.
Many people fondly remember Kmart’s “Blue Light Specials” in its stores to let shoppers know that there’s a big sale.
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Sahara Desert experiences flooding
Parts of the Sahara Desert in Northern Africa got a lot more rain than usual and there are amazing images of huge pools of water nestled in sand dunes. The rainfall happened in Morocco. Its government said there were two days of rainfall in September that exceeded yearly averages in several areas. A lake bed that had been dry for 50 years was filled with water. Tragically, over 20 people were killed by the deluge and some farmers’ harvests were damaged.
Locals said they’ve never seen this much rain in 30 to 50 years. Meteorologists call these kinds of rains an “extratropical storm” and said the water may change the region’s weather for months and years to come because there is now more moisture in the air, which may draw more storms.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/sahara-desert-flooding-morocco/
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Content creator dies trying to climb Spain’s highest bridge
A 26-year-old British man died after trying to climb Spain’s tallest bridge to create content for social media. The bridge is the Castilla-La Mancha in central Spain and it is about 600 feet tall. A local official said it is forbidden for anyone to climb the bridge and they are saddened by the incident. The man hasn’t been identified yet.
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/10/14/europe/castilla-la-mancha-bridge-death-scli-intl/index.html
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Lilly Ledbetter, equal pay activist, dies at 86
NBC News said Lilly Ledbetter, who is best known for advocating for equal pay for women, died on Saturday night at the age of 86.
In the 1990s, Ledbetter worked at Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. in Alabama as an area supervisor. She received an anonymous letter that said she was being paid far less than her male colleagues who were in similar levels as her.
Ledbetter took legal action and her cases went all the way to the Supreme Court, but she didn’t win her case due to a missed deadline.
Democrats in Congress then took action by passing the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which makes it easier for victims of pay discrimination to present their cases. This bill was the first bill that former President Obama signed into law in 2009.
Ledbetter’s family said she lived an extraordinary life.
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Georgia begins early in-person voting
Georgia opened its polls today for the first day of early in-person voting. Georgia Sec. of State Raffensperger said it appears that the state will break records for the first day of early voting. Over 71,000 people voted by 10:30 a.m. and as of this afternoon, over 122,000 ballots were cast.
North Carolina will begin early voting on Thursday. Despite damage from Hurricane Helene in western North Carolina, most polling locations will be open.
https://www.cnn.com/2024/10/15/politics/early-voting-georgia-north-carolina/index.html
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That is all the top stories for today. See you tomorrow and stay with the light.