Tuesday, October 20 top news briefs

Hello, it is Tuesday, October 20. Here are today’s top news briefs. 

In Dallas last July, a woman in her 30’s died from Covid-19 while she was in a commercial airplane that had arrived from Arizona. She had underlying health conditions and had trouble breathing while the plane was parked near a gate. She was given oxygen, but died on the plane.

First Lady Melania Trump was supposed to fly to Pennsylvania tonight to join the president’s campaign rally, but she dropped out because she is still recovering from the coronavirus. Her staffer said Melania has a “lingering cough” but continues to feel better everyday. 

Actor Jeff Bridges announced he has been diagnosed with lymphoma, which is a cancer of the lymph nodes. He said although it is a serious disease, he feels fortunate that he has a great team of doctors and that the prognosis is good. 

Radio host Rush Limbaugh said his battle with stage 4 lung cancer is going into the wrong direction because the cancer is progressing. He said it is tough for him to realize that he has a “death sentence.” He is 69 years old. 

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Today is Florida’s first day for early in-person voting and there were 366,000 ballots cast today, which is a record for opening day for Florida. Online records say it is a dead heat between registered Democrats and registered Republicans at 42 percent each. The interesting number is voters with no party affiliation — they made up 15 percent of the vote. That could go either way. Florida is truly a swing state and it is worth 29 electoral votes. Certainly a big state. It’s important to note that Floridians have already cast 2.5 million mail-in ballots. 

In Vietnam, over 105 people died from severe flooding and landslides caused by several weeks of heavy rains. Most of the dead were soldiers whose barracks were buried by mudslides. Al Jazeera said 178,000 homes were submerged and that there is damage to huge swathes of crops and hundreds of thousands of farm animals. 

The U.S. Department of Justice sued Google. The DOJ partnered with 11 states with a Republican attorney general in the lawsuit to argue that Google is monopolizing the online search and search advertising markets. Axios explained that the DOJ said Google has unfairly dominated the search market by locking in its search engine as the default in browsers and on mobile devices. 

A Google spokesperson said today that the lawsuit is deeply flawed because people use Google because they choose to, not because they are forced to or because they can’t find alternatives. 

Axios said in general, antitrust lawsuits move slowly. In 1997, a DOJ lawsuit against Microsoft took five years to complete.

That is all the top news briefs for today. See you tomorrow and stay with the light. 

https://www.ksat.com/news/texas/2020/10/20/texas-woman-in-her-30s-dies-from-covid-19-after-boarding-flight-authorities-say/

https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/20/politics/melania-trump-campaign-rally/index.html

https://www.nbcnews.com/pop-culture/celebrity/jeff-bridges-announces-he-has-been-diagnosed-lymphoma-n1243956

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/10/20/105-killed-5-million-affected-in-catastrophic-vietnam-floods

https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/521799-florida-breaks-first-day-early-voting-record-with-350k-ballots-cast

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