Early voting is now well underway in the US presidential election. Record turnout has been reported across the country; almost 30 million Americans have already voted by mail or in-person, a far higher number than the 2016 election and unprecedented in US electoral history.
Early voting opened in a number of states yesterday, including the key swing state of Florida. The „Sunshine State” is the largest and most unpredictable of the competitive states and both President Donald Trump and rival Joe Biden are campaigning, and spending, hard to win over Floridian votes.
President Trump won Florida by a narrow margin in 2016, and polling this year is showing an even more closely-fought race.
With fourteen days to go, challenger former Vice-President Biden has a strong lead in national polls and is favoured to win by forecasters, but the race is much closer in the all-important swing states and polling experts are not ruling out a repeat of 2016 when Trump came from behind to beat Hillary Clinton to the presidency.
The two candidates are set to go head-to-head once again on Thursday night in the final debate before the election day on November 3rd.
Sources: FiveThirtyEight, Real Clear Politics, CNN
Poland and the US have this week signed a landmark agreement on jointly developing nuclear power in Poland.
The US Department of Energy announced the deal Monday. Under the agreement, Poland could be set to buy $18 billion dollars-worth of American nuclear technology, with the two countries jointly developing civil atomic energy in Poland.
Over the coming 18 months, Polish and American teams will put together a document exploring the idea with a final decision made later.
The deal was stuck as the two countries attended the international Three Seas Initiative summit in Tallinn, Estonia.
Both the Polish and US governments are keen to develop atomic energy in Poland in order to reduce the country’s dependence on Russian gas supplies. Nuclear power is also an increasingly key part of Poland’s plan to reduce fossil fuel use and a reliance on coal.
Gdansk could soon be home to a temporary COVID-19 field hospital under new plans announced by the government.
Speaking at a press conference on Monday, Health Minister Adam Niedzielski said short-term over-flow hospitals would be set up in major provincial cities across the country. The hospitals are likely to be based in conference centres and sports arenas, which have largely been left empty during the pandemic.
It was revealed this weekend that Warsaw’s National Stadium would become the first field hospital in Poland, with 500 beds including 50 intensive care beds for those suffering from COVID-19.
The news comes amid a surge in virus cases across Poland. 7,482 new cases were announced on Monday, bringing the total to more than 183,000.
Countries across Europe are also taking measures to fight a painful second wave or cases sweeping the continent. Wales will this week become the next country to return to lockdown as it tries a so-called „fire-break lockdown” for two weeks in the hope of cutting off virus transmission.
A Tricity foodbank has launched a campaign to raise funds as food stocks for those in need come close to running out.
Speaking to gdansk.pl, Lukasz Jaron of the Tricity Foodbank said the pandemic had seen a significant increase in the number of people turning to foodbanks for help. He said hundreds of extra requests for help had come in from families stuck in quarantine and those put out of work by the pandemic.
The foodbank now says it’s running out of much-needed long shelf-life foods and has started a campaign to bring in funds and supplies.
Anyone wishing to help can either make an online financial donation for any amount or simply buy some shopping online and have it shipped directly to the foodbank’s address.
Donate to tricity foodbank here: http://robimyzapasy.pl/
Address for food donations:
Sklep Społeczny „Za Stołem”, ul. Wolności 52, 80-538 Gdańsk.
Łukasz Jaroń, phone: 506 841 334, e-mail: lukasz.jaron@bztrojmiasto.pl
Weather
Cool and cloudy is the outlook for the day, with temperatures peaking at 11C or 51F.
No rain expected today and a light wind from the southwest keeping things relatively mild for this time of year.
A chance of some showers overnight and going into tomorrow, with teperatures set to pick up into the mid-teens over the coming days.
TH/am
