Las Notis is a daily news column that gets you up to speed on the political, media + other goings-on in the United States, Latin America, and the diaspora—all in one quick digest.
Here’s your glimpse at what’s going on today:
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- The morning after Kamala Harris and Mike Pence participated in the vice presidential debate, the Commission on Presidential Debates announced that the next debate—which was supposed to be a townhall between Donald Trump and Joe Biden—will be remote and virtual because of concerns over the White House’s coronavirus outbreak. Trump then said in an interview on Fox Business that, “I’m not going to waste my time doing a virtual debate,” and called a virtual debate a “joke” and an effort “to protect Biden. [USA Today]
- According to data gathered by the COVID Tracking Project, more than 44,500 of the nearly 211,000 people who have died of coronavirus in the U.S. have been Latino. The rates of death have been much higher for minority communities, with Latinos and Native Americans dying at a rate 1.5 times higher than white people and Black people dying at a rate 2.4 times higher. [Latino Rebels]
- Hurricane Delta made landfall in Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula while the country was also struck by several minor earthquakes this week—and as it was all happening, a meteorite lit up the sky, visible in the states of Nuevo León, Coahuila, and Tamaulipas. Some camera footage captured the fireball as it made its way across. [Newsweek]
- A fire destroyed major parts of Brazil’s National Museum, including the institution’s ancient artifacts, but planned restoration of the building has now been put on hold because of the pandemic. Additionally, the museum has only raised money for part of the project, which is likely to take longer as Brazil’s economy faces a hit from the virus. [BBC]
- Mario Molina, a Mexican scientist who won a Nobel Prize for chemistry in 1995, passed away this week at the age of 77. He’s the only scientist from Mexico to have been honored with a Nobel distinction, and when he won, he shared his prize with scientists Frank Sherwood Rowland and Paul Crutzen for pivotal research on climate change. [NBC Latino]