Election Day preview - Covid-19 increases in kids - Vienna terror attack

Six states [Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Florida and North Carolina] represent 101 of the 270 electoral votes needed to win. Early voting amid the pandemic has exploded in most of these states. Florida and North Carolina have passed 90% of their 2016 turnout, while Arizona has passed 80%, Wisconsin has passed 60% and Michigan has passed 50%, according to the U.S. Elections Project.
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Of all the battleground states that flipped from blue to red four years ago, Michigan still appears most likely to swing back to supporting the Democratic nominee. Other states could prove critical under some election scenarios, from the congressional district in eastern Nebraska (which is not a winner-take-all state) to Georgia, Minnesota, Iowa and maybe even Texas.
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About 3.1 million Pennsylvania voters requested mail-in or absentee ballots for the general election, and 2.1 million ballots had been returned by Oct. 29, according to ElectProject.org. Those included 1.4 million from Democrats, 467,000 from Republicans and 202,700 from unaffiliated voters. Two recent polls showed Biden maintaining his lead over Trump in Pennsylvania.

If this year has been an infodemic, the next 24 hours might be its apex. To keep things short, we want to provide clarity (to the extent possible) on the most important results to watch for from today’s election and when those results might be known.

In this brief 2 minute post, we cover which states to watch and why, where to get credible news on election results, and which senate races are the most critical to the fight for Congress. And we will share one way to take a breather from all the election news.

A federal law-enforcement source told [NBC News reporter Geoff Bennett] that "crews will build a 'non-scalable' fence" on Monday "to secure the [White House] complex, Ellipse, and Lafayette Square," Bennett tweeted late Sunday. Lafayette Square and the Ellipse are the parks to the immediate north and south of the White House.
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Bennett also reported that 250 National Guardsmen have been put on standby in Washington, DC, and would be reporting to the city's Metropolitan Police Department. A spokesperson for the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia told Business Insider on Monday that it "has not requested any assistance from the National Guard at this time."
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Election Day on Tuesday looks to be more charged than usual, with far-right groups threatening to come out to the polls armed, and law-enforcement agencies in several cities planning for unrest and possible clashes in the street. Last week, the International Crisis Group, a threat-tracking organization, released a 30-page report, saying that Americans faced an "unfamiliar danger" in the coming days.

Police said that the shootings across six locations began around 8 p.m. local time and involved suspects armed with rifles. One officer was among those injured, police said. [Austria's Interior Minister, Karl Nehammer] told a local news outlet that the army had been called in to help guard some locations as police search for assailants still at large.
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One of the attackers was reportedly killed and another arrested by authorities. Austrian broadcaster ORF reported that the attacker shot and killed by police was wearing an explosive belt and bag full of ammunition. The belt is reportedly being diffused by the demining service.
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Oskar Deutsch, the president of the Israelite Religious Society in Austria, said that the shooting occurred on the street where the city's main synagogue is, but was not certain whether or not the place of worship itself was targeted. At the time of the attack, the synagogue was reportedly closed.

In all, 853,635 children have been diagnosed with the virus this year, representing 11.1 percent of all U.S. cases. The percentage of pediatric cases has risen steadily since mid-April, when children accounted for just 2 percent of Covid-19 cases in the country.
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[The American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children's Hospital Association] said it believes the true number of children with Covid-19 is higher because the illness tends to be mild in kids and because they may not always be tested. Children accounted for less than 3.5 percent of current Covid-19 hospitalizations, the report found. As of Thursday, 121 children had died.
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The American Academy of Pediatrics report found that in October, the greatest increases of pediatric Covid-19 case numbers — increases of 25 percent or more — occurred mostly in Western states: Alaska, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico and Utah. The Dakotas, Kentucky, Michigan and Wisconsin also reported greater rises among children.