Hurricane Eta grinds into Nicaragua; at least 3 dead
MANAGUA, Nicaragua — Hurricane Eta churned inland through northeast Nicaragua Tuesday night with devastating winds and rains that destroyed rooftops, caused rivers to overflow and left at least three people dead in the region.
The hurricane had sustained winds of 105 mph (165 kph), according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center, down from an overnight peak of 150 mph (240 kph). Even before it made landfall as a Category 4 hurricane, Honduras reported the first death after a mudslide trapped a 12-year-old girl in San Pedro Sula and two miners were killed in a mudslide in Bonanza, Nicaragua.
Tuesday night, the Category 2 hurricane crawled inland from the coast, about 45 miles (70 kilometers) west-southwest of coastal Puerto Cabezas or Bilwi, and it was moving west near 6 mph (9 kph).
Landfall came hours after it had been expected. Eta’s eye had hovered just offshore through the night and Tuesday morning. The unceasing winds uprooted trees and ripped roofs apart, scattering corrugated metal through the streets of Bilwi, the main coastal city in the region. The city’s regional hospital abandoned its building, moving patients to a local technical school campus.
Postal Service says it can’t meet judge’s ballot order
The U.S. Postal Service on Tuesday said it could not meet a federal judge’s order to sweep processing centers for undelivered mail-in ballots, arguing that doing so would disrupt its Election Day operations.
U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan of Washington, D.C., gave the agency until Tuesday afternoon to search 27 facilities in several battleground areas for outstanding ballots and send out those votes immediately.
The order came after weeks of bruising court decisions for an agency that has become heavily politicized under its new leader, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy. DeJoy, a major GOP donor, made a series of controversial policy changes in the summer that delayed mail nationwide, fueling worry about the service’s ability to handle the unprecedented crush of mail-in ballots. At the same time, President Donald Trump has baselessly attacked mail voting as fraudulent throughout his campaign.
From wire sources
In its response to the judge’s order, the Postal Service said it had already conducted rounds of morning checks at all its processing hubs. Further, the agency said has been performing daily reviews of all 220 facilities handling election mail and planned another sweep hours before polling places closed Tuesday.
Much of Sullivan’s order hinged on postal data showing roughly 300,000 mail-in ballots in several states had not received scans showing they had been delivered. The agency has disputed the accuracy of the figure, saying it has pushed to ensure same-day local delivery of ballots by circumventing certain processing steps entirely, leaving them without the final delivery scan.
From wire sources