US election roundup: Joe Biden, Donald Trump all set for final debate; emails threatening voters linked to Iran & more

The powerful Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday confirmed the nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court with the opposition Democrats boycotting the voting process. All 12 Republicans on the committee voted to advance the nomination, while all 10 Democrats boycotted the vote.

Democratic senators argue that Republicans should not push through a confirmation vote to install Trump's nominee to replace the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg just days before the election. Never has the Senate confirmed a Supreme Court nominee so close to a presidential election.

Democratic voters in at least four battleground states including Florida and Pennsylvania received threatening emails, falsely purporting to be from the far-right group Proud Boys, that warned "we will come after you" if the recipients didn't vote for President Donald Trump.

The voter-intimidation operation apparently used email addresses obtained from state voter registration lists, which include party affiliation and can include email addresses.

Those addresses were then used in an apparently widespread targeted spamming operation. The senders claimed they would know which candidate the recipient was voting for in the November 3 election, for which early voting is ongoing.

US officials have accused Iran of being behind a flurry of threatening but fake emails sent to Democratic voters in multiple battleground states in a late-stage efforts to sway public opinion and interfere in the presidential election.

Purportedly from far-right, pro-Trump groups like the Proud Boys, the fake emails were apparently aimed at intimidating voters. John Ratcliffe, the government's national intelligence director, said the aim was to hurt President Donald Trump in the contest against Democrat Joe Biden, though he did not elaborate on how.

As Joe Biden hopscotched through Iowa and New Hampshire in late 2019, he also name-dropped his way across the globe. China's Xi Jinping. German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Vladimir Putin of Russia.

“I've met every major world leader for the last 40 years,” the former vice president and eventual Democratic presidential nominee said.

Behind the braggadocio was something Biden saw as a chief selling point for his third White House bid: His decades as a leading senator and two-term vice president make him “ready on day one” to restore a world order he believes President Donald Trump has destabilized.

Seeking his re-election, US President Donald Trump on Wednesday told Americans that he will deliver optimism, opportunity and hope while his Democratic rival Joe Biden will bring in "pessimism, poverty and decline".

"For the last 47 years, Joe Biden has been outsourcing your job, opening your borders," he alleged.

"I will deliver optimism, opportunity, and hope. Biden will deliver pessimism, poverty, and decline," Trump told thousands of his supporters in Gastonia city of the battleground state of North Carolina.

"Normal life will fully resume and next year will be the greatest economic year in the history of our country. That's where we are headed. This election is a choice between a Trump super recovery or a Biden steep depression and that's what you're going to have," said the President