Tuesday, September 20 top stories
It is Tuesday, September 20. Here are today’s top stories.
Scientists estimate 20,000 trillion ants on Earth
Scientists estimated that there are 20 quadrillion individual ants on Earth. That is 20 trillion. The number looks like this: 20,000,000,000,000,000.
The Washington Post said a group of scientists from the University of Hong Kong analyzed 489 studies to come to this finding. The number means that for every person on Earth, there are 2.5 million ants.
Ants are most abundant in tropical and subtropical regions but they are found almost everywhere on Earth except in the coldest parts, such as Antarctica or the high Arctic.
Florida college student fatally shot after getting in wrong car
Police in Tampa, Florida said a 19-year-old college student was shot and killed after he tried to get into the wrong car.
The student’s name was Carson Senfield. On Friday night, he was out with friends and took an Uber to go to his home early Saturday morning, which was his birthday. When the Uber dropped him off, Senfield tried to get into a car that wasn’t his. There was a man inside that car and he shot at Senfield because he feared for his life.
It is up to the state attorney’s office whether the shooter will face charges.
Senfield’s friends expressed shock and grief at what happened. He was from the Buffalo, New York area.
Texas sheriff investigating migrants’ trip to Martha’s Vineyard
A sheriff in Texas said he is investigating how 48 migrants from Venezuela were brought into planes that went to Florida and then to Martha’s Vineyard.
The sheriff is Bexar County Sheriff Javier Salazar, who is a Democrat. He said that based on his understanding, a Venezuelan migrant was paid a fee to recruit migrants from a center in San Antonio. The migrants stayed at a hotel for two days before being flown to Florida and then up to Massachusetts. The sheriff said he believes that both state and federal laws were broken and that the migrants were exploited.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis took credit for sending the migrants and said he did this as a way of criticizing the Biden administration’s immigration policies. DeSantis claimed that all the migrants signed consent forms and knew they were going up to Martha’s Vineyard.
The migrants are no longer on the island — they were transported to a military base in Cape Cod.
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Special master questions Trump attorneys over declassification
The special master who is tasked with reviewing documents the FBI seized from Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home held a hearing today in New York City. The special master, Judge Raymond Dearie, wanted to get evidence that Trump declassified various top-secret records before he brought them from the White House to his home. Trump previously claimed that he declassified all of the records.
Trump’s legal team said the Department of Justice/FBI has not proved that the documents are actually classified. They also said they don’t want to provide specific information on declassification because they want to preserve this information in case Trump is charged with crimes.
Dearie said it is Trump’s burden to prove that he has privilege over the documents. The special master told the Trump team that they “can’t have your cake and eat it too.” Dearie said he would have to decide whether the records were classified or not based on their markings. Many of the documents had markings such as “Top Secret” on it.
Protests in Iran over woman who died in custody
There were large protests in Iran after a young woman died while in the custody of Iran’s “morality police,” which is a branch of the police that seeks to enforce Iran’s religious laws.
News reports said a 22-year-old Kurdish woman named Mahsa Amini was arrested for not wearing a hijab correctly. Iran requires women to cover their hair and wear long, loose clothes. Reports said Amini fell into a coma and died and many have accused the morality police of beating her to the point where she died.
Iranian authorities denied the accusations and said Amini died from a heart attack.
News reports said protests spread to several cities and towns and that Iranian law enforcement opened fire on some protesters, killing at least five people. Over 250 people were arrested for protesting.
The Biden administration said they “call on the Iranian government to end its systemic persecution of women and to allow peaceful protest.”
DOJ charges 47 people with stealing $240 million in pandemic aid
The Department of Justice announced it has charged 47 people with orchestrating a fraud that stole $240 million from the U.S. government’s anti-hunger programs during the coronavirus pandemic. The DOJ said the 47 people fraudulently billed the government for meals that they never delivered to children who did not exist. The case is in Minnesota.
The DOJ said there were fake receipts for over 125 million meals. One of those accused made a claim that he fed 5,000 children a day in an apartment. Others created a list of fake children.
The DOJ said the group had help from a founder of a nonprofit group who was entrusted by the state of Minnesota to act as a watchdog against fraud. The DOJ said that the founder ended up being one of the leaders of the fraud. She was indicted on charges of wire fraud and bribery involving federal programs.
Many of the alleged fraudsters spent their money on real estate, cars, luxury goods, guns, and cryptocurrency.
That is all the top stories for today. See you tomorrow and stay with the light.
***Correction: There are 20,000 trillion ants, not 20 trillion.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/09/19/ants-population-20-quadrillion/
https://www.wesh.com/article/tampa-student-killed-carson-senfield/41293430#
https://www.cnn.com/2022/09/19/us/bexar-county-texas-migrant-investigation/index.html
https://www.politico.com/news/2022/09/20/trump-special-master-judge-mar-a-lago-00057805
https://www.axios.com/2022/09/20/special-master-mar-a-lago-trump-doj
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/justice/trump-lawyers-admit-he-could-be-charged-raid-filing
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/09/20/us/politics/pandemic-aid-fraud-minnesota.html