The Junior Explorer

On 3 November, grown-ups in the United States will vote in the midterm elections. They choose people for Congress. Congress is the group that makes the country's laws. Midterms come halfway through a president's four years in office.

Many people do not wait for the last day. They vote early, by mail or in person. A group at the University of Florida counts early votes. It found more than 16 million people in 41 states and Washington, D.C. had already voted. About 10 million voted by mail. About 6 million voted in person.

Some places have seen big jumps. The Associated Press, a news agency, found huge jumps in Kansas and Texas. In Maine, North Carolina and Ohio there were at least 30% more early votes than four years ago.

Seychelles is a country of islands in the Indian Ocean. Aldabra is part of it. It is an atoll, a ring of coral islands around a lagoon. Scientists now think about 183,000 giant tortoises live there.

That is more than the number of people in Seychelles, which is about 123,000. The scientists used five years of counts, from 2018 to 2022. They also used math to guess how many tortoises hide in thick bushes. So the number is an estimate, which means a careful guess.

The tortoises nearly vanished. In the 1800s people took far too many, and fewer than 1,000 were left. Aldabra became a nature reserve in 1981. In 2012, people removed invasive goats from the island. Today the population looks steady.