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The Mega Millions jackpot is now $940 million after months without a big winner

Published Wed, 25 Dec 2024 08:05:31 GMT

By The Associated PressLottery players will have another shot at a huge Mega Millions jackpot Friday night and a chance to break a stretch of more than three months without a big winner of the game.The estimated $940 million prize has been building since someone last matched all six numbers and won the jackpot April 18. Since then, there have been 28 straight drawings without a jackpot winner.The jackpot is now the eighth-largest ever in the U.S. It comes a little over a week after someone in Los Angeles won a $1.08 billion Powerball prize that ranked as the sixth-largest in U.S. history. It’s still a mystery who won that prize.Lottery jackpots grow so large because the odds of winning are so small. For Mega Millions, the odds of winning the jackpot are about 1 in 302.6 million.The $940 million prize would be for a sole winner choosing to be paid through an annuity with annual payments over 30 years. Jackpot winners almost always opt for a lump sum payment, which for Friday ni...

Yankees activate Aaron Judge before crucial clash with Orioles

Published Wed, 25 Dec 2024 08:05:31 GMT

BALTIMORE – Aaron Judge is back.The Yankees activated their captain on Friday, just in time for a three-game series with the first-place Orioles. The team demoted Oswald Peraza to make space for Judge, who has been out since June 3 after tearing a ligament in his right big toe while making a spectacular catch at Dodger Stadium.The Yankees also designated Willie Calhoun for assignment on Friday.Judge’s injury left the Yankees without the reigning MVP for nearly two months. The team’s lineup scuffled as a result. As of Friday morning, the Yankees were 29th in average, 26th in on-base percentage, 22nd in wRC+ and 21st in runs during Judge’s absence.Judge, in 49 games, has slashed .291/.404/.674 with 19 home runs, 40 RBI, a 187 wRC+ and 2.7 Wins Above Replacement, per FanGraphs. He leads the team in all three slash line statistics, home runs, wRC+ and WAR.The last-place Yankees, while 54-48 overall, have been a sub-.500 team without ...

Colorado officer who put suspect in car hit by train found guilty of reckless endangerment

Published Wed, 25 Dec 2024 08:05:31 GMT

DENVER (AP) — A Colorado police officer who put a handcuffed woman in a parked police vehicle that was hit by a freight train has been found guilty of reckless endangerment and assault but was acquitted of a third charge of criminal attempt to commit manslaughter. Jordan Steinke was the first of two officers to go to trial over the Sept. 16, 2022, crash that left Yareni Rios-Gonzalez seriously injured.Steinke testified that she did not know that the patrol car of another officer she was helping was parked on the tracks even though they can be seen on her body camera footage along with two railroad crossing signs. Steinke said she was focused on the threat that could come from Rios-Gonzalez and her pickup truck, not the ground.Steinke said she put Rios-Gonzalez in the other officer’s vehicle because it was the nearest spot to temporarily hold her. She said she didn’t know the train was coming until just before it hit.There was no jury in Steinke’s trial, which started Monday. Instead...

Roller coaster with big crack has a second structural issue, inspectors say

Published Wed, 25 Dec 2024 08:05:31 GMT

CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) — Another structural issue has been located with a large roller coaster that’s been closed for weeks since a large crack in a support column was discovered, a North Carolina agency confirmed on Friday.A Swiss-based engineering company that designed and built the Fury 325 roller coaster at Carowinds, which sits along the North Carolina-South Carolina border, replaced that steel support column earlier this month, news outlets reported.But the North Carolina Department of Labor, which inspects the ride and decides whether it can operate, said in an email that the agency has now been notified of a separate “weld indication,” which “could be either a break or a crack.”“No certificate of operation has been issued nor do we have a timeline of when the certificate of operation will be issued for the Fury 325,” department spokesperson Meredith Watson said, referring other questions to Carowinds.In a statement released Friday, Carowinds said it was conducting a full maint...

Judge blasts prosecutors’ handling of Venezuela case against ex-Miami congressman

Published Wed, 25 Dec 2024 08:05:31 GMT

MIAMI (AP) — A federal judge in Miami on Friday blasted prosecutors for an apparent attempt to disavow a court order and take control of a oceanside condo belonging to a former Republican Congressman ahead of a high-profile trial connected to a $50 million consulting contract with Venezuela’s socialist government.When David Rivera and an associate were charged last November with money laundering and acting as unregistered foreign agents for President Nicolás Maduro’s government, prosecutors obtained a judge’s order freezing around $24 million from banking and brokerage accounts as well as Florida properties that they said were the product of ill-gotten gains.Prosecutors also blocked eight more properties belonging to Rivera and his associate in Florida and Georgia that, while unrelated to criminal activity, would likely be seized if the two are found guilty.This month, in a harshly worded ruling, Magistrate Judge Edwin Torres said that the government had no right to take...

Variety revises article on former CNN chief Jeff Zucker that was sharply criticized

Published Wed, 25 Dec 2024 08:05:31 GMT

NEW YORK (AP) — The entertainment publication Variety, under fire this week for an article it published about former CNN chief Jeff Zucker’s interest in his old employer, revised the piece on Friday to reflect some of the complaints about it.None of its changes affected what was written about Zucker, however. He has called for the story to be retracted.The article by Tatiana Siegel, which initially ran online Tuesday, depicted Zucker as badmouthing his successor at CNN, Chris Licht, while simultaneously trying to buy the news organization that fired him in early 2021. Licht’s unsuccessful run atop the struggling news network ended with his firing in May.The dispute also points to the dangers inherent in the use of confidential sources by journalists. There are at least a dozen claims made in the story that Variety did not attribute to a named source that were denied on the record, either in the story or after publication, leaving it up to readers to decide who to believe...

Defense presses case that mental illness spurred Pittsburgh synagogue massacre

Published Wed, 25 Dec 2024 08:05:31 GMT

PITTSBURGH (AP) — A federal trial for the man who fatally shot 11 people at a Pittsburgh synagogue approached its conclusion Friday as the defense, trying to persuade a jury to spare his life, pressed its case that mental illness spurred the nation’s deadliest antisemitic attack.Robert Bowers, a 50 year-old truck driver from suburban Baldwin, was convicted in June on 63 criminal counts for the 2018 massacre at Tree of Life synagogue. The jury has been hearing testimony in the penalty phase of the trial and will decide whether Bowers will receive the death penalty or life in prison without parole.Prosecutors have presented evidence that Bowers was motivated by his hatred of Jewish people when he opened fire at the synagogue on Oct. 27, 2018, killing members of three congregations gathered for Sabbath worship and study. The defense argues Bowers has schizophrenia and acted out of a delusional belief that Jews were participating in a genocide of white people.On Friday, a defense psychi...

3 people fatally shot, 2 wounded in a town in southern Germany

Published Wed, 25 Dec 2024 08:05:31 GMT

BERLIN (AP) — Three people were shot and killed at a residential building in southern Germany on Friday and another two wounded in a nearby house, police said. A suspect was arrested.The shooting took place Friday evening in Langweid, just outside the Bavarian city of Augsburg. Police said the suspect, a 64-year-old man, was then arrested, German news agency dpa reported.Authorities said the motive was still under investigation, as was the question of what, if any, relationship there was between the suspect and the victims.Police said the suspect fatally shot two women, ages 49 and 72, and a 52-year-old man, before continuing to another house a few hundred meters away. There, he allegedly shot a 32-year-old woman and a 44-year-old man.Both were being treated in a hospital but their lives were not believed to be in danger.The suspect was stopped in his car and was arrested without resistance, police told dpa.The Associated Press

Paperwork problems drive surge in people losing Medicaid health coverage

Published Wed, 25 Dec 2024 08:05:31 GMT

JEFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — The nation’s top health official implored states to do more to keep lower-income residents enrolled in Medicaid, as the Biden administration released figures Friday confirming that many who had health coverage during the coronavirus pandemic are now losing it.Though a decline in Medicaid coverage was expected, health officials are raising concerns about the large numbers of people being dropped from the rolls for failing to return forms or follow procedures. In 18 states that began a post-pandemic review of their Medicaid rolls in April, health coverage was continued for about 1 million recipients and terminated for 715,000. Of those dropped, 4 in 5 were for procedural reasons, according to newly released data from the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra sent a letter Friday to all governors encouraging them to bolster efforts to retain people on Medicaid. He particularly encouraged th...

Mobile homes turn deadly when tornadoes hit. This year has been especially bad, AP analysis finds

Published Wed, 25 Dec 2024 08:05:31 GMT

ROLLING FORK, Miss. (AP) — Many were not just killed at home. They were killed by their homes.Angela Eason had visited Brenda Odoms’ tidy mobile home before. It was a place where Odoms, who had many tragedies in her life, felt safe.In March, a tornado ripped through this small Mississippi town and people in mobile or manufactured homes were hit the hardest. Inside a mobile morgue, Eason, the county coroner, examined Odoms’ gaping fatal head wound. Odoms was found just outside of her collapsed mobile home that was tossed around by a tornado. Blunt force trauma killed her.“The one place she felt safe she was not,” Eason said. Fourteen people died in that Rolling Fork tornado, nine of them, including Odoms, were in uprooted manufactured or mobile homes.Tornadoes in the United States are disproportionately killing more people in mobile or manufactured homes, especially in the South, often victimizing some of the most socially and economically vulnerable residents. Since 1996, tornadoes ...