(NEW YORK) — A whopping $700 million is up for grabs in the next Powerball drawing on Wednesday night, lottery officials said.
The estimated jackpot increased from $680 million after no ticket matched all six numbers drawn on Monday night, the 35th consecutive drawing. Wednesday’s jackpot is Powerball’s largest prize so far this year, the fifth-largest in the American lottery game’s 30-year history and the eighth-largest U.S. lottery jackpot ever, according to a press release from Powerball.
If a player wins Wednesday’s grand prize, it will be the sixth Powerball jackpot won this year. Jackpot winners can either take the money as an immediate cash lump sum or in 30 annual payments over 29 years. The cash value of Wednesday’s $700 million jackpot is $335.7 million, Powerball said.
Tickets cost $2 and are sold in 45 U.S. states as well as Washington, D.C., Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. More than half of all proceeds remain in the jurisdiction where the ticket was purchased, according to Powerball.
The jackpot grows based on game sales and interest rates. But the odds of winning the big prize stays the same — 1 in 292.2 million, Powerball said.
Powerball drawings are broadcast live every Monday, Wednesday and Saturday at 10:59 p.m. ET from the Florida Lottery draw studio in Tallahassee. The drawings are also live streamed online at Powerball.com.
(SAN ANTONIO) — A Texas teenager remains on life support more than three weeks after he was shot by a now-former police officer who confronted the unarmed teen while he was eating a hamburger in his car, attorneys for his family said Tuesday.
Erik Cantu, 17, was shot at least four times during the encounter in a San Antonio McDonald’s parking lot on Oct. 2, his family said.
His mother, Victoria Casarez, said her son was shot in his diaphragm, lungs, liver and bicep — and that one of the bullets remains lodged near his heart.
“He’s just mutilated,” she said during a press briefing surrounded by their extended family and their attorneys. “It just hurts us to see our son that way.”
His father, Erik Cantu Sr., described his son’s condition as “very touch and go,” and that he developed pneumonia while in the hospital.
The family’s attorneys said they believe the teen will survive his injuries and referred to Cantu as a “fighter.”
“But what quality of life will he have once he gets through it?” civil rights attorney Ben Crump, an attorney for the family, said.
The San Antonio Police Department said on Oct. 5 that it fired the officer, James Brennand, while releasing body-camera footage that showed him shooting nearly a dozen times at the teen’s car as Cantu drove away. Brennand’s actions violated department tactics, training and procedures, according to San Antonio Police Chief William McManus.
The rookie officer, who had been on the force for seven months, was subsequently charged with two counts of aggravated assault by a public servant, according to the San Antonio Police Department Homicide Unit. He was booked on Oct. 11 and released from Bexar County Jail the following day after posting a $200,000 bond.
A hearing has been set for Nov. 23. ABC News has reached out to his attorney for comment. Neither Brennand nor his attorney, Jay Norton, have yet to release a statement or publicly comment on the case.
The San Antonio Police Officer’s Association said it is not representing Brennand because he had not completed his 1-year probationary period for new officers at the time of the shooting and was therefore not eligible for the benefit.
The family’s attorneys said they were grateful that charges were pressed, but that the family would like to see more. Casarez said she would like to see the former officer charged with two counts of attempted murder and “behind bars.”
“That being said, I pray for his family,” she said.
Crump called the use of force “excessive” and claimed that the former officer racially profiled the teen.
“He profiled this young Hispanic teenager. He profiled him, there’s no question about it,” Crump said. “If we don’t get justice for Erik Cantu, then it can happen to you.”
Crump said his office has reached out to the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division to review the case.
“What crime was being committed by two 17-year-old kids parked in a McDonald’s parking lot eating a cheeseburger?” Crump said.
According to police, Brennand was responding to a disturbance call when he noticed a vehicle he thought had fled from him the night before during an attempted stop. The car had no connection to the disturbance call, police said.
The footage shows the officer approaching the car and opening the door, when he sees Cantu eating a hamburger alongside a female passenger and orders him out.
Police said the officer reported the car door hit him as the unarmed teen started to reverse the car.
Body-camera footage shows the officer firing 10 times, including into the car and after Cantu started to drive away, before chasing after it on foot.
Police said that the passenger in the vehicle was not injured during the incident.
Cantu was initially charged by proxy with evading detention in a vehicle and assault on an officer, though the Bexar County Criminal District Attorney has since dismissed the charges.
(NEW YORK) — A suspect has been charged with attempted murder for allegedly shoving a man onto the subway tracks in New York City last week.
Lamale McRae, 41, of Brooklyn, was arrested on Monday in Queens in connection with what police said was an unprovoked attack Friday afternoon at the Wyckoff Avenue and Myrtle Avenue subway station.
McRae was arraigned in Queens Criminal Court on charges including attempted murder in the second degree and attempted assault in the first degree, both felonies.
He was also charged with endangering the welfare of a child for allegedly pushing an 8-year-old boy to the ground as he fled the scene, causing abrasions to the child’s knee, according to the complaint.
McRae was remanded into custody and his next court appearance is scheduled for Nov. 14, court records show. ABC News did not immediately receive a response to an email seeking comment from his attorney.
McRae was arrested days after the New York City Police Department released footage of the incident, while calling on the public’s help to find the suspect.
Police said a man “intentionally without being provoked charged” at the 32-year-old victim, shoving him onto the tracks, before fleeing.
McRae was arrested with help from tips by the public, police said.
The victim sustained injuries in the attack from the fall but was not hit by a train, police said.
He was treated at a local hospital for a broken collarbone and a sprained shoulder, among other injuries, according to the complaint. He has since been released.
“In the blink of an eye, I was pushed with full force into the train tracks,” the victim, David Martin, said in an interview with ABC New York station WABC-TV.
“Mentally I don’t know how to even get through this,” he told the station.
Martin, a native New Yorker who was on his way to work when he was attacked, said he always felt safe taking the train.
“Now at 32 years old, I no longer feel safe and that’s not fair, and that’s not OK,” he told WABC.
On Saturday, New York City Mayor Eric Adams and New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said they plan to add more officers at subway stations, among other measures, to address transit crime.
(SAN JOSE, Calif.) — A 5.1-magnitude earthquake struck near San Jose, California, on Tuesday.
Santa Clara County’s Fire Department said it hasn’t received any calls for service.
Santa Cruz County officials said no schools were damaged and classes have resumed.
Cal OES is actively coordinating with local authorities in the region to evaluate any preliminary damage or issues created as a result of this earthquake and provide any assistance that is needed from the state level. https://t.co/Zq5HKbsNjV
— California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services (@Cal_OES) October 25, 2022
Seismologist Dr. Lucy Jones said this was the Bay Area’s largest earthquake since the 6.0-magnitude quake in Napa in 2014.
The Bay Area earthquake was on the Calaveras fault. The largest quake in the Bay Area since the 2014 Napa quake M6.0https://t.co/nbDx242Rmv
(NEW YORK) — New research from New York University found that public school curriculum is falling short in providing “culturally responsive” education, a blind spot that researchers believe could be failing students across the country.
The study was released just days after the National Assessment of Educational Progress announced that math and reading scores among fourth and eighth grade students across the country are declining.
“Culturally responsive” education infuses the backgrounds, cultures, identities, and lived experiences of the students into the instruction of a classroom. These identities inform a teacher’s communication style, the tools they use in their lessons and more, according to researchers from NYU’s Metropolitan Center for Research on Equity and the Transformation of Schools.
For example, educator and curriculum evaluator Sara Carroll-Muniz said in a press conference that when her students were having difficulty understanding allusion in poetry, she instead sought it out in songs they loved.
“We’re leaning on a lot of old, white poetry to try to get this message across and it just wasn’t clicking,” Carroll-Muniz said at the press conference. “Hip-hop is rife with allusion … it’s just such a wonderful source for exploring that.”
Past research from NYU, in the Journal of Curriculum and Teaching, and the Review of Educational Research has shown that this kind of education positively impacts students of all races and backgrounds, increasing students’ grades, engagement and academic success.
NYU researchers looked at three of the nation’s most widely used elementary school English Language Arts curricula used by millions of students.
It found that all three lacked cultural responsiveness — and researchers even declared some to be culturally “destructive,” by using “superficial visual representations to signify diversity,” without “meaningful cultural context, practices or traditions” and provided “one-sided storytelling that provided a single, ahistorical narrative.”
The study also found that the curricula “used language and tone that demeaned and dehumanized Black, Indigenous and characters of color, while encouraging empathy and connection with White characters.”
One example, study author Flor Khan pointed out, was that “Native Americans were described as docile, distressful, and broad and unusual and what this did was alienate and really like problematize and other BIPOC characters.”
It provided little to no guidance for teachers to engage with their student’s backgrounds, prior knowledge, cultures or opportunities for educators to reflect on their own biases or beliefs.
However, curriculum that resembles cultural responsiveness has been under attack. Legislation or policy changes have been introduced in at least 46 states to regulate how racism, sexism and other forms of discrimination are taught in K-12 classrooms.
Supporters of these laws say that some lessons on race and oppression make students feel guilty, uncomfortable or ashamed based on their race, sex or gender.
Critics say these policies censor teachers and students, and distill or erase certain perspectives from history.
In light of recent news about poor academic scores and the ongoing debate about how to teach children about race and gender, researchers argue that culturally responsive education could be the key to re-engaging with students.
(MEMPHIS, Tenn.) — Longtime relic collector Riley Bryant said he had a good hunch that he would find something interesting last weekend under the I-55 bridge in Memphis as the Mississippi River’s water levels reached record lows.
But the 21-year-old student and videographer never expected to see such a treasure trove in plain sight along the rocky shoreline Saturday.
Civil War-era bullets and a union U.S. cartridge box plate were lying around the rocks, just waiting to be picked up, he said.
“To find it there in such good condition just lying there, it almost gave me a heart attack,” Bryant told ABC News.
The location under the bridge used to be home to Fort Pickering, a base that was used for shipping first by the Confederates and later the Union after they took over the facility in 1862, according to historians. The Union army would continue to use the base until the end of the war and it was dismantled in 1866.
The bridge went up in the early part of the 20th century.
Bryant, who has discovered and collected over 75,000 historical artifacts from all over the country, posted videos of his discovery on his TikTok and Instagram pages and it quickly sparked interest from other local history buffs.
Bill Shaner, 63, a Civil War historian and lifelong Memphis resident, told ABC News that Bryant’s discovery was very rare.
“They are in exceptional condition. It’s hard to find a box plate that’s that undamaged,” Shaner told ABC News. “I couldn’t believe it was sticking up in the rocks like that.”
Shaner said other Civil War-era box plates, which were standard issue for troops, are usually discovered underground and not near river banks.
Bryant said the fort and the area near the bridge was frequently used for shipping so it was not uncommon for materials to be washed up and left behind in the water.
“The water levels being at this low level is the reason that no one has found it before,” he said.
The Memphis relic discovery is becoming a more common site around major bodies of water across the world as climate change, and droughts have brought up various rare objects and artifacts including dinosaur footprints in Texas.
The Mississippi River, following weeks of drought, hit a record low in Memphis of -10.71 feet last week, according to the National Weather Service.
Bryant said while he was excited to find the relics he also felt sad because of the state of the river.
“It’s showing how much garbage has been thrown into the river and how polluted the river really is,” he said. “The videos really show how much pollution is going on in the river along with the historical stuff.”
In the meantime, Bryant, who works as a videographer for American Digger Magazine, said he never sells any historical find and instead travels the country to display his collection to anyone interested in history.
“I try to educate people about the history behind the relics,” he said. “I try to do that in a way that has the context of where it’s from.”
(NEW YORK) — New York City’s COVID vaccination mandate for municipal workers was “arbitrary and capricious,” and those who were fired over it should be reinstated, according to a judge’s ruling made public on Tuesday.
Judge Ralph Porzio in Staten Island cited President Joe Biden’s recent declaration the pandemic was over and a decision by New York Gov. Kathy Hochul not to renew the state’s COVID-19 emergency.
The ruling came in a case brought by 16 sanitation workers who were fired earlier this year over their refusal to get vaccinated but who claimed they had natural immunity because of prior infections.
“Though vaccination should be encouraged, public employees should not have been terminated for their noncompliance,” Porzio wrote in the ruling. “It is time for the city of New York to do what is right and what is just.”
The ruling said the fired workers were to have been reinstated Tuesday and were entitled to back pay. The city is appealing.
“The city strongly disagrees with this ruling as the mandate is firmly grounded in law and is critical to New Yorkers’ public health,” a spokesman for the Law Department said in a statement. “We continue to review the court’s decision, which conflicts with numerous other rulings already upholding the mandate.”
The ruling said the vaccine requirement violated the sanitation workers’ due process rights, along with the separation of powers. The judge also criticized a decision in March to exempt athletes, artists and performers.
“Granting exemptions for certain classes and selectively lifting vaccination orders, while maintaining others, is simply the definition of disparate treatment,” the ruling said.
Biden was asked about New York while getting his COVID booster on Tuesday and called it a “local judgment.” His own vaccine mandates focused on the federal workforce and employees at large companies.
(DALLAS) — Henry “Michael” Dwight Williams, the man who sold the gun to the Texas synagogue hostage-taker earlier this year, was sentenced to nearly eight years in federal prison, authorities said.
Malik Faisal Akram, 44, held four people hostage for 10 hours in Colleyville’s Congregation Beth Israel synagogue in the Dallas-Fort Worth area last January. The hostages were safely evacuated and Akram was fatally shot by law enforcement officers.
Williams sold Akram a semiautomatic Taurus G2C pistol on Jan. 13. In plea papers, Williams admitted to possessing the firearm despite his conviction, according to Chad Meacham of the U.S. attorney’s office for the Northern District of Texas.
“This defendant, a convicted felon, had no business carrying – much less buying and selling – firearms. Whether he suspected his buyer would use the gun to menace a community of faith is legally irrelevant: In the U.S., convicted felons cannot possess firearms,” said Meacham.
The FBI was able to uncover cellphone records tying Williams to Akram. The two exchanged several phone calls from Jan. 11 to Jan. 13, according to the U.S. attorney’s office.
After he was arrested on an outstanding warrant in January, Williams told investigators that he sold Akram the handgun at an intersection in South Dallas.
Williams was charged in January, indicted in February and pleaded guilty to the charge in June. A federal judge issued the sentencing on Monday. He was previously convicted of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon and attempted possession of a controlled substance.
“The Justice Department is committed to prosecuting those who violate our nation’s federal firearm laws, which are designed to keep guns from falling into the hands of dangerous offenders. We are grateful to the FBI, which sprang into action as soon as the synagogue hostage crisis began, and to the agents who worked tirelessly to track the weapon from Mr. Akram to the defendant,” Meacham said.
(NEW YORK) — Five tourists who were trapped some 200 feet underground at Arizona’s Grand Canyon Caverns for more than 24 hours due an elevator malfunction have since been rescued, authorities said.
“All subjects were safely removed at approximately 7:30 p.m. last night and were all in good condition,” Jon Paxton, public information officer for the Coconino County Sheriff’s Office, told ABC News in an email on Tuesday morning.
The elevator broke down on Sunday evening when visitors went to leave the popular tourist attraction near Peach Springs, Arizona, about 100 miles west of Flagstaff. Several people were able to walk up the 21 flights of stairs to get out, but five others were either unable to safely do so or chose to stay behind with those who physically couldn’t, according to the sheriff’s office.
The stranded group was provided accommodation and food that night by a small hotel and restaurant adjacent to the dry caverns, which are among the largest in the United States and date back 65 million years. The elevator malfunction was initially thought to be electrical but is now believed to be mechanical after an external generator that arrived on Monday did not fix the problem, the sheriff’s office said.
The sheriff’s office said it sent a search and rescue team with a basket apparatus that can lift people up the elevator shaft one-by-one, in the event that the technicians could not repair the elevator quickly.
It was not immediately clear how the tourists were rescued on Monday evening.
(WASHINGTON) — A bill recently introduced in Congress would restrict federal funding from organizations, local governments and schools that include LGBTQ content in events, programs, education and more.
The “Stop the Sexualization of Children Act” has a very slim chance of passing Congress. The midterm elections, however, could change that.
Here’s what the bill would entail:
If passed by Congress, the legislation would prohibit federal, state, local governments and private organizations that receive federal tax dollars from developing, facilitating or funding programs, events or literature on “sexual orientation, gender identity, gender dysphoria, or related subjects” for children under the age of 10.
Parents would be allowed to file a lawsuit against any public or private entity that uses federal funds to display or facilitate content featuring LGBTQ identities.
If an agency or organization violates these restrictions more than once in a five-year period, it could lose access to federal funds for three years, according to the bill.
The bill specifically mentions drag shows, which have been the recent target of criticism by conservative groups advocating for laws such as this one.
Proposed bill prompts criticism
The bill sparked immediate backlash from some LGBTQ people and activists across the country, who say this legislation misrepresents these identities as inherently sexual, shameful or taboo.
They assert that this kind of legislation will silence and harm LGBTQ teachers and students, while stigmatizing the community and threatening federally funded programs on inclusion.
“Instead of joining the rising tide of acceptance and bipartisan support for LGBTQ people, members of Congress trying to score political points propose a bill filled with misinformation with the futile attempt of smearing and erasing who we are,” said Sarah Kate Ellis, president and CEO of LGBTQ advocacy group GLAAD.
She continued, “The American people see this for what it is: a desperate and losing effort targeting the most vulnerable students, with the goal of spreading lies.”
The proposed bill comes amid a wave of conservative calls against the representation or discussion of LGBTQ identities in schools and libraries. The Republican-led battle against LGBTQ content has grown nationwide, prompting book bans and similar legislation in several states.
“A federal ‘Don’t Say Gay or Trans’ bill – modeled after the controversial discriminatory law in Florida and aiming to drive LGBTQ+ families and teachers out of the education system – is their latest cruel attempt to stigmatize and marginalize the community, not in an attempt to solve actual problems but only to rile up their extremist base,” said David Stacy, the government affairs director of LGBTQ advocacy group Human Rights Campaign.
Effort reflects nationwide conservative movement
Louisiana Rep. Mike Johnson is leading the effort, backed by more than 30 other Republican Congress members.
“The Democrat Party and their cultural allies are on a misguided crusade to immerse young children in sexual imagery and radical gender ideology,” Johnson said.
The legislation follows the implementation of Florida’s Parental Rights in Education law, which was implemented in July. Several states have followed Florida’s lead, including Alabama, which has implemented so-called “Don’t Say Gay” policies of its own.
Supporters say these laws allow parents to decide what should be taught to their children.
“We will make sure that parents can send their kids to school to get an education, not an indoctrination,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said before signing the bill in March.
Following the law’s implementation, the state Board of Education approved a rule that could remove the licenses of teachers who include sexual orientation or gender identity in their curriculum. The Miami-Dade school board also voted against formally recognizing LGBTQ History Month, a month it had celebrated in the past.
Some teachers say they’ve left classrooms behind because of these anti-LGBTQ policies.
