(NEW YORK) — The Mega Millions jackpot has surged to $1.35 billion for Friday’s drawing, the second-largest in the game’s history.
The only Mega Millions jackpot larger than Friday’s prize is the $1.537 billion prize won in South Carolina on Oct. 23, 2018.
The prize is also now the fourth-largest jackpot in U.S. lottery history. Last November’s $2.04 billion prize, taken by a single winner in California, is the largest in U.S. history.
The lump sum cash option payout for Friday’s drawing is $707.9 million — before taxes.
Tuesday night’s winning numbers were 7, 13, 14, 15 and 18 and the Mega Ball number was 9.
The most recent Mega Millions jackpot win was at $502 million, shared by winning tickets in California and Florida, on Oct. 14.
While no one has claimed the top prize, there have been a total of almost 33.3 million winning tickets sold in the 25 drawings since the jackpot was last won.
Sixteen tickets matched the five white balls to win $1 million on Tuesday, while three people matched all five and played the multiplier to take home $3 million.
(NEW YORK) — A massive storm system sweeping across the United States struck the South on Thursday with severe winds and numerous tornadoes, killing at least seven people in Alabama and Georgia.
In Alabama’s Autauga County, northwest of Montgomery, at least six people died due to the severe weather, according to the local sheriff’s office. “Multiple” other people were hospitalized and about 40 to 50 homes were either damaged or destroyed, the county emergency management agency told ABC News.
In Georgia’s Butts County, southeast of Atlanta, at least one person — a child — died when a tree fell on a vehicle, the local coroner told ABC News.
Meanwhile, at least 23 tornadoes were reported across Alabama on Thursday. More twisters were expected as a line of severe storms moved through Georgia and the Carolinas on Thursday night.
One of the tornadoes delivered “significant damage” to Alabama’s historic city of Selma, according to the mayor’s office.
The National Weather Service confirmed a “large and extremely dangerous” tornado struck Selma on Thursday at 12:20 p.m. local time.
Most of Selma’s streets are closed due to downed power lines and trees, according to the mayor’s office.
All Selma students are reported to be safe and at their schools, the office added.
The city, a famous focal point of the civil rights movement, is located in central Alabama and has a population of about 17,000.
Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey issued a state of emergency for six counties — including Dallas County, which encompasses Selma, and Autauga County — “that were in the path of Mother Nature’s wrath,” the governor tweeted Thursday evening.
Ivey said she will be monitoring the severe weather system “to determine if an expanded state of emergency is needed.”
ABC News’ Matt Foster and Melissa Griffin contributed to this report.
Photos of Abby Williams, left, and Libby German, right, at police headquarters in Delphi, Indiana. – Lindsey Jacobson/ABC News, FILE
(DELPHI, Ind.) — Delphi, Indiana, double murder suspect Richard Allen is set to return to court on Friday morning.
Allen County Judge Fran Gull is expected to review the gag order and consider the defense’s change of venue request.
Allen was arrested in October 2022 and charged with two counts of murder for the February 2017 killings of Abby Williams, 13, and Libby German, 14. Allen has pleaded not guilty.
Abby and Libby, who were best friends, were on a hiking trail in rural Delphi when they were killed. The case, which garnered national interest, had gone years without an arrest.
While the girls were on the trail that day, one of them said “gun” as a man approached them, the probable cause affidavit said, citing video recovered from one of the victim’s phones. A man was seen and heard telling the girls, “Guys, down the hill,” and Abby and Libby then went down the hill, according to the probable cause affidavit.
A .40-caliber unspent round was found less than 2 feet away from one of the bodies and went through a gun that Allen owns, according to the probable cause affidavit.
Allen admitted to police he was on the trail the day of the murders but he denied knowing the victims and denied any involvement in their deaths, the affidavit said.
“When asked about the unspent bullet, [Allen] did not have an explanation of why the bullet was found” by the girls’ bodies, the probable cause affidavit said.
Police still have not released how Abby and Libby died.
(SELMA, Ala.) — Severe weather devastated parts of Alabama, including Selma, on Thursday as multiple tornadoes tore through the state.
At least six people were killed due to severe weather in Autauga County, outside of Montgomery, the local sheriff’s office confirmed to ABC News. No further details were immediately available.
A tornado also delivered “significant damage” to the city of Selma, according to the mayor’s office.
A “large and extremely dangerous” tornado struck Selma at 12:20 p.m. local time, according to the National Weather Service.
Most of Selma’s streets are closed due to downed power lines and trees, according to the mayor’s office.
All Selma students are reported to be safe and at their schools, the office added.
The tornado in Selma is one of at least 23 twisters reported across Alabama on Thursday. More tornadoes are expected as a line of severe storms moves through Georgia and the Carolinas Thursday night.
Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey issued a state of emergency for six counties — including Dallas County, which encompasses Selma, and Autauga County — “that were in the path of Mother Nature’s wrath,” the governor tweeted Thursday evening.
Ivey said she will be monitoring the severe weather system “to determine if an expanded state of emergency is needed.”
Selma, a famous focal point of the civil rights movement, is located in central Alabama and has a population of about 17,000.
ABC News’ Matt Foster and Melissa Griffin contributed to this report.
(CYRIL, Okla.) — Oklahoma police have arrested the caretaker of a 4-year-old girl who was reported missing after a postal carrier found her sister wandering alone outside on Tuesday, authorities said.
Local authorities began searching for Athena Brownfield Tuesday afternoon, when the postal worker discovered her 5-year-old sister near the children’s home in Cyril and notified police, according to the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation, which is also involved in the search.
Alysia Adams, 31, was arrested Thursday afternoon on two counts of child neglect, the agency said. The two sisters were reportedly in the care of Adams and her husband when the 5-year-old was found alone, police said.
Meanwhile, the search for Athena continues.
“The investigation into her whereabouts is active and ongoing,” the agency said Thursday.
The Oklahoma Highway Patrol on Wednesday issued a missing and endangered person alert to people in a 15-mile radius of Cyril, located about 70 miles southwest of Oklahoma City.
Law enforcement is working to put together an exact timeline of when Athena was last seen, according to Brook Arbeitman, a spokesperson for the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation.
The location of the parents is “part of the ongoing investigation,” Arbeitman told reporters Wednesday.
“Right now our top priority is locating her and sorting out who’s responsible will come next,” Arbeitman said. “But we need to find this little girl.”
Arbeitman said whether the child is a victim of physical harm is “yet to be determined,” though she is considered in danger at this time.
“She’s a little child and she’s missing, and she’s on her own in the elements,” Arbeitman said.
Her sister did not require any medical care and currently is in protective custody with the state, Arbeitman said.
The National Center for Missing & Exploited Children and soldiers from Fort Sill are among those assisting in the search, Arbeitman said. State troopers were conducting sonar searches of bodies of water in and around Cyril on Wednesday. Search dogs from the Oklahoma Department of Corrections and drones from the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs have also been employed in the search.
Volunteers also helped conduct a grid search, looking in vacant houses and local waterways, police said.
Arbeitman said authorities are finding items in town that “could be relevant” and helpful to the case, though did not elaborate.
“We are finding things that we hope might give us clues,” she said.
Law enforcement is encouraging residents and businesses to share any surveillance footage they may have, including doorbell cameras, as well as to search their properties.
Athena is described by authorities as being 3 feet tall and 45 pounds with light brown hair and blue eyes. She is believed to have been recently wearing a butterfly hoodie.
Anyone with information on her whereabouts is asked to contact the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigations at 800-522-8017 or tips@osbi.ok.gov.
(NEW YORK) — Teachers are speaking out days after a 6-year-old allegedly shot a teacher at a Newport News, Virginia, elementary school.
Trayvon Thompson teaches kindergarten at a public school in Los Angeles County. The 22-year-old is in his first year of teaching and he said when he first heard about the shooting, which reportedly took place last Friday, he was “shocked” and immediately had questions.
“My students are 6. I was just like, it really puts it into perspective. Like, OK, if he can do that, that makes it a little bit scarier because what if … one of my students were to do that?” Thompson told “Good Morning America.”
According to Newport News police, a 6-year-old student, who has not been identified, allegedly brought a gun from home to Richneck Elementary School on Friday, Jan. 6, and opened fire, striking Abigail Zwerner, a 25-year-old first grade teacher at the school, in the hand and chest.
Authorities described the incident as an “intentional” act.
The incident is the latest in a spate of other school shootings, which have roughly doubled in the last 10 years, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.
Zwerner, who according to police managed to usher her students to safety even after being shot, was taken to a local hospital following the incident.
On Monday, Newport News Police Chief Steve Drew said the 25-year-old was in stable condition.
After learning about the incident, Thompson took to TikTok to share his thoughts. “I was really shocked and I wanted to see how other people felt about it, how it made them feel, if it would make them scared to go to school in a way,” he said.
Of his post, Thompson told “GMA,” “I did mention the fact that if a school shooting were to happen in a school I worked at, that I would deeply consider quitting. I don’t really blame anyone if they would quit because of [a] school shooting or would say, ‘You know what, let me not be a teacher due to it.'”
Teachers across the U.S. have been leaving the profession in droves, and last fall, 45% of public schools reported they had at least one vacant teaching position, according to data from NCES.
Educators have cited stressors such as burnout, mental health struggles, school safety, low pay, funding cuts and a lack of respect as reasons many are leaving, or are considering leaving, the education field.
Marisa Palermo is also an elementary school teacher at a Connecticut public school and has been teaching for the last nine years. She said this year is the first time where she’s considered the idea of leaving her profession, one that she loves.
“This is something that teachers should never ever have to even worry about happening coming into school, just the same as students should never have to worry about being harmed in school either,” Palermo, 30, said.
“I was pretty angry that [Zwerner] was even put into this situation for this to happen,” the fifth grade teacher added.
Teachers say change is needed
Palermo opened up Monday in her own TikTok post, sharing a strong message. “Administration WAKE UP,” she captioned her video.
Other teachers chimed in on Palermo’s post, sharing their own viewpoints.
“I have been a para educator for 13 years [at] a public high school. Every year has gotten worse, and scarier. People don’t understand who don’t work in it,” wrote one TikTok user.
“Teacher here of 29 years and you said exactly what we’re all saying. If I was starting out as an educator now, I would never stay in this career,” another added.
Both Palermo and Thompson said safety concerns are always at the back of their minds, especially since gun violence has become a leading cause of death for children, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“As a teacher, my number one concern always is keeping my students safe and that comes before anything else to me, like academics, anything. So watching the way things have been going down in our country, it is a thought that I have going into work every single day,” Palermo said.
Thompson said he’s even adopted a safety precaution in his daily routine.
“I’ve started carrying pepper spray with me,” he said. “It’s just something that at first I was carrying it in case somebody tried to do something to me while I was walking down the street but now … if someone were to come in with a gun, at least that’s something I do have on deck. Maybe I can’t reach anything to throw but maybe I can get to my pepper spray quickly enough and maybe I could spray with it.”
Palermo and Thompson are also of the opinion that schools need to provide more mental health resources — and not just for students.
“What schools will do, they’ll provide counselors and resources for students, but sometimes I feel like they overlook teachers and the trauma that teachers go through when it comes to shootings,” Thompson said. “They should think about teachers heavily as well.”
“What I’m seeing right now in schools, and what I’m hearing from other educators as well, is our students are crying out for help, and nobody’s really listening, it feels like — and surely nobody is listening to teachers,” Palermo said.
Palermo suggested one way of effecting change is to bring teachers to the table and not only rely on lawmakers and administrators who may be far removed from today’s classroom to make school-related policy decisions.
“I think one of the biggest changes that can be made, other than money of course … is having teachers be part of this decision-making process at the school level but also at state levels to help our country just improve,” Palermo said.
Parents have also been speaking out in the aftermath of the alarming incident. They include Joselin Glover, whose son is a fourth grade student at Richneck Elementary.
“It’s just really hard to process that this happened to us,” Glover told “GMA.”
“[My son] said to me on our walk out, ‘I don’t want to come back here. I never want to come back here. I want to forget this happened.'” Glover recalled her child telling her after she picked him up from school on Friday.
Michele Nordeen, the president of the Newport News Council PTA, which includes Richneck Elementary, told “GMA” the local PTA council is standing by teachers and students in the community following Friday’s shooting.
“I reached out to the Richneck teachers just to let them know that we’ve had a huge outpouring across from PTAs across the country offering support, and I wanted to let them know that even though the child and the injured teacher had been receiving all of the attention, that I wanted to let them know that we were also thinking of them,” Nordeen said.
In a statement released last Friday, Nordeen and Virginia PTA president Pamela Croom also said in part, “Schools should be safe places that celebrate learning. We cannot become numb to these continued acts of violence in our schools. We must all play a role in working collaboratively to address violence in our schools and create a strong safety-net of mental health support for our children that helps them learn how to channel anger and frustration in a healthy manner.”
(NEW YORK) — Dangerous avalanche conditions are expected through the weekend in Colorado, experts warned, as the state has reported several deadly avalanches so far this season.
“We have seen more avalanches this year than we do during a typical year, and recently they’ve gotten much bigger,” Ethan Greene, director of the Colorado Avalanche Information Center, said in a statement Thursday. “We want everyone to enjoy the wonderful public lands in Colorado, and go home alive and well to their family and friends on Monday.”
Early-season snowfall, followed by heavy snow in early December and early January, has created dangerous avalanche conditions, the center said. New snowfall this week and more in the forecast over the weekend adds to the continued threat, it said.
“We are on the cusp of a potentially very dangerous weekend. Dangerous avalanche conditions falling over a holiday weekend is a recipe for potential accidents,” the center warned.
The Colorado Avalanche Information Center has reported more than 870 avalanches since Dec. 26, three of which have been deadly.
On Dec. 26, a father and his three teenage sons got caught in an avalanche while skiing and snowboarding in an area known as the Nitro Chute, the Colorado Avalanche Information Center said. The 44-year-old father was fully buried and died despite life-saving measures, the center said.
On Dec. 31, a father and his adult son were skiing in the backcountry outside of the Breckenridge ski area got caught in an avalanche. The son was fully buried and found dead about two hours after the avalanche occurred, according to the Colorado Avalanche Information Center.
Most recently, two snowmobile riders were buried and killed in an avalanche on Mount Epworth on Saturday, according to the Colorado Avalanche Information Center.
“We need everyone headed into the backcountry to plan their trip carefully and make sure they avoid avalanche hazards,” Greene said. “We need to stop this deadly trend.”
The Colorado Avalanche Information Center advises checking the avalanche forecast before going into the backcountry and ensuring that everyone carries and knows how to use an avalanche-rescue transceiver, probe pole and shovel. Low-angle terrain without steep slopes overhead is also advised due to the high avalanche potential.
ABC News’ Jeffrey Cook contributed to this report.
(SELMA, Ala.) — A tornado delivered “significant damage” to the city of Selma, Alabama, as strong storms moved through the region on Thursday, according to the mayor’s office.
The “large and extremely dangerous” tornado struck Selma at 12:20 p.m. local time, according to the National Weather Service.
Most of Selma’s streets are closed due to downed power lines and trees, according to the mayor’s office.
All Selma students are reported to be safe and at their schools, the office added.
The tornado in Selma is one of at least 18 twisters reported across Alabama on Thursday. Storms are pummeling Alabama, including rough rain 150 miles north of Selma in Hartselle.
The tornado watch remains in effect from Atlanta to Mobile, Alabama, through Thursday evening.
Selma, a famous focal point of the civil rights movement, is located in central Alabama and has a population of about 17,000.
ABC News’ Melissa Griffin contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — With the Federal Aviation Administration’s Notice To all Air Missions, or NOTAM, system back up and running, staffing remains high and systems monitoring is at an urgently high level this morning, a senior official told ABC News Thursday.
Computer traffic on the NOTAM system is at super-high levels as airlines, pilots and airports start the day with normal flight operations while also trying to make up for delays and cancellations yesterday. At the same time, public and media computer traffic on the NOTAM system is running high because of global interest in the antiquated system that crashed on Wednesday.
The ground stop order that paused all airplane domestic departures and the FAA systems failures Wednesday morning appear to have been the result of a mistake that occurred during routine scheduled systems maintenance, according to a senior official briefed on the internal review.
An engineer “replaced one file with another,” the official said, not realizing the mistake was being made. As the systems began showing problems and ultimately failed, FAA staff feverishly tried to figure out what had gone wrong. The engineer who made the error did not realize what had happened.
Engineers and IT teams are working to keep the system from crashing again today while they also try to figure out if there are any similar systems that could fail without redundancies.
The official equated this morning’s situation in the FAA networks to the unprecedented strain that was placed on residential internet systems in the first days of the COVID shutdowns in 2019. The systems were just not built for that level of sustained traffic, the official said.
Canada’s NOTAM system was also disrupted Wednesday. FAA teams in contact with the Canadians do not know what happened to the Canadian NOTAM system Wednesday or whether it was connected to the U.S. chaos, the official who spoke with ABC News said. Canada did not have to initiate a ground stop and its system had backups and returned to normal function much more quickly than the U.S. operation. Canada also has a more modern system, the official said, and a fraction of U.S. air traffic.
ABC News’ Sam Sweeney, Jon Haworth, Kevin Shalvey and Meredith Deliso contributed to this report.
Photography by Keith Getter (all rights reserved)/Getty Images
(NEW YORK) — Extreme drought, the second-highest level of drought, has been nearly eliminated in the state of California in the wake of storms caused by atmospheric rivers slamming the state over the last several weeks.
Extreme drought fell from 27.1% last week to 0.32% in the numbers released Thursday, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor. Severe drought, the third-highest level, fell from 71% to 46%.
