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(NEW YORK) — The dream of becoming America’s next billionaire is up for grabs this Saturday night as the Powerball jackpot climbed to $1 billion, sending ticket sales soaring across the nation ahead of the Labor Day weekend drawing.

Game officials increased the jackpot estimate Friday morning from $950 million after reviewing national ticket sales, Powerball said. The winner could opt for a cash payment of $453.1 million before taxes.

“We’re bringing extra excitement to Labor Day Weekend with a Powerball jackpot that’s climbed to a billion dollars!” Powerball Product Group Chair and Iowa Lottery CEO Matt Strawn said in a press release.

The game hasn’t seen a jackpot winner since May 31, when a California player claimed a $204.5 million prize. During this 39-drawing streak, the game has created 62 million-dollar winners and 608 tickets worth $50,000 or more.

Wednesday’s drawing saw six tickets match all five white balls — 9, 12, 22, 41 and 61 — with red Powerball 25, each winning $1 million or more.

Winners of Saturday’s jackpot can choose between annual payments or the lump sum. The annuity option provides one immediate payment followed by 29 annual payments that increase by 5% each year.Powerball tickets cost $2 per play and are sold in 45 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The odds of winning the jackpot are 1 in 292.2 million, while the overall odds of winning any prize are 1 in 24.9.

The game has generated more than $36 billion for good causes supported by U.S. lotteries since its first drawing in 1992, Powerball noted. More than half of ticket sale proceeds remain in the jurisdiction where the ticket was sold, according to Powerball.

The current jackpot ranks sixth among Powerball’s largest prizes. The record stands at $2.04 billion, won by a California player in November 2022, followed by the $1.765 billion prize claimed in California in October 2023.

Other notable jackpots include the $1.586 billion split among winners in California, Florida and Tennessee in January 2016, the $1.326 billion won in Oregon in April 2024, and the $1.08 billion claimed in California in July 2023.

Saturday’s drawing will be broadcast live at 10:59 p.m. ET from the Florida Lottery draw studio in Tallahassee and streamed on Powerball’s website.

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(MIAMI) — University of Miami football player Adarius Hayes has been arrested and charged with vehicular homicide following a monthslong investigation into a car crash that killed three people in Florida, police said Friday.

Hayes, 20, turned himself into the Largo Police Department and was transported to the Pinellas County Jail on Friday, police said.

Hayes was “traveling at a high rate of speed and maneuvering aggressively through traffic” shortly before colliding with another vehicle on May 10, Largo police said.

Three people, including two children, were killed in the crash, police said.

The two-vehicle crash occurred at an intersection in Largo, police said. Hayes was driving a Dodge Durango, which collided with a Kia Soul that was “lawfully executing a left-hand turn,” police said.

“It was discovered during the investigation that approximately five seconds prior to the fatal crash, Hayes made a rapid and dangerous maneuver, changing lanes from the curb lane to the median lane, crossing three lanes of traffic while overtaking other vehicles,” the Largo Police Department said in a press release. “Moments later, Hayes abruptly re-entered the curb lane, again crossing all three lanes without signaling.”

 A search warrant on Hayes’ vehicle determined that he was traveling 78.9 mph in a 40 mph zone at the time of the crash, police said.

Two children who were traveling in the backseat of the Kia Soul were ejected from the car and were pronounced dead at the scene, police said. The driver of the Kia Soul was transported with life-threatening injuries to an area hospital, where she died the following day, police said.

An adult front passenger in the Kia Soul was taken to a hospital with serious injuries and survived, police said.

Officers spoke with multiple eyewitnesses and reviewed video surveillance as part of their investigation into the crash, police said.

“The investigation concluded that Adarius Hayes’ egregious speed, aggressive and reckless lane changes, and complete disregard for surrounding traffic conditions demonstrated a willful and deliberate disregard for the safety of others, constituting reckless driving,” police said. “These actions directly led to the tragic deaths of the three victims.”

Hayes, who is a sophomore at Miami, was one of the top linebacker recruits in the country in 2024. A star at Largo High School, he was ranked as the 78th-best overall player in the country and sixth-best linebacker in the country by ESPN. He chose the Canes over such powerhouse programs as Alabama, Florida and Georgia.

He played sparingly as a freshman, mostly on special teams, but was expected to play a bigger role in 2025. Miami, ranked No. 10 in the country, hosts No. 6 Notre Dame in both schools’ first game of the season on Sunday.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

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(MINNEAPOLIS) — Over 100 people gathered across the street from the children’s ward at Minneapolis’ Hennepin County Medical Center to pray for the kids recovering there after they were shot at the Annunciation Catholic School this week.

Teachers, students and nurses, as well as police officers who had heard about the Thursday night candlelight vigil over their dispatch radios, all joined together for a moment of silence, united in a shared sense of grief and hope after Wednesday’s mass shooting.

“This is every nurse/mother’s worst nightmare, and worst fear come true,” a flyer for the vigil said. “We’d like anyone who is interested to come join us to light up [Minneapolis] with candlelight, love, and support, for the kids, their families and our staff.”

One of those victims is 12-year-old Sophia Forchas, who is in critical condition after undergoing surgery. It’s a tragedy that struck her entire family at once — her younger brother was inside Annunciation Catholic School at the time of the shooting and her mom is a pediatric nurse at the hospital where Sophia was admitted.

“Sofia’s mother was called into work, and only to find out when she arrived that her daughter was one of the victims, unfortunately,” Father Timothy Sas of St. Mary’s Greek Orthodox Church told ABC News.

“No priest is ever prepared enough to offer consolation for a moment like this,” he said.

He described Sophia as “luminous” and “bright,” an active student at school and in church.

“She’s pulled through, and we need about two, three days before they can understand what her future prognosis is,” he said.

The gunfire erupted during Wednesday morning Mass, when a shooter opened fire through the windows of the school’s church, killing an 8-year-old boy, Fletcher Merkel, and a 10-year-old girl, Harper Moyski.

Eighteen people — including 15 kids — were injured. All injured victims are expected to survive, police said.

The 23-year-old shooter, who previously attended the school, died at the scene from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, police said. A motive remains unknown.

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(BIG HORN COUNTY, Wyo.) — After being missing for nearly a month, a man who had left for a three-day hike in Wyoming was found dead in Bighorn National Forest, authorities said.

“While it’s not the outcome we hoped for, we are hopeful this will provide much needed peace and closure to the family,” the Big Horn County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement on Thursday.

Grant Gardner, a Minnesota man who had planned on a three-day hike “through the Misty Moon Lake area, eventually summiting Cloud Peak,” which is the highest peak within Bighorn National Forest, was last heard from on July 29, when he contacted his wife, saying he had made it to the summit, the sheriff’s office said.

Phone records revealed that he had reached the summit at Cloud Peak — which is around 13,000 feet — at approximately 7 p.m., which was concerning to officials due to the “lack of visible trails through cliffs, timer line, boulder fields and other hazards that had to be navigated after dark before reaching clear trails and safe terrain,” officials said.

Since then, officials said “there has not been any contact with Gardner.”

On Tuesday, a professional climbing team from North Carolina “summited Cloud Peak and descended to the northern route of the peak,” the sheriff’s office said. When the team was establishing a high-altitude camp for the evening, they “noticed a slight reflection a few hundred feet above them underneath a ledge,” and were “confident it was a backpack,” the sheriff’s office said.

But due to nightfall approaching, further investigation would be “too dangerous,” so the team notified the sheriff’s office via satellite, officials said.

Then on Wednesday, teams from the sheriff’s office were launched and “Grant Gardner’s remains were located near the backpack” and he was wearing “clothing that very closely matched the terrain he was climbing in,” officials said.

The body was recovered in one of the two primary search areas, “very closely matching one of the highest probability scenarios,” officials said.

“It is noteworthy that this area had been covered by air and other means, underscoring how difficult this mission has been,” the sheriff’s office said.

Bighorn National Forest is over 1 million acres, with 191,000 acres dedicated to the Cloud Peak Wilderness area, which is where Gardner is believed to have been traveling, according to the U.S. Forest Service.

While the case has been transferred to the Big Horn County Coroner’s Office to determine the time, manner and cause of death, officials said they believe Gardner “succumbed to a tragic accident as we all have surmised.”

Prior to the discovery of Gardner’s body, officials had suspended search efforts for the hiker, saying that his “most optimistic survival odds have run out.”

“I have made the heartbreaking and difficult decision to suspend active search and rescue operations for Mr. Gardner. Our teams have exhausted all resources and personnel over the last 20 days. With weather conditions and other factors updated in our search models, we have to face the reality that the most optimistic survival odds have run out,” Big Horn County Sheriff Ken Blackburn said in a statement last week.

Now, after this “dangerous” recovery, Gardner’s body will be “brought home to his family,” officials said.

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(NEW YORK) — Luigi Mangione, the accused UnitedHealthcare CEO killer, may have influenced last month’s deadly attack on NFL headquarters in New York City, federal prosecutors argued in a new court filing.

By carrying out the assassination-style killing of CEO Brian Thompson last year on a Midtown Manhattan street, Mangione “hoped to normalize the use of violence,” instead of reasoned dialogue, to achieve political objectives, prosecutors said. The prosecutors used last month’s mass shooting attack on the NFL headquarters in Midtown as an example.

On July 28, Shane Tamura brought an assault-style rifle to 345 Park Avenue, not far from where Mangione allegedly gunned down Thompson. Tamura shot and killed four people and, like Mangione, left behind writings for investigators to find. Tamura, in a letter found on his body, blamed the NFL and football for causing CTE. Tamura played football in high school, but not beyond that level. 

CTE, or chronic traumatic encephalopathy, is a brain disease linked to repeated hits to the head, often seen in military veterans and athletes, including football players, hockey players and boxers. It can only be diagnosed after a person’s death.

Mangione allegedly wrote “deny,” “depose” and “delay” on the bullets used to kill Thompson, authorities said. In a notebook found after his arrest, Mangione allegedly wrote in a journal, “The target is insurance” because “it checks every box.”

“The murder was thus, by the defendant’s own admission, calculated to resonate beyond this specific victim and to generate scorn, outrage, or fear toward the health insurance sector more broadly,” prosecutors said. “Simply put, the defendant hoped to normalize the use of violence to achieve ideological or political objectives. Since the murder, certain quarters of the public — who openly identify as acolytes of the defendant — have increasingly begun to view violence as an acceptable, or even necessary, substitute for reasoned political disagreement.”

The government believes Mangione deserves the death penalty in part because he poses a continuing danger by seeking to influence others.

Federal prosecutors elaborated on their reasoning for pursuing capital punishment as they urged a federal judge to deny a defense motion that asked for additional evidence to support the government’s theories.

Prosecutors said Mangione is not entitled to additional information at this stage of the case and argued “the defendant is already in possession of the evidentiary support for the Government’s aggravating factors and there is no risk of surprise.”

Mangione has pleaded not guilty to Thompson’s Dec. 4 killing. Mangione is accused of shooting the CEO several times using a 9 mm handgun equipped with a silencer. He was captured in Altoona, Pennsylvania, several days later.

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