(NEW YORK) — For only the third time in the 20-year history of Mega Millions, the jackpot has surpassed the massive $1 billion mark after the winning numbers were drawn on Tuesday night and no winner was declared.
The estimated jackpot Mega Millions drawing on Friday, July 29, is now an estimated $1.025 billion.
The winning numbers on Tuesday were 7-29-60-63-66. The Mega Ball was 15 and the Megaplier was 3.
The jackpot had reached an estimated $830 million ahead of Tuesday night’s drawing, making it the third-largest jackpot in the game’s history.
“Friday night’s drawing will be the thirtieth in this jackpot run, which began April 19 after the jackpot was won in Tennessee on April 15,” Mega Millions said in a statement issued early Wednesday.
Even though Friday’s prize is now estimated to be valued at over $1 billion, it still falls short of the record jackpot which was won in South Carolina on Oct. 23, 2018. The winner won $1.537 billion and it holds the world record for the largest lottery prize ever won on a single ticket.
Only four Mega Millions jackpots have been won this year; in California, Minnesota, New York and Tennessee.
Tuesday’s Mega Millions drawing had a cash value of $487.9 million, the company said in a press release. The next drawing on Friday has an estimated cash value of $602.5 million.
“We look with anticipation on the growing jackpot,” says Ohio Lottery Director Pat McDonald, current Lead Director of the Mega Millions Consortium. “Seeing the jackpot build over a period of months and reaching the billion-dollar mark is truly breathtaking. We encourage customers to keep play in balance and enjoy the ride. Someone is going to win.”
As the numbers were being drawn at 11 p.m. ET, those who were trying to check the Mega Millions website were given an error — the site had crashed.
“With unprecedented traffic after the drawing — more than any in the history of megamillions.com — the Mega Millions website was down for more than two hours Tuesday night,” the company said in a statement.
There were a total of 6,775,330, winning tickets at all prize levels from Tuesday night’s drawing. A total of nine tickets matched the five white balls to win the Mega Millions second prize with one of those being sold in Ohio being worth $3 million because it included the optional Megaplier. The other eight Match 5 tickets were all worth $1 million with two each being sold in New Jersey and New York, plus one each in California, Florida, Illinois and Ohio.
“In the 29 drawings since the jackpot was last won in Tennessee on April 15, there have been more than 28.1 million winning tickets at all prize levels, including 42 worth $1 million or more,” the company said. “Those big prizes have been won in 17 states across the country: Arizona, Arkansas, California, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Texas and Virginia.”
Lottery winners have two options: take the money as a lump sum payment or annuity payments over 29 years.
Most winners usually take the lump sum payments, but record inflation has complicated matters, experts said.
“If we believe that inflation will be here for a while, then you may want to consider taking the annuity versus taking the lump sum,” tax and estate planning attorney Kurt Panouses told ABC News’ Deirdre Bolton.
(NEW YORK) — The United States now leads the globe in confirmed monkeypox cases, new data published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has revealed.
The U.S. has reported a total of 3,846 known monkeypox cases as of Monday, July 25, federal and global data shows, surpassing Spain, which has reported 3,100 cases, and Germany, which has 2,352 cases.
“The international community must work together to protect individuals that have been impacted by monkeypox, and those most at risk of contracting the virus,” White House COVID-19 Coordinator Dr. Ashish Jha said during a press briefing on Tuesday.
“We want to make sure that we all Americans understand that we have taken we are continue to take this virus seriously,” he added.
Last week, the World Health Organization declared the monkeypox outbreak a public health emergency of international concern.
Across the globe, nearly 18,100 cases have been confirmed in 75 countries, including more than 17,800 cases confirmed in countries that have not historically reported monkeypox.
Health experts have said that the number of monkeypox cases is likely much higher than the total that is officially reported, and U.S. health officials have been warning for weeks that the number of monkeypox cases would likely increase across the country, as the government increases testing capacity and surveillance.
“I would like you all to understand that we anticipate an increase in cases in the coming weeks,” CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said during a press briefing earlier this month.
With increased testing, an improved reporting system for states, and the continued spread of disease, more cases will be identified, she said.
“We know monkeypox symptoms usually start within three weeks of exposure to the virus, so we anticipate we may see an increase in cases throughout the month of July and into August,” Walensky added.
Monkeypox transmission typically occurs through close contact for an extended period of time, or contact with articles of clothing, bedding, or towels that have been in contact with an infectious patient, Dr. Amy Arrington, Medical Director, Special Isolation Unit at Texas Children’s Hospital, told ABC News.
“You cannot get this virus from touching an elevator button, from walking past someone in the mall casually. It is spread by close contact – contact with lesions so touching infectious lesions or infectious scabs,” Arrington said.
Although the vast majority — 99% — of the cases reported domestically have been related to male-to-male sexual contact, according to the WHO, last week, federal officials confirmed that two children in the U.S. had tested positive for monkeypox.
One case has occurred in a toddler, who is a resident of California, and the other has been reported in an infant, who is a non-U.S. resident.
The two cases are unrelated, located in different jurisdictions, and were likely the result of household transmission, officials said.
Officials have repeatedly stressed that although monkeypox is affecting the “gay, bisexual, and other men who have sex with men,” community most prominently, at this time, the virus can affect anyone who has close contact with people who have monkeypox, including children.
ABC News’ Dr. Rachel Boren contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — A report released Tuesday by Republicans on the Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee says that China targeted the Federal Reserve for nearly 10 years, working to recruit and influence employees in an effort to obtain information and monetary benefit and to influence U.S. monetary policy.
The report zeroes in on what it describes as Chinese efforts to recruit American talent using programs that targeted individuals at the Fed — offering job prospects, academic positions and economic and research opportunities in an effort to gain access to sensitive data and information.
Fed Chairman Jerome Powell refuted many aspects of the report. In a letter on Monday to Sen. Rob Portman, the committee’s ranking Republican, Powell wrote that he had “strong concerns” about the findings, including allegations that the Fed had failed to work with law enforcement to ward off outside influence.
The report’s conclusions are based off of counterintelligence data from the Fed and detail a variety of actions by the central banking system’s employees that the report describes as putting the institution at risk. It identifies 13 persons of interest, representing eight regional Fed banks, who have connections to known Chinese talent recruiters or “similar patterns of activity.”
The report details the interactions that some of these individuals had with China’s government — some of which were aggressive on the part of the Chinese.
In one series of events, the report says, a Fed employee was detained on four separate occasions during a trip to Shanghai in 2019. Chinese officials threatened the employee’s family, tapped their electronics and tried to force them to sign a letter stating they would not discuss the interactions, according to the report.
Another employee provided modeling code to a Chinese university with ties to a Chinese talent recruitment agency.
Still another individual, with “continuous contacts with Chinese nationals and universities,” tried twice to transfer Fed data to an external site.
One of the reasons Fed employees were vulnerable, the report asserts, is due to China “taking advantage” of America’s openness to participating in academic and research-based work.
Republicans on the Senate committee said the Fed remains poorly positioned to counter such overtures from China, citing a “lack of internal counterintelligence competency” at the bank and failure to sufficiently cooperate with law enforcement and intelligence agencies. The result, the report says, is an institution unable to identify threats quickly or to investigate potential efforts by China to recruit U.S. talent.
Powell, the Fed chairman, pushed back in his letter.
“We value our interactions with the law enforcement community and would not hesitate to refer a matter to them or otherwise seek their counsel where appropriate. We would be concerned about any supportable allegation of wrongdoing, whatever the source,” he wrote to Portman. “In contrast, we are deeply troubled by what we believe to be the report’s unfair, unsubstantiated and unverified insinuations about particular individual staff members.”
Portman, who previously led investigations of China’s recruiting efforts in the tech and science fields, urged the Fed to “do more” to protect itself.
“I am concerned by the threat to the Fed and hope our investigation, which is based on the Fed’s own documents and corresponds with assessments and recommendations made by the FBI, wakes the Fed up to the broad threat from China to our monetary policy,” he said in a statement. “The risk is clear, I urge the Fed to do more, working with the FBI, to counter this threat from one of our foremost foreign adversaries.”
Powell insisted the Fed was already being proactive.
“Because we understand that some actors aim to exploit any vulnerabilities, our processes, controls and technology are robust and updated regularly,” he wrote. “We respectfully reject any suggestions to the contrary.”
But the report recommends that Congress act to institute safeguards for federally funded research at the Fed and other academic institutions. Portman is leading an effort to include these protections in a soon-to-pass bill on science and microchips.
(SAN FRANCISCO) — A couple received a ticket last week for parking in a red zone after the curb was repainted while their car was parked there, according to ABC San Francisco station KGO .
Jeff and Desiree Jolly have lived in San Francisco’s Russian Hill neighborhood for years, telling KGO that they’ve parked in the spot whenever it’s available for 25 years.
The couple said they noticed a $180 parking ticket on the windshield of their Honda sedan for parking in a red zone about a week ago.
The Jollys said the parking space was not a red zone when they had parked their vehicle days earlier, adding that the city missed a small patch when it avoided painting over their tire.
“If it was warranted, I don’t have a problem with it, but this seems unfair to me,” Desiree Jolly told KGO.
A spokesperson for the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency told KGO the ticket wasn’t for the newly painted red zone, but rather, a faded one.
The decision on whether to enforce the ticket or dismiss it is now in the hands of the citation clerk, as the Jollys contested the ticket, the agency told KGO.
Earlier this month, a San Francisco couple was fined more than $1,500 for parking in their own driveway. The city eventually agreed to waive the fine and the threat of a $250-per-day fee if the couple could prove that the lot had historically been used for parking, or if they build a cover for the carpad or a garage.
As for Desiree and Jeff Jolly, they told KGO they plan to move out of the country to France in the future. “We do want to leave because of all of this stuff that goes on in the city,” Jeff said.
“I’m going through chemotherapy right now, so it’s like I’m worried about other things, and now I have to worry about this,” Desiree Jolly told KGO.
As previously reported, this year’s Commonwealth Games will run from July 28 to August 8 in Birmingham, U.K, UB40’s hometown. The group collaborated with local rappers Dapz on the Map and Gilly G on the song, whichmarks the debut of the group’s new frontman, Matt Doyle. The track also features a horn line from founding UB40 sax player Brian Travers, who died of cancer last year.
The “Champion” video was directed by award-winning filmmaker and Birmingham native Daniel Alexander. The clip features footage of UB40 and the guest rappers performing on a Birmingham rooftop, mixed with scenes of athletes competing in various sports. The song boasts an inspiring message encouraging people to strive to always do their best.
“Champion” also celebrates the Commonwealth Games being held in England for the first time in 20 years. The event is an international multiple-sport competition, held every four years, that features athletes from countries that are part of the Commonwealth of Nations.
“We are proud to be representing the Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games with the official anthem ‘Champion,'” says UB40 guitarist Robin Campbell. “Birmingham represents the best of global Britain and it’s our pleasure to showcase this to the world. Birmingham is a city of champions!”
The song is the first single from UB40’s forthcoming studio album, UB45, which is due out in early 2023 and will feature new original songs as well as updated versions of some of the group’s classic hits and fan favorites.
Meanwhile, the band kicks off a new U.S. tour on August 18 in Knoxville, Tennessee.
Emmy and Oscar winner Kate Winslet is staying with her Mare of Easttown studio, HBO, for a limited series called The Palace.
The show “tells the story of one year within the walls of the palace of an authoritarian regime as it begins to unravel,” according to the network.
Interestingly, HBO points out that Winslet and fellow Brit Stephen Frears, her director on the project, have never worked together until now. Frears recently called the shots on the acclaimed A Very British Scandal and directed films like Dangerous Liasons and High Fidelity.
Winslet has a strong working relationship with the network; As reported, she’s also starring in and executive producing the limited series Trust, based on Hernan Diaz‘s novel of the same name.
Here’s wishing a very Happy Birthday to Mick Jagger, who still has us rocking at age 79.
In celebration of Jagger’s big day, his bandmates Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood both posted birthday messages to him on their social media sites.
In his post, Richards wrote, “Dear Mick, what a trip!! Happy Birthday! Love, Keith” and accompanied the note with two photos of him and Jagger together — one from the 1960s and the other, a recent pic of them onstage.
Wood, meanwhile, simply wrote, “Happy birthday @MickJagger!” followed by several birthday-appropriate emojis. Ronnie also posted photos of him with Mick as well as pics of two portraits he painted of the singer.
The Rolling Stones’ official Twitter feed also features a message for the frontman that reads, “Join us in wishing the one and only @mickjagger a very happy birthday today! Happy birthday Mick!” along with a vintage black-and-white pic of Jagger onstage as confetti falls down around him.
The Rolling Stones have three shows left on their current European tour leg, with the next concert taking place tomorrow, July 27 in Gelsenkirchen, Germany.
Judas Priest frontman Rob Halford says that he felt “a bit pissed” about the band’s induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame with the Musical Excellence Award instead of in the main Performers category.
In an interview with the Arizona Republic, Halford admits that he goes back and forth regarding whether the distinction“matters.”
“Some days, I go, ‘No, it doesn’t matter. We’re in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Be grateful. Shut the hell up,'” the metal icon says. “Then there are other days where I’m like…’Why did they give us the Musical Excellence Award?'”
“I’m like, ‘Yeah, but I want to be with that bunch of musicians over there that have got the performance or whatever it is that they’ve got,'” he continues. “I don’t know why they gave us the Musical Excellence Award. I have no clue.”
The Musical Excellence Award, which has been given out since 2000, is gifted to musicians, songwriters and producers in recognition of their “originality and influence creating music have had a dramatic impact on music.” Meanwhile, the Performer category, which often makes the headlines, honors artists who’ve “created music whose originality, impact, and influence has changed the course of rock & roll.”
Halford notes that when Black Sabbath was inducted into the Rock Hall in 2006, the group went in as Performers.
“Why do they put these tags on the damn thing?” Halford wonders. “Why don’t they go, ‘Welcome. You’re in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’ and leave it at that.”
Speaking to ABC Audio earlier this year, Halford said he “quite like[d] the idea of the ‘musical excellence.'” Meanwhile, Rock Hall president and CEO Greg Harris told ABC Audio that all inductees — Performer, Musical Excellence or otherwise — are “equal.”
(NEW YORK) — There are now at least 3,846 monkeypox cases confirmed in the U.S., according to updated numbers from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The virus is firmly on the radar of American health officials after the World Health Organization declared it a global health emergency over the weekend.
Most positive cases have been among men having sex with men, but there are women among the infected, and a few children, as well.
Andy Slavitt, the former senior adviser of the Biden administration’s coronavirus response team, told ABC News’ “START HERE” that he is concerned the outbreak is being dismissed as a “gay disease.”
Slavitt reiterated that monkeypox is spread by skin-to-skin contact and limiting one’s conception of who can get the disease leads to unfair discrimination.
“It would be wrong to assume that we’re going to contain this by telling people to have less sex. I don’t think that’s going to work,” he told “START HERE.”
Jonathan Araujo, of Miami, contracted the virus this month and spoke with “START HERE” Tuesday. Araujo spoke about his symptoms and the stigma he faced when he told his friends and family about his diagnosis.
START HERE: Jonathan, first of all, how are you feeling?
JONATHAN ARAUJO: Right now, I’m way better. I did like a full 360. I was really having a really tough time battling monkeypox in the beginning. It was really like mentally taxing just as much as physically.
There were kind of all just like open wounds at one point. And I had so many of them, you know, I had at least I want to say, at least 30 of them on me at one time. So, it was painful.
START HERE: Can you walk me through what it was like? Like do you know when you got it?
ARAUJO: On July 4, I was working normal. Everything was fine. And I was going out clubbing with my friends, you know, celebrating July Fourth weekend. And I went out to this club, which is where I believe I got it. [There were] the little hairs in the back of my neck just telling me that night something was not right.
The very next day, I got a fever, and then I had the fever for two days. Then I got chills, and then the chills and the third day went away. By the fourth day, I was breaking out on my forehead and on my back really bad. I had all these little pimples. That’s what they looked like to me. They were like very small little pimples at first. The fifth day, which was now July 7 or July 8, I had one on my lip.
START HERE: Like it’s spreading.
ARAUJO: Yeah. I’m not just breaking out. I’m not just sick with a random fever for two days, and now I have chills and I have headaches and body pains. It just didn’t make sense, and I knew something was wrong.
So I went to the clinic and I thought, OK, maybe I have an STD or something’s wrong. And so I went to the clinic, and when I went to go get tested and treated, the doctor immediately looked at me and he was like, “I don’t think you have an STD, I’m not saying you don’t have any, but by looking at you, I think you have monkeypox.” And I was just like, “What? I think monkeypox. I was like, ‘Are you sure?'”
START HERE: Had you heard of it before that? Like, do you know what that was at that point?
ARAUJO: I was very ignorant to the situation. I’m going to be honest with you, I didn’t think much of it. I didn’t think that I would get it, and I didn’t really pay too much [attention] to it .
I knew what it was and [that] it was going around, but I was just like, it will not happen to me. And yeah, boom, it sure did happen to me.
The lesions and the sores, they weren’t huge. They got really big and they progressed rapidly. They turned into these big zits, but you couldn’t pop them, they wouldn’t burst, even if I tried to squeeze them.
They would sting randomly, like they would feel like jolts of pain. They would be dull for the most part, but then out of nowhere I would get a strike in one of them or in some of them, and then they would burn or itch. If I mess with them, or if I touch them, or if I laid the wrong way, it really felt like someone took a match and was setting fire to my skin at some point.
I had some on my elbows, so every time I move my arm it would burn or I would itch. The one I have on my hand currently itches a lot.
START HERE: You have one right now that’s still itching?
ARAUJO: Yeah. It’s on the palm of my hand. So it flexes and it’s constantly like being touched by something.
START HERE: Does the pain continue on for like days, for weeks? Do you feel like you’re sort of past the worst of the symptoms?
ARAUJO: Yeah, I’m definitely past the worst of the symptoms. In the beginning, the pain was, on a one to 10 [scale], it was like at to eight or nine half the time.
After I left the clinic, I went to the emergency room because I didn’t know what else to do. I didn’t have a PCP. So I went to emergency room and then I told them, “I think I have monkeypox.” And when they looked at me, they were like in shock that I had monkeypox. Like, they didn’t even know.
START HERE: You’re like the first guy they’ve been dealing with to say this?
ARAUJO: Yeah, they were like, “You think you have monkeypox?” And she pulled out this paper and she was looking at the paper and looking at me. When I looked over like desk to see what she was looking at she was looking at pictures of what monkeypox looked like to see if it matched because she didn’t know. And so they put me into an emergency room I think within maybe 10 minutes. That is the fastest I’ve ever been put into an emergency room ever.
START HERE: And if that’s the reaction from doctors, what’s it like from other people around you?
ARAUJO: A lot of people were very like surprised. They were like, this is real. It was a shock. It was it was like a reality check to a lot of people. Even a lot of people in my family, they were like, “You have what?”
I even had some people would be like, “What is that?” They were like, “I didn’t even know this was a thing.”
I don’t want to segregate groups, but it was predominantly straight people, heterosexuals, that didn’t know what monkeypox was. I hate that it was that way because it was like, you can, anyone can get this.
START HERE: Which is concerning, right, if you’ve got people treating this like an STD passed between people in sexual situations, and it’s not necessarily that.
ARAUJO: No, absolutely not. I didn’t get it from having sex. I got it from going out, and partying and doing normal day-to-day things. I didn’t get it from having sex. I got all my test results back with all my other studies, and I came back negative for everything.
I didn’t have sex for maybe a month or three weeks, almost a month before I got sick. So, I definitely didn’t get it from having sex.
I’m sure it’s possible that you can get it from having sex, but that is not the only way to get it, and that’s where the stigma lies, is that people think it’s just an STD. No, you can get it if you touch one of my sores and then touch your face, it passes just like that because of the infection.
START HERE: Yeah really alarming when you see, not just how quickly it’s spreading, but that it’s spreading kind of faster than people are being educated about it, which is why you’re now shouting from the rooftops. We should note though that [there are] no American deaths from monkeypox yet. Thanks a lot for sharing your experience Jonathan.
