(NEW YORK) — Someone is taking home a big pot of cash.
One person in California bought the ticket that matched all six numbers drawn Monday night to win the Powerball jackpot worth $699.8 million. It is the fifth largest in Powerball history and the seventh largest jackpot in U.S. lottery history, Powerball said in a statement early Tuesday morning.
“Due to final ticket sales, the jackpot climbed beyond earlier estimates to a staggering $699.8 million at the time of the drawing with a cash option of $496 million,” they said. “The winning numbers in the Monday, Oct. 4 drawing were white balls 12, 22, 54, 66, and 69. The Powerball number was 15.”
The person — whose identity was not released — bought the winning ticket at Albertsons grocery store in Morro Bay, near San Luis Obispo.
The jackpot was last hit on June 5, and since then there have been 40 consecutive drawings without a Grand Prize winner, a new record for the Powerball jackpot, according to officials.
The lottery is available in 45 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
In August, it went from two drawings a week, on Wednesdays and Saturdays, to three drawings a week, Mondays, Wednesdays and Saturdays.
This was the first Powerball jackpot won on a Monday night since the game launched a third weekly drawing on Aug. 23.
“The lucky ticket holder will have the choice between an estimated annuity of $699.8 million, paid in 30 graduated payments over 29 years, or a lump sum payment of $496 million. Both prize options are prior to taxes,” Powerball said. “Participating lotteries are reminding players to check their tickets for one of the nine ways to win. In Monday’s drawing alone, more than 2.2 million tickets won prizes ranging from $4 to $2 million.”
On Monday, five tickets matched all five white balls but missed the red Powerball to win a $1 million prize. The $1 million-winning tickets were sold in Arizona, Florida, Massachusetts and Virginia. A ticket sold in Tennessee matched all five white balls and doubled the prize to $2 million, because it included the Power Play feature for an additional $1, the company said.
Monday’s Powerball drawing was the 41st drawing in the jackpot run: a record for the number of consecutive drawings without a Grand Prize winner.
Even though there hadn’t been a jackpot winner in months, several Powerball players have earned smaller cash prizes.
“In Saturday’s drawing alone, more than 2.8 million tickets won prizes ranging from $4 to $1 million,” Powerball officials said in a news release.
The largest Powerball jackpot prize money was $1.586 billion in 2016, which was shared by winners in California, Florida and Tennessee, officials said.
The odds of winning the jackpot are 1 in 292.2 million, according to Powerball officials.
Jameson Rodgers is in quite a good mood this week, as he tops the chart with “Cold Beer Calling My Name,” featuring his pal Luke Combs.
“It just means a lot that I can help Luke get off the ground as an artist,” Jameson jokes. “He’s struggling, especially financially. You know, it’s good to help his bank account out a little more.”
“No, I’m just kidding…” he clarifies. “This would not be the same without Luke on it. Obviously, he’s the biggest artist in the format.”
Not only are the two label mates, Luke’s taken Jameson out on tour multiple times — and even famously got him drunk onstage once as an end-of-tour prank. But even Jameson can’t believe how Luke’s career has grown.
“When I asked him to jump on this thing and when he sang on it, this was in 2018…” Jameson recalls. “He was a star then, but I mean, he wasn’t like [an] Entertainer-of-the-Year star yet, you know what I mean? So it’s just been cool seeing his rocket to the stars over the last three years.”
Jameson’s also a little in disbelief that this is his second consecutive #1, after “Some Girls” topped the chart in late October of last year.
“It’s just weird thinking that I have two number ones as an artist,” the Mississippi native admits. “I can remember a time not so long ago when it seemed like having ONE as an artist seemed like a million miles away.”
“And so the stars have been aligning for me over the last few years,” he reflects, “and [I’m] just super blessed. [I’m] trying not to mess it all up, you know?”
Jameson’s already celebrated another major milestone this fall, tying the knot with his wife Sarah in early September.
(MENLO PARK, Calif.) — Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp are back.
The apps, owned by Facebook, stopped working Monday for millions of users across the U.S., according to outage site Down Detector.
Both the mobile and web browser editions of the apps were not working as of 11:42 a.m. ET, the site reported.
They were down for more than six hours.
“To the huge community of people and businesses around the world who depend on us: we’re sorry. We’ve been working hard to restore access to our apps and services and are happy to report they are coming back online now. Thank you for bearing with us,” Facebook said Monday evening, once the apps began working again.
Later on Monday, the company explained why the outage occurred.
“Our engineering teams have learned that configuration changes on the backbone routers that coordinate network traffic between our data centers caused issues that interrupted this communication. This disruption to network traffic had a cascading effect on the way our data centers communicate, bringing our services to a halt,” Facebook said in a statement.
Despite the many theories that have been circling the internet since the outage, Facebook said it has no evidence that any user data was compromised during the disruption.
“Our services are now back online and we’re actively working to fully return them to regular operations. We want to make clear at this time we believe the root cause of this outage was a faulty configuration change. We also have no evidence that user data was compromised as a result of this downtime,” they said.
On Monday afternoon, when the outage was first reported, a Facebook company spokesperson told ABC News, “We’re aware that some people are having trouble accessing our apps and products. We’re working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible, and we apologize for any inconvenience.”
The company added that it was experiencing “networking issues” and gave no timeline for a fix.
“Sincere apologies to everyone impacted by outages of Facebook-powered services right now,” Facebook said at the time. “We are experiencing networking issues and teams are working as fast as possible to debug and restore as fast as possible”
The Instagram and Facebook outages come shortly after a whistleblower came forward and claimed to CBS News that the company could do more to protect against hate speech and misinformation but prioritizes profits over its users.
Following the Sunday “60 Minutes” interview with the whistleblower, identified as Frances Haugen, a data scientist, the company put out a statement defending itself.
“We’ve invested heavily in people and technology to keep our platform safe, and have made fighting misinformation and providing authoritative information a priority,” the company said in a statement. “If any research had identified an exact solution to these complex challenges, the tech industry, governments, and society would have solved them a long time ago.”
After the whistleblower’s identity was made public, Sens. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., and Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., announced the Senate will hold a hearing in the Senate Consumer Protection Subcommittee Tuesday to hear from Haugen about Facebook and Instagram’s impacts on young users.
Facebook’s stock took a severe hit Monday following the whistleblower’s revelations and the outage, recording its worst day of the year. At closing, the stock was trading at $326.23 a share, down 16.78 points or 4.89%.
The situation promoted other social media sites to make some fun jokes.
Twitter’s official account tweeted, “Hello literally everyone,” Monday afternoon.
The tweet prompted several funny replies from other major accounts, including McDonald’s, Burger King, and Starbucks, which tweeted, “Perfect time for a coffee break.”
Twitter users later on Monday reported some issues with the app due to an increase in users, but Twitter’s support page said the matter was fixed.
“Sometimes more people than usual use Twitter. We prepare for these moments, but today things didn’t go exactly as planned. Some of you may have had an issue seeing replies and DMs as a result. This has been fixed. Sorry about that!” Twitter Support tweeted.
On Monday afternoon, the Facebook status page came back online with a message for users. “Major disruptions: Platform Status,” it read. “We are aware that there is an ongoing issue impacting our service. Our engineers are working on it. Sorry for the inconvenience.”
Facebook’s safety head was questioned by lawmakers last Thursday over what the company knew about the potential for Instagram to be harmful to young users’ mental health.
The Senate Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety and Data Security convened the hearing in the wake of a Wall Street Journal investigation citing Facebook’s own internal research, allegedly leaked by a whistleblower, that found Instagram adversely impacted mental health issues in teens, especially girls.
“We’re here today because Facebook has shown us once again that it is incapable of holding itself accountable,” Blumenthal said in his opening remarks last week.
Facebook defended itself against the bipartisan scrutiny at the hearing.
“We understand that recent reporting has raised a lot of questions about our internal research, including research we do to better understand young people’s experiences on Instagram,” Antigone Davis, Facebook’s global head of safety, stated in written testimony. “We strongly disagree with how this reporting characterized our work, so we want to be clear about what that research shows, and what it does not show.”
The new, upcoming committee hearing, titled “Protecting Kids Online: Testimony from a Facebook Whistleblower,” is scheduled for 10 a.m. Tuesday.
Heart guitarist Nancy Wilson has debuted an extended version of her acoustic instrumental tribute song for the late Eddie Van Halen, “4 Edward,” which was the final track on her recently released debut solo studio album, You and Me.
On Monday, Wilson posted a video on her official YouTube channel featuring her playing the updated version of the tune, titled “4 Edward with Love,” which runs about 40 seconds longer than the original track. The new version premieres just two days shy of the one-year anniversary of Eddie’s death.
As Nancy explained in an interview earlier this year with ABC Audio, she decided to write “4 Edward” after the guitar great died of cancer at age 65 on October 6, 2020. She said the song was inspired by an instrumental tune that he composed for her on an acoustic guitar she gave to him as a gift in the late 1970s after he revealed to her that he didn’t own one.
“4 Edward,” which clocks in at just one minute, 43 seconds, features some delicate strumming, picking and harmonics, and includes a segment that incorporates the chords from the classic Van Halen hit “Jump.”
You and Me was released in May. An expanded two-LP, blue-vinyl edition of the album will be issued on November 26 as part of the Record Store Day Black Friday event. It contains three bonus tracks, covers of The Beatles‘ tunes “Blackbird” and “Fixing a Hole” and a rendition of Steely Dan‘s “Any Major Dude.”
Lady Gaga reunited for a pair of farewell shows in August, titled “One Last Time: An Evening with Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga,” and, in a recent 60 Minutes interview, she recalled the moment Bennett, who was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 2016, remembered who she was.
“Whoa, Lady Gaga,” the legendary 95-year-old crooner shouted as she entered the stage, but as Gaga revealed on Sunday’s episode 60 Minutes, it was the first time he remembered her name in a while.
“That’s the first time Tony said my name in a long time. I had to keep it together ’cause we had a sold out show and I have a job to do,” she recalled. “But I’ll tell you when I walked out on that stage and he said, ‘It’s Lady Gaga,’ my friend saw me, and it was very special.”
Gaga insisted that when dealing with someone who has Alzheimer’s “there is a way to communicate and there’s a way to touch the magic inside of them that’s still there.”
The 35-year-old performer added, “I think it’s up to us to ask ourselves what are the ways we can push through what we’re feeling so we can best communicate with them and receive our love, because it’s still there.”
“With Tony in particular, a lot of it was me making sure that I navigate his needs in any given moment,” she continued, noting that “to be honest, that’s jazz too……we’re singing different notes in every song almost every time. We improvise all the time… Once you learn [the music that was written at the time] you can play with it, but you have to listen to each other.”
Lady Gaga and Tony Bennett’s last album together, Love for Sale, is out now.
Dancing with the Stars fans were left begging “Gimme More” on Monday, when the night saluted Britney Spears‘ illustrious career. While the competitors were not “Intimidated” to push themselves on the ballroom floor, Christine Chiu‘s dreams of winning the Mirrorball Trophy were broken like “Shattered Glass.”
For the second week in a row, the audience voted Chiu into the bottom two, where the judges had to choose between saving her or Real Housewives of Atlanta star Kenya Moore. The panel chose to spare the latter.
Also on Monday night, three members of the DWTS cast were absent on the ballroom floor — pro dancer Cheryl Burke, Peloton instructor Cody Rigsby and judge Derek Hough. Burke and Rigsby both tested positive for COVID-19 last week, despite being fully vaccinated, and Hough sat out the night out of “an abundance of caution,” as announced by host Tyra Banks.
Despite being unable to perform before the audience, Rigsby and Burke were beamed in virtually and performed their jazz routine to Britney’s “Gimme More” on split screens. Unfortunately, the two ended the night at the bottom of the pack with an overall score of 18 out of 30 — but the audience decided to give the two another chance and sent them through to next week’s show.
Meanwhile, three competitors tied for first place on Monday, a season first, with Amanda Kloots, JoJo Siwa and Olivia Jade collecting three straight eights for an overall score of 24 out of 30.
Kloots dazzled with her cha cha to Spears’ “Circus,” but judges Len Goodman, Carrie Ann Inaba and Bruno Tonioli all agreed that the Talk co-host needed to take more risks on the floor. While the judges praised Kloots for her technical skills, saying she delivered a clean and solid routine, they felt her dance was too safe.
As for Siwa, the Nickelodeon star wowed the audience by lifting partner Jenna Johnson three separate times during their fresh and powerful Argentine tango to Britney’s “Baby One More Time.” The complicated routine earned high praise from the three judges, but Siwa was held back by a missed step in the middle of her dance.
As for birthday girl Olivia Jade, who just turned 22, the three judges lauded the influencer’s flowing tango to “Hold It Against Me,” dubbing it the “best performance of the night.”
The judges also took note of two competitors who pushed themselves on the ballroom floor, praising Bachelor star Matt James and WWE star Michael “The Miz” Gregory for coming out of their shells and paying attention to the finer details of their routines.
Another standout was country singer Jimmie Allen, who dedicated his salsa to Britney’s “Outrageous” to wife Alexis Gale. Allen also joked that he “did not plan to cry on this show two weeks in a row” by talking about the powerful women who made a difference in his life.
Dancing with the Stars returns Monday night at 8 p.m. ET on ABC, where the cast and crew will celebrate all things Disney. Also, as an added twist, Mickey Mouse himself crashed the festivities to show the competitors the special “Mickey Moves” they must include in their routine, no matter what dance they are supposed to perform.
Here are the current standings:
Amanda Kloots, The Talk co-host, with Alan Bersten — 24/30
JoJo Siwa, Nickelodeon star, with Jenna Johnson — 24/30
Olivia Jade, influencer, with Val Chmerkovskiy — 24/30 Melora Hardin, The Office actress, with Artem Chivensky — 23/30
Michael “The Miz” Gregory, WWE superstar, Witney Carson — 22/30 Melanie C, Spice Girl, with Gleb Savchenko — 22/30 Suni Lee, Olympic Gold medalist, with Sasha Farber — 21/30
Kenya Moore, former Miss USA, with Brandon Armstrong — 21/30 Matt James, former Bachelor, with Lindsey Arnold— 20/30
Jimmie Allen, country music singer, with Emma Slater — 20/30 Brian Austin Green, Beverly Hills, 90210 alum, Sharna Burgess — 19/30 Iman Shumpert, NBA player, with Daniella Karagach — 19/30
Cody Rigsby, Peloton instructor, with Cheryl Burke — 18/30
Lady Gaga reunited for a pair of farewell shows in August, titled “One Last Time: An Evening with Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga,” and, in a recent 60 Minutes interview, she recalled the moment Bennett, who was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease in 2016, remembered who she was.
“Whoa, Lady Gaga,” the legendary 95-year-old crooner shouted as she entered the stage, but as Gaga revealed on Sunday’s episode 60 Minutes, it was the first time he remembered her name in a while.
“That’s the first time Tony said my name in a long time. I had to keep it together ’cause we had a sold out show and I have a job to do,” she recalled. “But I’ll tell you when I walked out on that stage and he said, ‘It’s Lady Gaga,’ my friend saw me, and it was very special.”
Gaga insisted that when dealing with someone who has Alzheimer’s “there is a way to communicate and there’s a way to touch the magic inside of them that’s still there.”
The 35-year-old performer added, “I think it’s up to us to ask ourselves what are the ways we can push through what we’re feeling so we can best communicate with them and receive our love, because it’s still there.”
“With Tony in particular, a lot of it was me making sure that I navigate his needs in any given moment,” she continued, noting that “to be honest, that’s jazz too……we’re singing different notes in every song almost every time. We improvise all the time… Once you learn [the music that was written at the time] you can play with it, but you have to listen to each other.”
Lady Gaga and Tony Bennett’s last album together, Love for Sale, is out now.
Pitchfork has unveiled its list of the 200 Most Influential Musicians of the last 25 years to coincide with the site’s 25th anniversary.
The ranking is divided into 50 “Icons” and 150 “Essentials,” each presented in alphabetical order. Trent Reznor, for example, is listed among the “Essentials,” while bands including The White Stripes and Radiohead find themselves among the “Icons.”
“The key to Reznor’s longevity is his willingness to experiment,” Pitchfork writes of the Nine Inch Nails frontman. “He’s a connected industry guy who thinks like a cult artist — he’ll make weird instrumental music aimed at his most devoted fans one moment and then his next project will be a soundtrack to a Hollywood blockbuster.”
Other rock and alternative artists who made the ranking include Arctic Monkeys, Billie Eilish, Paramore, Lorde, Arcade Fire, Bjork, Fiona Apple, Lana Del Rey, The Strokes, Tame Impala, Vampire Weekend, The 1975, Death Cab for Cutie‘s Ben Gibbard, Blur and Gorillaz‘s Damon Albarn, Brittany Howard, The xx, HAIM, St. Vincent, Phoebe Bridgers, TV on the Radio and Yeah Yeah Yeahs.
If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em, which is why Michael Buble is now offering fans the chance to buy t-shirts based on one of those memes that poke fun of his identification with the Christmas season.
On TikTok, Michael explains, “Every time the holiday season comes around, it’s like clockwork. I hear the jokes, I see the memes: ‘Buble’s coming out of the cave, Buble’s defrosting, Christmas is near.'”
He then asks, “Did you guys ever wonder WHY someone might spend that much time in a cave?”
Cut to Michael wearing a Batman mask and cape.
“It’s because I’m f***ing Batman, you a**holes,” he growls, doing his best Michael Keaton impression.
“And now you’ve probably cost me THAT job, so I’m forced to have to sell these t-shirts,” he concludes, holding up the new merchandise.
The tee uses the photo of the meme that shows Michael wearing a suit and appearing to be exiting a cave. The meme’s caption reads: “‘Christmas Is Coming.’ Michael Buble emerges from his cave.”
The shirt, which simply shows the pic along with the words “Christmas Is Coming…Michael Buble,” is now available in Michael’s online shop for 30 bucks.
As previously reported, Michael is releasing a Super Deluxe Edition of his 2011 album Christmas to mark its 10th anniversary. You can buy that on the site too.
(NEW YORK) — Here are the scores from Monday’s sports events:
NATIONAL BASKETBALL ASSOCIATION PRESEASON
Toronto 123, Philadelphia 107
Boston 98, Orlando 97
Miami 125, Atlanta 99
Charlotte 113, Oklahoma City 97
Minnesota 117, New Orleans 114
San Antonio 111, Utah 85
Sacramento 117, Phoenix 106
Final Golden State 121, Portland 107
LA Clippers 103, Denver 102
NATIONAL HOCKEY LEAGUE PRESEASON
Columbus 5, Buffalo 3
New Jersey 4, Washington 1
Toronto 3, Ottawa 1
Philadelphia 2, Boston 1 (OT)
Chicago 6, Detroit 4
Minnesota 3, Colorado 1
Edmonton 4, Calgary 3
Anaheim 3, San Jose 2 (OT)
NATIONAL FOOTBALL LEAGUE
LA Chargers 28, Las Vegas 14
