DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — The estimated Mega Millions jackpot has risen to $449 million, making it potentially the 7th largest lottery jackpot in the U.S.
If any ticket matches the balls drawn Tuesday, the jackpot will be the largest since a $448.4 million Powerball prize won by a New Jersey family May 7. The highest jackpot drawn in the country was a $1.6 billion Powerball jackpot won in January by players in three states.
The odds of picking the correct numbers on five white balls and one yellow ball in the Mega Millions game are one in 259 million.
The drawing will take place at 10 p.m. Central time.
LEAVENWORTH, Kan. (AP) — Leavenworth, Kansas, police say they’ve made an arrest in connection with an 85-year-old woman’s weekend death.
Investigators say Anna Higgins of Leavenworth was found dead Sunday afternoon in a home.
Police did not publicly say how Higgins was killed, though investigators expect to turn over their reports to prosecutors on Tuesday. No charges had been filed as of Monday.
PRATT, Kan. (AP) — A south-central Kansas sheriff says a man who fell 120 feet while working on a wind turbine is expected to survive.
Pratt County Sheriff Vernon Chinn says the worker was seriously injured during the tumble onto muddy terrain Sunday morning while he was repairing a blade on a wind generator near Pratt. Chinn says emergency responders found the man coherent, able to talk and “doing amazingly well for the fall he just had.”
Another worker was found hanging from his safety harness 120 feet in the air and eventually was lowered to safety in a construction basket.
General Electric says it is investigating the accident.
WILLARD, Mo. (AP) — An upstate New York woman is tearfully rejoicing at the recovery in Missouri of a U.S. flag that had draped the casket of her World War II veteran father in 1969.
Cathy Scoppo says the flag was stolen days after Memorial Day while she had it displayed at her family’s campground near Wolcott, New York.
Sixty-year-old Scoppo says the theft left her heartbroken. She says texts by a southwestern Missouri teenager who had been staying with relatives at the campground at the time of the theft identified him as a suspect.
Willard, Missouri, police working with New York authorities located the flag from the teenager last week, only after Scoppo says the teen and his family refused to cooperate in the matter. Police have referred the incident to juvenile authorities.
KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — The biggest wildfire in Kansas history has a silver lining despite scorching nearly 600 square miles of land in Kansas and Oklahoma.
Conservation experts say it would have taken decades to clear out the number of eastern red cedars consumed by the Anderson Creek fire in March.
Kansas Department of Wildlife and Parks agent Ken Brunson called the blaze an “ecological cleansing for the environment” because it killed so many cedars, also known as junipers.
Red cedars are drought-resistant trees that crowd out native grasses, suck up moisture from the soil and reduce the amount of forage for wildlife and livestock.
Aron Flanders with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service estimates it would have cost Kansas landowners $56 million to remove the same number of trees killed in the fire.
RAYTOWN, Mo. (AP) — Police in the Kansas City, Missouri, suburb of Raytown say officers investigating a burglary shot and wounded one suspect and arrested another.
Police say the shooting happened about 9:40 a.m. Sunday after officers responded to a burglary alarm at a residence and found two men inside the home.
Police say that after one of the alleged intruders pointed a gun at the officers, one of the officers shot that suspect in the stomach. That man was taken to a hospital with injuries police said were not considered life-threatening.
The officers were not injured.
There was no immediate word Monday about any charges.
Kris KobachWICHITA, Kan. (AP) — Documents show Kansas taxpayers have been picking up the tab for state officials and legislators to fly in the state-owned executive aircraft to attend out-of-state sports events and take trips with family and friends.
The Associated Press used open record requests to document who was traveling in the state’s nine-passenger plane. It found state officials often mixed political, religious and family interests with state business while traveling on government business.
Those documents show Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach frequently flies in the state-owned executive aircraft to promote voter ID efforts outside of Kansas and to speak at Republican political events across the state. All of that is at state expense. Kobach used the plane to fly more than 4,350 miles during a 15-month period.
Several flights appeared to either offer no benefit to Kansas or have little connection to Kobach’s official duties. On some trips, the state business coincided with Republican Party functions where he spoke, and his family often flew with him.
Kobach says he visited county election officials and his public appearances did not cost extra.
Kansas has a statute that specifically allows the governor to use the plane for personal or political travel as long as he reimburses the state, but it mentions no other state agencies.
The Kansas Highway Patrol oversees executive aircraft operations, but it leaves it up to each state agency to decide who gets to travel and where they go.
NEW YORK (AP) — Film and TV studio Lions Gate is buying cable channel operator Starz in a deal worth $4.4 billion.
Lions Gate is the company behind “The Hunger Games” movies and the “Orange Is The New Black” TV series. Englewood, Colorado-based Starz runs its namesake cable channel, as well as Starz Encore and MoviePlex. Together, Lions Gate said it can tap its library of movies and TV shows and air them through Starz’s channels.
The deal is expected to close by the end of the year.
Lions Gate said today that it will pay holders of Starz Series A stock $18 in cash and 0.6784 of a Lions Gate share. Starz Series B stockholders will receive $7.26 in cash and 1.2642 of Lions Gate stock.
Santa Monica, California-based Lions Gate is not new to the cable business, owning stakes in the Epix and Pop channels. Starz, besides its channels, also owns Anchor Bay Entertainment, which distributes movies on DVDs.
DETROIT (AP) — The government is urging owners of older Hondas and Acuras to stop driving them and get them repaired after tests found that their Takata air bag inflators are extremely dangerous.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says it has new data showing that chances are as high as 50 percent that the inflators can explode in a crash.
Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx says the vehicles should be fixed as soon as possible before they cause more deaths or injuries.
Takata inflators can explode with too much force, blowing apart a metal canister and sending shrapnel into drivers and passengers. At least 11 people have died and more than 100 have been injured.
The advisory covers vehicles from the 2001 to 2003 model years.
