Winning ticket for Mega Millions $1.22 billion jackpot sold in California
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(LOS ANGELES) — The winning ticket for the $1.22 billion Mega Millions jackpot has been sold in California, with the winner set to take home the fifth-largest prize ever.
The winning ticket was sold in Shasta County at the Circle K on 3505 Rhonda Road in Cottonwood, California, and matched all six numbers in Friday night’s drawing.
The winning numbers were 3, 7, 37, 49, 55 and gold Mega Ball 6 and the cash value of the jackpot is estimated to be $549.7 million, according to the lottery.
No one has won the grand prize in the last 30 drawings, as the jackpot has ballooned. The last time the jackpot was won was at $810 million in Texas on Sept. 10.
The odds of winning the jackpot are 1 in 302,575,350, according to Mega Millions.
“Congratulations to our $1.22 billion jackpot winner from California,” said Joshua Johnston, lead director for the Mega Millions Consortium. “What an amazing present this holiday season! At an incredibly special time of year, this is both an incredibly special moment for our winner, and for all the great organizations and causes that benefit from lottery ticket sales around the country. Thank you to everyone who plays. Because of you, we have winners all around the country taking home cash prizes both big and small, and we have educational causes, parks and many other great organizations benefiting as well. Thank you and congratulations to all our winners.”
In total, there were more than 31.4 million winning tickets across all prize tiers during the 31-drawing run, which began after the last jackpot was won in Texas on Sept. 10 — including 65 second-tier prizes of $1 million or more, won in 26 different jurisdictions from coast to coast, according to Mega Millions.
“It’s only the fourth Mega Millions jackpot won in 2024, and with only one more drawing this year, odds are that the year will end with the fewest jackpots won in any year since the game began in 2002,” Mega Millions said following Friday’s drawing. “In addition to the $810 million Texas win on September 10, a $552 million windfall went to an Illinois online player on June 4 (the largest lottery prize ever won with an online ticket purchase), and a huge $1.128 billion prize was won in New Jersey on March 26.”
Mega Millions is played in 45 states, Washington, D.C., and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Tickets are $2 for one play.
(NEW YORK) — The FBI has uncovered “additional criminal conduct” by New York City Mayor Eric Adams, federal prosecutors said in a new court filing Tuesday.
Adams has already pleaded not guilty to a five-count indictment charging him with accepting luxury travel in exchange for political favors, including persuading the fire department to approve the opening of the new Turkish consulate in Manhattan despite the lingering safety concerns of inspectors.
The disclosure of possible additional criminal conduct came in a court filing in which prosecutors opposed a defense request for additional information about the initial charges.
“Although the Indictment and discovery provide Adams with more than sufficient information as to his alleged co-conspirators and aiders and abettors, law enforcement has continued to identify additional individuals involved in Adams’s conduct, and to uncover additional criminal conduct by Adams,” the filing said.
Federal prosecutors did not elaborate but have said in prior court hearings a superseding indictment is “likely” in the mayor’s criminal case.
Alex Spiro, the mayor’s lawyer, said Tuesday: “This is amateur hour. They are just looking for a headline instead of doing the right thing. I assume we are at the point where New Yorkers are not falling for it.”
Adams, who was elected in 2021, is the first sitting New York City mayor to ever face charges.
He is expected to stand trial on federal corruption charges in April.
Kīlauea volcano erupts in in Hawaiʻi Volcanoes National Park on Jan. 22, 2025. Image via USGS.
(KILAEUA, Hawaii,) — The world’s most active volcano, located in Kilauea, Hawaii, resumed its latest eruption on Wednesday.
Volcanic activity was noted just before 3 p.m. local time in Hawaii Volcanoes National Park.
The activity marked the fifth episode from the Kilauea volcano since it started to erupt on Dec. 23, 2024.
“Weak, intermittent spatter” was observed earlier in the day, but it was not until 2:57 p.m. that “small spatter fountains” of lava could be seen, marking the beginning of a new phase of the eruption, according to the United States Geological Survey, which assesses the risk of volcanic hazards in the U.S.
Such activity can be monitored through the agency’s volcano livestream on YouTube.
“Small lava dome fountains in the north vent are feeding short lava flows in the southwest part of the caldera,” the USGS wrote in an Instagram post on Wednesday. “Volcanic gas emissions are elevated compared to during the eruptive pause.”
The USGS noted that observable lava flow began at 2:59 p.m. and “seismic tremor” increased at 3:00 p.m.
In an advisory notice posted Wednesday, the agency wrote that “significant hazards” of the eruption include “wall instability, ground cracking, and rockfalls.” It noted that these hazards could be enhanced by earthquakes, which would endanger members of the public that ventured too close to the volcano within the national park.
“This underscores the extremely hazardous nature of Kilauea’s caldera rim surrounding Halemaʻumaʻu crater, an area that has been closed to the public since late 2007,” the USGS wrote.
It also said that it “continues to closely monitor Kilauea and will issue an eruption update tomorrow morning unless there are significant changes before then.”
The fourth and most recent eruption episode began on Jan. 15, but it had paused over the weekend on Jan. 18.
“Each episode of lava fountaining since December 23, 2024, has continued for 14 hours to 8 days and episodes have been separated by pauses in eruptive activity lasting less than 24 hours to 12 days,” the USGS advisory said.
There are about 170 potentially active volcanoes in the U.S., according to the USGS.
ABC News’ Marilyn Heck and Jennifer Watts contributed to this report.
(LOS ANGELES) — The power of the ocean could soon be used to power homes in the U.S. as scientists prepare to test an untapped form of renewable energy.
The U.S. Department of Energy has invested $112.5 million to advance the commercial readiness of wave energy technologies by harnessing the powerful waves of the Pacific Northwest.
The first-ever facility, equipped with open water testing is set to begin operations off a seaside Oregon town next summer, Burke Hales, a professor of oceanography at Oregon State University who has involved in the launch, told ABC News.
Named Pacwave, PacWave the facility was built with the infrastructure to house four separate test berths, each with its own dedicated cable that leads from about 7 miles offshore back to the coastal facility, Matthew Grosso, director of the Department of Energy’s Water Power Technologies Office, told ABC News.
It’s a project that was more than a decade, requiring years of permit approvals with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and input from all of the federal ocean agencies, including the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, the National Fisheries Service and the Marine Mammal Commission, Hales said.
The five-year investment from the federal government will involve testing by companies to accelerate the design, fabrication and testing of wave energy converters (WECs), which will harness power from ocean waves, which will then be converted at PacWave into energy that will supply the power grid.
Ocean wave energy could soon become synonymous with other natural sources of power like wind, solar and geothermal. In the U.S., there’s enough marine energy resources, including waves, tides, rivers and ocean currents to power over half of the country’s energy demands, Grosso said.
The renewable could prove to be even be more abundant, unlike solar, which ends when the sun sets, and wind, which isn’t always available, Hales said. The biggest challenge marine energy presents is how new it is compared to the other renewables, which have extensive existing infrastructure, Grosso said.
“Wave is this great complement to the other renewables, because it’s sort of slow and steady, he said. “There are basically always waves on the ocean.”
How is it possible to collect energy from ocean waves?
Using water to create energy is nothing new, the experts said. Traditional water mills were found in China as early as 30 A.D., and humans have been extracting power from the flow of water ever since.
But while water mills rely on the movement of the tide, PacWave will be focusing on surface waves in the open ocean, Hales said.
Devices bobbing up and down on the ocean surface like a buoy harness the natural movement of the water and send the captured energy back to shore via underwater pipes, Grosso said. The devices are located about 7 miles offshore.
One of the challenges is the waves can arrive erratically, so building devices that can withstand a challenging environment is key, Maha Haji, an assistant professor of mechanical, aerospace and systems engineering at Cornell University, told ABC News.
From its shoreside facility, PacWave then takes the power that comes from the wave generation devices and makes it compatible to enter the Central Lincoln Public Utility District, Grosso said.
The PacWave facility is currently in its commissioning phase, Hales said.
“We have to run the system through a number of tests to make certain that we don’t have a short circuit out there miles into the ocean that we have to go fix,” he said.
These US locations are best suited for harnessing ocean energy
While the U.S. is surrounded by coastlines, there are only a few regions where the generation of ocean wave power is viable.
Places with the biggest waves — Hawaii, Alaska and the Pacific coast — are the best locations to utilize wave energy converters due to the strength and consistency of the waves, the experts said.
However, wave energy can also be combined with other renewables, so there are benefits to combining wind, wave and solar together — making Texas another viable option, due to its existing renewable infrastructure, despite the Gulf of Mexico being in calmer waters, Haji said.
When it came time to selecting the best location to put the test facility, Northern California and central Oregon were deemed best suited, Hales said.
Southeast Alaska also has energetic waves, but the coastline is challenging, and the region is not equipped with the necessary infrastructure to connect the collected energy to the local grid.
Input from local communities played a big role in planning
PacWave will be operating out of two different sites — each located near Newport, Oregon, a deepwater port. The inception of the project was devised “hand-in-hand” with the local community, Grosso said.
The exact locations of the sites were picked by local fishers, who made the determination based on the location of the tow lanes that access the port, depth conditions, strength of the waves and whether the local community would be supportive, Hales said.
That level of consideration for the local ecology and economy continues to impact the PacWave project, the energy experts said.
Application documents included fine details on the regional ecosystem, including what kind of shrimp burrow in the nearby sand, fish that are attracted to the region and the marine mammals that could possibly be impacted by the presence of the devices, Hales said. The permits contain a requirement for acoustic monitoring to make certain the devices aren’t changing the underwater noise distributions and ways that impact marine mammals.
This was all done to minimize the impacts on the environment, Hales said, adding that community members have been concerned about the potential hazard to wildlife and the presence of offshore wind infrastructure.
“It was an exhaustive effort to identify where the problem might be, avoid those problems, and, if they’re unavoidable, talk about mitigating them,”
Engaging the community has resulted in “very little footprint” in the construction of the sites, Grosso said.
“It’s hard to tell that there’s anything there,” he said.
