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$1B Powerball Is Minting Social Media Gold

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Powerball just hit a billion dollars, and people are freaking out about it.

For 39 draws in a row, no ticket matched all six numbers for the Powerball jackpot. The last draw was on Saturday night.

Now, for the next drawing on Labor Day, the jackpot has snowballed to $1.1 billion and will be the game’s fifth-largest prize ever, according to a statement from the lottery. The largest jackpot prize ever was cashed out in November 2022 by Edwin Castro, a California man who scored a $2.04 billion dollar drawing.

The five winning numbers will be announced just after 11 p.m. ET on Monday after a drawing broadcast live from the Florida Lottery drawing studios in Tallahassee.

The winner will have the option to get the full $1.1 billion as a 30-year graduated annuity or get a one-time lump sum cash payment of $498.4 million. Most winners opt for the latter option.

The prize is then subject to substantial taxes, that include an automatic withholding tax of 24% and more in federal and state taxes come next tax season. But winners in some states —California, Florida, New Hampshire, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Washington and Wyoming— are exempt from state taxes.

Monday night’s drawing will be the 40th since the last jackpot worth $204.5 million was won on May 31, 2025 by someone in California. There have been three more jackpot winners so far in 2025 besides the winner in May, three lucky winners from Oregon, Kentucky, and another from California.

The odds of winning the jackpot are one in 292.2 million, according to the Multi-State Lottery Association.

Here are some of our favorites

How to play the Powerball

Powerball tickets cost $2 a piece and are sold in 45 states, plus Washington D.C., Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. You can buy them from local convenience stores, gas stations, grocery stores, some airport terminals and even online in some states like Arizona, Massachusetts, and New York.

Then, you pick six numbers on your ticket —five white balls numbered 1 to 69 and one red Powerball numbered 1 to 26. You have to use a black or blue pen or a pencil to do so. If you can’t pick them yourself, you can ask for a “Quick Pick Powerball ticket,” and a computer will generate random numbers for you.

Then you hand in your play slip to the retailer or lottery vending machines to receive a ticket and you are all set for the results.

Come Monday night, you can tune in to the livestream drawing on the official lottery website to watch the numbers roll in. If you match all five white balls in any order, and the red Powerball, you win the mega prize.

People don’t just play for the jackpot

The winning numbers for Saturday night were 3-18-22-27-33 and the Powerball 17, but no winner matched all those numbers to hit the jackpot.

But if you don’t win jackpot on Monday you can still win smaller prizes. For those, some people also add a “Power Play,” an additional multiplier for $1 which can increase your non-jackpot winnings anywhere from 2x to 10x.

On Saturday night’s drawing, there were three $2 million winners in Colorado, Indiana and New Hampshire, and nine $1 million winners in Florida, Connecticut, Illinois, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and California.

Why the jackpot became so big

A number of factors go into the estimated value of a ticket price. Ultimately, it’s determined by basic gambling rules, and the number of how many tickets are purchased nationwide. The more tickets purchased means a higher jackpot pay but also lower odds of winning.

Odds of winning the Powerball jackpot are very, very low. Which is also what hikes the price up. When a jackpot drawing does not match any ticket, the prize increases for the next drawing as more people continue to buy tickets.

If no ticket matches all six numbers on Monday, the Powerball jackpot will increase yet again as it goes on to a 40th drawing on Wednesday night.

The longest ever Powerball jackpot run was for 42 consecutive drawings, which ended in a $1.326 billion win for an Oregon player on April 6, 2024.





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Iran-backed Houthis raid UN offices in Yemen’s capital and detain staffers

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CAIRO (AP) — Iran-backed Houthis on Sunday raided offices of the United Nations’ food, health and children’s agencies in Yemen’s capital, detaining 11 U.N. employees, officials said. The rebels tightened security across Sanaa following the Israeli killing of their prime minister and several Cabinet members.

Abeer Etefa, a spokesperson for the World Food Program, told The Associated Press that security forces raided the agencies’ offices in the Houthi-controlled capital on Sunday morning.

Also raided were offices of the World Health Organization and UNICEF, according to a U.N. official and a Houthi official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to brief the media. The U.N. official said armed forces raided the offices and questioned employees in the parking lot.

Ammar Ammar, a spokesperson for UNICEF, said a number of the agency’s staffers were detained, and UNICEF was seeking additional information from the Houthis.

Both Etefa and Ammar said their agencies were conducting “a comprehensive head count” of their employees in Sanaa and other Houthi-held areas.

U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres in a statement late Sunday said at least 11 personnel had been detained. He condemned that and the “forced entry into the premises of the World Food Program, the seizure of U.N. property and attempts to enter other U.N. premises in Sanaa.” He called for the immediate and unconditional release of the personnel.

The raids were the latest in a long-running Houthi crackdown against the U.N. and other international organizations working in rebel-held areas in Yemen.

They have detained dozens of U.N. staffers, as well as people associated with aid groups, civil society and the now-closed U.S. Embassy in Sanaa. The U.N. suspended its operations in the Houthi stronghold of Saada in northern Yemen after the rebels detained eight U.N. staffers in January.

At least 5 ministers confirmed killed in the Israeli strike

Sunday’s raids came on the heels of the killing of the Houthi prime minister and several of his Cabinet members in an Israeli strike Thursday. It was a blow to the Iran-backed rebels who have launched attacks on Israel and ships in the Red Sea in relation to the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip.

Among the dead were Prime Minister Ahmed al-Rahawi, Foreign Minister Gamal Amer, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Local Development Mohammed al-Medani, Electricity Minister Ali Seif Hassan, Tourism Minister Ali al-Yafei and Information Minister Hashim Sharafuldin, according to two Houthi officials and the victims’ families.

Also killed was a powerful deputy interior minister, Abdel-Majed al-Murtada, the Houthi officials said.

They were targeted during a “routine workshop held by the government to evaluate its activities and performance over the past year,” a Houthi statement said Saturday, two days after the strike. The Houthis said a funeral for all those killed is scheduled for Monday in Sabeen Square in central Sanaa.

Defense Minister Mohamed Nasser al-Attefi survived the attack while Abdel-Karim al-Houthi, the interior minister and one of the most powerful figures in the rebel group, didn’t attend the Thursday meeting, the Houthi officials said.

U.N. envoy for Yemen Hans Grundberg expressed “great concern” over Israel’s recent strikes in the Houthi-controlled areas following Houthi attacks against Israel.

“Yemen cannot afford to become a battleground for a broader geopolitical conflict,” he said in a statement. He called for de-escalation.

Thursday’s strike came after the Houthis attacked Israel on Aug. 21 with a ballistic missile that its military described as the first cluster bomb the rebels had launched at Israel since 2023. The missile, which the Houthis said was aimed at Ben Gurion Airport, prompted air raid sirens across central Israel and Jerusalem, forcing millions into shelters.

The Houthis are likely to escalate their attacks on Israel and ships in the Red Sea, after they vowed in July to target merchant ships belonging to any company that does business with Israeli ports, regardless of nationality.

“Our military approach of targeting the Israeli enemy, whether with missiles, drones or a naval blockade, is continuous, steady, and escalating,” al-Houthi, the group’s secretive leader, said in a televised speech Sunday.





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Florida State QB Tommy Castellanos mocks Alabama with merch after opener upset

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Less than 24 hours after handing Alabama its first loss in a season opener since 2001, Florida State quarterback Tommy Castellanos is capitalizing on the weekend’s biggest upset.

Castellanos’ website is selling eight shirts and sweatshirts taunting the No. 8 Crimson Tide over its 31-17 loss to the Seminoles. Alabama entered the game as a heavy favorite, even on the road.

Some of the merchandise features the line “Nick Can’t Save Them,” a reference to his eyebrow-raising comments about the Tide in June, when he said, “They don’t have Nick Saban to save them. I just don’t see them stopping me.”

At ACC media days in July, he doubled down on his prediction, telling reporters: “We stand on what I said. I said what I said, and we stand on that.”

 

 

On Saturday, he backed up those words, leading FSU to a stunning victory.

Other items Castellanos is selling show a cartoon of him standing on a brick with Saturday’s score painted on it, while others say “Stand On What I Said.”

Castellanos, a senior who transferred to FSU after two seasons at Boston College, completed 9 of 14 pass attempts for 152 yards against Alabama. He also ran for 78 yards and a touchdown.

Alabama suffered multiple upsets last season under new head coach Kalen DeBoer, and some fans feel the team has underperformed since Saban’s retirement, posting a 9-5 record since the switch.

The Seminoles will face East Texas A&M next Saturday, while Alabama is set to take on Louisiana-Monroe the same day.

(Photo by Butch Dill / Getty Images)





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Kristi Noem confirms plan to expand ICE operations in major cities

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Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem confirmed Sunday that the Trump administration plans to expand Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations in major cities, including Chicago.

Asked about plans to expand ICE operations in Chicago specifically, Noem told CBS News’ “Face the Nation,” “We’ve already had ongoing operations with ICE in Chicago and throughout Illinois and other states, making sure that we’re upholding our laws, but we do intend to add more resources to those operations.”

Asked about what an expansion of ICE operations would look like in Chicago and whether it would involve a mobilization of National Guard troops to assist with immigration raids and arrests, Noem demurred, saying, “That always is a prerogative of President [Donald] Trump and his decision. I won’t speak to the specifics of the operations that are planned in other cities.”

Her remarks come one day after Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson signed an executive order directing his city’s legal department to explore ways to counter a potential surge in federal law enforcement and National Guard troops to Illinois.

During a press conference Saturday, Johnson warned that Chicago officials had “received credible reports that we have days, not weeks, before our cities see some type of militarized activity by the federal government.”

Earlier this month, the Trump administration directed federal law enforcement officers, including those employed by ICE, to assist police in Washington, D.C., with crime-fighting operations. That surge of resources included thousands of National Guard troops who were deployed to the nation’s capital with the stated goal of lowering crime rates.

Following the movement of troops and law enforcement officers to Washington, Trump threatened to send federal officers and troops to other major American cities, including Baltimore.

Later in the Sunday interview, Noem was asked whether Boston would be one of the cities where the federal government would surge immigration enforcement agents.

“There’s a lot of cities that are dealing with crime and violence right now, and so we haven’t taken anything off the table,” she said, adding later: “I’d encourage every single big city — San Francisco, Boston, Chicago, whatever they are — if they want to help make their city safer, more prosperous, allow people the opportunity to walk in freedom like the people of Washington, D.C., are now … they should call us.”

Other Democratic officials, including a group of over a dozen governors, have condemned plans to deploy troops to their states.

In a statement last week, they said, “Whether it’s Illinois, Maryland and New York or another state tomorrow, the President’s threats and efforts to deploy a state’s National Guard without the request and consent of that state’s governor is an alarming abuse of power, ineffective, and undermines the mission of our service members.”

And in an interview that aired Sunday on “Face the Nation,” Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, a Democrat, said, “We don’t want troops on the streets of American cities. That’s un-American. Frankly, the president of the United States ought to know better.”

Pritzker also accused the Trump administration of targeting states run by Democrats rather than those run by Republicans, telling CBS, “Notice he never talks about where the most violent crime is occurring, which is in red states. … Their violent crime rates are much worse in other places, and we’re very proud of the work that we’ve done.”

Asked whether there are plans in place to deploy troops and federal law enforcement officials to states and cities run by Republicans, Noem said, “Absolutely.”

“Every single city is evaluated for what we need to do there to make it safer. So we’ve got operations that, again, I won’t talk about details on, but we absolutely are not looking through the viewpoint at anything we’re doing with a political lens,” she added.



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