Powerball jackpot winner: 'We'll have a good Christmas'

A 52-year-old Missouri mechanic and his wife claimed their share Friday of the record $588 million Powerball jackpot. ( Source: Associated Press)

Dearborn, Mo.—

A Missouri couple who won half of a record $587.5 million Powerball jackpot said on Friday they plan to stay put in their rural community, but know their lives will be changed.

“I think we'll have a good Christmas,” Cindy Hill said at a news conference where she and her husband, Mark Hill, were presented as winners of the jackpot by the Missouri Lottery.

Cindy Hill, 51, is a former office manager who got laid off in 2010. Mark Hill, 52, was a mechanic for Hillshire Brands, a food company, but has now quit his job.

They have three grown sons and a 6-year-old daughter adopted from China who were among about 25 relatives at the news conference, held in the gymnasium of the high school where they were sweethearts in the 1970s.

Cindy Hill first learned of the winning ticket on Thursday when she checked her numbers at the Trex Mart in Dearborn, a community of about 500 people 30 miles (50 km) north of Kansas City. She then called Mark Hill from her car. They had bought five tickets.

“I think I'm going to have a heart attack,” she told him. He told her to meet him at his mother's house so he could check the numbers for himself. “He said this is the ‘Show Me State,' show me.”

When they verified the numbers, they traveled to lottery offices in Jefferson City, Missouri, spent the night in a hotel and tried to comprehend what happened, Cindy Hill said.

“I thought ‘This isn't what I thought it would be like, now I'm really nervous,” she said. “I'm grateful, but there will be some not-so-good stuff to go along with it.” Earlier, she said “You are going to get people coming out of the woodwork and some of them many not be too sane.”

She said she and her husband plan to make the most of the winnings by giving to charity, to relatives for college education and other needs, and to the community.

“We are pretty well-grounded and worked hard all our lives,” Cindy Hill said.

Mark Hill deferred to his wife for most of the news conference, which was observed by about 300 students from grades 7 to 12 in the bleachers.

“It's all just kind of a fuzz,” Mark Hill said.

He said he has not grasped winning the money. On Thursday, for example, he went to buy toothpaste and other items to take to the hotel and found himself checking the price.

A CAMARO AND A HORSE

Cindy Hill said her husband wants a red Chevrolet Camaro car and she wants a horse. Daughter Jaiden wants a pony, Cindy Hill said. They also plan to travel, including a holiday with a lot of relatives in tow, she said.

The Hills won $293,750,000 before taxes. But they will take it in a lump sum of about $193 million rather than the larger amount over 30 years.

The Hills shared the Powerball payout with someone who bought a ticket at a food store in Fountain Hills, Arizona, on the outskirts of Phoenix. The Arizona winner has not yet come forward.

Some states allow lottery winners to remain anonymous but Missouri requires that the winner be publicly identified to claim the prize.

Dearborn reveled in its sudden arrival in the spotlight.

“It was a total surprise,” Don Palmer, a customer at the Trex Mart convenience store, said on Thursday. “Nothing ever happens in Dearborn.”

The winning numbers were 5, 16, 22, 23, 29, and the Powerball number 6.

The odds of winning the jackpot with a $2 ticket is one in more than 175 million.

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Study: DVRs now in half of US pay-TV homes

NEW YORK (AP) — A new survey finds that digital video recorders are now in more than half of all U.S. homes that subscribe to cable or satellite TV services.

Leichtman Research Group‘s survey of 1,300 households found that 52 percent of the ones that have pay-TV service also have a DVR. That translates to about 45 percent of all households and is up from 13.5 percent of all households surveyed five years ago by another firm, Nielsen.

The first DVRs came out in 1999, from TiVo Inc. and ReplayTV. Later, they were built into cable set-top boxes. The latest trend is “whole-home” DVRs that can distribute recorded shows to several sets.

Even with the spread of DVRs, live TV rules. Nielsen found last year that DVRs accounted for 8 percent of TV watching.

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No charges against Chris Brown in Fla. phone grab

MIAMI (AP) — Grammy-winning singer Chris Brown won’t be charged with a crime after a woman claimed he snatched her cell phone when she tried to take his photo outside a Miami Beach club.

A memo released Friday by the Miami-Dade County State Attorney‘s office concludes there is no evidence that Brown intended to steal the phone in February or that he deleted the photo. One or the other is necessary for him to be charged.

Prosecutors say that Brown tossed the phone from his limo and that it was picked up by security.

A felony charge against the 24-year-old might have triggered a violation of his probation for his 2009 assault on singer Rihanna, who was his girlfriend at the time. The two have recently collaborated on a new duet.

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Jewel parent says sale talks proceeding

Exterior of Jewel-Osco's first "Green Store" located at 370 N. Desplaines in Chicago. (Antonio Perez / November 29, 2012)

By Emily Bryson York




Chicago Tribune reporter

6:51 a.m. CST, November 30, 2012

Supervalu, the Minneapolis-based parent of Jewel-Osco said sale talks are proceeding after stock closed down more than 18 percent Thursday, to $2.28.

The beleaguered grocery chain was likely moving to combat reports that sale talks with suitor Cerberus Capital Management had stalled over funding.

"The company continues to be in active discussion with several parties," according to the statement. "There can be no assurance that this process will result in any transaction or any change in the Company's overall structure or its business model."

Supervalu, the third-largest U.S. grocery chain, has acknowledged sale talks since the spring. The company has been closing stores and cutting jobs as it has underperformed competitors like Dominick's parent Safeway and Kroger.

If Supervalu does not sell to Cerberus, it may have to restructure on its own or sell off individual assets, which could have big tax consequences, Bloomberg said.

Reuters reported last month that buyout firm Cerberus was preparing a takeover bid for Supervalu, the third-largest U.S. supermarket chain.

Cerberus officials could not be reached immediately for comment.

-- Reuters contributed to this report

In addition to Jewel, Supervalu owns Albertsons, Cub and other regional grocery chains.

SVU data by YCharts

SVU data by YCharts

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Winning tickets sought in $588 million jackpot

The search is on for the country's newest multimillionaires, the holders of two tickets that matched all six numbers to claim a record $588 million Powerball jackpot.

Lottery officials said Thursday that the winning tickets matching all six numbers were sold at a convenience store in suburban Phoenix and a gas station just off Interstate 29 in a small northwestern Missouri town. Neither ticket holder had come forward.

The mystery fueled a giddy mood at the Trex Mart just outside Dearborn, Mo. — population 500 — as lottery officials and the media descended.

Cashiers Kristi Williams and Kelly Blount greeted customers with big smiles and questions about whether they had bought the winning ticket. No one had come forward to claim the prize by late Thursday morning, Missouri Lottery officials said.

"It's just awesome," Williams said. "It's so exciting. We can't even work."

The winning ticket sold in Arizona was purchased at a 4 Sons Food Store in Fountain Hills, Ariz., state lottery officials said.

In Dearborn, Williams said several local people buy lottery tickets there regularly and workers were hoping it was one of their regulars.

But Baron Hartell, son of the store's owner, Lowell Hartell, said truck drivers moving in both directions on the north-south interstate that connects Kansas City to the Canadian border who frequent the store are also considered locals.

"Even the truck drivers who come around, we see them every day, so they all feel like all locals to us," he said.

Store manager Chris Naurez said business had been "crazy" for Powerball tickets lately and that the store had sold about $27,000 worth of tickets in the last few days.

"This really puts Dearborn on the map," he said.

The general manager of Trex Mart suggested his staff would be sharing in the $50,000 bounty that the store will be awarded for selling one of the winning tickets.

"The response from the owner was, 'I guess we'll be able to give out Christmas bonuses,'" General Manager Kenny Gilbert said. "That's nice, especially at this time of year."

It appeared the winners had yet to come forward, and it wasn't clear if the tickets had been bought by individuals or groups. Winners have 180 days to claim their share of the prize money.

The numbers drawn Wednesday night were 5, 16, 22, 23, 29. The Powerball was 6. The $587.5 million payout represents the second-largest jackpot in U.S. history.

"If you find you're holding the winning ticket, be sure you sign the back and put it in a safe place until you can take it to a Missouri Lottery office," said May Scheve Reardon, executive director of the Missouri Lottery. "You will also want to get some legal and financial advice before you claim."

Americans went on a ticket-buying spree in the run-up to Wednesday's drawing, the big money enticing many people who rarely, if ever, play the lottery to purchase a shot at the second-largest payout in U.S. history.

Tickets sold at a rate of 130,000 a minute nationwide — about six times the volume from a week ago. That pushed the jackpot even higher, said Chuck Strutt, executive director of the Multi-State Lottery Association. The jackpot rolled over 16 consecutive times without a winner.

In a Mega Millions drawing in March, three ticket buyers shared a $656 million jackpot. This remains the largest lottery payout of all time.

___

Skoloff reported from Fountain Hills, Ariz.

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Womens’ stories dominate 2013 Sundance film lineup

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The Sundance Film Festival, the top U.S. film festival for independent cinema, on Wednesday unveiled its lineup for 2013, with films centered on female characters dominating the American fiction film competition.

The 113 feature length movies, including both narrative films and documentaries, cover a range of topics, but more than half of those chosen for the U.S. dramatic competition focus on stories about women, including several about females exploring sexual relationships.

That includes “May In The Summer,” director Cherien Dabis’s new film about a bride-to-be forced to re-evaluate her life when she reunites with her family in Jordan that is one of 16 films in the U.S. dramatic competition.

It will kick off Sundance on January 17 as one of four first-night screenings that will comprise of one feature and one documentary from each of the U.S. films and world cinema sections – movies made outside the United States.

Overall, 4,044 feature films from around the world were submitted for the festival that is backed by Robert Redford’s Sundance Institute for filmmaking and is the premiere U.S. event for movies made outside Hollywood’s major studios.

Indie films from Sundance festivals that have gone on to critical success include last year’s winner, “Beasts of the Southern Wild,” as well as “The Sessions,” and “Little Miss Sunshine” and “An Inconvenient Truth”.

Other features about female journeys include writer director Lynn Shelton’s “Touchy Feely,” about a massage therapist unable to do her job when she suddenly has an aversion to bodily contact.

“There are a lot of women’s stories, and interestingly enough, a lot of those stories exploring sexual relationships,” the festival’s program director Trevor Groth said in an interview, noting it was a natural extension of an increase in female directors.

“We have had some over the years that have been from a male gaze looking at sexual politics and sexual relationships, but this year we have got a wave of films doing that from a female perspective, which is intriguing and exciting.”

Those include “Afternoon Delight”, a dark comedy about a lost L.A. housewife who takes in a young stripper, “Concussion”, about a woman in a lesbian relationship who becomes a call girl, and “The Lifeguard”, about a reporter who quits her job in New York and moves back home to Connecticut.

Stories from the male perspective include “C.O.G.”, the first film adaptation of comic writer David Sedaris. Adapted from a short story from Sedaris’ best-selling 1997 essay collection, “Naked”, Sedaris has co-written the screenplay about a cocky man traveling to Oregon to work on an apple farm.

PUNK PRAYERS

Other “Day One” screenings include “Crystal Fairy”, about two strangers on a road trip in Chile, and the documentaries “Twenty Feet From Stardom”, about backup singers for some of the biggest bands in pop music and “Who Is Dayani Cristal?”, about the search for an anonymous body in the Arizona desert.

Nonfiction films from the world documentary section tackle subjects ranging from Russian punk protest band Pussy Riot in “Pussy Riot — A Punk Prayer”, to the 2008 Sichuan earthquake “Fallen City” to Google’s quest to build a giant digital library “Google and the World Brain”.

And returning to the United States, among American documentaries are an examination of the occupy Wall Street movement “99% – The Occupy Wall Street Collaborative Film”, “Dirty Wars” about America’s covert wars and “Manhunt” that looks inside the CIA’s conflict against Al Qaeda.

Festival director John Cooper noted the strength and “immediacy” of the documentary lineup and “the way these films explain and expose the issues of our time, like economic inequality, corporate corruption and greed, the problems and sometimes the solutions of living in this information age”.

Movies in the Premieres section, which unlike the competition sections feature more established directors, will be announced December 3.

Overall, this year’s festival will feature movies from 32 countries and 51 first-time filmmakers. The festival begins on January 17, 2012 and runs through January 27.

(Reporting By Christine Kearney, editing by Patricia Reaney)

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Hypothermia and Carbon Monoxide Poisoning Cases Soar in New York After Hurricane Sandy

The number of cold-exposure cases in New York City tripled in the weeks after Hurricane Sandy struck compared with the same period in previous years, the health department reported in an alert to thousands of doctors and other health care providers on Wednesday.

And even though power and heat have been restored to most of the city, there are still thousands of people living in the cold, the department said.

The department warned health care providers that residents living in unheated homes faced “a significant risk of serious illness and death from multiple causes.”

The number of cases of carbon monoxide exposure, which can be fatal, was more than 10 times as high as expected the week of the storm and 6 times as high the next week, reflected in greater numbers of emergency department visits. Calls to the city’s poison center also increased, health officials said.

And as temperatures dip, health officials said the cold could lead to other health problems, including a worsening of heart and lung diseases and an increase in anxiety and depression.

“My bigger concern is what happens in the future as we get closer to winter in the next four weeks,” Dr. Thomas A. Farley, the city’s health commissioner, said in an interview. “There are probably about 12,000 people living in unheated apartments right now.”

Between Nov. 3 and 21, more than three times as many people visited emergency rooms for cold exposure as appeared during the same time periods from 2008 to 2011, the health department said. The storm hit on Oct. 29.

It took days before many elderly and disabled residents, trapped in cold, dark apartments without working elevators or phones, were visited by emergency responders and health workers. Some went to emergency rooms.

Dr. Farley said prolonged exposure to cold even slightly below room temperature could be deadly, and he urged residents of unheated apartments to consider relocating. He said they could find help by calling 311.

The alert said residents in cold apartments should wear layers of dry, loosefitting clothing. They should not use ovens or portable gas heaters because of the risks of fire and carbon monoxide.

The statistics were collected through a system that gathers major complaints daily from most of the city’s hospital emergency departments. The number of hypothermia cases reported to the system since the storm is 65, but that is considered an undercount.

Health department officials said the figure also did not reflect the much larger number of people whose underlying heart and lung problems had worsened in cold environments. An increase in asthma attacks, heart attacks and stroke would be more difficult to detect immediately. Officials said both the very young and older people, as well as people with chronic diseases, mental illness and substance use, were most at risk.

Dr. Farley said the increase in hypothermia cases was greatest immediately after the hurricane and during the cold period around the northeaster on Nov. 7.

Some people exposed to cold were treated at Staten Island University Hospital. “Our initial cases were people immersed in water, most in the process of being rescued,” said Dr. Brahim Ardolic, chairman of the hospital’s department of emergency medicine.

Makeshift efforts to keep warm also caused health problems. Many city residents without heat used stoves and, in some cases, generators indoors or in garages, leading to exposure to carbon monoxide, a colorless, odorless gas.

“It’s a really scary exposure because you usually don’t realize what happened,” Dr. Ardolic said. “It can be insidious enough that you can go to sleep and wake up, if you’re lucky, with a severe headache. If you’re unlucky, you just won’t wake up.”

One post-storm patient was Hazel Mintz, 90, who lives on the 12th floor of an apartment building in Far Rockaway, Queens, that lost heat. She was taken to the emergency room after the storm because of chest pain. Days later, after neighbors heard a carbon monoxide alarm and smelled something burning in Ms. Mintz’s empty apartment, a caregiver opened the door to find a blackened kettle atop a burner with a gas flame. “I put on the gas to warm up,” Ms. Mintz, who has recovered, said.

At St. John’s Episcopal Hospital in Far Rockaway, one of the areas hardest hit by the storm, 13 people have been treated for carbon monoxide exposure since the storm, including a family of three burning charcoal indoors to keep warm, said Dr. Rajiv Prasad, the emergency department director.

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Griffin buyer of Chicago's priciest condo

Billionaire Kenneth Griffin, who is the founder and chief executive of Chicago-based hedge fund Citadel, was the buyer of that $15 million penthouse condominium unit in the Park Tower, which sold two weeks ago in what appears to be Chicago's priciest condo sale ever.

Newly public records show that Griffin, 44, bought the 7,900-square-foot unit, which had been owned by hedge fund manager Richard Cooper's Cooperfund.

Griffin was a logical buyer for Cooper's unit, given that he has owned a penthouse on the 67th floor of the Park Tower since buying it in 2000 for $6.9 million. The new unit is on the 66th floor.

 The unit never actually was publicly listed.  Instead, it was listed privately and only was placed into the real estate MLS at the exact time that the deal was struck.

Chezi Rafaeli of Coldwell Banker represented both Griffin and Cooper.  He has declined to comment on any aspect of the transaction.

Features in the three-bedroom unit that Griffin just purchased include four full baths, five half baths, 16-foot ceilings, a private terrace space measuring 44 feet by 15 feet, and three garage spaces in the building.  Cooper bought the unit as raw space in 2000 for $3.316 million.

 Griffin's new acquisition is the most expensive condo in Chicago history, easily surpassing the previous recordholder -- actor Vince Vaughn's $12 million purchase in 2006 of a triplex penthouse in the Palmolive building, which he now has available for $16.75 million.

The most expensive condo ever listed in Chicago is the current, $32 million listing for the penthouse unit in the Trump International Hotel and Tower.

Chicago's other highest-priced condo sales are financier James S. Crown's $10.1 million purchase in 2002 of a duplex in an eight-story luxury Gold Coast condo building, chewing-gum heir Bill Wrigley's $9.125 million purchase that same year of a full floor atop that same building, Tampa Bay Buccaneers co-chairman Bryan Glazer's $8.606 million purchase in 2010 of a 53rd-floor condo unit at the Elysian Private Residences Tower, options trader Igor Chernomzav's $8.18 million purchase in 2010 of a full-floor, 6,432-square-foot unit in the Elysian and commodities trader Jeff Silverman's $7.2 million purchase last year of a top-floor condo unit in a Gold Coast tower.

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Convicted former Rep. Mel Reynolds wants Jackson seat

Disgraced former U.S. Rep. Mel Reynolds said he will ask voters to focus on his congressional experience rather than his state and federal criminal record as he announced his bid today for the seat held by Jesse Jackson Jr., who has resigned.

At a downtown hotel news conference, Reynolds acknowledged having made “mistakes” in the past. For his campaign, he will try to assume the mantle of an incumbent while also seeking redemption from voters. Red and white campaign signs urged voters to “re-elect” Reynolds “so he can finish the work” while another stark red sign with white letters said simply: “Redemption.”

Reynolds held the 2nd Congressional District seat from 1993 until October 1995, when a Cook County jury convicted him of several sex-related charges, including having sex with an underage volunteer campaign worker. While serving time in state prison, Reynolds also was convicted on federal financial and campaign fraud charges. President Bill Clinton commuted Reynolds' sentence to time served in 2001.

Under law, Reynolds, formerly a South Side resident who is now renting in Dolton, no longer has to register as a sex offender.

Reynolds sought to downplay his previous convictions, contending “it was almost 18, 20 years ago” and that his past crimes “shouldn’t be a life sentence.”

“The fact of the matter is, nobody’s perfect,” Reynolds said, adding that voters should “look at the entire history of me,” including what people do “after they make mistakes.” Reynolds, however, stopped short of acknowledging guilt for any of his crimes.

Though Reynolds sought to focus on his experience in Congress, where he served on the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, his entry into the contest was yet another sorry reminder of the congressional representation that voters on the South Side and south suburbs have had with their last three representatives.

Reynolds replaced Gus Savage, a controversial and outspoken congressman who was condemned by the House Ethics Committee amid allegations of sexual misconduct involving a Peace Corps volunteer while he was on an official congressional visit to Zaire.

After Reynolds resigned, Jackson won a special election in 1995 to succeed him. But after 17 years, Jackson stepped down last week amid federal ethics investigations and a diagnosis of bipolar depression.

Unlike his failed 2004 primary bid against Jackson, in which Reynolds lost by an 89 percent to 6 percent margin, Reynolds was not joined this time in his announcement by his wife, Marisol. The two have had a history of marital problems. As he spoke about raising his children almost like a single parent, Reynolds said he was not divorced but wanted to leave questions about his wife out of the campaign.

Reynolds said he is self-employed as a financial consultant who acts as a broker between African investors and U.S. companies. But if there was a symbol that he misses Congress, despite his short tenure there, it was the shining black GMC SUV parked outside his news conference with retired congressional license plates that read “MR.”

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Sculptor Gormley wants us to get inside his head

LONDON (Reuters) – Britain’s foremost living sculptor Antony Gormley wants us to get inside his head with his latest work “Model”, a 100-tonne steel maze of cubes and squares, dark corners and splashes of light on show at the White Cube gallery in London.

The giant grey-black work, based on a human form lying down, is entered via the right “foot”, and combines the fun of an adventure playground with the unnerving quality of a labyrinth often plunged into darkness.

For the first time, the Turner Prize-winning artist who has always been preoccupied with the human form allows us to get inside, and draws parallels between the body and the architectural spaces we inhabit.

“I think we dwell first in this borrowed bit of the material world that we call the body,” Gormley told Reuters, standing beside the imposing structure made up of interlocking blocks.

“It has its own life that is unknowable. But the second place we dwell is the body of architecture, the built environment,” he added.

“We’re the most extraordinary species that decided to structure our habitat according to very, very abstract principles of horizontal and vertical planes.”

Model has plenty of surprises. The more nimble visitor can crawl through its left “arm”, which is a passage around three feet high, or clamber on to a roof bathed in light.

“There are places that you wouldn’t necessarily know are there,” Gormley said. As if to prove his point, he disappeared into a large raised “aperture” invisible in the darkness.

Sound also plays a part, with the resonance of voices and rumble of footsteps giving clues to the size of each space.

PLAYGROUND

The artist said he encouraged people to explore the work rather than just look, unlike most sculptures which are strictly off-limits.

“Psychological architecture suddenly starts to reverberate with human life,” he explained, adding that the sense of unease when entering the dark spaces was part of its appeal.

“I think creepiness is good,” he said in the pitch-black “head”. “I think it’s necessary to get under people’s skin. You don’t want them to easily ingest or accept something.”

Several times he referred to the Seagram murals of American painter Mark Rothko, works that inspired him as an artist and which he had in mind while making Model.

“Their surfaces give you this idea of space, or an invitation, they seat you at a threshold and allow you to dream of what exists beyond that threshold,” he said.

“You could say this is the literal version of that.”

Gormley, born in 1950, won the Turner Prize in 1994 and is probably best known for his 20-metre high public “Angel of the North” sculpture located near Newcastle in northern England.

He would not say what price the White Cube gallery had put on Model, and the gallery itself could not immediately provide a figure when asked, but Gormley has become one of the most sought-after British artists at auction.

A life-size iron maquette for Angel of the North fetched 3.4 million pounds ($ 5.4 million) at an auction at Christie’s in October last year.

Early critical reaction to Model was mixed.

“We think of the pyramids, of tombs in lightless spaces,” wrote Michael Glover in the Independent. “We have entered this space hoping for a visceral response of some kind, but it never quite happens.”

Model is on display at White Cube, Bermondsey, until February 10, 2013.

(This story has fixed typos in paragraph six)

(Reporting by Mike Collett-White, editing by Paul Casciato)

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