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The Powerball jackpot soared to $1.25 billion for Wednesday night’s drawing after there were no grand prize winners on Monday night. It’s now the sixth highest Powerball jackpot of all time, and there will be at least 44 drawings in between jackpot winners — a new record, according to Powerball operators. The last grand prize was won on Sept. 6, when lucky winners in Missouri and Texas split a $1.787 billion jackpot. That was the second largest jackpot in Powerball history. “This one has arrived just in time for the holidays,” said Matt Strawn, Iowa Lottery CEO and Powerball Product Group Chair. “While it’s exciting to see the jackpot climb to this level, please remember to play responsibly. A single $2 ticket gives you a chance to win.” The odds of winning the jackpot are 1 in 292.2 million, allowing it to reach astronomical heights over time. If someone wins Wednesday’s $1.25 billion jackpot, the immediate cash payout option will be $572.1 million, according to Powerball. The other option is an annual payout over 29 years, increasing by 5% each year. Both options are taxed. The largest Powerball jackpot ever was $2.04 billion in November 2022. It was won by a single man, Southern California resident Edwin Castro.

The Kings will be without their best player for the foreseeable future and could lose another key cog entirely, as Tuesday’s developments were unkind to the black and silver. Goalie Darcy Kuemper, who was voted the team MVP last season and was on track to repeat the feat this year, was placed on injured reserve Tuesday. The 2025 Vezina Trophy finalist absorbed a blow to the head from Dallas Stars winger Mikko Rantanen on Monday that was deemed interference, nullifying a Wyatt Johnston goal, but, controversially, not a penalty. In Kuemper’s stead, the Kings recalled veteran netminder Pheonix Copley. Additionally Tuesday, Montreal-based reporter Marco D’Amico shared that center Phillip Danault had asked for a trade. Danault has struggled to score, going 38 consecutive games without a goal and mustering just five assists in 30 appearances during 2025-26. He’s been out with an illness for the Kings’ last two games and did not travel with the team for its current road trip. D’Amico reported that not only did Danault ask for a trade, but the Quebecois pivot’s preference was to have the deal done ahead of the holiday trade freeze, which begins Saturday. SCNG reached out to Danault’s representative, Octagon’s Allan Walsh, for comment. “Zero truth. Pure fantasy,” Walsh replied. “Who wants a trade before Christmas?” Both Danault, 32, and Kuemper, 35, are in the penultimate year of their respective contracts, which each carry a cap hit in excess of $5 million. Danault, a superb defensive centerman, has seen his offensive game crater over time. It flourished after he signed as a free agent in 2021 following a stunning run to the Stanley Cup Final with Montreal. Kuemper had muscled his way into the conversation to represent and possibly even start for Canada at February’s Olympic Games in Milan. Among goalies with at least 10 starts, he ranks seventh league-wide in both save percentage and goals-against average, all behind the NHL’s third least productive offense. In Dallas, the Kings scored one goal, a five-on-three tally that was the fortuitous result of a puckhandling error by Stars goalie Casey DeSmith. The severity and precise nature of Kuemper’s injury were not revealed by the Kings on Tuesday. They had a day off in advance of a back-to-back set in the Sunshine State against the defending champion Florida Panthers and the Tampa Bay Lightning.

By MICHAEL R. SISAK NEW YORK (AP) — A judge said Tuesday he’s optimistic that a pretrial hearing will end this week in Luigi Mangione’s New York murder case in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson. Related Articles The US labels another Latin American cartel a terrorist group as the anti-drug war escalates Trump expands travel ban, adding 5 more countries and imposing new limits on others A doctor who helped sell ketamine to actor Matthew Perry gets less than a year of home confinement Hyundai and Kia will repair millions of vehicles under a deal to fix anti-theft technology Joe Ely, a Texas songwriter whose legacy touched rock and punk, dies age 78 “Hopefully we wind up on Thursday,” Judge Gregory Carro said at the hearing, which is in its third week of testimony. Mangione, 27, is seeking to exclude items seized during his Dec. 9, 2024, arrest in Altoona, Pennsylvania, including a gun and notebook that prosecutors say tie him to Thompson’s shooting five days earlier in Manhattan. Prosecutors have called more than a dozen witnesses so far, with at least one more expected after an off-day on Wednesday. On Tuesday, a Pennsylvania police evidence custodian, a New York City police homicide commander and an investigative analyst from the Manhattan district attorney’s office testified. Mangione has pleaded not guilty to state and federal murder charges. The pretrial hearing applies only to the state case. His lawyers are making a similar push to exclude the evidence from his federal case, where prosecutors are seeking the death penalty. Mangione was arrested after customers spotted him eating breakfast at a McDonald’s in Altoona, a Pennsylvania city of about 44,000 people some 230 miles west of Manhattan. The restaurant’s manager told a 911 dispatcher customers thought “he looks like the CEO shooter from New York.” Mangione’s lawyers contend that anything found in Mangione’s backpack should be excluded from his trial because police didn’t have a search warrant and lacked the grounds to justify a warrantless search. Luigi Mangione talks to a photographer as he appears in court in New York, Tuesday, Dec. 16, 2025. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig, Pool) Luigi Mangione talks to a photographer as he appears in court in New York, Tuesday, Dec. 16, 2025. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig, Pool) Luigi Mangione appears in court in New York, Tuesday, Dec. 16, 2025. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig, Pool) Luigi Mangione appears in Manhattan Criminal Court, Tuesday, Dec. 16, 2025, in New York. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig, Pool) Show Caption1 of 4Luigi Mangione talks to a photographer as he appears in court in New York, Tuesday, Dec. 16, 2025. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig, Pool) Expand Prosecutors say the search was legal because it was conducted in conjunction with an arrest and officers were checking to make sure there were no dangerous items in the bag that could be harmful to them or the public. Police eventually obtained a warrant, prosecutors said. Items seized during that search include a 9 mm handgun that prosecutors said matches the one used to kill Thompson and a notebook in similar handwriting in which he purportedly described his intent to “wack” a health insurance executive. The Altoona police department’s evidence custodian, Officer George Featherstone, testified Tuesday that he logged evidence collected during Mangione’s arrest and placed it in labeled evidence bags and envelopes before turning it over to the NYPD. NYPD Lt. David Leonardi, the commanding officer of the detective squad that investigated Thompson’s killing, testified that before going to Altoona he told a police sergeant there: “I would like no one to speak to him and all of the property held.” Leonardi said he raced to Altoona with a team of detectives and personally drove the evidence back to Manhattan, where it was delivered to the NYPD’s crime laboratory for testing. Investigative Analyst Anissa Weisel testified about a timeline she created of events surrounding Mangione’s arrest. Mangione’s…

A shift in the way the federal government funds housing for the homeless could put about 10,000 people already housed in Los Angeles County back onto the street, according to county officials. The federal Housing and Urban Development department last month drastically changed the funding formula for states and counties, affecting the application for monies already approved to keep people in permanent housing, what HUD calls the Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO). The Los Angeles Homeless Service Authority’s Continuum of Care (CoC) funding for both L.A. County and the city of Los Angeles amounts to about $220 million. Under the previous rules, 90% is used to take people off the street and place them into permanent housing, with case managers, access to doctors, and other support services. Under the Trump Administration’s new HUD rules, only 30% can be used for permanent housing, while the rest assumably will be for shelters or temporary housing. The switch from the “housing first” strategy comes in the middle of the two-year cycle for funded programs, meaning unless the county or LAHSA backfills the housing subsidies, these residents will lose their homes and have no place to go, county officials reported. After being sued by nonprofits and other counties, HUD suddenly withdrew the funding plans after making it a one-year cycle. These actions left L.A. County in limbo. The withdrawal before the Dec. 8 court hearing may relieve the crisis only in the short term, wrote Third District Supervisor Lindsey Horvath in an emailed statement. Nonetheless, Horvath’s office said the county share of homeless funding will run out in February. “HUD’s withdrawal of the NOFO shows just how destabilizing these sudden federal policy shifts have been for Los Angeles County and communities across the country. The proposed cuts — driven by the Trump Administration — would have pushed people who are currently housed into homelessness,” Horvath said. The crisis may have been pushed down the road, but it is not resolved, she noted. On Tuesday, Dec. 16, a motion by Horvath and First District Supervisor Hilda Solis, approved by the Board, directs staff to write a letter to HUD asking that it “honor the original commitment to a two-year Continuum of Care funding cycle, providing ongoing, uninterrupted funding.” The motion also asks the County Chief Executive Office and its legislative analyst to advocate that Congress pass legislation that will ensure the already approved funding continues and that HUD upholds the initial two-year commitment. “This is a moment requiring fierce, urgent advocacy, so that the County can retain its CoC funding,” read the motion. Legislation already has 28 Republican backers who indicate that the Trump-led HUD is making a mistake, Horvath’s office said. In a statement last month, HUD Secretary Scott Turner said the changes are aimed at “stopping the Biden-era slush fund that fueled the homelessness crisis, shut out faith-based providers simply because of their values, and incentivized never-ending government dependency.” Esroruleh Mohammad, a clinical psychologist, wrote in a written comment to the Board that the instability of funding from HUD will undermine positive outcomes for those who are housed and working back into society because they would be separated not just from a home, but from county care services. She wrote that the currently funded housing program “prevents avoidable transitions into homelessness, violence, addiction, hunger, hospitalization, or crisis.” The National Health Care for the Homeless Council also strongly opposes the new HUD funding restrictions, saying these changes will increase homelessness throughout the nation. “Most significantly, these restrictions will end funding for more than 170,000 people who currently live in permanent housing so they can manager their health, stay connected to care, and remain safe,” the group wrote in a release. Related Articles After housing nearly 300 people,…

By ALEXA ST. JOHN DETROIT (AP) — Sixteen states and the District of Columbia are suing President Donald Trump’s administration for what they say is the unlawful withholding of over $2 billion dollars in funding for two electric vehicle charging programs, according to a federal lawsuit announced Tuesday. Related Articles House Speaker Johnson rebuffs efforts to extend health care subsidies, pushing ahead with GOP plan FAA head vows to maintain safety measures implemented after tragic DC plane crash The US labels another Latin American cartel a terrorist group as the anti-drug war escalates Trump expands travel ban, adding 5 more countries and imposing new limits on others Trump will go to Delaware for the dignified transfer of the 2 National Guard members killed in Syria The lawsuit filed Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington is the latest legal battle that several states are pursuing over funding for EV charging infrastructure that they say was obligated to them by Congress under former President Joe Biden, but that the Department of Transportation and Federal Highway Administration are “impounding.” “The Trump Administration’s illegal attempt to stop funding for electric vehicle infrastructure must come to an end,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta said in a release. “This is just another reckless attempt that will stall the fight against air pollution and climate change, slow innovation, thwart green job creation, and leave communities without access to clean, affordable transportation.” The Department of Transportation did not immediately respond to request for comment. The Trump administration in February ordered states to halt spending money for EV charging that was allocated in the bipartisan infrastructure law passed under the previous administration. Several states filed a lawsuit in May against the administration for withholding the funding from the $5 billion National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure program for a nationwide charging buildout. A federal judge later ordered the administration to release much of the funding for chargers in more than a dozen states. Tuesday’s separate lawsuit addresses the withholding of funding obligations for two other programs: $1.8 billion for the Charging and Fueling Infrastructure Grant program, as well as about $350 million in Electric Vehicle Charger Reliability and Accessibility Accelerator money. Tuesday’s lawsuit is led by attorneys general from California and Colorado, joined by the attorneys general of Arizona, Delaware, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, Wisconsin and the District of Columbia, and the governor of Pennsylvania. The Trump administration has been hostile to EVs and has dismantled several policies friendly to cleaner cars and trucks that were put in place under Biden, in favor of policies that instead align with Trump’s oil and gas industry agenda. Once in office a second time, President Trump immediately ordered an end to what he has called Biden’s “EV mandate.” While Biden targeted for half of new vehicle sales in the U.S. to be electric by 2030, policies did not force American consumers to buy or automakers to sell electric vehicles. Biden did set stringent tailpipe emissions and fuel economy rules in an effort to encourage more widespread EV uptake, as the auto industry would have had to meet both sets of requirements with a greater number of EVs in their sales mix. Under the Biden administration, consumers could also receive up to $7,500 in tax incentives off the price of an EV purchase. The Trump administration has proposed rolling back both tailpipe rules and the gas mileage standards, cut the fines to automakers for not meeting those standards, and eliminated the EV credits. Trump has also repeated incorrect information about the status of the federal charging programs; without all of the funds available, only a fraction of what was…