Man wins $1 million after finding $20 on floor of convenience store
A $20 bill lying on the ground outside a convenience store led Jerry Hicks, of Banner Elk, to a $1 million scratch-off win, according to an NC Education Lottery news release. “I found $20 in the parking lot outside the Speedway,” Hicks said. “I used that to buy the ticket. ”Hicks, a master carpenter, took the $20 and walked into the Speedway on N.C. 105 in Boone on Tuesday evening and bought an Extreme Cash scratch-off. “They actually didn’t have the ticket I was looking for, so I bought that one instead,” he said. Hicks said he knows the first thing he wants to do after he claims his winnings. “We are going to head straight to Golden Corral and eat everything they’ve got,” he said. When Hicks arrived at lottery headquarters Friday, he had a decision to make. He could choose to receive the prize as an annuity of $50,000 over 20 years or a lump sum of $600,000. He chose the sum of $600,000.
Over 200,000 subscribers flee ‘Washington Post’ after Bezos blocks Harris endorsement
The Washington Post has been rocked by a tidal wave of cancellations from digital subscribers and a series of resignations from columnists, as the paper grapples with the fallout of owner Jeff Bezos’s decision to block an endorsement of Vice President Kamala Harris for president. More than 200,000 people had canceled their digital subscriptions by midday Monday, according to two people at the paper with knowledge of internal matters. Not all cancellations take effect immediately. Still, the figure represents about 8% of the paper’s paid circulation of roughly 2.5 million subscribers, which includes print as well. The number of cancellations continued to grow Monday afternoon.
A corporate spokesperson declined to comment, citing The Washington Post Co.’s status as a privately held company. Few people inside the paper credit that rationale given the timing, however, just days before a neck-and-neck race between Harris and former President Donald Trump. Former Executive Editor Marty Baron voiced that skepticism in an interview with NPR’s Morning Edition on Monday. “If this decision had been made three years ago, two years ago, maybe even a year ago, that would’ve been fine,” Baron said. “It’s a certainly reasonable decision. But this was made within a couple of weeks of the election, and there was no substantive serious deliberation with the editorial board of the paper. It was clearly made for other reasons, not for reasons of high principle.”
What caused deadly floods in Spain?
Catastrophic flash floods that have killed at least 72 people in Spain are caused by a destructive weather system in which cold and warm air meet and produce powerful rain clouds, a pattern believed to be growing more frequent due to climate change. The phenomenon is known locally as DANA, a Spanish acronym for high-altitude isolated depression, and unlike common storms or squalls it can form independently of polar or subtropical jet streams. Eastern and Southern Spain are particularly susceptible to the phenomenon due to its position between the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea. Warm, humid air masses and cold fronts meet in a region where mountains favour the formation of storm clouds and rainfall. “We’re going to see more of these flash floods in the future. This has the fingerprints of climate change on it, these terribly heavy rainfalls, and these devastating floods,” said Hannah Cloke, professor of hydrology at the University of Reading. She said even early warnings of heavy rain based on reliable forecasts did little to prevent the fatalities and people needed to understand the real danger. Before the term DANA was coined in the early 2000s, any heavy rainfall in the autumn, characteristic of the Mediterranean climate, used to go by the popular name “gota fria” (cold drop) in Spain and parts of France. The term is still widely used colloquially.Its origin dates back to 1886 when German scientists introduced the idea of “kaltlufttropfen”, or cold air drop, to describe high altitude disturbance but without apparent reflection on the surface.
Aemet says the concept of cold drop is outdated and defines DANA as a closed high-altitude depression that has become isolated and separated from an associated jet stream. Aemet says DANAs sometimes become stationary or even move backwards, from east to west.
