2 Towns Hint at Powerball Winners

The $587 million question on the identity of the winners in the historic Powerball jackpot is still a mystery, but residents in Missouri and Maryland say they already know who the two lucky winners are.

Employees and customers at Marlboro Village Exxon in Upper Marlboro, Md., said a tall, black, bald man held the winning ticket purchased in Arizona, according to ABC News affiliate WJLA-TV.

Meanwhile, speculation began running wild in the small town of Dearborn, Mo., when a factory worker named Mark Hill updated his Facebook account late Thursday, writing, "We are truly blessed, we are lucky winners of the Powerball."

Within hours, his family began celebrating, telling ABC News Hill is one of the two big winners.

"Just shocked. I mean, I thought we were all going to have heart attacks," Hill's mother, Shirley, said Thursday.

Hill's mother says her son and his wife, Cindy, have three grown sons and an adopted daughter from China, but the family has been struggling financially.

Hill works in a hot dog and deli packaging factory, but it was unclear whether he showed up for work Thursday night.

"I'm very happy for him. He's worked hard in his life; well, not anymore," Hill's son Jason said. "Well, I hope we all stay very grounded, stay humble and don't forget who we are."

Powerball Numbers: Two Winners Take Record Jackpot Watch Video

Powerball's Half-Billion Dollar Prize: Lotto Success Stories Watch Video

Missouri Lottery official Susan Goedde confirmed to ABC News Thursday that one of the winning tickets was purchased at a Trex Mart in Dearborn, about 30 miles north of Kansas City.

Lottery officials won't confirm whether Hill is the winner but family members offered another clue: Some of the winning numbers turned out to be the jersey numbers of some all-star Kansas City Royals baseball players, Hill's favorite team.

Hall of Fame third basemen George Brett wore 5; Willie Wilson 6; Bo Jackson 16.

The winning numbers were 5, 23, 16, 22 and 29; Powerball was 6.

Hill did not respond to ABC News' requests for comment.

In Maryland, surveillance cameras at the Upper Marlboro gas station captured the apparent winner walking into the store Thursday afternoon, digging into his chest pocket for his lottery tickets. After a few seconds of scanning the wad of tickets, the man began jumping up and down, pumping his arms.

The man gave the tickets to store manager Nagassi Ghebre, who says the six Powerball numbers was on the ticket, which the apparent winner said he bought in Arizona.

"And then he said, 'I got to get out of here,'" employee Freddie Lopez told WJLA.

But before leaving, the possible winner felt the need to check again to see whether he really had the ticket that millions of Americans dreamed of having.

"He says, 'Is this the right number? I don't know.' And I said, 'Yeah that's the numbers. You got them all,'" customer Paul Gaug told WJLA.

Employees and customers said the main stuck around for a few more seconds shouting, "I won," before leaving.

"He came back a minute later and said, 'I forgot to get my gas. What am I thinking?'" Lopez said.

The man drove out of the gas station in a black car and on a full tank of gas with a cash payout of $192.5 million coming his way.

"He said he lives in Maryland. I'm pretty sure," Gaug said.

The possible jackpot winner was wearing bright neon clothing and store employees told WJLA that he appeared to be a highway or construction worker.

Arizona lottery officials told WJLA that if the man does have the winning ticket, it needs to be redeemed within 180 days of the drawing in Arizona.

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A treasure trove of natural history opens

Kat Austen, CultureLab editor

(Images: Natural History Museum)

Where can you see the pigeons that feature in Chapter One of the On the Origin of Species, next to a first edition of the book? Or the iguanodon teeth that sparked the discovery of dinosaurs? Opening this Friday, the new Treasures Gallery at London’s Natural History Museum displays some of the most influential and fascinating artefacts from the museum's collections in a single room.

In an age of shortening attention spans and information overload, the museum has condensed its collection into a one-stop mega-shop for natural history. But while some may balk at the notion of a boiled-down collection of greatest hits, the new gallery is well-named. The pieces within it - the first Neanderthal skull ever discovered, for example, or one of the emperor penguin eggs collected during Captain Scott’s 1910 expedition to Antarctica - are indeed treasures, and the stories behind them are captivating.

Take the foot-long tooth specimen sitting in a display case between a plate from Audubon’s The Birds of America - the most expensive book in the world - and the first meteorite seen to land in Britain. This dwarf elephant tooth from Cyprus was discovered by palaeontologist Dorothea Bate in 1901 and provided the first evidence of elephants on the island. Bate’s discovery supported the theory that elephants swam over from mainland Europe and then, constrained by the scarcity of food, evolved to be far smaller than their ancestors - roughly the size of a pig.

Bate, we learn, was a self-taught enthusiast. She talked her way into a job at the museum at the tender age of 19, having pursued her interest in fossils by battling up mountains near her home in Carmarthenshire, UK. She went on to pioneer the field of archaeozoology, looking at the impact of humans on their environment.

Where zeal for nature drove Bate to discover, other exhibits show it as a source of creative inspiration. Sparkling within a well-lit case are three glass models of marine invertebrates, deftly sculpted by the Blaschka family of Dresden, Germany. This father-and-son team, who are responsible for the glass flowers in Harvard’s Museum of Natural History, were so fascinated with sea creatures that they not only owned an aquarium populated with specimens from Naples’s marine zoology centre, but were in correspondence with biologist Ernst Haeckel, whose diagrams of microscopic organisms informed their work.

The curiosities on show are frequently backed by this type of engaging human story. A portrait of the museum’s founder Richard Owen sits next to the iguanodon teeth. The teeth were discovered by Mary Ann Mantell alongside a road in Sussex. Her husband Gideon, an amateur naturalist, saw a similarity between the fossil find and the much smaller teeth of the modern iguana. From this observation, he posited that long ago giant reptiles roamed the Earth.

A touchscreen betwixt the two exhibits tells a remarkably honest history of how Owen, an established biologist, wrested the mantle of dinosaur discovery from the Mantells, though Gideon - the son of a shoemaker - fought to overcome both his class and amateur status so that his theory would be accepted by the scientific elite.

The human side of science in days gone by is nowhere more obvious, however, than in the display of pigeon specimens gathered by Charles Darwin during his experiments on breeding (see photo above). Seeing his meticulous labelling and notes on the dead birds and skeletons conveys both his intense dedication and methodical approach, which we now know enabled him to formulate his world-changing theory. “It gives you an insight into Darwin as a curator, working with the collection, as a researcher, the kind of approach that he was taking,” says Jo Cooper, curator of the museum’s bird collection.

Ironically, it is a fossil of the earliest known bird that brings these stories into the present day of scientific research. The archaeopteryx fossil is the most valuable in the museum’s collection, and is held as the world standard for this type of fossil. A CT scan of the skull cavity in 2004 showed the similarities between the archaeopteryx’s brain and that of a modern bird. The fossil may yet hold more gems about the evolutionary link between dinosaurs and birds. “We’re still researching it really intensively”, says curator Tate Greenhalgh.

The Treasures Gallery does what it says on the tin, and more. Far from providing a whistle-stop tour of groundbreaking discoveries and theories in natural history, these artefacts and the stories behind them draw you in - and will spur your curiosity to delve ever more deeply.

The Treasures Gallery is a permanent collection opening tomorrow at the Natural History Museum, London.

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US jobless claims recede, still show Sandy impact

WASHINGTON: US jobless claims fell back to 393,000 in the most recent week, the Labour Department said on Thursday, still showing the impact of superstorm Sandy which blasted the Northeast in late October.

Claims in the week to November 24 fell from 416,000 the previous week and 451,000 in the November 10 week.

But they remained well above the 360-380,000 range held most of this year.

The three weeks of high claims, much the result of the shutdown of the economy in and around New York due to the storm, pushed the four-week rolling average to 405,250.

Many companies in the region, especially small businesses, are still struggling to get back to normal nearly one month after the storm struck.

- AFP/de

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iPhone 5 clears network hurdle on path to China launch

Apple's
iPhone 5 is one step closer to launching in China.

The China Telecommunication Equipment Certification Center has approved the iPhone 5 for a "network access" license in the country. The license approval was discovered by the Wall Street Journal.

Apple is currently planning to launch the iPhone 5 on China Telecom and China Unicom networks. The company is reportedly hoping to bring the device to China Mobile, the country's largest carrier, but so far, no deal has been announced.

Apple's approval comes about a month after another regulatory agency, China's State Radio Management, approved two iPhone 5 models to run on the country's mobile networks. One model supported the China Unicom 3G network, while the other would work on China Telecom's CDMA network.

Now that the iPhone has received its Equipment Certification Center approval, it might not be long before the device ships. In the past, vendors that receive the approval launch their new handsets within a matter of weeks. If Apple follows that schedule, it would launch the iPhone 5 sometime in December, as expected.

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Caterpillar Fungus Has Anti-Inflammatory Properties

In the Tibetan mountains, a fungus attaches itself to a moth larva burrowed in the soil. It infects and slowly consumes its host from within, taking over its brain and making the young caterpillar move to a position from which the fungus can grow and spore again.

Sounds like something out of science fiction, right? But for ailing Chinese consumers and nomadic Tibetan harvesters, the parasite called cordyceps means hope—and big money. Chinese markets sell the "golden worm," or "Tibetan mushroom"—thought to cure ailments from cancer to asthma to erectile dysfunction—for up to $50,000 (U.S.) per pound. Patients, following traditional medicinal practices, brew the fungal-infected caterpillar in tea or chew it raw.

Now the folk medicine is getting scientific backing. A new study published in the journal RNA finds that cordycepin, a chemical derived from the caterpillar fungus, has anti-inflammatory properties.

"Inflammation is normally a beneficial response to a wound or infection, but in diseases like asthma it happens too fast and to too high of an extent," said study co-author Cornelia H. de Moor of the University of Nottingham. "When cordycepin is present, it inhibits that response strongly."

And it does so in a way not previously seen: at the mRNA stage, where it inhibits polyadenylation. That means it stops swelling at the genetic cellular level—a novel anti-inflammatory approach that could lead to new drugs for cancer, asthma, diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, and cardiovascular-disease patients who don't respond well to current medications.

From Worm to Pill

But such new drugs may be a long way off. The science of parasitic fungi is still in its early stages, and no medicine currently available utilizes cordycepin as an anti-inflammatory. The only way a patient could gain its benefits would by consuming wild-harvested mushrooms.

De Moor cautions against this practice. "I can't recommend taking wild-harvested medications," she says. "Each sample could have a completely different dose, and there are mushrooms where [taking] a single bite will kill you."

Today 96 percent of the world's caterpillar-fungus harvest comes from the high Tibetan Plateau and the Himalayan range. Fungi from this region are of the subspecies Ophiocordyceps sinensis, locally known as yartsa gunbu ("summer grass, winter worm"). While highly valued in Chinese traditional medicine, these fungi have relatively low levels of cordycepin. What's more, they grow only at elevations of 10,000 to 16,500 feet and cannot be farmed. All of which makes yartsa gunbu costly for Chinese consumers: A single fungal-infected caterpillar can fetch $30.

Brave New Worm

Luckily for researchers, and for potential consumers, another rare species of caterpillar fungus, Cordyceps militaris, is capable of being farmed—and even cultivated to yield much higher levels of cordycepin.

De Moor says that's not likely to discourage Tibetan harvesters, many of whom make a year's salary in just weeks by finding and selling yartsa gunbu. Scientific proof of cordycepin's efficacy will only increase demand for the fungus, which could prove dangerous. "With cultivation we have a level of quality control that's missing in the wild," says de Moor.

"There is definitely some truth somewhere in certain herbal medicinal traditions, if you look hard enough," says de Moor. "But ancient healers probably wouldn't notice a 10 percent mortality rate resulting from herbal remedies. In the scientific world, that's completely unacceptable." If you want to be safe, she adds, "wait for the medicine."

Ancient Chinese medical traditions—which also use ground tiger bones as a cure for insomnia, elephant ivory for religious icons, and rhinoceros horns to dispel fevers—are controversial but popular. Such remedies remain in demand regardless of scientific advancement—and endangered animals continue to be killed in order to meet that demand. While pills using cordycepin from farmed fungus might someday replace yartsa gunbu harvesting, tigers, elephants, and rhinos are disappearing much quicker than worms.

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Two Winners in Record Powerball Jackpot

Winning tickets for the record Powerball jackpot worth more than $587 million were purchased in Arizona and Missouri.

Missouri Lottery official Susan Goedde confirmed to ABC News this morning that one of the winning tickets was purchased in the state, but they would not announce which town until later this morning.

Arizona lottery officials said they had no information on that state's winner or winners but would announce where it was sold during a news conference later in the day.

The winning numbers for the jackpot were 5, 23, 16, 22 and 29. The Powerball was 6.

The jackpot swelled to $587.5 million, according to Lottery official Sue Dooley. The two winners will split the jackpot each getting $293.75 million. The cash payout is $192.5 million each.

An additional 8,924,123 players won smaller prizes, according to Powerball's website.

"There were 58 winners of $1 million and there were eight winners of $2 million. So a total of $74 million," said Chuck Strutt, Director of the Multi-State Lottery Association.

In Photos: Biggest Lotto Jackpot Winners

This is the 27th win for Missouri, ranking it second in the nation for lottery winners after Indiana, which has 38 wins. Arizona has had 10 Powerball jackpot wins in its history.

Players bought tickets at the rate of 131,000 every minute up until an hour before the deadline of 11 p.m. ET, according to lottery officials.

The jackpot had already rolled over 16 consecutive times without a winner. That fact, plus the doubling in price of a Powerball ticket, accounted for the unprecedented richness of the pot.

Powerball Numbers: Two Winners Take Record Jackpot Watch Video

Powerball's Half-Billion Dollar Prize: Lotto Success Stories Watch Video

"Back in January, we moved Powerball from being a $1 game to $2," said Mary Neubauer, a spokeswoman at the game's headquarters in Iowa. "We thought at the time that this would mean bigger and faster-growing jackpots."

That proved true. The total, she said, began taking "huge jumps -- another $100 million since Saturday." It then jumped another $50 million.

The biggest Powerball pot on record until now -- $365 million -- was won in 2006 by eight Lincoln, Neb., co-workers.
As the latest pot swelled, lottery officials said they began getting phone calls from all around the world.

"When it gets this big," said Neubauer, "we get inquiries from Canada and Europe from people wanting to know if they can buy a ticket. They ask if they can FedEx us the money."

The answer she has to give them, she said, is: "Sorry, no. You have to buy a ticket in a member state from a licensed retail location."

About 80 percent of players don't choose their own Powerball number, opting instead for a computer-generated one.
Asked if there's anything a player can do to improve his or her odds of winning, Neubauer said there isn't -- apart from buying a ticket, of course.

Lottery officials put the odds of winning this Powerball pot at one in 175 million, meaning you'd have been 25 times more likely to win an Academy Award.

Skip Garibaldi, a professor of mathematics at Emory University in Atlanta, provided additional perspective: You are three times more likely to die from a falling coconut, he said; seven times more likely to die from fireworks, "and way more likely to die from flesh-eating bacteria" (115 fatalities a year) than you are to win the Powerball lottery.

Segueing, then, from death to life, Garibaldi noted that even the best physicians, equipped with the most up-to-date equipment, can't predict the timing of a child's birth with much accuracy.

"But let's suppose," he said, "that your doctor managed to predict the day, the hour, the minute and the second your baby would be born."

The doctor's uncanny prediction would be "at least 100 times" more likely than your winning.

Even though he knows the odds all too well, Garibaldi said he usually plays the lottery.

When it gets this big, I'll buy a couple of tickets," he said. "It's kind of exciting. You get this feeling of anticipation. You get to think about the fantasy."

So, did he buy two tickets this time?

"I couldn't," he told ABC News. "I'm in California" -- one of eight states that doesn't offer Powerball.

In case you were wondering, this Saturday's Powerball jackpot is starting at $40 million.

ABC News Radio contributed to this report.

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Hive minds: Honeybee intelligence creates a buzz

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President Tony Tan meets Indonesian counterpart in Jakarta

SINGAPORE: Singapore President Tony Tan Keng Yam met his Indonesian counterpart Dr Susulio Bambang Yudhoyono in Jakarta on Wednesday.

Dr Tan is on a state visit to Indonesia at the invitation of President Yudhoyono, who received the Singapore president at the Merdeka Palace in Jakarta with a full ceremonial welcome.

Dr Tan last visited Indonesia on an official visit in 2005, soon after President Yudhoyono took office as Indonesia's first directly elected President.

Dr Tan was then Singapore's deputy prime minister.

Both leaders have known each other since their time as security ministers for their respective countries.

Dr Tan also held talks with Indonesian Vice President Boediono on Wednesday and laid a wreath at the Kalibata National Heroes Cemetery in Jakarta.

President Tan, who is accompanied by several officials, will end his visit in Yogyakarta on Saturday.

- CNA/jc

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Nokia wins key victory in RIM patent dispute

As if its slumping market share figures aren't enough, Research In Motion has found itself in some legal trouble with Nokia.

A Swedish arbitrator has ruled that RIM is "in breach of contract and is not entitled to manufacture or sell WLAN products without first agreeing royalties with Nokia." If such a royalty agreement is not made, Nokia could have the legal grounds it needs to ban the sale of any BlackBerry devices that violate its patents related to WLAN (wireless local access network) technology.

Reuters was first to report on the news.

The trouble between RIM and Nokia dates all the way back to 2003 when the companies signed a licensing agreement that allowed RIM to use some of Nokia's standard-essential patents, and vice versa. In 2011, RIM sought arbitration on the contract, requesting that Nokia's WLAN patents be included in that deal. The company reasoned that the WLAN intellectual property should be included in any agreement related to standard-essential patents.

During the arbitration process, Nokia argued that RIM's use of WLAN technology in its products violated its patents, and requested that the BlackBerry maker pay it royalties. RIM did not refute that it used WLAN in its products, but reportedly believed that the use was covered under the initial contract.

According to Reuters, the arbitrator decided against RIM earlier this month, paving the way for Nokia to recently file lawsuits in the U.S., Canada, and U.K. to enforce that ruling.

For RIM, the stakes are high. If the courts uphold the arbitrator's decision and enforce it, RIM could see its products banned from sale until the company signs a licensing deal with Nokia. There's also a chance, however, that this dispute could get dragged out in courts for awhile, and thus, maintain status quo.

CNET has contacted both RIM and Nokia for comment on the arbitrator's decision. We will update this story when we have more information.

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Pictures: Falcon Massacre Uncovered in India

Photograph courtesy Conservation India

A young boy can sell bundles of fresh Amur falcons (pictured) for less than five dollars. Still, when multiplied by the thousands of falcons hunters can catch in a day, the practice can be a considerable financial boon to these groups.

Since discovering the extent of Amur hunting in Nagaland this fall, Conservation India has taken the issue to the local Indian authorities.

"They have taken it very well. They've not been defensive," Sreenivasan said.

"You're not dealing with national property, you're dealing with international property, which helped us put pressure on [them]." (Related: "Asia's Wildlife Trade.")

According to Conservation India, the same day the group filed their report with the government, a fresh order banning Amur hunting was issued. Local officials also began meeting with village leaders, seizing traps and confiscating birds. The national government has also requested an end to the hunting.

Much remains to be done, but because the hunt is so regional, Sreenivasan hopes it can eventually be contained and stamped out. Authorities there, he said, are planning a more thorough investigation next year, with officials observing, patrolling, and enforcing the law.

"This is part of India where there is some amount of acceptance on traditional bush hunting," he added. "But at some point, you draw the line."

(Related: "Bush-Meat Ban Would Devastate Africa's Animals, Poor?")

Published November 27, 2012

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