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Florida woman wins $5 million playing Lottery scratch-off game

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Florida woman wins  million playing Lottery scratch-off game

KISSIMMEE, Fla. – A Florida woman won $5 million playing the 500X The Cash scratch-off game, Lottery officials confirmed this week.

Mensny Oreste, 41, of Kissimmee, claimed her prize this week at Lottery headquarters in Tallahassee.

According to Lottery officials, she chose to receive her winnings as a one-time, lump-sum payment of $3,960,000.

Oreste purchased her winning ticket from a Circle K gas station in Sanford.

The business will receive a $10,000 bonus commission for selling the winning ticket.

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“The $50 game, 500X THE CASH, features a top prize of $25 million—the largest ever offered on a Florida Scratch-Off game—and the best odds to become an instant millionaire!” the Florida Lottery said in a news release. “The game’s overall odds of winning are 1-in-4.50.”

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‘Absolutely Ridiculous’: Democrats Seethe at Schumer for Backing G.O.P. Spending Bill

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‘Absolutely Ridiculous’: Democrats Seethe at Schumer for Backing G.O.P. Spending Bill

Many Democratic lawmakers continued to express deep frustration at Senator Chuck Schumer on Sunday for having broken with most of his party to allow a Republican spending bill to pass, as the Democratic base increasingly demands stauncher resistance to President Trump’s far-reaching agenda.

Mr. Schumer, a New York Democrat and the Senate minority leader, joined nine other Democrats in allowing the bill to come to a vote, which averted a government shutdown. It was an abrupt reversal from Wednesday, when he said he would oppose the bill.

Explaining his sudden shift in position, Mr. Schumer argued that a shutdown would empower Mr. Trump and Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency. “A shutdown would shut down all government agencies, and it would solely be up to Trump and DOGE and Musk what to open again, because they could determine what was essential,” he told The New York Times in an interview. “So their goal of decimating the whole federal government, of cutting agency after agency after agency, would occur under a shutdown.”

But to critics within his own party, he had squandered the leverage provided by the standoff to negotiate a bipartisan spending bill that would reclaim some of Congress’s power.

“He is absolutely wrong,” Representative Jasmine Crockett, Democrat of Texas, told CNN on Sunday. “The idea that Chuck Schumer is the only one that’s got a brain in the room and the only one that can think through all of the pros and cons is absolutely ridiculous.”

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The stream of criticism that Mr. Schumer has faced since his vote comes as the Democratic Party is divided on how best to oppose Mr. Trump’s agenda while facing dismal polling numbers. An NBC poll released on Sunday showed that just 27 percent of voters had positive views of the party, while a majority of its base expressed disappointment at the Democrats’ fractured response.

Ms. Crockett has called on her Senate colleagues to consider ousting Mr. Schumer as minority leader, suggesting that “a younger, fresher leadership” is what “many Americans may be looking for.”

Representative James E. Clyburn, Democrat of South Carolina, told MSNBC that the House minority leader, Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, “got blindsided” by Mr. Schumer. House Democrats — all but one opposed the bill — had voted against giving Mr. Trump “a blank check,” Mr. Clyburn said. On Friday, Mr. Jeffries dodged repeated questions on whether he still supported Mr. Schumer as the leader of Senate Democrats.

Another House Democrat, Representative Debbie Dingell of Michigan, was a little more understanding, saying that Mr. Schumer had “sent out mixed signals.” But she stressed that even the American Federation of Government Employees, the largest labor union representing federal workers, whose members would be furloughed during a government shutdown, opposed the stopgap bill.

“People are scared, and they want us to do something,” Ms. Dingell said on CBS. “They want to see Democrats fighting back.”

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Senator Chris Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, did not denounce Mr. Schumer but pleaded for a change in tactics and for a more steadfast resistance against the Trump administration.

“The way the president is acting using law enforcement to target dissidents, harassing TV stations and radio stations that criticize him, endorsing political violence, puts our democracy at immediate risk,” Mr. Murphy said on NBC. Over the past few weeks, Mr. Trump has revoked security clearances of lawyers who argued against him, dismantled congressionally funded news agencies and pardoned those convicted of attacking the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Mr. Murphy added, “If you are a Democrat in the Senate or in the House you have to start acting with urgency.”

Prominent House Democrats, including Representative Nancy Pelosi, had pressed their Senate colleagues to block the bill. But more than a handful of Democratic senators joined Mr. Schumer in helping Republicans bring the bill to a vote: Dick Durbin of Illinois, Brian Schatz of Hawaii, Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada, John Fetterman of Pennsylvania, Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, as well as two who have announced plans to retire, Gary Peters of Michigan and Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire. Senator Angus King, the Maine independent who caucuses with Democrats, also voted yes.

Some Democrats, including Representatives Jake Auchincloss of Massachusetts and Haley Stevens of Michigan, refrained from openly criticizing Mr. Schumer’s shift. They said Democratic infighting after the bill’s passage would only emphasize the divisions within the party. They warned that it would also draw voters’ attention away from Trump trade policies that have dampened the stock market and imbued uncertainty into the broader economy — developments that Democrats said could play to their advantage.

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Ashley Etienne, a former communications director for Vice President Kamala Harris, told CNN that Democrats should not save Mr. Trump and Republicans from themselves. “Get out of the way,” she said. “Donald Trump said he was better for the economy. Let him prove it.”

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US says Trump and Putin to speak in next few days on Russia-Ukraine war

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US says Trump and Putin to speak in next few days on Russia-Ukraine war

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Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin are set to hold a call about the Russia-Ukraine war in the coming week, a US official said, as Washington seeks to broker a ceasefire deal.

Trump envoy Steve Witkoff on Sunday told CNN he had a “positive” meeting with Putin and that the Russian and Ukrainian parties “are today a lot closer” in negotiations.

“I expect that there’ll be a call with both presidents this week and we’re also continuing to engage and have conversation with the Ukrainians,” he said. 

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The comments come after the US and its G7 partners on Friday warned Moscow that they could expand sanctions and use frozen Russian assets to support Ukraine, as Trump seeks to win over Putin to his ceasefire proposal. The joint statement followed a week in which Kyiv signed up to the 30-day truce but Moscow signalled reluctance to do so immediately.

Witkoff told CNN he had witnessed improvements in ceasefire negotiations. The sides were previously “miles apart,” he said.

Following talks in Saudi Arabia led by US national security adviser Mike Waltz and US secretary of state Marco Rubio as well as Witkoff’s “equally positive” meeting with Putin, “we’ve narrowed the differences between them and now we’re sitting at the table,” he added.

The White House and Russia’s embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The envoy told CBS that negotiations were complex, involving multiple angles and a large swath of territory, including a “main area of confrontation” in the Kursk region, a nuclear reactor supplying electricity to Ukraine and access to ports. 

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“There’s so many elements to the implementation of a ceasefire here,” Witkoff said, adding that it “involves how to get people to not be fighting with each other over a 2,000 kilometre border”.

He also seemed to dismiss a statement made by French President Emmanuel Macron, who argued that Russia “does not seem to be sincerely seeking peace”.

Witkoff declined to comment on Macron’s remarks, but added: “I think it’s unfortunate when people make those sort of assessments, and they don’t have, necessarily, first-hand knowledge . . . I saw a constructive effort over a long period of time to discuss the specifics of what’s going on in the field”.

Asked when he thinks there will be a deal, Witkoff cited Trump, who has said it would take weeks.

“I don’t disagree with him,” the envoy told CNN. 

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Trump Guts Voice Of America News Agency, Musk Says “Nobody listens to them anymore.”

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Trump Guts Voice Of America News Agency, Musk Says “Nobody listens to them anymore.”

Voice of America staff were locked out of their offices on Saturday—unable to complete planned reporting—after President Donald Trump signed an executive order gutting the government-run news agency that the White House has referred to as “radical propaganda.”

VOA was founded in 1942 in part to counter Nazi propaganda.

The move impacts all full-time staffers at the VOA and the Office for Cuba Broadcasting, which runs Radio and Television Martíore, and is poised to have a devastating effect on practically all operations under the United States Agency for Global Media—the parent entity of VOA and the department targeted by Trump’s Friday evening order.

According to the agency, which is fully funded by federal dollars, broadcasters and their sister networks reach 420 million people in 63 languages and more than 100 countries each week, “often in some of the world’s most restrictive media environments.”

“I am deeply saddened that for the first time in 83 years, the storied Voice of America is being silenced,” VOA director Michael Abramowitz wrote in a LinkedIn post. He shared that his entire staff of 1,300 journalists, producers, and assistants had been put on administrative leave, including himself. “Even if the agency survives in some form, the actions being taken today by the Administration will severely damage Voice of America’s ability to foster a world that is safe and free and in doing so is failing to protect U.S. interests,” he said.

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A statement released by the White House following the executive order details news coverage by VOA as justification for the defunding, including an article defining white privilege after the murder of George Floyd, a story about whether Russia perpetuated allegations against Hunter Biden to benefit Trump, and a segment on LGBT migrants.

“It’s a relic of the past,” Ric Grenell, Trump’s special envoy for special missions, wrote on X in February. “We don’t need government-paid media outlets.” Trump’s billionaire donor and Department of Government Efficiency advisor Elon Musk wrote on his social media platform: “Yes, shut them down … Nobody listens to them anymore.”

The order, entitled “Continuing the Reduction Of The Federal Bureaucracy,” called for multiple other departments to be “eliminated to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law,” including the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the United States Interagency Council on Homelessness, and the Minority Business Development Agency.

In December, Trump announced that Republican Kari Lake, a former news anchor who ran twice for office in Arizona on a MAGA platform and lost both times, was his pick to serve as director of Voice of America—though that didn’t happen. A couple of months later, Trump named her a senior adviser to the USAGM.

On Saturday morning, Lake took to X, shared a link to the executive order, and told employees to check their emails—where they would find news of being terminated.

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