Lotteries

In the crowded downtown streets of Lapeer, Mich., one question rose Friday above the tinny din and excited shrieks of the town's annual summer carnival. Who's the lucky winner? Everyone in town knows the story. Someone shelled out $2 at a Sunoco gas station this week and hit the jackpot. The $337-million payout from the Michigan Powerball is the third-largest in the game's history. The owner of the winning ticket could claim a lump sum of $241 million. What the town doesn't know is the winner's identity.

Martin Amis, once dubbed "fiction's angriest writer," continues dissecting the absurdity and excesses of postmodern society in his latest novel, "Lionel Asbo: State of England," which reaches bookstores Aug. 21. The British novelist, 62, recently moved from London to Brooklyn, N.Y., with his wife, American writer Isabel Fonseca, and their teenage daughters, Clio and Fernanda. The subtitle of your new novel, "Lionel Asbo," is "State of England. " But I think your story of a sociopathic criminal who wins the lottery and becomes a tabloid celebrity could easily have happened here.

After the coffee. Before making sure to catch the next Venus transit in 2117. The Skinny: Why do the midseason comedies always look better than what has been scheduled for the fall? Shouldn't it be the other way around? Wednesday's headlines include a look at who won the California tax credit lottery, a new deal from Clear Channel that could change the relationship between radio and performers and an "oops" moment for ABC's Barbara Walters. Daily Dose: Jim Paratore, the veteran television executive who played a key role in the development of Ellen DeGeneres' talk show as well as the creation of TMZ, died last week of a heart attack.

Producer Andrew Lazar was all set to shoot an adult romantic comedy in Hermosa Beach, where the story is set. But now, he's forced to have the $10-million movie rewritten with Miami Beach as the backdrop so he can take advantage of Florida's film tax credit. The reason: His film didn't make the cut of 28 projects approved last week for California's state film tax credits. “I'll just have to change the location and the script because these tax credits are so important for making movies," said Lazar.

The cables that allow hikers to ascend Yosemite National Park's iconic Half Dome will open for the season Friday. But all the permits required to use them from May through mid-October have been given out by lottery already, right? Not quite. The National Park Service on Tuesday announced a new daily lottery that will issue 50 hiking permits a day for the popular and strenuous 17 miles to the top and back. The lottery will be held two days before a desired hiking date.

Do you remember the case of Amanda Clayton? She's the Michigan woman who made headlines last month when it was revealed that she'd won $1 million in the state lottery -- and kept collecting welfare. Well, that alleged double-dipping has cost her: Clayton was arrested Monday on fraud charges and spent the night in the slammer before being arraigned Tuesday morning. She pleaded not guilty to charges that she improperly collected more than $5,475 in food stamps and public medical benefits over an eight-month period, according to the Associated Press.

I have a lottery hangover. And I can't shake it. I was absolutely convinced I was going to win the $640-million jackpot last week. After all, stranger things have happened. I was born a middle-class American at the height of U.S. power, for instance, and not a galley slave in ancient Rome. Or any of the billions of other poor saps who peopled the Earth over the millennia. What are the chances of that? Worse than the 1-in-176-million odds of coming up with the six magic numbers, I bet. I won an Etch-a-Sketch in a dance contest when I was 12. Why me and not all the other little girls?

Lotto fever reached a frenzied peak Friday, only to dash the dreams of California players as no ticket with all six Mega Millions numbers was sold in the state, a California Lottery spokesman said. The numbers were 2, 4, 23, 38 and 46 with Mega number 23. Early Saturday, the Baltimore Sun reported that one winning ticket had been sold in Baltimore County, Md. It was unknown if winning tickets were sold elsewhere. But 29 tickets sold here had five of the numbers and were expected to pay off in the high hundreds of thousands, said Russ Lopez, a spokesman for the California lottery, which monitors the lottery activity in the state.

Lotto fever reached a frenzied peak Friday, only to dash the dreams of California players as no ticket with all six Mega Millions numbers was sold in the state, a California Lottery spokesman said. The numbers were 2, 4, 23, 38 and 46 with Mega number 23. Early Saturday, the Baltimore Sun reported that one winning ticket had been sold in Baltimore County, Md. It was unknown if winning tickets were sold elsewhere. But 29 tickets sold here had five of the numbers and were expected to pay off in the high hundreds of thousands, said Russ Lopez, a spokesman for the California lottery, which monitors the lottery activity in the state.

Perhaps it was the multiple bags of $500 in coins used to buy lottery tickets that tipped authorities off to the theft.  Two former Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority employees pleaded guilty Monday to stealing at least $445,000 from subway fare machines in Virginia, Maryland and Washington. John Vincent Haile, 52, a former transit officer from Virginia, and Horace Dexter McDade, 58, a Maryland resident who worked as a revenue collection technician for the transit agency, pleaded guilty in federal court in Alexandria, Va., to theft concerning programs receiving federal funds and conspiring to commit money laundering, according to the U.S. attorney's office.  The men face a maximum penalty of 10 years on the theft charges and 20 years on the conspiracy charges when they are sentenced June 15. They were arrested in January after authorities observed them hiding and later retrieving bags of change from beneath an overpass.