hPowerball jackpot grows to record $340 million

hPowerball jackpot growsto record $340 million
ROSEVILLE, Minn. -- Tim Slattery, validation clerk for the Minnesota State Lottery in Roseville, holds Powerball tickets for Wednesday's drawing. The jackpot has been growing since mid-August, and 20 drawings have passed without a jackpot being won. Wednesday's jackpot of $340 million is the biggest jackpot in the game's history and eclipses the previous record of $314.9 million won on Christmas Day 2002 by a West Virginia man.
Woman stabs co-workerto use microwave first
TAMARAC, Fla. -- Things got very ugly at a Walgreens when police said one employee stabbed a co-worker over who could microwave her soup first.
Both women wanted to use the microwave in the employee break room Wednesday afternoon, according to the Broward County Sheriff's Office.
While they were fighting over who could use the microwave first, Mellesia Grant grabbed a large kitchen knife off the counter and stabbed Merloze Tilme in the abdomen, the sheriff's office said.
The two women then wrestled for the knife, each cutting their hands, before the store manager could stop the fight, Broward County Sheriff's Office spokesman Jim Leljedal said.
Tilme, 20, was hospitalized in good condition, officials said.
Grant, 23, of North Lauderdale, was charged with aggravated battery with a deadly weapon after being treated at a hospital for her wounds, officials said.
Chechen warlord takescredit for deadly attack
MOSCOW -- Chechnya's top warlord said Monday he was behind last week's deadly assault in southern Russia, but added it was carried out by regional fighters -- indicating an increasingly organized effort to set up militant cells in the area.
Shamil Basayev, who is the author of Russia's worst terrorist attacks, claimed responsibility for the assault in the city of Nalchik that officials say left at least 137 dead.
"I carried out the general operative management," Basayev said, according to the statement on the Web site of Kavkaz Center, seen as a mouthpiece for the Chechnya's Islamic separatist rebels.
Revered Chinese writerBa Jin dies at age 100
BEIJING -- Ba Jin, one of China's most revered communist-era writers who attacked the evils of the pre-revolutionary era in novels, short stories and essays, died Monday of cancer in Shanghai, the official Xinhua News Agency said. He was 100.
Best known for his 1931 novel "Family," the story of a disintegrating feudal household, Ba Jin also translated the Russian writers Ivan Turgenev and Pyotr Kropotkin.
Ba Jin worked well into his later years writing essays and compiling anthologies of his work.
He was part of the young intelligentsia in the early 20th century that looked to Western philosophies -- Marxism, anarchism, and liberalism -- for solutions to China's backwardness and social inequality.
Advocate of 'intelligentdesign' testifies at trial
HARRISBURG, Pa. -- A biochemistry professor who is a leading advocate of "intelligent design" testified Monday that evolution alone can't explain complex biological processes and he believes God is behind them.
Lehigh University Professor Michael Behe was the first witness called by a school board that is requiring students to hear a statement about the intelligent design concept in biology class. Lawyers for the Dover Area School Board began presenting their case Monday in the landmark federal trial, which could decide whether intelligent design can be mentioned in public school science classes as an alternative to the theory of evolution.
Behe, whose work includes a 1996 best-seller called "Darwin's Black Box," said students should be taught evolution because it's widely used in science and that "any well-educated student should understand it."
Behe, however, argues that evolution cannot fully explain the biological complexities of life, suggesting the work of an intelligent force.
Associated Press