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One Of Three Winning Powerball Tickets Sold In North Texas

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Five stories that have North Texas talking: a Dallas motorist beats up the motorist who rear-ended her; check your Powerball tickets – there’s a winner in Collin County; President Obama gives Dallas officials an Ebola shout-out; and more.

Check your lottery tickets – North Texas has a big Powerball jackpot winner. One of three winning tickets in the $564.1 million Powerball was sold at the Appletree Food Mart in Princeton in Collin County. The other two were sold in North Carolina and Puerto Rico. Wednesday's jackpot was the third-largest in Powerball history and the fifth-largest U.S. lottery prize. Should the winners select the lump sum option, each would get a one-third share of $381,138,450.16 before taxes. The other option is an annuity, under which the lottery would make payments 30 times over 29 years. Also, the Texas Lottery says three tickets in Texas matched five numbers, meaning those folks have won $1 million each. They were bought in Fort Worth, Euless and Houston. The winning numbers in Wednesday's drawing were: 11, 13, 25, 39, 54 and the Powerball 19. [KERA/Associated Press]

  • President Obama gave Dallas officials a shout-out Wednesday for how they responded to the Ebola virus last fall. Obama told attendees at an event about the country’s response to Ebola here and elsewhere: “We’ve equipped more hospitals with new protective gear and protocols. We’ve developed partnerships with states and cities, thanks to public servants like Mayor Mike Rawlings and Judge Clay Jenkins of Dallas, Texas, who were on the front lines when the first case appeared here on our shores. A few months ago, only 13 states had the capability to even test for Ebola. Today, we have more than 54 labs in 44 states.” Nina Pham and Amber Vinson, the Texas Health Presbyterian Dallas nurses who contracted and survived Ebola, appeared at the event, too.

  • KERA’s Lauren Silverman is scheduled to interview Nancy Writebol this afternoon. She’s one of the missionaries who contracted Ebola in Liberia last year. She was flown to Emory University Hospital in Atlanta and recovered. What questions do you want Lauren to ask Writebol? Tweet Lauren at @lsilverwoman. Writebol recently talked with Here & Now, a public radio program. Listen to that conversation here.

  • Wednesday was opening day in the murder trial of Eddie Ray Routh, who’s accused of killing Navy SEAL sniper Chris Kyle and Chad Littlefield. The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reports: “’This is a serious matter — you know that,’ Erath County District Attorney Alan Nash told the jury of 10 women and 2 men during his opening statement. ‘… In the end, there will be two critical issues: Did he intentionally cause their deaths and, when he did so, did he know that what he did was wrong? Those will be the two ultimate issues we will ask you to decide.’” 

  • Here’s a strange-but-true car chase in Dallas. And the lesson here is: Don’t mess with Texas moms in minivans. On Wednesday afternoon, a robbery suspect stole a car – and police chased him through Dallas. He slammed the car into the back of a minivan in North Dallas. A mother was driving that van – her son was with her. She got out and ran to the other car -- but not to see if the man was OK. She helped pull the robbery suspect out of the car and started beating him up. She had the man pinned to the ground until police arrived. This was all captured by TV news helicopters hovering overhead. The woman told WFAA-TV that she was not going to let the man get away. Here’s video from KXAS-TV (NBC 5):

Eric Aasen is KERA’s managing editor. He helps lead the station's news department, including radio and digital reporters, producers and newscasters. He also oversees keranews.org, the station’s news website, and manages the station's digital news projects. He reports and writes stories for the website and contributes pieces to KERA radio. He's discussed breaking news live on various public radio programs, including The Takeaway, Here & Now and Texas Standard, as well as radio and TV programs in New Zealand and the United Kingdom.