Spontaneous office pool wins $543 million lottery jackpot
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — A group of California co-workers who decided to play the lottery on a whim won last month’s $543 million Mega Millions jackpot, the largest prize ever on a single state ticket, the California Lottery said Friday.
The 11 co-workers who work in the financial industry in the San Francisco Bay Area said they don’t have a regular lottery pool but decided to chip in $2 apiece when they heard how big the jackpot had become, the Lottery said in a news release Friday.
“It was spur of the moment,” said Roland Reyes, the only person among the co-workers whose name has been released.
Remarkably, Reyes said he and his coworkers, who range in age from 21 to 60, plan on keeping their jobs, though they declined to specify where the group works.
“We love that company,” he said. “We love what we’ve built there. We have a good time and want to stay together.”
U.S. jobless rate down to 3.9 percent
WASHINGTON — U.S. employers slowed their hiring in July, adding 157,000 jobs, a solid gain but below the healthy pace in the first half of this year.
The Labor Department said Friday the unemployment rate ticked down to 3.9 percent from 4 percent. That’s near an 18-year low of 3.8 percent reached in May.
Man convicted of killing Jordan’s father gets new attorney
SANFORD, N.C. — One of the men convicted of killing basketball star Michael Jordan’s father 25 years ago has a new attorney for his appeals.
WRAL-TV reports attorney Chris Mumma will represent Daniel Green, who appeared Friday in Lee County court to request a new trial and a new attorney.
Mumma is executive director of the North Carolina Center on Actual Innocence, which investigates claims of innocence by people convicted of crimes.
Green and Larry Demery were convicted of killing James Jordan as he slept in his car in Robeson County in July 1993. At their 1996 trial, Demery said Green shot Jordan.
Green says he helped dispose of Jordan’s body after Demery killed him. Green has been seeking a new trial for 18 years.