One $2 ticket turned into a billion-dollar windfall.

An anonymous Illinois lottery player has claimed the record-setting $1.04 billion Powerball jackpot after purchasing just one set of numbers.

The sole winner filed their claim Tuesday for Illinois’ second-largest lottery prize, the Illinois State Lottery said. The claim came a little more than a month after the jackpot-winning drawing.

“I chose a Quick Pick and spent just $2 on a single line of Powerball numbers,” the winner told lottery officials.

That $2 purchase represented roughly 0.000000192% of the $1.04 billion Powerball jackpot.

“I never could have imagined that a $2 purchase would lead to a $1.04 billion jackpot. This is truly a blessing, and I’m incredibly grateful for this unexpected and extraordinary opportunity.”

The unidentified Illinois resident bought the winning ticket at the Hy-Vee Fast & Fresh convenience store in Quincy, a western Illinois city along the Mississippi River near the Missouri border.

The winning numbers in the Aug. 12 Powerball drawing were 4, 26, 66, 67 and 69, with a red Powerball number of 9.

Since learning about the life-changing win, the jackpot holder said they have cycled through an array of emotions.

“I initially didn’t believe I had won, so I called a family member to confirm it,” they said. “Even after claiming the prize, I’m still processing the news and experiencing the full range of emotions that come with winning a billion-dollar jackpot — from disbelief and shock to overwhelming elation.”

The winner chose the one-time cash sum option, meaning they will receive the more modest, yet still transformational payout of $450,500,000 before taxes.

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The new multi-millionaire will face an automatic 24 percent federal withholding tax, which will cut their prize to $342.4 million. Then an additional 13 percent in federal taxes will further cut the amount to $283.8 million.

The state of Illinois will withhold $22.3 million due to its 4.95 percent tax applied to winnings. 

The $1.04 billion jackpot was the largest Powerball prize of the year and the eighth largest in game history.

Hy-Vee store manager Jon Marshall had predicted the lotto winner was a regular, as only 15% of customers that enter the gas station were

“I’d say probably 15% of our customers are traveling through town. The majority of our customers are regulars,” Marshall told The Post after the store sold the winning ticket in August.

“We kind of know our regular customers, and I’ve seen the majority of them so far this morning,” he said at the time.

It wasn’t known if the winner every returned to the store, because the winner is allowed to remain anonymous under state law.

“I’d like to shake their hand at least if I could,” Marshall said. “I don’t know if I can go when they collect their winnings in Springfield… I wonder if they would invite me. That’d be nice if I could go up there and meet the person at that time too.”

The retailer earned a $500,000 bonus for selling the ticket

A jackpot of this magnitude is an extraordinary event, and we’re excited to see the second-largest lottery prize ever won in Illinois officially claimed,” Illinois Lottery Director Harold Mays said Tuesday. “It’s exciting to see such a significant Powerball win come to an Illinois player, and we’re pleased to celebrate this milestone with them.”

The office of the Archbishop of Canterbury has revoked an interfaith honor awarded to a Muslim cleric after earlier remarks emerged in which he spoke positively about Osama bin Laden.

Maulana Hafiz Muhammad Tahir Mehmood Ashrafi was presented with the Hubert Walter Award for Reconciliation and Interfaith Cooperation at Lambeth Palace last Friday, in a ceremony held on the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Lambeth Palace announced Thursday that it had rescinded the award after Ashrafi’s past statements came to its attention and prompted a review of the decision.

“It is a longstanding principle of interfaith dialogue and co-operation that we must engage with one another across deeply-held differences, and that remains the case,” Lambeth Palace said in a statement.

“However, previous comments made by Imam Ashrafi have come to light that have led Lambeth Palace to reconsider this award and we can now confirm today that the award has been withdrawn,” the statement said. “We have contacted Imam Ashrafi to make him aware of this decision.”

The palace said it continues “to pray for the Christian community in Pakistan, and for all those working for interfaith dialogue and harmony in Pakistan and around the world.”

Lambeth Palace said Ashrafi had originally been selected for the award because of his “longstanding support for religious minorities in Pakistan, particularly the Christian community.”

According to the BBC, Ashrafi said in 2007 that bin Laden, the mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks, had “been fighting for Islam against the Russians, Americans and British.”

The BBC also reported that Ashrafi said he would give bin Laden the title “Saifullah,” meaning “Sword of God.”

Ashrafi told the BBC that his remarks had been “totally taken out of context” and described the backlash against him as an “unfair campaign.”

He said he made the remarks about bin Laden in 2007 in response to “the hurt felt by many Muslims” over the British government’s decision to knight “The Satanic Verses” author Salman Rushdie.

During the award presentation last week, the Archbishop’s office said Ashrafi was being honored for “his outstanding work as an ambassador of interfaith harmony in Pakistan, known for his commitment to promoting religious tolerance.”

Lady Gaga and her fiancé, Michael Polansky, have reportedly become parents for the first time after welcoming a baby girl through surrogacy.

The singer, 40, and Polansky are said to have named their daughter Rose Bean Polansky. She was reportedly born at 11.19pm on June 9 at Los Angeles‘ renowned Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, with the couple using a surrogate, according to TMZ.

It is not known why the couple chose surrogacy. Gaga has, however, spoken publicly for years about living with fibromyalgia, a chronic condition linked to intense pain and fatigue.

The Grammy-winning star gave viewers an emotional insight into her experience with chronic pain in the 2017 Netflix documentary Gaga: Five Foot Two. During a 2020 conversation with Oprah, she also described being in pain from “head to toe.”

Exclusive Daily Mail photographs showed the pop icon arriving in Los Angeles on a private jet on Sunday, holding her newborn daughter as she stepped off the plane.

The Daily Mail has approached Gaga’s representatives for comment and is awaiting a response.

“She has been in full nesting mode and has never been happier in her life because being a mother was a very large goal, even more than becoming a successful musician,” a source told the Daily Mail.

A birth certificate obtained by TMZ reportedly confirmed the newborn’s name and sex, along with further details surrounding her birth.

The child was delivered by Dr Robert Katz, an OB/GYN who also delivered Ciara and Russell Wilson’s daughter Sienna Princess. 

The name Rose has a sentimental connection to Gaga, whose maternal grandmother is the late Veronica Rose ‘Ronnie’ Ferrie Bissett.

She also has the name of her song from A Star Is Born, La Vie En Rose, tattooed down her spine. 

News that Gaga and Polansky had welcomed a child first came to light last week after she mysteriously dropped out of the public eye several months ago.

Page Six broke the news and published photos of the couple with their baby daughter. 

The Born This Way singer had last been seen in public in August during a fan encounter in Northern California that was documented with an Instagram selfie.

But before that, she had kept a very low profile after wrapping up her tour, The Mayhem Ball, in April. 

Gaga, whose real name is Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta, and Polansky have been together since 2019 and became engaged in April 2024.

During an appearance last October on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, the hitmaker said motherhood would be her ‘next starring role.’

‘I would like to do many things, yeah, all of these things,’ she said after Colbert asked if she wanted to continue acting in films or performing on Broadway. ‘But, what I really want is to be a mom. That’s my next starring role, I hope.’

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While speaking to the New York Times in March 2025, Gaga said she was ‘excited to be a mom,’ even though she ‘used to have a lot of apprehension about it.’

‘I’m also kind of at war with myself sometimes as I get ready to, hopefully, become a mom soon,’ she added. ‘Like, today is wonderful, but the whole day has revolved around me. There’s an incredible amount of narcissism in this.’

Gaga’s plans for becoming a mother may not end with just one child.

‘She has only one sister, Natali, and always wanted more siblings. So she wants her children to have many siblings so they can all lean on each other,’ a source told the Daily Mail.

So far, there’s no word on when Gaga and Polansky plan to tie the knot, but in March of this year she indicated that they planned to wed ‘soon.’

During an appearance on Bruno Mars’s Romantic Radio TikTok Live, the Poker Face singer said via a recorded message: ‘Me and my fiance have been traveling all year, but we’re getting married soon. We were hoping you could choose a special song for us.’

In her earlier interview with Stephen Colbert, Gaga couldn’t help but sing her fiance’s praises.

‘He’s my best friend in the whole world,’ she said of Polansky, adding that he ’empowered me as a woman in music with a beautiful partner that has my back every day.’

‘He just blew me away from the minute that I met him,’ Gaga continued. ‘He always, I think, really saw me and I think I always really saw him.’

Back in October 2024, the occasional actress told Jimmy Kimmel that she and Polansky were considering an elopement involving ‘just going to a courthouse, just the two of us, and ordering Chinese food.’

Gaga and Polansky have been together for six years after meeting in 2019 at a star-studded 40th birthday party in Los Angeles for tech entrepreneur Sean Parker.

They were first seen out together as a couple on New Year’s Eve that year at the Park MGM in Las Vegas before being spotted stealing a kiss on a hotel balcony in February 2020. In the days that followed, they went to the Super Bowl in Miami, then confirmed their relationship on social media with a cozy picture of them cuddled up on a boat.

By 2024, they were engaged. The couple made their red carpet debut that fall at the Venice Film Festival, with Gaga flashing her colossal diamond ring at the cameras.

Polansky, it would later be revealed, had proposed to her five months prior on April Fools’ Day when the couple was out rock climbing.

‘We were just walking back to the room and talking. He actually – it was very Michael – asked me if he could ask me. He wanted to know if it was OK to propose before he proposed. And I was like, “Yes, it’s so OK!”‘ she recalled.

‘He had the ring in his backpack, so it was so super cute. But you know what? I’m a modern lady. I like what he did.’

Now, the couple has started to build a quieter life in the affluent town of Ross in Marin County, close to the home of California Governor Gavin Newsom, according to sources.

‘There are tons of Lady Gaga sightings all over Marin, and everyone loves her; she has become a local,’ one resident told the Daily Mail.

Newly released surveillance video captures the harrowing final seconds before a news helicopter rapidly lost altitude and crashed Tuesday night in Chatsworth, killing its two crew members and a man on the ground.

The footage, obtained by NBCLA from a nearby building, shows the Airbus helicopter hovering above an intersection before suddenly descending toward the ground.

The aircraft had been reporting on a fatal collision involving an SUV and a Metro bus when it crashed into the parking lot of a self-storage facility.

Reporter Eliana Moreno, 38, and pilot George Marciniw died in the crash. Also killed was 29-year-old Edy Gutierrez Mejia, who was on the ground at the time.

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The newly obtained video does not show the helicopter’s complete descent, as a building obstructs the camera’s view during its final moments. Seconds later, however, thick smoke and flames rise from behind the structure as emergency responders rush to the scene.

The video emerged as federal investigators examine whether an engine problem or other mechanical failure contributed to the deadly helicopter crash.
The recording also appears to indicate that the aircraft did not merely run out of fuel.

Smoke becomes visible about 20 seconds after the impact, while flames first appear roughly 50 seconds after the crash.

The National Transportation Safety Board has asked anyone with video of the Chatsworth crash to contact investigators as they work to reconstruct the helicopter’s final moments.

Finland has overhauled security along its eastern frontier after what officials describe as Russian efforts to unsettle European countries, recently finishing a new fence designed to strengthen control of the border with Russia.

The country has built about 124 miles of fencing on the Finnish-Russian border. Petri Hakkarainen, political director at Finland’s Ministry for Foreign Affairs, told News Media that the barrier serves as an additional safeguard against the arrival of unauthorized migrants directed from Russia.

“We have in the past witnessed Russia’s attempts … to instrumentalize migrants at the Finnish border,” Hakkarainen said. “Basically pushing migrants towards our borders, forcing us then to take them on.”

Hakkarainen said a rapid surge in arrivals can place major pressure on Finland’s asylum system, requiring authorities to handle a high volume of applications and potentially creating broader instability if the numbers become large enough.

Finland responded by shutting its entire land border with Russia in 2023. Moscow quickly protested the decision, characterizing the move as “Russophobic.”

The Kremlin said it “deeply regretted” the closure, arguing that Finland had abandoned decades of pragmatic and mutually respectful ties in favor of what it called an anti-Russian political approach.

Finland’s 833-mile boundary with Russia is the longest shared by any European Union or NATO country. The newly completed border fence adds another layer of protection alongside the crossing closures.

With Russia still engaged in a grinding war in Ukraine, Western officials have accused the Kremlin of conducting broader campaigns to destabilize Europe. Those alleged efforts range from disinformation operations to state-backed economic pressure aimed at weakening public confidence.

“We think it’s important to listen to those of us who live next door to Russia,” Hakkarainen said. “Listen to our analysis of the situation: We consider Russia to be a long-term threat to transatlantic security — not only to Ukraine, not only to Europeans, but to transatlantic security as a whole.”

Finland launched the border fence initiative after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, a landmark conflict that prompted the historically neutral Nordic nation to join NATO in April 2023.

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Moscow has long viewed NATO’s eastward expansion as a direct security threat, using it to justify reinforcing its Western defenses. 

When Finland officially joined the alliance, Helsinki saw an immediate reaction. Over 1,300 migrants without visas arrived at its eastern border.

Finland accused Moscow of weaponizing migration as an act of “hybrid warfare,” a charge the Kremlin denied.

Closing the border checkpoints has proven “very effective,” Hakkarainen noted. Beyond physical barriers, Finnish lawmakers passed the Border Security Act. 

The temporary law allows border authorities to restrict asylum applications and turn back migrants if a foreign actor attempts to destabilize the country by funneling people across the border.

While the law sparked some initial debate over potential human rights and international law violations, Hakkarainen emphasized that national defense took priority.

“We take these concerns very seriously,” he said. “But national security and our own sovereignty … weighed more heavily in this conversation, though there is broad majority support for the act.

“We take our security and preparedness very seriously. 

“I would say not despite that, but because of that, we are able to lead very normal lives here — regardless of the neighbor we have.”