Morning News Sports Briefs: Powerball jackpot now above $300 million

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The Powerball jackpot is above $300-million dollars for only the fourth time since Wisconsin started offering the game 20 years ago.

Nobody matched all the numbers last night, when the top prize was $250-million. So the jackpot rose to $310-million for the next drawing on Saturday night. Wisconsin’s biggest winner last night was for $10,000. One ticket in the state matched four regular numbers plus the Powerball. Just over 25-thousand Wisconsin players won smaller prizes – including 13-thousand who got four bucks simply by matching the Powerball. The numbers were 17, 28, 38, 39, and 51. The Powerball was 33. The jackpot has been rising faster under a series of changes made in January. It’s first time since August of 2007 that the prize has been above 300-million-dollars. It’s the third-largest since Wisconsinites started playing Powerball in April of 1992. Saturday’s cash option is 193-million-dollars for a single winner who takes the whole prize now instead of in 30 annual installments.

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Milwaukee fire-fighters discovered a man’s body while putting out a blaze at a vacant house. Authorities said the body was found inside the structure. The fire was reported early yesterday morning on Milwaukee’s north side. It caused about $30,000 of damage to the house. Both the fire and the death remain under investigation.

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A memorial service will be held in suburban Milwaukee tonight for a man killed last weekend while trying to break up a tavern fight near Chicago. The service will take place at Brown Deer High School, where 24-year-old Shaun Wild was a top scholar-and-athlete. He became a teacher in Naperville, Illinois, and that’s where he was murdered last weekend. Authorities said one of his friends was picking on Daniel Olaska for drinking beer out of a wine glass. The two men got into a fight, and police said Wild was trying to breaking it up when Olaska pulled out a knife and stabbed him to death. A tavern employee was injured in the incident. Olaska is charged with murder and attempted murder. Wild’s friends and relatives joined prosecutors in calling the murder “senseless.”

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Madison transit officials said a bus driver did not perform a routine physical maneuver to overcome a blind spot, when the bus struck-and-killed a UW librarian last year. 58-year-old Maureen Grant of New Glarus died last June, as the bus was turning left and struck Grant in a crosswalk. Madison Metro general manager Chuck Kamp said Grant was in the bus’s blind spot when she started crossing – and she stayed in the blind spot until a fraction of a second before she was hit near the middle of the crosswalk. The bus driver, Debra Foster, was ticketed for not yielding to a pedestrian. Dane County District Attorney Ismael Ozanne did not file criminal charges due to the blind spot. Foster was put on paid leave for three days, and then used her accumulated time off before going on an unpaid layoff. Kamp said she has not been fired, but it’s not known if or when she would return. Meanwhile, he said Madison’s buses have had their driver’s side mirrors re-mounted to reduce the blind spots. And officials are thinking about using audio signals to let pedestrians know when a bus is about to make a left turn.

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The federal government is giving two-million-dollars to a statewide team that finds-and-rescues people when large buildings collapse. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security awarded the grant to provide equipment and training. The rescue team is made up of 250 fire-fighters from throughout Wisconsin. They’ve been trained for search-and-rescue operations in large building collapses. And they can organize and respond anywhere in Wisconsin within eight hours. Governor Scott Walker says $800,000 dollars of the new grant will provide tools, protective gear, and medical supplies. The rest will train more fire-fighters in specialized rescue techniques for building collapses.

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