The Powerball lottery has swollen to $1.3 billion. “Biggest jackpot in the history of the world. Absolutely confirmed,” Gary Grief, executive director of the Texas Lottery, which is part of the Multi-State Lottery Association that runs Powerball, told the Associated Press. Meanwhile, the Association is quietly trying to deal with a multi-state jackpot rigging scandal that has forced the man who has run the Powerball game for 28 years to be placed on indefinite administrative leave.

“In the worst-case scenario, according to State Department officials, an estimated 500,000 people could be killed while more than a million could be rendered homeless if the dam, Iraq’s largest, were to collapse in the spring, when the Tigris is swollen by rain and melting snow.”

Some journalists, in the course of their professional lives, will come upon people who, before, during, or after an interview, will ask if they can read the forthcoming piece, once it is written, in order to approve its contents. Most often, they are simply concerned with making sure that they don’t sound like idiots. Understandable! Still, this is a frustrating thing to be asked, because it makes one wonder where these people have gotten this idea—that this is a thing that is done. Now, we know that Jann Wenner, founder and publisher of Rolling Stone magazine, is at least partly to blame, as, in response to criticism over allowing El Chapo final approval over Sean Penn’s 10,000-word article on him, he told the New York Times, “I don’t think it was a meaningful thing in the first place. We have let people in the past approve their quotes in interviews.”

Recently, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has been raising the question of his rival Ted Cruz’s eligibility to be president, implying that, because he was born in Canada, he is not a “natural-born citizen.” He is, of course, but that hardly seems to matter.

Former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg reportedly commissioned a secret poll last month to gauge how he might fare as a third-party presidential candidate running against Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. The results of the poll have not been disclosed.

Last week, Mexican drug kingpin Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán was captured in the town of Los Michos, possibly because of an interview he conducted with Sean Penn for Rolling Stone. The Sinaloa cartel, however, will carry on business as usual: “It’s not even going to skip a beat,” one analyst told AFP.

Andy Borowitz, a man who throws darts at major headlines and calls it satire, is a blight on his supposed genre. Which is to say, Andy Borowitz is great at his job.

In Iowa this weekend, Talking Points Memo reports, registered voters began receiving robocalls in which Jared Taylor, spokesman for the white supremacist group that Dylann Roof cites as inspiration in his racist manifesto, implores citizens of the state to vote for Donald Trump.

Tyrant idolizer and drug lord pal Donald Trump has lots of influence these days, and he’s taken to wielding it with the delicacy of a flame thrower.

In a 2010 interview with Vegas magazine, then-aspiring actress Kristin Cavallari revealed the name of the actor she’d most like to work with, if given the chance. Who was Kristin’s “fantasy co-star?”

Sean Penn, the bard of our generation, published a 10,000-word opus in Rolling Stone on Saturday that is about as worth reading as “Hurlyburly” was worth seeing.

A Mexican official tells the AP El Chapo was captured as a result of Sean Penn’s apparently not-so-clandestine meeting with the drug lord last October, a report that, if true, should ensure Penn sleeps somewhat uneasily for the rest of his life.

Earlier this evening, Rolling Stone published a bizarre, 11,000-word article detailing occasional Friends extra Sean Penn’s seven-hour encounter with the then-at-large drug lord El Chapo. And of course the two discuss (who else but) Donald Trump.

The scene: “A jungle clearing atop a mountain at an undisclosed location in Mexico.” The characters: Escaped Mexican billionaire drug kingpin El Chapo and, uh, Sean Penn? The result: A presumably edited, rambling 11,000-word account of a madman’s meeting with a criminal.

He loves the snow.

The drug kingpin Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman will be extradited to the U.S. after his capture, according to Mexican Attorney General Arely Gomez.

Donald Trump, a man who could be called equally as fascist as many a dictator who came before him, has a new hero—or, rather, a new supreme leader.