Talk of Powerball is heating up nationwide as Saturday’s draw edges toward a staggering $1.8 billion, making it the second-largest jackpot in U.S. lottery history. The record jackpot was $2.04 billion, won on Nov. 7, 2022, according to Powerball. Zooming in on Texas tells a different story. Since joining the multi-state Powerball lottery in February 2010, the state has seen only two jackpot winners. Both came from small North Texas towns, and both wins happened less than two years apart. On May 29, 2013, a Quick Pick ticket purchased in Bells in Grayson County matched all numbers for a $40 million jackpot. Less than two years later, on Feb. 11, 2015, in Collin County, a Princeton player claimed part of a $564 million prize using their own numbers. No Texan has taken home the top prize since. What are the odds of winning Powerball in Texas? Technically, the odds are the same everywhere: about 1 in 292.2 million for a single ticket, according to Powerball. But Texas history tells its own story. With three drawings each week, more than 2,300 drawings have taken place since the state joined the game. Out of all those chances, only two jackpots were won in Texas. That means Texans have claimed…

The first human case of the flesh-eating parasite called “New World Screwworm” has been detected in the United States according to the Maryland Department of Health and Human Services. State leaders in Texas have already been on the lookout for the parasite. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Maryland Department of Health, the infected person recently traveled to El Salvador and has since recovered from the infection. Health officials said there is no indication that the parasite was passed to other people or animals. “This is the first human case of travel-associated New World screwworm myiasis (parasitic infestation of fly larvae) from an outbreak-affected country identified in the United States,” HHS spokesperson Emily G. Hilliard said in a statement. Federal health officials said the risk to the public from this case is low, but concerns are growing in Texas, where the agriculture community has already been on alert. “It’s a real nasty infection. I can’t … describing it, you know, it will almost gross you out. It’s about as bad as anything you can imagine, being eaten alive by maggots is what it is,” said Texas Agriculture Commissioner Sid Miller. The screwworm spreads its eggs…

The U.S. plans to build a $750 million factory in southern Texas to breed billions of sterile flies, ramping up its efforts to keep flesh-eating maggots in Mexico from crossing the border and damaging the American cattle industry. Secretary Brooke Rollins announced Friday that the U.S. Department of Agriculture hopes to be producing and releasing sterile male New World screwworm flies into the wild within a year from the new factory on Moore Air Base outside Edinburg, about 20 miles from the Texas-Mexico border. She also said the USDA plans to deploy $100 million in technology, such as fly traps and lures, and step up border patrols by “tick riders” mounted on horseback and train dogs to sniff out the parasite. In addition, Rollins said the U.S. border will remain closed to cattle, horse and bison imports from Mexico until the U.S. sees that the pest is being pushed back south toward Panama, where the fly had been contained through late last year through the breeding of sterile flies there. The U.S. has closed its border to those imports three times in the past eight months, the last in July, following a report of an infestation about 370 miles from…