Nation Briefs March 27, 2011

Winning Mega Millions tix worth $312M sold in NY

NEW YORK - A New York lottery official said a winning ticket for the Mega Millions lottery jackpot worth $312 million has been sold at a variety store in Albany, N.Y.

New York Lottery spokeswoman Carolyn Hapeman said the winning jackpot ticket for Friday's drawing was sold at Coulson's News Center.

According to the Mega Millions website, the jackpot is the sixth-highest in the game's history. The largest jackpot was $390 million in March 2007.

This is the second-highest jackpot for a single winning ticket behind a $315 million jackpot in November 2005. That ticket was purchased in California.

Hapeman said the earliest the winner or winners can claim the prize is Monday, because lottery offices are closed for the weekend.

The winning numbers in Friday's drawing were: 22-24-31-52-54, with a Mega ball of 4.

Jesuits settle NW abuse claims for $166 million

SEATTLE - Clarita Vargas was sent to an Indian boarding school some four decades ago to study her ABCs and learn to blend in with majority culture. She says she instead learned a nightmarish lesson - that children sometimes have no one to protect them from pedophiles.

On Friday, the 51-year-old had her "day of reckoning and justice," when an order of Jesuit priests agreed to pay $166.1 million to hundreds of Native Americans and Alaskan Natives who were abused at its schools around the Pacific Northwest.

The settlement with victims like Vargas is one of the largest in the Catholic church's sweeping sex abuse scandal.

Vargas alleges she and her two sisters were abused at St. Mary's Mission and School, a former Jesuit-run boarding school on the reservation near Omak, Wash., in the late 1960s and 1970s.

She said the abuse began when they were as young as 6 or 7, and that she was told to obey the priest who was abusing her or forfeit the chance to go to heaven. "My spirit was wounded, and this makes it feel better."

- The Associated Press