West Virginia

FEMA workers share Powerball jackpot

A group of federal disaster workers, used to helping others facing misfortune, basked in their own good fortune Wednesday as they claimed a $10 million Powerball jackpot.

Fourteen of the 15 Federal Emergency Management Agency picked up checks in Charleston on Wednesday. Three workers are from West Virginia, while the rest are from Virginia.

Paul Whittemore of Winchester, Va., bought the winning ticket for the June 29 drawing at a Sheetz convenience store in Charles Town in West Virginia’s Eastern Panhandle.

Whittemore chose to stay at work Wednesday to help with relief efforts for victims of Hurricane Dennis.

Florida

Disney World reopens Twilight Zone ride

Disney World on Wednesday reopened a thrill ride that was closed when a 16-year-old British girl almost died of cardiac arrest after riding it.

Disney had invited an official from the state Bureau of Fair Rides and Exhibitions to monitor a Tuesday night inspection of the “Twilight Zone Tower of Terror,” which the park does not typically do, in an apparent effort to calm any public anxiety caused by its second medical emergency involving a child in a month.

Leanne Deacon, of Kibworth, England, remained in critical condition Wednesday after suffering cardiac arrest Tuesday minutes after exiting the attraction, which depicts a haunted elevator ride that plunges more than 100 feet.

Deacon’s illness came a month after a 4-year-old Pennsylvania boy, Daudi Bamuwamye, died after riding another Disney World attraction, Epcot’s “Mission: Space.” That ride is so intense that it has motion sickness bags and several riders have been treated for chest pain.

California

Planet with three suns discovered

“Star Wars” fans know all about Tatooine, Luke Skywalker’s home planet, whose two suns glare down on a vast desert. Now comes an even more extraordinary, real-life sight: a newly discovered giant planet with three suns wheeling overhead.

The Jupiter-sized world is 149 light-years (about 879 trillion miles, just next door for astronomers) away from Earth in a triple-star system in the northern constellation Cygnus.

Maciej Konacki, a planetary scientist at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, reported the sighting in this week’s edition of the British scientific journal Nature.

About 150 extrasolar planets have been discovered in the past 10 years. About 20 were found in binary star systems, consisting of two suns, but this is the first time a planet has been found in a cluster of three.