With the majority of possible combinations of Powerball numbers in play, someone is almost sure to win the game’s highest jackpot during Saturday night’s drawing, a windfall of hundreds of millions of dollars — and that’s after taxes.

The problem, of course, is those same odds just about guarantee the lucky person won’t be you.

The chances of winning the estimated $600 million prize remain astronomically high: 1 in 175.2 million. That’s how many different ways you can combine the numbers when you play. But lottery officials estimate about 80 percent of those possible combinations have been purchased, so now’s the time to buy.

“This would be the roll to get in on,” said Iowa Lottery CEO Terry Rich. “Of course there’s no guarantee, and that’s the randomness of it, and the fun of it.”

That hasn’t deterred people across Powerball-playing states — 43 plus Washington, D.C., and the U.S. Virgin Islands — from lining up at gas stations and convenience stores Saturday for their chance at striking it filthy rich.

At a mini market in the heart of Los Angeles’ Chinatown, employees broke the steady stream of customers into two lines: One for Powerball ticket buyers and one for everybody else. Some people appeared to be looking for a little karma.

“We’ve had two winners over $10 million here over the years, so people in the neighborhood think this is the lucky store,” employee Gordon Chan said as he replenished a stack of lottery tickets on a counter.

Workers at one suburban Columbia, S.C., convenience store were so busy with ticket buyers that they hadn’t updated their sign with the current jackpot figure, which was released Friday. Customer Armous Peterson was reluctant to share his system for playing the Powerball. The 56-year-old was well aware of the long odds, but he also knows the mantra of just about every person buying tickets.

“Somebody is going to win,” he said. “Lots of people are going to lose, too. But if you buy a ticket, that winner might be you.”

The latest jackpot is the world’s second largest overall, just behind a $656 million Mega Millions jackpot in March 2012. The $600 million jackpot, which could grow before the numbers are drawn at 10:59 EDT Saturday, currently includes a $376.9 million cash option.

Charles Hill of Dallas says he buys lottery tickets every day. And he knows exactly what he’d do if he wins.

“What would I do with my money? I’d run and hide,” he said. “I wouldn’t want none of my kinfolks to find me.”

Clyde Barrow, a public policy professor at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth, specializes in the gaming industry. He said one of the key factors behind the ticket-buying frenzy is the size of the jackpot — people are interested in the easy investment.

“Even though the odds are very low, the investment is very small,” he said. “Two dollars gets you a chance.”

That may be why Ed McCuen has a Powerball habit that’s as regular as clockwork. The 57-year-old electrical contractor from Savannah, Ga., buys one ticket a week, regardless of the possible loot. It’s a habit he didn’t alter Saturday.

“You’ve got one shot in a gazillion or whatever,” McCuen said, tucking his ticket in his pocket as he left a local convenience store. “You can’t win unless you buy a ticket. But whether you buy one or 10 or 20, it’s insignificant.”

Seema Sharma doesn’t seem to think so. The newsstand employee in Manhattan’s Penn Station has purchased $80 worth of tickets for herself. She also was selling tickets all morning at a steady pace, instructing buyers where to stand if they wanted machine-picked tickets or to choose their own numbers.

“I work very hard — too hard — and I want to get the money so I can finally relax,” she said. “You never know.”

Officials will conduct the drawing live Saturday night from Tallahassee, Fla.

This is News in :90 for Friday, May 17, 2013.

St. Thomas’ Director of Communications Services Peter Breuch said the university rebranded the graduate programs because the market is saturated because many schools are adding graduate schools.

“Northwestern College in Roseville is becoming the University of Northwestern in July so they’ll have more graduate programs,” Breuch said. “St. Kate’s is adding their MBA program and Hamline is adding programs as well.”

One of the new St. Thomas buses picks up students to bring to the Minneapolis campus. The new buses are colored black and orange in part of a new marketing strategy for the university's graduate programs. (Sean Crotty/TommieMedia)

The new campaign went live last fall at some of St. Thomas’ football games, but what may have attracted more attention recently are St. Thomas’ black and orange shuttle buses, which started to run in late April.

The decision to use black and orange colors instead of St. Thomas’ traditional purple and white was carefully thought out by a group of professionals that worked on the campaign.

“We wanted a color that was very distinct, very bold, and something that would stand out,” Breuch said. “When you design, you want a light color on a dark color and so by adding the St. Thomas purple into that mix it won’t pop. We couldn’t use yellow and black because that’s St. Olaf or Gustavus colors. If you think about where orange is used, it’s in high visibility locations.”

The campaign’s main slogan is “Learn what you need to know,” which Breuch said stems from the main ideas of the campaign as a whole.

“Learn what you need to know: first of all, we do have grad programs at St. Thomas and the second thing is it’s kind of tied into the program finder,” Breuch said. “If you want to do some kind of leadership program, you can learn which programs we have on the site, and then you get into the program and you’re learning what you need to know in order to advance your career.”

However, the campaign isn’t solely about the buses. According to Breuch, the campaign has already debuted online with digital advertisements and radio advertisements as well. Advertising for the graduate programs is also expanding into some print publications.

Sophomore Kirsten Gorman wasn’t aware of the graduate programs St. Thomas offers, but said the campaign might help with that.

“I think (the campaign is) different, but it might catch people’s eye,” Gorman said. “It’s not normally what you see on campus. You typically see purple and white. If it’s orange, it kind of pops out at you.”

Junior Mike McGoldrick said he has seen the new buses and is confused by them.

“Orange and black do not make me think of St. Thomas,” McGoldrick said. “The only reason I knew it was a Tommie bus was because it stuck out like a sore thumb and I read the side that said University of St. Thomas.”

Senior Wendy Consoer will be attending graduate school at the University of Utah in the fall for physical chemistry. Though she won’t be studying through the graduate programs at St. Thomas, Consoer still thinks the black and orange colors work.

“I think it makes the graduate programs look more professional and sets it aside from the undergraduate school,” Consoer said. “I think they’re trying to gear it more toward a professional audience. I think the students going to St. Thomas already know St. Thomas’ reputation, maybe offering scholarships would be a good idea.”

Sophomore Marcus Farmer said using the black and orange colors could help the graduate programs attract more attention.

“I think using those colors could work,” Farmer said. “People never really differentiate undergrad from graduate, but I think that could for sure help. I think they could do some events related to graduate programs in the quad too.”

The new campaign has been successful so far and has helped drive traffic to their website.

“When the bus went live, the request for information doubled,” Breuch said. “Traffic is definitely up which is what we needed.”

Anne Becken can be reached at beck9626@stthomas.edu.

This is News in :90 for Wednesday, May 15, 2013.

This is News in :90 for Tuesday, May 14, 2013.

Police Superintendent Ronal Serpas identified the suspect late Monday as Akein Scott, 19, of New Orleans. Referring to blurry surveillance camera images of the mass shooting, Serpas said police have “multiple identifications of Akein Scott as the shooter” seen in the film.

Serpas said officers would be searching all night and into Tuesday for Scott, whom he called “no stranger to the criminal justice system.” He urged the teen, who has previous arrests on firearms and drug charges, to give himself up.

“We would like to remind the community and Akein Scott that the time has come for him to turn himself in,” Serpas said at a news conference outside police headquarters.

A photo of Scott hung from a podium in front of the police chief. “We know more about you than you think we know,” he said.

Serpas said it was too early to say whether he was the only shooter.

The mass shooting showed again how far the city has to go to shake a persistent culture of violence that belies the city’s festive image. Earlier, police announced a $10,000 reward and released the surveillance camera images, which led to several tips from the community.

“The people today chose to be on the side of the young innocent children who were shot and not on the side of a coward who shot into the crowd,” Serpas said.

The superintendent said SWAT team members and U.S. marshals served a searched warrant at one location looking for Scott, but didn’t locate him.

Angry residents said gun violence — which has flared at two other city celebrations this year — goes hand-in-hand with the city’s other deeply rooted problems such as poverty and urban blight. The investigators tasked with solving Sunday’s shooting work within an agency that’s had its own troubles rebounding from years of corruption while trying to halt violent crime.

“The old people are scared to walk the streets. The children can’t even play outside,” Ronald Lewis, 61, said Monday as he sat on the front stoop of his house, about a half-block from the shooting site. His window sill has a hole from a bullet that hit it last year. Across the street sits a house marked by bullets he said were fired two weeks ago.

“The youngsters are doing all this,” said Jones, who was away from home when the latest shooting broke out.

Video released early Monday shows a crowd gathered for a parade suddenly scattering in all directions, with some falling to the ground. They appear to be running from a man in a white T-shirt and dark pants who turns and runs out of the picture. Two children were among those wounded.

Police were working to determine whether there was more than one gunman, though they initially said three people were spotted fleeing from the scene. Whoever was responsible escaped despite the presence of officers who were interspersed through the crowd as part of routine precautions for such an event.

A police news release says Scott has previously been arrested for illegal carrying of a weapon, illegal possession of a stolen firearm, resisting an officer, contraband to jail, illegal carrying of a weapon while in possession of a controlled dangerous substance and possession of heroin.

It was not immediately clear whether Scott, who was arrested this past March, had been convicted on any of those charges.

Serpas said ballistic evidence gathered at the scene was giving them “very good leads to work on.”

Witness Jarrat Pytell said he was walking with friends near the parade route when the crowd suddenly began to break up.

“I saw the guy on the corner, his arm extended, firing into the crowd,” said Pytell, a medical student.

“He was obviously pointing in a specific direction; he wasn’t swinging the gun wildly,” Pytell said.

Pytell said he tended to one woman with a severe arm fracture — he wasn’t sure if it was from a bullet or a fall — and to others including an apparent shooting victim who was bleeding badly.

Three gunshot victims remained in critical condition Monday, though their wounds didn’t appear to be life-threatening. Most of the wounded had been released from the hospital.

It’s not the first time gunfire has shattered a festive mood in the city this year. Five people were wounded in a drive-by shooting in January after a Martin Luther King Jr. Day parade, and four were wounded in a shooting after an argument in the French Quarter in the days leading up to Mardi Gras. Two teens were arrested in connection with the MLK Day shootings; three men were arrested and charged in the Mardi Gras shootings.

The shootings are bloody reminders of the persistence of violence in the city, despite some recent progress.

Last week, law enforcement officials touted the indictment of 15 people in gang-related crimes, including the death of a 5-year-old girl killed by stray gunfire at a birthday party a year ago.

The city’s 193 homicides in 2012 are seven fewer than the previous year, while the first three months of 2013 represented an even slower pace of killing.

On Monday night, 100 to 150 people gathered for a unity rally and peace vigil in the wake of Sunday’s shootings. Some residents stood in their doorways or on their steps. At one point, trumpeter Kenneth Terry played, “O For a Closer Walk With Thee.”

Robin Bevins, president of the ladies group of the Original Four Social Aid and Pleasure Club, said she and members of her organization came to the rally to show solidarity.

“This code of silence has to end,” said Bevins, who’s also a member of the city’s Social Aid Task Force. “If we stand up and speak out, maybe this kind of thing will stop.”

New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu walked into the area, greeting people, shaking hands and stopping to talk with some residents before addressing the crowd.

“We came back out here as a community to stand on what we call sacred ground,” Landrieu said. “We came here to reclaim this spot. This shooting doesn’t reflect who we are as a community or what we’re about.”

Leading efforts to lower the homicide rate is a police force that’s faced its own internal problems and staffing issues. At about 1,200 members, the department is 300 short of its peak level.

Serpas, who has been chief since 2010, has been working to overcome the effects of decades of scandal and community mistrust arising from what the U.S. Justice Department says has been questionable use of force and biased policing.

The site of the Sunday shooting — about 1.5 miles from the heart of the French Quarter — showcases other problems facing the city. Stubborn poverty and blight are evident in the area of middle-class and low-income homes. Like other areas hit hard by Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the area has been slower to repopulate than wealthier areas. And Landrieu’s stepped-up efforts to demolish or renovate blighted properties — a pre-Katrina problem made worse by the storm — remain too slow for some.

Frank Jones, 71, whose house is a few doors down from the shooting site, said the house across from him has been abandoned since Katrina. Squatters and drug dealers sometimes take shelter there, he said.

A city code inspector, who declined to be interviewed, was there Monday.

“It’s too late,” Jones said. “Should have fixed it from the very beginning. A lot of people are getting fed up with the system.”

The Senate is expected to pass the bill on Monday, which would send it to the desk of Gov. Mark Dayton. He has promised to sign the bill.

The Capitol is again jammed with demonstrators as the Senate takes up the bill. This time, gay marriage supporters clearly outnumber opponents which is a contrast from last Thursday’s House vote, where it was more closely matched.

The bill’s sponsor, Sen. Scott Dibble of Minneapolis, says changing a few words in law will “bring families across Minnesota into the full sunshine of equality and freedom.”

Infographic by Creative Designer Bailey Jordan

Admission goals and standards for St. Thomas’ incoming class of 2017 have so far been met, according to Director of Admissions and Financial Aid Kris Roach.

As of Wednesday, 1,363 incoming freshmen submitted a confirmation deposit indicating their intention to enroll next fall. When the class of 2016 walked the March Through the Arches ceremony in fall 2012, it encompassed 1,460 freshmen.

Roach said the current number of students enrolled is “dynamic,” meaning the exact number of students that will actually attend St. Thomas next year could change.

“Most students make a decision by May 1, but St. Thomas usually sees some activity over the summer,” Roach said. “The whole admission process is dependent on the decision-making process of 18-year-olds, so it’s fluid.”

Roach said the goal for enrollment is between 1,350-1,400 students.

Currently, the class of 2017 is 52 percent male. It’s made up of 12.4 percent students of color, an increase from last year’s freshman class, which Roach said was 9-10 percent students of color. The average ACT score for the class is 26 and the average GPA is about 3.6.

Sophomore Sean Warner, a Tommie Ambassador who has had the chance to meet some members of the class of 2017, said from what he has seen, the future Tommies will be an enthusiastic class.

“In the tours they are really friendly, and they ask a lot of questions,” Warner said. “Most of the kids that are coming here for sure are really involved, like (in) student council, sports, those kinds of things.”

Incoming freshman Mitch Sullivan, a senior at St. Charles North High School in Illinois, is one of the captains of his high school’s mock trial team, and is also involved in the music department. Sullivan said St. Thomas’ welcoming atmosphere made his decision to attend an easy one.

“The first thing I thought was that the campus was really nice,” Sullivan said. “And then as I was walking around campus all of the people I met there were super nice, I remember everyone was holding doors, everyone was saying ‘hi.’”

Roach said the future students she has met will make great additions to the St. Thomas community.

“The students that we’ve been able to get to know through this process seem to be really wonderful people, excited about becoming Tommies, very involved in high school in every possible way, lots of people who have done a lot of volunteer work, service work,” Roach said.

Sullivan said coming from the suburbs of Chicago, he is most excited for the change of scenery that will come with his first year at St. Thomas.

Warner said one thing that has surprised him is the level of responsibility and commitment to St. Thomas he has seen from the future freshmen.

“They’re taking care of things a lot sooner, which I’m really surprised about,” Warner said. “They’ve all pretty much put their deposits in and have applied. There’s not a lot of kids who are on the fence about St. Thomas.”

Roach said in terms of involvement and statistics like GPA and ACT scores, accepted members of the class of 2017 have met all expectations.

“It looks great in terms of all of the things we watch, but then in terms of the people we’ve met and all of the personalities and their enthusiasm seems really great too,” Roach said.

Gabrielle Martinson can be reached at mart5649@stthomas.edu.