This Week in Words: October 21- 27, 2018

There was only one winner in the huge Mega Millions lottery this week. The prize was valued at just under 1.6 billion dollars. The winning ticket was sold in South Carolina, and that state’s laws allow the winner to remain anonymous, so we may never learn whether they take a lump sum or an annuity. An annuity is money paid each year from an investment. You may see the word annual hiding in there, meaning something that happens every year.

Megyn Kelly looks like she is on the way out at NBC News. On her show, Kelly made controversial comments about white people wearing blackface as a Halloween costume. Kelly was widely chastised for racial insensitivity, including by some at her own network. Although Kelly later apologized for her remarks, it may be too little, too late to keep her job.

Two of golf’s major stars, Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson, will face off against each other in a $9 million, winner-take-all, golf match on the Friday after Thanksgiving this year. A portion of the money will be going to the winning golfer’s favorite charity. If you want to watch the match, it will cost you $19.99 on pay-per-view cable TV.

A caravan of refugees, primarily from Honduras, is headed to the border between Mexico and the United States. It is estimated that there are thousands of migrants in the caravan, most of whom will try to seek asylum in the U.S. The Trump administration has put in a request to deploy military personnel to meet the caravan and erect a makeshift wall. It is unclear whether any or all of the people seeking refuge will be allowed to enter the United States.

Two teenagers in Wales, aspiring filmmakers, just got the break of a lifetime. Stephen King has sold them to rights to adapt one of his short stories into a movie for the grand sum of one dollar. This is King’s effort to encourage creativity, and he has been granting similar permissions for years. King’s only condition is that he receive a copy of the finished film.

A teenage boy has discovered a better way to treat pancreatic cancer. One challenge in treating the disease is that the pancreas moves, and nearby healthy tissue can be easily damaged. Using virtual reality techniques to map the pancreas, Rishab Jain created an algorithm that enables better visualization of the problem areas on the pancreas. Jain received $25,000 for his work and was named America’s Next Top Young Scientist.

Forbes magazine's list of the highest paid actors and actresses on television was released this week and, for the seventh year in a row, Sofia Vergara from Modern Family tops the list. Vergara made over $40 million dollars this year in combined earnings from the show and product endorsement deals. Number 2 on the list of actresses was Kaley Cuoco of The Big Bang Theory.

A man who shined shoes at a Pittsburgh children’s hospital for over 20 years passed away this week. This is noteworthy because before he died he donated $200,000 to the hospital to take care of children without health insurance. Appropriately, the man is being celebrated as an everyday hero who gave all he had to help others in need.

The remake of Halloween was the number one movie at the box office this week, and it is expected to repeat as number one next week. The movie took in $76 million dollars in its first week of release. Scant is a good word to use when you’re talking about a skimpy amount of something.

Several pipe bombs were mailed to the homes and businesses of prominent Democrats and noted critics of President Trump. Former Vice President Biden, former President Obama, and actor Robert DeNiro were among those targeted by the devices, which did not explode. Mr. Trump condemned the attacks, but critics say that the president's past rhetoric has encouraged violence toward his opponents.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average, an indicator of the health of the stock market and by extension the whole economy, fell 600 points on Wednesday. By Thursday stocks had rebounded and made most of that loss up, rising 400 points. The stock market is always unpredictable, but recent wild swings such as the ones seen this week have some experts worried about the country’s long term economic picture. Volatility is the quality of being very unstable, bouncing from one extreme to another.