When the price of Powerball lottery tickets increases from $1 to $2 on Jan. 15, Chris Taranto says, he will still buy them.

So will a lot of other lottery players, he told phillyburbs.com. And their chances of winning will improve.

“People like to dream in this country,” the Delran, N.J., resident said as he purchased tickets for the Powerball and Mega Millions lotteries at the Hartford Deli on Tuesday. “The only true dream left is the lottery.”

With the price increase, the Powerball jackpot will grow from a minimum of $20 million to $40 million, and that could grow to the hundreds of millions if it takes several weeks to get a winner.

WASHINGTON — When Representative Ed Pastor was first elected to Congress two decades ago, he was comfortably ensconced in the middle class. Mr. Pastor, a Democrat from Arizona, held $100,000 or so in savings accounts in the mid-1990s and had a retirement pension, but like many Americans, he also owed the banks nearly as much in loans.

Today, Mr. Pastor, a miner’s son and a former high school teacher, is a member of a not-so-exclusive club: Capitol Hill millionaires. That group has grown in recent years to include nearly half of all members of Congress — 250 in all — and the wealth gap between lawmakers and their constituents appears to be growing quickly, even as Congress debates unemployment benefits, possible cuts in food stamps and a “millionaire’s tax.”

The holiday spirit is alive and well in Miami after an anonymous donor dropped a diamond ring into a Salvation Army kettle Friday.

Miami-Dade Salvation Army Capt. Linda Payton said her office received a call around 1 p.m. from a woman who wanted to remain anonymous.

“She said that she had just left something in the kettle in front of Kmart and that it was something special,” Payton said.

READING, Mass. — A surprising discovery was made during a demolition which led to an emotional meeting in Reading.

“We went through the house pretty good and we thought we found it all,” said Janice Perry, former homeowner.

But, they hadn’t. Hidden inside the Ash Street house the sisters sold was $2,500 in cash.

The new owner, Dr. Fred Ravens, found the money while crews were tearing down the building to expand his neighboring dental practice.

“I was looking out the window in between patients and the fellow was pulling the wall apart and the next thing I knew I saw a flutter of money,” Dr. Fred Ravens.

Fifty and 100 dollar bills flew out of the rubble.

WASHINGTON (CNN) — All 50 states plus Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C., submitted applications to the Department of Transportation for grants to fund DOT projects, but — in a sign of tough economic times coupled with a shortage of federal dollars — not everyone is finding presents under the federal Christmas tree this year.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood announced Thursday that 46 transportation projects in 33 states and Puerto Rico will receive $511 million in the latest round of Transportation Investments Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) grants.

LONDON — The demand for rhino horn in Asia, where some see its ground-up powder as an aphrodisiac and even cancer-curing medicine, has driven prices to nearly $50,000 a pound — and with it a new type of crime: thieves breaking into museums and auction houses to tear the horns off stuffed specimens.

At least 30 such thefts have taken place across Europe in the last year. The latest, on Tuesday at a hunting museum in Paris, saw thieves use a stun gas on two guards to facilitate the theft.

“The style of the offenses has taken us by surprise and the fact that they’re still continuing today,” Scotland Yard Detective Ian Lawson told NBC News after Tuesday’s heist.

The heists are happening as poachers, motivated by the same profit, are slaughtering rhinos in Africa and Asia.

A Seattle woman who is receiving welfare assistance from Washington state also happens to live in a waterfront house on Lake Washington worth more than a million dollars.

Federal agents raided the home this weekend but have not released the woman or her husband’s name because they have not officially been charged with a crime.

However, federal documents obtained by KING 5 News show the couple currently receives more than $1,200 a month in public housing vouchers, plus state and government disability checks and food stamps. They have been receiving the benefits since 2003.

The 2,500 square-foot home, which includes gardens and a boat dock, is valued at $1.2 million. And even though the couple has been receiving the benefits for nearly 10 years, records show that they accurately listed the address of their current home when applying for the state and federal benefits.

NEW YORK – An early rally fizzled on the stock market Friday but still left the Standard & Poor’s 500 index up 7.4 percent for the week, its biggest gain since March 2009.

A surprise drop in the U.S. unemployment rate sent stocks higher in early trading, but the gains faded during the afternoon.

The Dow Jones industrial average dropped 0.61 of a point to close at 12,019.42. The Dow ended the week up 7 percent, the largest weekly gain since July 2009.

Bank stocks rose sharply, continuing a weeklong rally. JPMorgan Chase & Co. jumped 6.1 percent, the most among the 30 stocks in the Dow average. Morgan Stanley leapt 6.9 percent, the second-biggest gain of any stock in the S&P 500 index.

The U.S. government has agreed to pay $2.5 million to the widow and family of a Florida tabloid photo editor killed in the 2001 anthrax attacks.

A document obtained Tuesday by The Associated Press shows that Maureen Stevens will drop all other claims stemming from the death of Robert Stevens. The document also says the U.S. is not admitting fault.

Stevens’ lawsuit, filed in 2003, claimed the government was negligent because it failed to stop someone at the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases at Fort Detrick, Md., from creating weapons-grade anthrax used in letters that killed her husband and four other people. Seventeen more people were sickened.