Widow, 84, hits €451m jackpot in the US

An 84-year-old widow who bought a Powerball ticket after another customer let her go ahead in the queue has claimed the biggest undivided lottery jackpot in history: 590 million dollars (€451m).

Mother-of-four Gloria MacKenzie, who lives in a modest, tin-roof house in Zephyrhills, Florida, where the lone winning ticket in the May 18 draw was sold, took her prize in a lump sum of just over 370 million dollars (€282m). After government taxes, she will receive about 278 million dollars (€212m), lottery chiefs said.