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Former police chief sentenced to life in prison in arson case

June 27, 2023 by WDNY Radio

(ELLICOTT CITY, Md.) — A former Maryland police chief accused of being a serial arsonist who targeted his rivals has been sentenced to life in prison.

David Crawford, 71, was found guilty of eight counts of attempted murder in March following a trial in Howard County. On Tuesday, a judge sentenced him to life in prison for all counts, court records show. The judge ruled that six of the life sentences can be served at the same time, The Baltimore Sun reported.

Crawford was also found guilty of three counts of arson and one count of malicious burning in the trial. He was sentenced to 75 years for those counts, court records show.

Crawford had pleaded not guilty to all counts. His attorney maintained Crawford’s innocence during Tuesday’s sentencing hearing and said he plans to appeal, according to The Baltimore Sun.

The eight attempted murder charges stem from two house fires in 2017 in which five people and three people were inside the homes, respectively. One of the fires targeted the home of a chiropractor who had treated Crawford, according to charging documents.

Crawford, who resigned as police chief in Laurel in 2010, was arrested in March 2021 on a laundry list of charges in connection with fires that took place in multiple Maryland counties, including Howard, from 2011 to 2020.

Law enforcement said at the time of his arrest that investigators discovered a link between the victims, leading them to Crawford following a November 2020 fire in Montgomery County.

Crawford still faces attempted murder and arson charges in Prince George’s County and arson and reckless endangerment charges in Montgomery County. Those cases remain ongoing, court records show.

One of the fires in Prince George’s County in 2019 targeted Richard Mclaughlin, Crawford’s deputy chief and successor at the Laurel Police Department, according to the charging documents. Crawford’s stepson was targeted in three different fires in Montgomery County, including the final arson in the decadelong string of attacks, according to charging documents.

Crawford was also charged with arson in Frederick County. He entered an Alford plea — in which he pleaded guilty without admitting guilt — and was sentenced last year to 20 years in prison with all but 18 months suspended, court records show.

Crawford has been held without bond at the Howard County Department of Corrections since March 2021.

ABC News’ Mark Osborne contributed to this report.

Judge dismisses claims against Ivanka Trump in New York AG’s $250M suit against Trump Organization

June 27, 2023 by WDNY Radio

Judge dismisses claims against Ivanka Trump in New York AG’s 0M suit against Trump Organization

(NEW YORK) — A New York appellate court on Tuesday dismissed a portion of the New York attorney general’s civil lawsuit against former President Donald Trump and other members of the Trump Organization.

New York Attorney General Letitia James last year sued Ivanka Trump, Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., alleging they, their father and certain Trump Organization executives schemed to adjust the value of the family real estate portfolio when pursuing loans or seeking tax breaks. The lawsuit seeks $250 million.

The New York Appellate Division’s First Department on Tuesday dismissed the claims against Ivanka Trump, ruling that the statute of limitations in her case had expired because she was no longer part of the Trump Organization by 2016.

“The allegations against defendant Ivanka Trump do not support any claims that accrued after February 6, 2016. Thus, all claims against her should have been dismissed as untimely,” the decision said.

The lawsuit will proceed against the other defendants.

“There is a mountain of evidence that shows Mr. Trump and the Trump Organization falsely and fraudulently valued multiple assets and misrepresented those values to financial institutions for significant economic gain,” said a spokesperson for the attorney general’s office following Tuesday’s ruling. “Those facts haven’t changed.”

For at least a decade, from 2011 to 2021, the lawsuit alleged that Trump’s financial statements were riddled with false and misleading valuations across nearly two dozen properties, including his Palm Beach estate Mar-a-Lago.

The Trumps have denied wrongdoing and former President Trump has cast the state attorney general as motivated by politics.

The trial is scheduled for October.

Summer cookout food costs only slightly down, new survey finds

June 27, 2023 by WDNY Radio

(NEW YORK) — The average cost of a 4th of July cookout is slightly down, but families are still feeling the pinch of inflation and other cost catalysts on groceries.

According to The American Farm Bureau’s annual marketbasket survey, the average cost for a 4th of July cookout will cost about $67.73 to feed 10 people, down just 3% or $2.27 per person from last year.

Although the organization’s survey indicates that prices have decreased slightly from the record highs of 2022, the cost of a holiday weekend cookout is still up significantly from 2021 with the grocery bill approximately 14% higher than prices from that time.

2023 comes in as the second-highest cost breakdown in a decade, since AFBF began the survey in 2013.

Cookout favorites that shoppers purchased for the survey included cheeseburgers, chicken breasts, pork chops, homemade potato salad, strawberries and ice cream, among other products.

“The slight downward direction in the cost of a cookout doesn’t counter the dramatic increases we’ve seen over the past few years. Families are still feeling the pinch of high inflation along with other factors keeping prices high,” AFBF Chief Economist Roger Cryan said. “Don’t assume farmers come out as winners from higher prices at the grocery store either. They’re price takers, not price makers, whose share of the retail food dollar is just 14%. Farmers have to pay for fuel, fertilizer and other expenses, which have all gone up in cost.”

The AFBF also pointed to a year-to-year increase in the cost of hamburger buns, which are up 17%, ground beef prices for 2 pounds rose 4%, and homemade potato salad will cost 5% more than last year.

The federation said a number of factors are to blame for those rising prices, including drought conditions that sent the cost of animal feed higher and reduced the number of cattle available. Plus, potato production is down due to poor weather, so consumer spending on spuds will be up for everything from fries to side dishes.

But the survey did find some drops in the cost of chicken breasts, lemonade and cookies.

Thanks to a reduced number of avian flu cases, that plagued the record-high poultry prices in 2022, chicken breasts and eggs are both lower this year.

Costco cracks down on members sharing cards at checkout

June 27, 2023 by WDNY Radio

(NEW YORK) — Costco Wholesale is cracking down on customers sharing membership cards at the self-service checkout.

The big box retailer will require shoppers at the self-checkout kiosks show their membership cards with their photo before they can begin scanning after the company noticed non-members were borrowing the non-transferrable cards to get in the warehouse.

“Those Costco memberships equal revenue and profits for Costco, the retailer. So when that membership gets shared, Costco ends up losing money and losing profits,” Hitha Herzog, chief research officer at H Squared Research, told GMA.

“Costco is able to keep our prices as low as possible because our membership fees help offset our operational expenses,” the company wrote in a statement. “We don’t feel it’s right that non-members receive the same benefits and pricing as our members.”

The policy is not new for Costco, where employees regularly scan a membership card at traditional checkout. The company is reinforcing the policy as more self-checkout lanes have opened up across the country.

Over 69 million households have an annual Costco membership, the least expensive of which is priced at $60 a year and lets you add on one extra person who lives at the same address.

“Costco is able to give members deep discounts on products because they know based on their purchasing profile what they are going to buy weekly or monthly,” Herzog continued. “It becomes a numbers game, and those numbers get completely skewed because there are multiple people using that membership.”

Costco’s competitor big box stores, BJ’s and Sam’s Club, have their own non-transferrable membership policies.

Costco isn’t the only major business to get stricter about membership sharing of late: Streaming giant Netflix has limited account sharing to use in one household only, shutting down the service for people attempting to use the account at different locations.

Customers made their feelings heard when Netflix first announced the changes, but they spent money on new subscriptions that hit a record high in the first days after the announcement — higher than they did in the early onset of the pandemic. Netflix stock jumped 15%.

ABC News’ chief business and technology correspondent Rebecca Jarvis says we don’t know if Costco or other companies cracking down will see the same boom.

Supreme Court overturns online stalking conviction, citing 1st Amendment

June 27, 2023 by WDNY Radio

(WASHINGTON) — The Supreme Court on Tuesday overturned the conviction of an online stalker from Colorado, tightening the standard by which threats made on social media can be punished as crimes.

Justice Elena Kagan, writing for a 7-2 majority, said the “the First Amendment still requires proof that the defendant had some subjective understanding of the threatening nature of his statements.”

In 2016, Colorado prosecuted the plaintiff, Billy Raymond Counterman, winning a state court conviction by showing that hundreds of Facebook messages Counterman sent to a female singer-songwriter were objectively threatening and received that way by the victim.

He served 4½ years behind bars, even though he has always maintained that he never intended to threaten the musician, Coles Whalen.

“The state must show that the defendant consciously disregarded a substantial risk that his communications would be viewed as threatening violence,” Kagan wrote.

That the state did not prove evidence of intent or state of mind “is a violation of the First Amendment,” she wrote.

Whalen has not yet publicly commented on the decision. Her younger sister, Marita, previously told ABC News that some of Counterman’s messages “had a significant impact on [Whalen] — that lightheartedness that she used to always carry, sharing that joy with other people, it really got dampened. She became much more protective and afraid.”

Justices Amy Coney Barrett and Clarence Thomas dissented.

“Counterman communicated true threats, which, everyone agrees, lie outside the bounces of the First Amendment protection,” Barrett wrote. “He knew what the words meant. Those threats caused the victim to fear for her life, and they upended her daily existence. Nonetheless, the court concludes that Counterman can prevail on a First Amendment defense. Nothing in the Constitution compels that result.”

Legal scholars supportive of Counterman’s case say the decision bolsters free speech protections and reduces the chance of “criminalizing misunderstandings” — as Counterman’s attorneys put it in previous court documents.

Critics of the ruling, however, warn it will make it more difficult for law enforcement to protect people online at a time when threatening behavior is rampant.

“Stalkers are often oblivious to reality, and if you require the state to have to show that they understood that their words were threatening and creating this fear of physical violence, you could actually let a lot of stalkers go,” Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser said in an interview with ABC News earlier this year.

Kagan acknowledged those concerns on behalf of the court’s majority, but wrote in her opinion on Tuesday that the new standard would not sacrifice “too many of the benefits of enforcing laws against true threats.”

“The rule we adopt today is neither the most speech-protective nor the most sensitive to the dangers of true threats,” she wrote. The balance keeps “much of what is important on both sides of the scale.”

As thousands of flights canceled, feud between United CEO and FAA spills out into public again

June 27, 2023 by WDNY Radio

(NEW YORK) — Airlines have canceled more than 5,200 flights since Saturday in the U.S. and United Airlines CEO claimed the Federal Aviation Administration staffing and inexperience is partly to blame.

United CEO Scott Kirby sent a letter to United employees on Monday, blaming the FAA for travel disruptions this past weekend at Newark Airport, one of United’s busiest hubs and in the center of the nation’s most congested air corridor.

“As you know, the weather we saw in EWR is something that the FAA has historically been able to manage without a severe impact on our operation and customers. This past Saturday, however, was different,” Kirby said in an internal memo to employees Monday.

Following bad weather, United canceled 293 flights at Newark and delayed 251 on Monday alone. As of 12:40 ET Tuesday, United canceled 251 flights and delayed 125 others.

“The FAA reduced the arrival rates by 40% and the departure rates by 75%. That is almost certainly a reflection of understaffing/lower experience at the FAA. It led to massive delays, cancellations, diversions, as well as crews and aircraft out of position,” Kirby wrote. “And that put everyone behind the eight ball when weather actually did hit on Sunday and was further compounded by FAA staffing shortages Sunday evening.”

The FAA responded in a statement, saying, “We will always collaborate with anyone seriously willing to join us to solve a problem.”

The series of cancellations started Sunday with weather on the East Coast and an FAA computer failure at a control center outside Washington, D.C.

The FAA said it “paused” departures to Washington, D.C., airports Sunday due to “repairs” being made to a communications system at an air traffic control facility in the region. The pause impacted flights across the Northeast, contributing along with weather to almost 10,000 flights delayed and 1,400 canceled across the US Sunday.

United’s public airing of grievances against the FAA is the latest in a long series of clashes between the airline and the agency.

In a company earnings call this year, Kirby told analysts, “All companies, including airlines and the FAA, need to staff at higher levels.”

In September last year, Kirby said at a conference in Washington, D.C., the FAA was “by far the No. 1” cause of flight delays. Hours later, the FAA released data showing that airlines were the No. 1 cause.

The latest spat also comes just after DOT’s Office of Inspector General found the FAA continues to face staffing shortages for air traffic controllers, and has made “limited efforts” to ensure adequate staffing at critical ATC facilities.

The OIG’s report found that 20 of 26 critical ATC facilities are staffed below the FAA’s 85% threshold. The FAA’s Certified-Professional-Controller workforce has decreased by 10% over the last decade, the audit found.

The problem was exacerbated by the pandemic, the audit found, when training was paused for nearly two years.

Throughout its probe, officials interviewed managers at various ATC facilities who said their towers were not adequately staffed, and that controllers were working mandatory overtime and 6-day work weeks to cover the shortages.

The FAA said in response to the report it recently completed a comprehensive review of the distribution of its controllers and submitted a Controller Workforce Plan to Congress in May.

Additionally, the agency said it’s implementing the Air Traffic Operations Management System — a comprehensive system that will track controller timekeeping and various work assignments.

‘They all are washed in blood after this war’: Ex-Russian minister on Wagner-Putin conflict

June 27, 2023 by WDNY Radio

(NEW YORK) — This weekend’s attempted rebellion by the Wagner Group, a Putin-packed private military company, appeared to show some serious distrust among the Russian government and its military allies.

Andrei Kozyrev, a former Russian foreign minister and author of the book “The Firebird: The Elusive Fate of Russian Democracy,” spoke with ABC News Live’s Linsey Davis Monday evening about his analysis of the situation and the relationship between Wagner’s leader, financier Yevgeny Prigozhin, and President Vladimir Putin.

ABC NEWS LIVE: Let’s start with your reaction to Russian President Vladimir Putin’s remarks today. Putin said Russian patriotism is what stopped the rebellion and, “It would have been suppressed anyway.” It appears that Putin is trying to project some strength or at least calm. But how weak or vulnerable would you say his position is right now?

ANDREI KOZYREV: Well, it’s actually very difficult to say. The interview was a laughing stock, so to say. But that’s for informed observer[s] or for foreign observers who have a lot of information about the reality of what happened. But remember that he addressed [the] Russian public and [the] Russian public is absolutely deprived — Russian people are deprived of truthful or even near-to-truth information. They’re totally disinformed. And when he speaks of patriotism and then once he speaks of their resolve to stay against the West, against neo-Nazi Ukrainians, I mean, all that is a phantom, right?

ABC NEWS LIVE: Putin also said fratricide — the killing of one’s own forces in war — is exactly what Ukrainian leaders and Western allies want. President Biden has insisted that the West had nothing to do with this. Do you believe that divisions within Russia will ultimately lead to the end of this war and potentially the end of Putin’s rule?

KOZYREV: See, these divisions are between the warlords and Prigozhin is Putin’s Frankenstein. He created him and all of them want the same [thing]. They are just fighting for the room on the top, for money, for power, but they are on the same wavelength politically. They want to continue the war in Ukraine.

They all are like, washed in blood after this war, so they know that there is no room for them in a civilized society. So it’s all the same, and it should not be overestimated. It’s a fight inside a wolf pack, so to say, between the wolves.

ABC NEWS LIVE: Do you expect President Putin to lash out on the battlefield in Ukraine at this point because of this threat to his power?

KOZYREV: Definitely. … They will definitely do everything to have a success of their invasion in Ukraine. And that’s the main point, I think, for the West to understand that first of all, there is no red line for either of them. You see how Putin immediately or very quickly [is] threatened by force, by his own lackey, but he steps back. So there is no red line for which he wants to die. He wants to stay alive, and his only interest is to save his own skin, so to say, … to survive himself.

The same for Prigozhin. So these guys are not those kind of warriors [that] should be countered with. … So the West should understand that the best way to deal with them and to prevent any kind of a reckless move is to ignore the red lines, but to give Ukraine the most powerful weapons to win and soon.

Why SCOTUS election law ruling doesn’t stop North Carolina congressional map from being changed

June 27, 2023 by WDNY Radio

(WASHINGTON) — The U.S. Supreme Court decision on Tuesday rejecting a theory that would grant state legislatures broad authority to unilaterally craft and enforce election laws has little impact on the actual issue that sparked the case — North Carolina’s House map.

The state Legislature, controlled by Republicans and able to set congressional district lines without the Democratic governor’s signoff, initially drew a map favoring their party after the 2020 census. But those lines were swiftly the center of a lawsuit, and the state Supreme Court ordered new ones to be created.

Republicans appealed, ultimately bringing their case to the U.S. Supreme Court where they argued that they had broad, ultimately power to define the terms of federal elections, including congressional maps.

That “independent state legislature” theory was shut down in Tuesday’s 6-3 ruling, written by Chief Justice John Roberts.

“State courts retain the authority to apply state constitutional restraints when legislatures act under the power conferred upon them by the Elections Clause,” the majority found (with three conservative justices dissenting). “In interpreting state law in this area, state courts may not so exceed the bounds of ordinary judicial review as to unconstitutionally intrude upon the role specifically reserved to state legislatures by Article I, Section 4, of the Federal Constitution.”

Yet the dispute over the map itself is now moot — and the court did not rule on whether the lines had to be redrawn.

That’s because the North Carolina Supreme Court, which was controlled by a 4-3 Democratic majority last year, flipped to a 5-2 Republican majority after the 2022 midterms. And in April, the new majority overturned its prior ruling on partisan gerrymandering, allowing Republican lawmakers in the state to again move forward with crafting a favorable map.

“There is no judicially manageable standard by which to adjudicate partisan gerrymandering claims. Courts are not intended to meddle in policy matters,” the state’s chief justice, Paul Newby, wrote for the court’s majority.

Republicans hailed the move, saying they plan on drawing new maps later this year.

“Today the United States Supreme Court has determined that state courts may rule on questions of state law even if it has an impact on federal elections law. Ultimately, the question of the role of state courts in congressional redistricting needed to be settled and this decision has done just that. I am proud of the work we did to pursue this case to the nation’s highest court,” state House Speaker Tim Moore, R, said.

“Fortunately the current Supreme Court of North Carolina has rectified bad precedent from the previous majority, reaffirming the state constitutional authority of the NC General Assembly. We will continue to move forward with the redistricting process later this year.”

North Carolina’s 14-seat House delegation is currently split evenly, though conservatives in Raleigh could conceivably draw a map that wins them 11 seats, a prospect that Democrats on the state Supreme Court noted in their April dissent.

“Today, the majority strips the people of this right; it tells North Carolinians that the state constitution and the courts cannot protect their basic human right to self-governance and self-determination,” wrote Justice Anita Earls. “Efforts to downplay the practice do not erase its consequences and the public will not be gaslighted.”

The potential four-seat gain by Republicans looms large ahead of the 2024 elections, where the GOP will seek to defend a narrow five-seat majority in the House and recently faced setbacks in redistricting elsewhere in the country.

Democrats could see one-seat gains in Alabama and Louisiana, respectively, after the U.S. Supreme Court paved the way for each of those states to add a second majority-Black district to be more representative of Black voters’ power relative to their share of population.

There are similar legal battles over redistricting playing out in Georgia and South Carolina.

New York Democrats, who control the state government there, are also optimistic that they will be able to redraw their own maps before the 2024 cycle.

Failed Wagner rebellion against Russia a battle between ‘two thugs’: Former US ambassador

June 27, 2023 by WDNY Radio

(NEW YORK) — The attempted rebellion over the weekend against President Vladimir Putin by the Russia-backed private military company the Wagner Group, run by former Putin confidant Yevgeny Prigozhin, shocked world observers and leaders.

Bill Taylor, the former U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine, spoke with ABC News’ Linsey Davis Monday evening about the situation and its effects on the ongoing Russian-Ukrainian conflict.

ABC NEWS LIVE: Let’s start with the dueling statements today, Prigozhin radio statement. And then later, President Putin made an address. What’s your takeaway listening to both of them?

BILL TAYLOR: It’s two thugs. There are two Mafia heads going after each other. President Putin is trying to say that he’s got things under control. He clearly didn’t have things under control over the weekend. And Mr. Prigozhin says that he wasn’t really trying for a coup. He wasn’t attempting to take down the Russian government. It was just really a protest. Neither of these stories [are] very credible.

ABC NEWS LIVE: And when you say, yeah, he said that that this was a protest, Prigozhin also went on to say we had no goal of overthrowing the regime. Just to give a very simple understanding here. Why would Prigozhin do this? Was this a power grab? What was the ultimate point? And obviously this is somebody who’s a strategist. He had to see some endgame here. I’m curious from your perspective what that might have been.

TAYLOR: It might have been Linsey…that Prigozhin could have thought that he was going to get more support than that actually materialized. That is, he may have hoped or even had some reason to believe that some of the other military commanders or other Russian military commanders who were just as upset as he is and was about the terrible decision that President Putin had made to both invade the neighbor and then send all of these Russian boys, young soldiers, to die.

And clearly, Prigozhin was angry about that. And he thought there would be other military leaders who were similarly angry. As he approached Moscow, it must have become clear to him that these other military leaders were keeping their heads down.

ABC NEWS LIVE: And today, Putin gave commanders and soldiers in the Wagner group a few options to join the Russian military, drop their weapons and go home or go to Belarus. We’re talking about members of a formidable fighting force. What do you see them doing and can they be trusted at this point?

TAYLOR: Probably not. I would imagine if there are any of the Wagner soldiers who decide, who elect to take the contract with the Ministry of Defense, that they will not be trusted. I imagine there won’t be very many anyway. Wagner pays pretty well. Prigozhin pays his people in Wagner pretty well, pretty top dollar to get them to volunteer. They are all volunteers. For them now to sign up with the Ministry of Defense, they will not be paid the same. They’ll be mistrusted. So I suspect not many will do that.

Then there are some that may go home. Some of these Wagner soldiers are criminals, as we know, and they may have been promised amnesty. There’s not much discussion of what happens when they go home.

Then the third category, Linsey, as you say, some may decide to go to Belarus, but even Belarus is a questionable place. I mean, Belarus is part of the union state with Russia. So it’s very close to Russia. We know that President Lukashenko is very close to and dependent on Putin. So Belarus is not going to be a very hospitable place for Prigozhin or the Wagner troops. So I imagine that Wagner troops and Prigozhin will try to get out of Belarus as fast as they can.

ABC NEWS LIVE: Big picture for us, ambassador. How do you see this ultimately playing out, both for Putin, for Russia and ultimately the war in Ukraine?

TAYLOR: I think the big picture is the weakness of Russia, both at the top and even on the lines and the strength of the Ukrainians, as well as the preparation of the Ukrainians for this counter-offensive, which has been building for months. [It] comes at a great time for the Ukrainians. So I think the big picture is watch the Ukrainians over the next couple of weeks.

Remains of actor Julian Sands found after he disappeared while hiking in January

June 27, 2023 by WDNY Radio

(LOS ANGELES) — The remains of Julian Sands have been found after the British actor was reported missing in the mountains of Southern California earlier this year, authorities said.

The 65-year-old Los Angeles resident disappeared while hiking Mount Baldy, the highest peak among the San Gabriel Mountains, located outside of Los Angeles. He was reported missing in the Baldy Bowl area on the evening of Jan. 13, according to the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department.

Unidentified human remains discovered by hikers on Saturday near where Sands went missing were positively identified as his, the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department said Tuesday.

“The manner of death is still under investigation, pending further test results,” the sheriff’s department said in a statement.

Ground and air search efforts occurred in the weeks following his disappearance before the search was temporarily suspended due to weather conditions.

Search efforts resumed on June 17, employing volunteers, deputies, helicopters and drone crews, the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department said.

“Despite the recent warmer weather, portions of the mountain remain inaccessible due to extreme alpine conditions,” the sheriff’s department said in a statement at the time. “Multiple areas include steep terrain and ravines, which still have 10-plus feet of ice and snow.”

Sands’ family released a statement on Jan. 23 amid search efforts, expressing “heartfelt thanks to the compassionate members of the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department who are coordinating the search for our beloved Julian” and several other “heroic search teams … who are braving difficult conditions on the ground and in the air to bring Julian home.”

“We are deeply touched by the outpouring of love and support,” the family added.

Sands made dozens of appearances in both television and movies since the 1980s, including as George Emerson — opposite Helena Bonham-Carter’s Lucy — in the 1985 Academy Award-winning film “A Room with a View.” Sands also starred in “Warlock,” “Leaving Las Vegas” and a 1998 adaptation of “The Phantom of the Opera” as the title character.

ABC News’ Morgan Winsor contributed to this report.

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