Small plane crashes into 3 vehicles on Texas roadway
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(VICTORIA, Texas) — A small plane crashed into three vehicles Wednesday afternoon on a roadway in Victoria, Texas.
According to the Federal Aviation Administration, the twin-engine Piper PA-31 crashed around 3:00 p.m. local time.
Only the pilot was on board the plane at the time of the crash.
In a video posted on Facebook, which showed the wreckage, the Victoria Police Department said there had been three vehicles and one airplane involved in the crash.
The condition of the vehicles’ occupants is unknown at this time, according to the police department.
“Preliminary information indicates the plane landed on a roadway and struck multiple vehicles,” the National Transportation Safety Board said in a statement.
The FAA and the NTSB will investigate the incident.
(NEW YORK) — AAT&T customers are being urged to stay cautious as thieves are using cellular data to track and steal deliveries, particularly iPhones.
Police report a nationwide surge in package thefts by organized criminal groups targeting FedEx shipments of new AT&T iPhones, sometimes resulting in violence.
“Criminal actors obtain cell phone tracking and delivery location information before the deliveries, providing competing organized theft groups the opportunity to intercept the delivery and steal cell phones from delivery personnel or consumers,” according to a law enforcement bulletin obtained by ABC News. “Violent encounters with criminal actors are escalating as subjects use various tactics, techniques, and procedures to obtain the devices.”
There has been a minimum of 77 reported incidents of theft in Northern Virginia alone, highlighting a troubling trend in the area, according to local authorities. In addition, the New York Police Department said it is investigating at least 55 similar theft cases, warranting close attention.
This surge is not isolated, as similar incidents have emerged across various states, indicating a broader, more widespread issue that may require a coordinated response from law enforcement agencies nationwide.
“We work with law enforcement agencies and parcel carriers to protect our deliveries from these sophisticated criminals,” AT&T said in a statement.
To elude law enforcement, the thieves have adopted the guise of delivery personnel, according to authorities. They cleverly utilize DoorDash bags and don Amazon or construction vests to blend seamlessly with legitimate couriers. Alarmingly, they often strike just moments after packages are left on doorsteps, snatching them away before anyone notices, police warn.
In Chicago, a man and woman duo were caught on video stealing packages along Damen Avenue in the Auburn Gresham neighborhood last week. Cameras have captured three different thefts and appear to involve the same people, according to ABC affiliate WLS in Chicago.
The video shows a woman walking to the front door and dancing on the walkway. She then grabs a package from the porch and runs to a waiting car parked across the street. The homeowner is alerted to the delivery and shouts at the thief, but it’s too late, according to WLS.
In another video obtained by WLS, a man grabs a package with one arm, then picks up another package on the front steps before returning to a similar gray vehicle used in a previous theft.
Both women said they filed reports with the Chicago Police Department and hope somebody recognizes the man and woman in the videos.
“They’ve got the same M.O. They come up, cigarette hanging out of their mouth, both of them. It looks like a husband-and-wife duo, like a Bonnie and Clyde,” a victim told WLS. “They’re just going over to these people’s houses. They don’t even know what’s in these packages; so, I’m not sure what they’re doing with them. Are they selling them or what?”
Investigators are trying to understand how criminals identify and target specific houses.
“We have rigorous safety and security programs in place and regularly remind our team members of the importance of both personal and package safety,” FedEx said in a statement.
(WASHINGTON, D.C.) — Inflation has fallen over the final months of the presidential campaign, carrying potential implications for a tight race between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris.
More than half of adults list inflation as a top issue for the country, making it the highest-ranking concern by a wide margin over issues like immigration, crime and abortion, according to an Ipsos poll conducted late last month.
Price increases nationwide have largely returned to normal. However, the presidential race is widely expected to hinge on the results in seven closely contested battleground states, placing importance on where inflation stands in those key locations.
An analysis by ABC News found that inflation rates vary significantly across four major cities situated in battleground states: Detroit, Michigan; Phoenix, Arizona; Atlanta, Georgia; and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
In each of those states, the average polling margin between the two candidates is no more than two percentage points, according to FiveThirtyEight.
Here’s what to know about what inflation looks like in swing-state cities and what that means for the election:
Detroit, Michigan
Consumer prices rose 3.5% in Detroit over the year ending in August, according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). That figure stands a percentage point above the national average and marks the highest inflation rate of the four cities examined by ABC News.
The surge in prices has stemmed in large part from rapidly rising housing costs, Gabriel Ehrlich, an economist at the University of Michigan, told ABC News. The trend marks a recent turnabout from sluggish housing prices that had taken hold in the city in the aftermath of the 2008 Great Recession.
Back then, a crisis in the auto industry caused rising unemployment, an exodus from Detroit and diminishing demand for homes. As Detroit has since improved its economic performance, however, the population has begun to grow and housing prices have started to soar. Housing costs climbed 6.2% in Detroit over the year ending in August, which stands more than a percentage point higher than the national average.
Even if the improved economic performance has contributed to the rise in housing prices, that silver lining offers little solace for city residents paying high costs, Ehrlich said.
“That’s a hard sell,” he added.
Phoenix, Arizona
In Phoenix, the inflation rate clocks in at 2.3%, according to BLS data for August, the most recent month on record. That pace of price increases is slightly lower than the national average.
Like Detroit, housing prices play a significant role in the dynamic behind costs in Phoenix – but it’s for the opposite reason. Housing prices there are rising at a pace of 3.5%, well below the national average of more than 6%.
The moderate pace of current housing price increases in Phoenix marks welcome relief after a bruising stretch of skyrocketing costs, Lee McPheters, director of the JPMorgan Chase Economic Outlook Center at Arizona State University, told ABC News. Since 2017, housing prices in the Phoenix area have doubled, he added.
The price increases have slowed, however, as Phoenix has made a concerted effort to ramp up home construction and address its dearth of supply.
Phoenix is expected to build roughly 20,000 apartments in 2024, granting it the fourth-highest apartment construction rate of any U.S. city, a RentCafe study in August found. That total would amount to a 88% increase from the apartment construction rate achieved two years prior, according to the Maricopa Association of Governments.
“There’s of course been the same housing shortage issues in Phoenix that you see across the country,” McPheters said. “The difference here is that Arizona responded.”
Atlanta, Georgia
As of August, the inflation rate in Atlanta stands at 1.7%, which clocks in nearly a percentage point lower than the national average and is the lowest pace for any of the swing-state cities examined by ABC News.
Prices in Atlanta have risen at a slower pace than the national average for a range of essential products, including housing, meat, poultry, fish and eggs.
Gasoline prices have dropped nationwide over the past year but they’ve fallen even more in Atlanta. The same trend applies to the price of new and used cars, the latter of which has fallen a staggering 11% over the past year.
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Consumer prices in the Philadelphia area climbed 3.4% over the year ending in August, BLS data showed. The city’s inflation rate registers nearly a percentage point higher than the national average.
In Philadelphia, prices for many food and beverage products are rising faster than the national average. Over the past year, prices for meat, poultry, fish and eggs have climbed at more than twice the national average pace. Cereal and bakery products have surged 2.5% over the past year in Philadelphia, even though prices for such goods have fallen by 1% nationwide.
The prices for nonalcoholic beverages in Philadelphia have climbed more than six times faster than the national average over the past year.
Erasmus Kersting, a professor of economics at Villanova University, said the sharp increase in prices for some food items may owed to a lack of competition among grocery stores in Philadelphia. In the absence of fierce competition, grocery stores retain the latitude to raise prices without fear of a rival offering a better deal on comparable products, Kersting explained.
Two supermarket chains, Giant and ShopRite, accounted for 56% of the local grocery market in 2022, according to the Philadelphia Business Journal.
“Grocery store prices have gone up a lot,” Kersting told ABC News. “Some of this has to do with market structure. How many competitors do grocery stores have?”
(WASHINGTON) — For more than a century, from the early 1800s to the 1960s, Indigenous children were taken from their tribes — sometimes forcibly from their homes — to attend government assimilation boarding schools. On Friday afternoon, President Joe Biden will issue a formal apology from the U.S. government to impacted communities.
Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, the first Native American to hold a Cabinet position, says her grandparents and mother were among those shipped off to these schools: “I understand that history,” she told host Brad Mielke on Friday’s episode of “Start Here,” ABC News’ flagship daily news podcast.
“The children got to these boarding schools. They were stripped of their clothing. Their hair was cut. They were forbidden to speak their native languages and were beat if they did,” said Haaland.
Haaland went on a reservation listening tour to hear from tribal elders and descendants of people who attended these schools as part of a federal investigation into the government’s boarding school programs and the reported physical and emotional abuse as well as death that took place.
She also investigated those who never made it home, and found that hundreds of children had been buried at unmarked sites far away from their homes.
As part of her investigation, Haaland put together a list of recommendations, the first of which is to issue a formal acknowledgment and apology from the U.S. government.
President Biden told White House reporters Thursday that he’s going to Arizona “to do something that should have been done a long time ago.”
“To make a formal apology to the Indian nations for the way we treated their children for so many years,” he said. “That’s why I’m going. That’s why I’m heading west.”
Haaland told “Start Here” that an apology is the first step in working toward a remedy to the trauma and pain.
“Quite frankly, Native American history is American history, so it’s important for the survivors and the descendants, I believe, to feel that they are seen.”
ABC News’ Justin Gomez contributed to this report.
