You're listening to KFI AM six forty wake Up Call with Me Amy King on
demand on the iHeartRadio app KFI and KOST HD two Los Angeles, Orange County
and yours Amy Kay. It's five o'clock. Good morning. I'm Amy King.
This is your wake up call for Tuesday, April twenty third. Thanks
for getting your day started with us today. Bill Handle's going to make fun
of me. There's so much going on today. We got lost to talk
about, but I really mean it. We have lots to talk about,
and I'm going to just say this, this is probably my favorite favorite thing
that I get to share with you today. As you may know, we
did the Wiggle Waggon Walk over the weekend. We amazingly the Humane Pasadena Humane
raised over three hundred thousand dollars and it all goes to taking care of the
pups at humane at the Pasadena Humane. And I got to walk a dog,
a beautiful six year old Doberman pincher named Hershey, and she was just
such a good girl, and she her owner had passed away and so the
son wasn't able to take care of the dog and the two cats that were
all living with the owner. And so they took him to the Pasadena Humane
Society and after the walk her she got adopted. So or she has to
no home, a new home. That's just like the best best news.
But all the donations you make through the Wiggle Wagga Walk go to taking care
of Hershey's so she's ready to go and ready to find her forever home.
Sot so yeay, I'm just thrilled for her. Here's what's ahead on wake
up call. And as I said, there's a lot. An La County
Sheriff's deputy is recovering after being shot in the back while stopped at a stoplight
in West Covina. The shooting happened yesterday. The deputy was wearing a bullet
proof vest and the bullet did not penetrate it. The lice are still looking
for the person who shot him and are looking for answers as to why he
was shot. Prosecutors in former President Trump's hush money trial introduced the case to
the jury, accusing the former president of falsifying business records to cover up payments
made to adult film actress Stormy Daniels in twenty sixteen over an affair. Trump's
defense then said there was no such scheme and accuse Stormy Daniels if trying to
cash in on the allegations. The trial continues today. Steve Gregory is going
to take a look at how AI could affect the way you vote this election
season. That's coming up in about a half hour, really fascinating stuff.
At six oh five, it is handle on the news. Of course,
testimony resumes in former President Trump's hush money trial, and you can bet that
Bill's going to run a way in on that. Let's get started with some
of the stories coming out of the KFI twenty four hour newsroom. La Kenny
Sheriff's investigators are trying to find the man who shot a motorcycle deputy in West
Covina. Sheriff Luna says the deputy was shot yesterday in an ambush attack.
He was sitting on a marked black and white police motorcycle in full uniform and
he was shot in the back. Luna says the shooter may have been driving
a white sedan with tinted windows. He says the car was last seen heading
west on the ten Freeway just after just off Baranka Avenue. The deputy is
in stable condition. A man accused of fatally stabbing a woman on a metro
train near Studio City has been arrested. Investigators have described the scene of the
killing as violent and bloody. They say the attack was unprovoked. This high
school student, who uses the train to get the school, says she's shocked
by the killing. I don't feel safe at all on the chain. I
don't want to get back on the chain ever. The attacker and woman both
got off the train at the Universal City station. Yesterday morning. Police arrested
the suspected killer about a half mile from the station in Studio City. Blake
Chrolli KFI News. The man arrested has been booked on suspicion of murderies being
held on two million dollars bail. LA's proposed city budget for the next fiscal
year is seventeen point eight billion dollars. Here. Gass's proposed budget increases funding
for police and reduces it for homeless programs compared to this year, but she
says the city will do more with less. She also said yesterday LA will
continue to invest in green infrastructure, with more electric buses, ev charging stations,
and new city positions. In her office, a new climate cabinet is
being formed that will help guide new required climate plans at key city departments,
stakeholder engagement and action on climate justice. The city Council will take up the
proposed budget next week with the public hearing. Michael Monks KFI News. It's
five oh seven on your wake up call. Time to say good morning to
ABC's Stephen portnoy So. Stephen, the case before the Supreme Court now could
affect how cities deal with homeless people all over the country, and the spotlight
is on Little Grant's Pass, Oregon, a town several couple hours south of
Portland on the five Look. This is a question of whether the eighth Amendments
Prohibition on Cruel and Unusual Punishment covers well laws that would try to prevent homeless
encampments. And the question is whether the city of grants Pass, population forty
thousand, can find people who are setting up tents and public parks and sleeping
there overnight because they have nowhere else to go. The backers of the law
say that this is for health and safety and it's the appropriate role of local
government to police these sorts of things. The opponents of the law say,
and the ninth Circuit upheld this that these people who are in the circumstance have
nowhere else to go, that there's a case going back to nineteen sixty two
that said that the law can't ban, for example, drug addiction as a
status, and homelessness is similarly in their mind of status, and therefore it's
cruel and unusual because they're in a catch twenty two. There aren't enough shelter
beds in this town, and therefore these people are being fined just for existing
there, and that that's against the constitution. That's the argument. Yesterday,
the Supreme Court heard two and a half hours of this back and forth,
and it seemed to me and most other observers that the court majority, the
conservative majority, was interested in figuring out a way to keep the law alive
in Grant's past. The question is exactly how and to what extent. And
at the same point the justices kept stressing, the conservative ones did that it's
not for the nine men and women in robes here in Washington, d c.
To be settling this question. It's for the individual police and local officials
in each of these cities in America to figure out how to solve this problem
and as the Chief Justice put it, municipalities have competing priorities, but it's
on them to figure out how to house the unhoused, how to build enough
shelters, and how to figure it out, not the Supreme Court. Okay.
And so do they just hear the testimony for just that one time or
will there be more? No? So, the way it works is the
Supreme Court cases rise to the level, the argument is heard, and if
the decision is made, a final decision is made, that's the final decision.
But if there's a reason that the Court has to not make a final
decision, it will send court the case back down to lower courts if necessary,
and then it's possible that it'll come back. But no, there's no
there's no rehearing, there's no second opportunity for argument before the court. If
the court reaches a final conclusion on the merits and sets a new precedent,
okay, And then when do we think we might expect a decision or is
it just kind of up in the air and they'll get to it when they
do. Well, No, we know an answer to that. We don't
know exactly when, but we know that this is the final week of the
term. Oh, the term starts in October. There'll be a couple of
more important case is that the court will hear through the end of the week.
There's are scheduled oral arguments, an abortion case tomorrow and of course the
big Trump immunity case on Thursday, and the case. When the court here's
cases this late in the term, we expect that they won't release the opinions
until the end of June. So that's what I would expect we'll hear from
the court all this homelessness question. Okay, man, it's gonna be a
big one because it could affect kind of every city in the country. You
bet all right, Thank you, Steven Portnoy, you got okay. Former
President Trump's criminal Hushmany trial resumes this morning in New York City, and I
have to tell you a little pull back the curtain. We had a little
technical difficulty this morning, so we weren't able to hook up with Peter Harralumbus
right now as we had planned. But I did get to talk to him
a little bit right before wake up started because I wanted to kind of get
a feeling of what it was like in the court room. Because it was
the first day of testimony, you know, the jurors, which seated yesterday
or last week, And so I was Peter tell us what it was like,
and he said it was really tense. He said the courtroom was packed,
and he said that it was interesting because with as full as the courtroom
was, and it's not that big that at some times it was hard to
even see Trump because there were so many Secret Service agents in the court with
him. But he said it was tense. He said that he gets the
feeling that Trump doesn't like other people to talk for him, and of course
his attorneys are speaking for him right now, and so he said he looked
frustrated, a little bit uncomfortable. And then they said that during part of
the introductions or the opening statements, that the prosecutors read that the transcript from
the Access Hollywood tape. That kind of made everybody a little squirmy. And
they also noticed that the jurors who are intently watching were offered notebooks in case
they wanted to take notes, and everybody raised their head. They're like,
yeah, yeah, yeah, I want to take notes keep track of this.
So that's that I thought was really kind of interesting. Then they said
that the guy who was the first on the stand, was the former head
of the National the National Enquirer, right, and they said that David Pecker's
testimony was kind of awkward. He said he was kind of trying to make
jokes and it was really just this sort of uncomfortable feeling. And then he
kind of delved into what the tabloid world is like and how they, you
know, they pay for their stories, unlike a regular newspaper which goes out,
investigates and does it that the tabloids do pay so people, the jurors
are learning more about the tabloid world. And then they broke and apparently they
had one of the jurors had a dental emergency, so they broke early.
So they're going to get back to it today and we will be talking to
David Moore about or not David, but to Peter Moore about what it's like
in the courtroom and some of the insights that he gets because there's not that
many of us who get to really get an inside look at the courtroom because
obviously no cameras. So super interesting and we will be talking with Peter again
with ABC. Let's get back to some of the stories coming out of the
KFI twenty four hour newsroom. A man from Santa Anna has been arrested for
allegedly stabbing his roommate to death during a fight. Police were called to the
home on Sunday. They found one man dead, the other gone. David
Espinoza had left the home on a bicycle. He was found a few blocks
away. And La County Sheriff's K nine is recovering from being shot on the
job. Four year old Belgian Malinois was helping find a guy who had been
threatening people with a gun in Compton on the evening of April seventeenth. Keld,
also known as Kid, found the guy under a tarp. The guy
opened fire, hitting Kid in his protective vest and shoulder. Kid was immediately
transported to VCA Lakewood Animal Hospital, where I am very thankful to say he
received exceptional veterinary. Sheriff Luna says the dog had a two inch gash and
received six stitches and is expected to go back to full duty. Steve Gregory
kay off I News. A judge in Arizona has declared a mistrial in the
case of a rancher accused of fatally shooting a migrant on his property near the
US Mexico border. Jurors yesterday could not reach a verdict. Prosecutor say George
Kelly shot at a group of men who arrived in the US looking for work.
Kelly claims he fired warning shots into the air, not directly at anyone.
Court records show the migrant killed had entered the US illegally several times and
had been deported most recently in twenty sixteen. President Biden's going to Florida to
talk about reproductive rights. ABC's Karen Travers says he'll be in Tampa later today
ahead of a new abortion band set to take effect in the state. Biden
campaign officials say he'll again blame former President Donald Trump for abortion bands. Since
the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, Florida's law will ban all abortions
after six weeks, except to save the life of the mother. She says,
there are also exceptions for rape and incest. The Budweiser Clydesdale's are headed
to Palm Desert to make some beer deliveries before the Stage Coach Country music Festival
begins. The iconic courses will arrive at the L Paseo Shopping District tomorrow where
they'll drop off Budweiser to restaurants along the Pesseo Path. The horses will then
make their annual appearance at stagecoach. I love the Budweiser Clydesdales so great that
they're back. Here's something else. I love American Idol. So it's on
Sunday nights. They're down to like the top twelve, I think, and
I think I've picked the winner. I have no doubts that this woman is
the most talented of all of them, and every time she sings, she
makes me cry. Her name is Abby Carter. Listen to her performance from
this week, So good bye world, where's the Dogs of Society? You
came? I'm gone, but oh I could listen to her voice all day.
Her name is Abby Carter. If you're not watching American Idol, you
might want to tune in for her. She is spectacular. Ellie Mayor Bass
has released her proposed twelve point eight billion dollar city budget for the twenty twenty
four to twenty five fiscal year. The new budget is two hundred and forty
two million less than this year's spending plan by Bass says the proposal is a
reset and includes sixty five million dollars in cuts to her signature inside Safe Program,
an increase of more than one hundred and thirty eight million dollars for the
LAPD and twenty three million dollars less for the LA Fire Department Death Row.
Inmates from San Quentin are being transferred to a prison in San Bernardino County,
and locals are not happy. So the official say the California Institution for Men
in Chino is in poor condition, and they're worried and inmate with nothing to
lose could escape. The aging facility sa Quenton will eventually be converted into a
rehab facility. The Angels have played and lost their ten thousandth game. The
Angels played their first game April eleventh, nineteen sixty one, coincidentally, also
against the Baltimore Orioles. The Angels have a four nine hundred and sixty seven
to FIVEY twenty nine record. The Angels lost game number ten thousand, four
to two at six oh five. It's handled on the news. We got
homeless, violence, and metro, all three big issues in LA wrapped up
into one. Right now, Let's say good morning to the host of How
to Money on KFI. It's Joel Larsgard Joel goals the gold is the hot
item right now. Oh yeah, it really is. It's so hot and
so hot. The cost is so hot right now makes you think of a
line from the movie Zoolander back in the day. But yeah, even Costco
is selling gold bars, and Costco is selling out almost immediately every time they
put them up for sale on their website. So there is an intense interest
in gold right now. And when you actually look at kind of recent returns,
gold is kind of up there with the overall stock market in recent years.
So there's I think a reason, like when the number goes up,
it piques more people's interests. Is the same thing that happens with bitcoin.
When bitcoin's on the rise, everyone's like, oh, should I invest in
bitcoin? And so yeah, I think it's on the minds of a lot
of people. And you know, whether or not you should invest in gold
depends, I think on a variety of factors. But the one thing you
have to be at least aware of when you invest in gold, specifically when
you invest in physical gold, like you're buying those gold bars on Costco's website,
is the friction in selling that gold, and so not just how difficult
it might be. You you can just list that thing on Facebook marketplace,
right, right, I mean I guess you could, right exactly. Yeah,
I'm selling gold bars, come on over here. It's like a target
on your back, right. But the friction and then the cost to you,
the inefficiency of buying and selling gold makes it especially physical gold makes it
less attractive of an investment. In my opinion. I get why some people
want to hold a little bit of gold in their portfolio, but the way
gold has been performing and the way people have been talking about gold, I
think is getting a lot more people interested, like ooh, I probably should
have a lot more exposure to gold in my investments, and that might not
be the case, so pass on it. Ors. Again, it depends
on what your goals are and what you're trying to do with your portfolio.
I think, especially for younger investors, gold is a distraction. The truth
is, gold is a shiny gold rock in many ways, right, And
it's not that it doesn't have any value. But if you are a younger
investor with many decades left in your time horizon, I would much rather have
you invested in most league stocks and businesses that are creating the next wave of
technology and innovation. I would rather have my future tied to those companies than
I would eyed to gold. But if you are, you know, in
those retirement years or getting close to those retirement ears, having some exposure to
gold can you can can at least help you as a as a as an
investor with with different needs. Right, So, so much depends on where
you're at in your investing horizon. But again it's important to note the frictional
cost and the friction and the cost associated with buying and selling gold. If
you want to have exposure to gold, I prefer people buy gold inside of
like a low cost ETF. That's the other thing is some of these ETFs
the race to especial so in exchange traded fund So it's it's basically you're owning
gold, but you don't actually have to keep it on premises, right,
which means less likely getting a less likelihood of getting robbed for that gold.
But also just it's easier to buy and sell. It's like you can buy
it and sell it just like you're trading a stock. Gotcha. Okay,
And as you were talking about getting closer to those that retirement age. You're
saying, if you're if you're getting ready to retire, you might want to
think a stick in an out just a little bit longer. So yeah,
there's this dual edge sword of one more year syndrome, right, And it's
like, oh, if I just work one more year, then all of
these great things will happen, and then I can retire in style. And
sometimes what that leads people to do is to working longer than they probably needed
to because they're too conservative. But I do think it's important to think about
the trade offs of working one more year. So first, you end up
saving more because you let's say you're working that year and you continue to toss
ten, twelve, fifteen percent into your retirement account. Boom, that's a
win, right, another year of contributions that can work for you. And
second, you need to save less for retirement because you've got one less year
to fund, which is a great news. And then you can die,
right, yes, exactly. Well yeah, well, let's say you're gonna
die at the same age. Right, it's not going to change the age
you die, but you've got one less year to fund because you wouldn't you
didn't take that year off. Then You've got more time for your investments to
compound, which is great. So you've got another year of hopefully market gains
that are allowing your investments to continue to grow. You can delay taking Social
Security a little bit longer, which means you're going to get a bigger check.
So all of these things would push you towards saying, yeah, maybe
I will stick it out for one more year. And depending on where you're
at kind of in the nest egg you've been able to build up, that
might be the right move. But but then the other thing you have to
factor in is life right, and so you have to say, well,
what do I want it? So maybe part time is a better way to
go. And I think that's a reasonable way for people to kind of back
off slowly from work instead of making it this all or nothing proposition. I
think the way we've talked about retirement in this country, it's not necessarily the
most helpful, the most healthy, And so maybe it's not either work full
time or not work at all. Maybe it's this gradual decline in how much
we work, allowing us to kind of maintain some of those connections and some
of that purpose that work can give us. While also saying I don't need
like a full size paycheck, and then it gives us maybe the best of
both worlds. Okay, so many decisions, so many decisions when it comes
to money, and you know, like there's a lot of times I wish
everything was just very cut and dry, but it's not. There's so much
nuances and that's why we appreciate you to help us, to help guide us
through these things. You're right, it's complex and sometimes it does feel overwhelming.
So anytime we can cut through the clutter with hopefully some good information and
wisdom, that's what that's what the goal is. And Joel is going to
help you cut through the clutter this weekend on how to Money with Joel.
It's Sunday from noon to two right here on KFI. You can also follow
him at how to Money Joel. Thank you, Joel. Thanks Amy.
The Dodgers are going to take on the Nationals this afternoon in Washington. The
first pitch goes out at three forty five. You can listen to every play
of every Dodgers game on AM five seventy LA Sports Live from the Galpin Motor
Broadcast Booth, and you can stream all the games in HD on the iHeartRadio
app keyword AM five seventy LA Sports Go Blue. A man has been booked
on suspicion of murder and connection with the stabbing death of a woman on a
metro train in Studio City. Please say the man repeatedly slashed the woman in
her sixties after stealing her purse early yesterday morning on the Universal City B line.
At least say the forty five year old man arrested is homeless. Express
is closing one hundred stores across the US as it files for Chapter eleven bankruptcy.
The retailer said it received a non binding letter of intent from a group
of investors to purchase it. The company has over five hundred stores worldwide.
The world famous Budweiser Clydesdales are getting ready for their annual appearance at Stagecoach.
The Country Music Festival is this weekend in the Coachella Valley. It's headlined by
Eric Church, Miranda Lambert and Morgan Wallen. A Dalmatian coach dog will accompany
the eight horse hitch and red Budweiser beer wagon to protect the horses and guard
the beer. Of course, at six oh five, it's handle on the
news. One hundred and fifty arrests have been made honor around a college campus
in New York as pro Palestinian protests continue and spread. At five point fifty,
ABC's Jim Ryan's gonna bring our headskun out of the clouds. When it
comes to our dreams of winning big with the Lotto jackpot, I'm buying my
ticket anyway. KFI Steve says artificial intelligence may decide what news stories you'll be
exposed to in the upcoming presidential election. AI has become all the rage,
and as society tries to decide how it fits into our daily lives, there
is an industry that wonders if it could change democracy. That industry journalism,
I think, especially with news and reporting, as an area to tread lightly.
So we've talked a little bit about on the editing side. As you're
you know, you already have the story you want to come in and pull
the relevant clips. That process can be easier if you're starting a little earlier
with the like story creation and trying to do research. I think that's an
area for cautions. Rachel Joy Victor is the co founder of fabric Ai,
a group that helps companies understand how to use AI and what to watch for.
I caught up with her at the annual convention of the National Association of
Broadcasters here in Las Vegas, and I wondered, as a journalist, should
I dabble in AI for research and storytelling. A lot of the models that
we're working with right now, if we're talking about chat GPT, we're talking
about these large language models are generative only, right, So they're based on
probability, they're based on kind of the system is scraping up all this information
from online and going in and finding patterns. So often we have enough data
that those patterns are accurate, but not always. Victor says the technology can
be fun, interesting and very useful, but when it comes to journalism,
she says, AI still needs a bassline. After all, how would AI
decipher the ethics of a story, protect a source, calculate the nuances of
the human condition. So if you go in and like actually start playing with
chat GBT or these kind of models and look for things around dates, around
specific names of people or places or books or things like that, it gets
the facts almost right, but not quite. So it's easy to feel like
confident and saying like, great, this generated output looks great, but that
little piece of that accuracy can be kind of really thrown off. I was
curious about other applications for AI in my world, so Victor referred me to
Audio Shape and their head of engineering Jonathan Lott, use AI to separate audio
in different formats. So we music space, we separate vocals, drums,
bass, guitar, different instruments, and now on the film space, we
have models that can actually separate dialogue from the music and effects. And then
we also do music removal as well, so those are the main offerings we
have. We also work on a model that actually can separate speakers, like
if you're doing interviews, you can actually isolate the two speakers if they're talking
over each other. That says they're now working on projects for the NFL and
the BBC. In fact, they've been separating tracks from old episodes of Doctor
Who so the series audio tracks can be recorded in other languages. So in
this case, AI can be an amazing Workhourse and speaking of the BBC,
Director General Tim Davie recently said the network will embrace AI, but only on
their terms. As we move to an Internet only world, we can shape
this tipping point to act for the benefit of the British public. We can
choose not to realize solely on US and Chinese tech companies who may not have
the interests of a shared British culture and our democratic, tolerant society at their
heart. This will require us to create unique algorithms to serve all that for
good, olgorithms and AI that bring us closer, not drive us apart.
Personalization of course, but not driven by a narrow commercial return. Judy Parnell's
the head of the BBC's Standards and Industry and says AI cannot be avoided,
but it can be harnessed for good to improve the process of news gathering and
to increase trust in the truth of their reporting. Here at KFI, we're
still exploring how AI may even work for what we do. We're certainly keeping
an eye on how other news organizations might use AI, and if it fits
for us, we may consider it. But for now we're doing news the
old fashioned way, personally checking, rechecking and verifying. Steve Gregory KFI News.
Thank you, Steve, it's one of the best in the business.
Let's get back to some of the stories coming out of the KFI twenty four
hour newsroom, and eleven year old boys been reported missing in Compton. Irvin
Diaz was last seen yesterday morning on North Bradfield Avenue near East Pixley's Street.
He's Latino, four foot eleven, about one hundred and twenty pounds, with
brown, brown eyes and brown hair. He was wearing a black shirt,
gray Dicky's pants, and black Nike shoes. The family of a man fatally
shot by La County Sheriff's deputies in Carson has filed a federal civil rights lawsuit
alleging excessive force. Deputies confronted the man at a gas station last summer after
a worker saw him yelling at the gas pumps. Attorney Michael Correo says the
Sheriff's department initially told Arturo Sernaz family that the deputies fired because they believed he
had a weapon. Now come to find out later that there's a very clear
video that shows that he was shot four times in the back. They're furious
angry. Coreo said yesterday. He's also calling on Da Gasconne's office to file
criminal charges against the deputy who fired the fatal rounds. The Sheriff's department has
not yet responded for comment. Chris Adler KFI news, a state senator from
Huntington Beach, wants animal shelters to post the number of animals they euthanize each
month. Surely they know the numbers, so what are they hiding? State
Senator Janet Wins says her two new bills would require a month report on euthanasia's
deaths, adoptions, and other animal treatment stats that are often kept hidden from
the public, and posing intakes, outtakes, and utilization numbers on website and
hosts shelters accountable. This then creates pressure for shelters to do venerians. When
also told the committee yesterday, legalizing trapped newter release programs would reduce cat populations
and euthanaser rates by neutering then returning cats to a community in which they were
already thriving in Orange County Corbin Carson k if I news. The Senate is
expected to vote today on a ninety five billion dollar foreign aid bill that includes
more than sixty billion dollars for Ukraine. Republican Congressman Tom Keane, who was
in Ukraine's capital yesterday, says he supports the bill. I'm confident though the
stringent oversight and accountabuilding measure in place to ensure that our aid is not subject
to fraud, corruption, or diverse and once on the battlefield, we know
that US provide weapons, will we put to good use. The bill,
which passed the House on Saturday, also has billions in funding for Israel and
Taiwan. A neutrality review of a UN agency helping Palestinian refugees has found Israel
never expressed concern about anyone on staff lists. It comes after Israel claimed a
dozen employees of UNRAW participated in the October seventh Hamas attack. The report found
that UNRAW has robust procedures to uphold neutrality, but also found some staff had
publicly expressed political views and certain textbooks contained problematic content. It says from twenty
twenty two to twenty four there were one hundred and fifty one allegations of neutrality
being breached at the agency. So yesterday they broke ground on the high speed
rail. It's going to go from Las Vegas to Rencho Cucamonga, and apparently
it's going to get you there in two hours, about half the time it
would take you to drive and you don't have to deal with traffic jams.
But it made me think, so here's something to chew on. It's a
funded brightline is the company who's building the tracks. Two hundred and eighteen miles
track is going to run along the fifteen The cost for California's high speed rail
project, which voters approved with ten billion dollars in funding in two thousand and
eight. The costs have absolutely exploded and that project has just barely started.
The full cost of putting in a train that would run from San Francisco to
La was originally estimated to be about forty billion dollars, but now those costs
have skyrocketed. So now they're saying it's going to cost between eighty eight and
one hundred twenty eight billion dollars to get this project completed. And guess what,
it's not going to be done until well, the first section of it.
It's not going to be done until twenty thirty. They're saying the first
one hundred and seventy one miles connecting Merced to Bakersfield, which why would anybody
ride that because it doesn't take you anywhere? Has gone up from twenty five
point seven billion dollars to at least thirty two billion dollars and again their whole
to have service begin in twenty thirty. The Bright Line project from Rancho Cucamonga
to Las Vegas twelve billion dollars. It's going to be two hundred and eighteen
miles, right. So the other one's one hundred and seventy one miles from
Bakersfield to Merced and it's going to cost like up to thirty two billion dollars.
This one is two hundred eighteen million dollars or two hundred and eighteen miles
twelve billion dollars. Construction is now begun and it's expected to be done in
time for the Summer Olympics in twenty twenty eight. Private versus public just something
to think about. La Mayor Bass has released her proposed multi billion dollar city
budget for twenty twenty four and twenty five. The new budget's two hundred and
forty two million dollars less than this year's spending plan. Bass says the proposal
is a reset and includes sixty five million dollars and cuts to her signature.
Inside Safe Program, a man's been convicted of ripping off seniors by getting him
involved in a fake community in Belize. Prosecutors say the guy I got two
couples and a woman to buy into a luxury resort community that was supposed to
have a hospital with US doctors, a championship golf course, a casino,
hotel, airport, marina, and a village with high end boutiques, restaurants,
cafes, and a grocery store. Well there was a development, but
none of those amenities, and the investors all lost their money. He's going
to be sentenced in May. And so much for the super bloom. Lots
of rain has colorful wildflowers covering southern California's deserts and bluffs, bluffs and open
spaces, but a lot of scientists say this year's flowers are not spectacular enough
to be called a super bloom. The scientists say that a true super bloom
is a once in a lifetime event. We're minutes away from handle on the
news this morning. It's up to the Senate now to pass or not to
pass a ninety five billion dollar foreign aid bill. The votes coming up.
And since we're talking about big money, let's talk to ABC's Jim Ryan.
I got my lotto ticket for Powerball, Jim one hundred and fifteen million dollars.
Megabut or Mega Millions is two hundred two million dollars to night. Yeah,
I'll probably win, huh probably. Yeah. The next drawing, I
think power Ball is tomorrow and it's one hundred and thirty million. I believe.
Oh was it up tow one hundred and thirty nowe yeah, because nobody
won last night. Okay, but plenty of people played. Plenty of people
do play. In fact, even if you didn't say I never play a
lottery, fifty percent of Americans buy at least one ticket every year, right,
So, whether it's an office pool or they're doing it on their own,
about half of Americans do play the lottery at least once a year.
Well, and I think of it as like it's two dollars. So if
I get one Mega Millions and one power Ball, that is a cup of
Starbucks coffee, and I can make my own coffee. So it's sort of
you know, it's not like I'm investing a lot in it, right,
So why do it anyway because I'm going to win? Okay? Right?
What if you're not going to win? There there are millions of cases of
people, billions maybe of people who tried to win, they didn't win,
and you know, at least scratch it all, and they go, okay,
well let's let's give it a shot. Some folks though to decide that,
yeah, you know, I didn't want I bought two tickets, but
neither one of them won. The tickets, the numbers didn't they didn't manche
the power ball or the whatever state lottery they're in, right, So this
woman says, I do have two tickets, but if I got them apart
right down the middle of then tape them together, it comes out as a
million dollar winning ticket. So the police say that's what she did. Her
name is Kira Enders, thirty six years old, lives in Pensacola. Went
to the Escambia County Lottery office there and presented this ticket and then swore she
wrote, you know, she filled up paperwork which swears that the ticket is
real in order to get her a million dollar winnings. But the Florida Lottery
officials immediately spotted the forgery and said, you know what, this isn't real,
and she said, sure, it's real and signed the paper and now
she's in jail, or she was in jail last week. Her boyfriend too,
Dakota Jones. Both of them were arrested in connection with this scheme.
Even though it didn't work. You know, they couldn't just walk away say
okay, you got me all right, so we won't do it again,
and they left. That's not the case. They faced serious charges, including
theft of one hundred thousand dollars, even though they didn't collect anything. How
are they facing the theft chargers? Well, it's forgery for one thing.
It's forgery that goes with that. And yes, even though they didn't they
were not able to pull this thing off. They tried to pull this thing
off, and so that constitutes theft, grand larceny and what are some of
the other things that people have tried to do. Well, there's a couple
last week in Iowa, roommates. Actually they're not married. They're not going
together, I guess, but roommates. The one roommate, his name is
Lars and Alvin hands Larson. The third he's got some legal problems there in
Iowa and he would have to pay back I suspect child support or something.
So that if you want a bunch of money, the state officials are going
to see that. They're going to say, hey, we're going to take
this money from you because you have to pay your whatever debt you owe.
So he says, tell you what, once, you go and cash this
in Sandy his roommates. So Sandy Crow goes and cashes it in, and
there's a picture of her grinning with the oversized check for thirty thousand dollars.
Well, you know, it turns out that then they got into a fight,
Candy in a roommate and the police were called. The police figured out
that it was all over this lottery ticket that Larson won, but that Sandy
turned in that too, is fraud in the lottery. It's not as serious
an offense as trying to turn in a million dollar ticket. So they lost
the thirty thousand dollars plus had to pay five hundred bucks on top of that.
Maybe they should change his last name to larceny. That's perfect. Why
didn't I think of that? Lars and need. There was a case last
year in Boston this father and son who ran a scheme for ten years,
ten years, millions of dollars worth of fraud. Committee they would purchase people.
Let's say that you were like mister larceny, and you had some debt
to the stage child's or for example. So this guy Ali Jafar and his
son Yusef, they would buy the ticket from you at a discount. Let's
say it's a million dollar ticket. They'd buy it from you for seven hundred
and fifty dollars, and then they would they would submit it for the full
million dollars. And they were doing this for a year after you. I'm
not sure how they were never caught, but eventually they were. It's crazy
that they even were able to get away with it in the first place.
Well, I'm gonna just do it the right way. I'm going to buy
my two dollars ticket and hope for the best. I know my odds are
like one in two hundred and ninety two. You went fantastic. If you
lose, you know, you lick your wins and save up another couple of
bucks and go buy it next time. Right, you got it. ABC's
Jim Ryan, thank you so much for the info. Jammy. All right,
this is KFI and kost HD two Los Angeles, Orange County. We
lead local live from the KFI twenty four hour newsroom for producer and and technical
producer KNO I'm Amy King. This has been your wake up call. If
you missed any wake up Call, you can listen anytime on the iHeartRadio app.
You've been listening to wake Up Call with me, Amy King. You
can always hear Wakeup Call five to six am Monday through Friday on kf I
Am six forty and anytime on demand on the iHeartRadio app.