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A little-known environmental organization founded by the heir of a billion-dollar fortune has quietly organized large grants for local news outlets to boost climate change coverage and, sometimes, hire new climate reporters. 

The North Carolina-based 1Earth Fund states on its website that it was founded to “fund cost-effective communication projects that can reach audiences across the political divide.” The group markets itself as a counter to “disinformation campaigns” funded by fossil fuel companies.

While little else is publicly shared about 1Earth Fund’s operations, the group adds on its site that it funds “projects like Connected Coastlines,” a nationwide climate reporting initiative in coastal states overseen by the Pulitzer Center. The project’s list of partners includes The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Boston Globe, Miami Herald, Seattle Times and Orlando Sentinel.

“The initiative is building a consortium of newsrooms and independent journalists across America to report on the local effects of erratic weather patterns on coastal populations using the latest climate science,” the Pulitzer Center states.

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“Currently, the Pulitzer Center is supporting 16 reporting projects and will cover climate change issues on every coastline in the mainland U.S. — the East Coast, Great Lakes, Gulf Coast and West Coast — along with Hawaii and Alaska,” it continues.

One such reporting project is titled “State of Change” and is based in North Carolina. The Pulitzer Center highlights six grantees who are journalists tasked with showcasing “the effects of climate change: sea level rise, ocean acidification, coastal erosion, more powerful storms, global warming, etc., and its impact on communities and individuals.” Their work has largely been published by a local PBS affiliate.

There are additional Connected Coastlines projects in Florida, Maine, California, Louisiana and Alaska.

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1Earth Fund is also listed as a sponsor of the Climate Reporting Masterclass, a project designed to help journalists report on climate change. Partners of the project include government agencies such as the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

In addition, 1Earth Fund has partnered with various non-profit organizations to send direct grants to newsrooms located throughout the Southeast. The grants include a $65,000 grant to USA Today affiliate Wilmington News-Star in North Carolina, a $50,000 grant to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (AJC) in Georgia and a grant to The News & Observer and The Herald-Sun in North Carolina. Articles published in the Winston-Salem Journal in North Carolina have also been funded by a 1Earth Fund grant.

Articles produced with financial support from 1Earth Fund grants or by reporters funded by such grants often promote green energy and warn of dangers posed by global warming. 

Examples published over the last 12 months include a News & Observer story with the headline “Sea change: NC is starting to make progress on wind energy, but lags other states” and a Winston-Salem Journal article titled “100% green energy in NC would cut costs, spark job growth, study says.”

1Earth Fund’s founder, meanwhile, is Roy Richards Jr., the current chairman of the Southwire Company, a massive electrical wire and cable company that provides products for renewable energy projects. Richards Jr.’s father founded Southwire, which has grown into a billion-dollar company, in 1937. The company has committed to various climate goals and to support green energy development.

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Still, the newspapers that have received financial support from 1Earth Fund have said the group doesn’t influence their editorial judgment. When asked about 1Earth Fund’s ties to the Southwire Company, a spokesperson for the AJC said the outlet maintains “strict editorial independence at all times to protect journalistic integrity.”

“In addition, we include a disclosure to every climate story supported through this partnership,” Jaime Sarrio McMurtrie, AJC’s director of development and community relations, told Fox News Digital in an email. “The funders of this grant have never made any attempt to review, influence or shape our coverage, nor would we entertain efforts to do so.”

However, a resume belonging to Sarah Barr — who is both a climate science research fellow for the Environmental Protection Agency and an independent contractor for the 1Earth Fund, according to her LinkedIn page — provides additional insight into 1Earth Fund’s operations.

Barr’s resume states that she helped 1Earth Fund achieve its mission of “raising the public mandate for climate action,” researched which outlets to “target” with climate initiatives, identified the most prominent newspapers in swing electoral districts, tracked “journalist output of climate stories” before and after they received funding to ensure effectiveness, and ensured that potential collaborators aligned with 1Earth Fund’s stances.

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“It’s advocacy dressed up as news reporting,” Brian Balfour — the senior vice president of research at the North Carolina-based free market think tank John Locke Foundation — told Fox News Digital in an interview. “I find it problematic that these pieces are published on news pages rather than opinion pages because there’s a lot of advocacy contained in these articles.”

“1Earth Fund is funded by a chairman of a company that seeks to gain financially from more of a transition to renewable energy,” Balfour continued. “The articles are sympathetic and almost promotional to renewable energy sources.”

Peter Daniel Sr., the chairman of the NC Ag Partnership, a North Carolina agriculture trade group, added that the newspapers receiving funding from 1Earth Fund have recently published articles critical of the state’s agriculture industry. He noted that many of the outlets that received grants are owned by McClatchy, a large media conglomerate that owns local papers nationwide.

“North Carolina proudly leads the country in supplying healthy and affordable poultry products. That our state helps feed the world should be a source of pride,” Daniel Sr. told Fox News Digital. “Yet the McClatchy media operation, whose reporters are literally paid by a secretive network of climate activists called the 1Earth Fund, launched a full-frontal assault on our state’s poultry industry last month.”

“We do not know if those donors pressed McClatchy to attack the industry,” he continued. “We do not know if the news organization cast the poultry industry in a negative light because it hopes to receive yet more money from the 1Earth Fund.” 

He said that McClatchy has been tight-lipped about the details of its relationship with 1Earth Fund.

“The notion that McClatchy doesn’t consider the agenda of the special interest donors who pay their reporters’ salaries is ridiculous,” Daniel Sr. said. “We’re entering a startling new frontier when secretive donor networks pay journalists who claim their work is ‘objective.’”

1Earth Fund, McClatchy and the Pulitzer Center didn’t respond to requests for comment.

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As many Illinoisans wait with bated breath to see if the state Supreme Court upholds its block on the elimination of cash bail, a local sheriff said he is hopeful the reform will be put to rest for good.

“We were very happy about the decision,” Jefferson County Sheriff Jeff Bullard told Fox News. “We hope that the Illinois Supreme Court takes a look at the language in the state constitution and sees how the elimination of cash bail in Illinois is a clear violation … and that they uphold the Kankakee County decision.” 

Illinois’ Safety, Accountability, Fairness and Equity-Today (SAFE-T) Act took effect on Sunday, but the state’s Supreme Court halted a key provision — the elimination of cash bail at the last minute. The high court issued a stay to “maintain consistent pretrial procedures throughout Illinois” after a lower court declared the bail measure unconstitutional.

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Circuit Judge Thomas Cunnington’s had ruled in favor of Illinois prosecutors and sheriffs around the state who filed a lawsuit aiming to stop the pre-trial release and bail reforms in the SAFE-T Act. The state is appealing the decision.

“As criminal justice leaders in the state, many of us opposed this legislation based on the public safety aspect,” Bullard told Fox News. “We were really glad that the state’s attorney in my county and over 60 others joined in a lawsuit against the state.”

No hearing date has been set, but the justices announced plans for an expedited process to review the appeal and make a final ruling. 

Bail reform advocates argue that the current cash bail system bases the freedom of people awaiting trial largely on their ability to pay money and have said it disproportionately affects communities of color. 

Bullard, however, said a defendant can petition the court to declare themselves indigent, or unable to afford cash bail. The judge then has the discretion to accept or reject the petition and can reduce the amount of bail or release them on their own recognizance.

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“The system is already in place with our current system to take care of people who claim to be poor,” he said. “And obviously, with the system based on handling crimes one at a time in front of a judge, race is not factored into that at all.”

Still, other provisions that took effect Sunday include limiting when defendants can be deemed flight risks, allowing defendants under electronic monitoring to leave home for 48 hours before they can be charged with escape, and, most concerning to Bullard, allowing the investigation into anonymous complaints against officers. 

“Disciplining police officers based on anonymous complaints … that violates the constitutional rights of a police officer who has the right of due process to face their accuser,” the sheriff told Fox News. “A police officer is not a lower-class citizen.” 

The SAFE-T Act — which one mayor called “America’s most dangerous law” — includes many other reforms on police conduct and policy, like mandating the use of body cameras, prohibiting police access to any military equipment and streamlining the decertification process for officers. 

“A lot of the things that are in the SAFE-T Act come from advocates that are anti-police,” Bullard said. “Law enforcement leaders are really taxed not to align themselves with this thinking, not to think that there’s compromise when there’s a group of people that just believe that cops are racists, that cops are murderers, that cops are all these ugly things.” 

“I tell my people that while they fight the battles on the street to keep the public safe, I will fight every chance I get with Springfield or Washington, D.C., or wherever to make sure that they can do their job as safely as possible while they respect the constitutional civil liberties of our citizens,” Bullard told Fox News. 

To watch the full interview with Sheriff Bullard, click here. 

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Cybersecurity experts have warned that 2023 could usher in a new era of concerns over cyberattacks, which are expected to rise sharply this year as new threats emerge faster than ever.

“Myriad forces are causing the uptick in cyberattacks,” John Wilson, a senior fellow responsible for Threat Research at Agari by Fortra and the head of the Agari Cyber Intelligence Division, wrote in Forbes last month. “The Russia-Ukraine war and rising poverty and food insecurity around the world are major contributors.”

Wilson’s warning comes as 2023 looks poised to become a record-breaking year for cyberattacks. According to an analysis by Cybersecurity Venture, the global annual cost of cybercrime could top $8 trillion in 2023.

That number could even underestimate the problem, according to numbers from Security Intelligence, who estimated that U.S.-based financial institutions alone lost close to $1.2 billion in ransomware attacks in 2021, an almost 200% increase over the previous year. If that rate increases at the same pace, global losses from cybercrime could be as high as $16 trillion in 2023.

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However, financial institutions are not the only target for cybercriminals, who have used new technologies and exploited weaknesses in systems to target everyone from small businesses to individual people.

With those crimes expected to explode in 2023, here are five cybercrimes to be on the lookout for this year.

QR codes have become a common sight for users of smartphones in recent years, being used to quickly transmit data such as shipping information or a restaurant’s menu.

However, experts are warning that malicious QR codes are on the rise, potentially exposing people to dangerous websites that could download their personal data or enable hackers to track their every move via apps that are geolocation-enabled.

“Cybercriminals tamper with both digital and physical QR codes to replace legitimate codes with malicious codes,” reads an FBI warning on the growing threat.

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According to the FBI, the malicious codes could prompt users to a fake website or application to input log-in or financial information that would allow the attacker to easily steal money.

“Malicious QR codes may also contain embedded malware, allowing a criminal to gain access to the victim’s mobile device and steal the victim’s location as well as personal and financial information,” the warning reads. “The cybercriminal can leverage the stolen financial information to withdraw funds from victim accounts.”

To avoid falling victim, the FBI advises smartphone users never to download an application when prompted to do so after scanning a QR code. The agency also suggests staying vigilant of what links QR code scans prompt you to open and never to use third-party applications to scan codes, sticking instead to the built-in QR code scanning function native to your smartphone.

Ransomware attacks, which threaten to compromise a user’s personal data or block access to it until a ransom is paid, are almost as old as the internet itself. However, experts are warning that the old tactic is expected to become a bigger threat in 2023, with cybercriminals adapting to the tools people have depended on to keep them safe.

“Ransomware is worsening, even more so than we predicted,” Switzerland-based cybersecurity company Acronis warned in its 2022 Cyberthreats report.

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The report painted a grim picture for 2023, estimating that global ransomware damages will exceed $30 billion. Meanwhile, a Cybereason report this year found that roughly 73% of organizations were the target of at least one ransomware attack in 2022, up from 55% in 2021.

“Increasing complexity in IT continues to lead to breaches and compromises highlighting the need for more holistic approaches to cyber-protection,” the Acronis report said. “The current cybersecurity threat landscape requires a multi-layered solution that combines anti-malware, EDR, DLP, email security, vulnerability assessment, patch management, RMM, and backup capabilities all in one place.”

Global supply chains that were severely hindered during the COVID-19 pandemic have been working to slowly recover, but 2023 will test them once again as cybercriminals look to take advantage of their vulnerability.

According to an analysis by BlackBerry, four out of five organizations faced threats to their software supply chain over the past year. The results of those vulnerabilities inflicted enormous cost, BlackBerry said, with 58% of those organizations facing operational disruptions and data loss, 55% experiencing intellectual property loss, and 49% suffering financial loss.

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That problem is not going away anytime soon, BlackBerry Vice President for Product Security Christine Gadsby said, who warned organizations to be diligent in monitoring their own cybersecurity.

“Unknown components, and a lack of visibility on the software supply chain, introduce blind spots containing potential vulnerabilities that can wreak havoc across not just one enterprise, but several, through loss of data and intellectual property and operational downtime, along with financial and reputational impact,” Gadsby said. “How companies monitor and manage cybersecurity in their software supply chain must rely on more than just trust.”

A push by environmentalists to curb emissions by transitioning to electric vehicles has caused a boom in the EV industry, with electric vehicles becoming more mainstream over the last few years.

However, many of the vehicles contain technology that is vulnerable to attack by cybercriminals, who could target a vehicle’s display, navigation, climate control, and even autonomous driving functions.

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“With new cars and electric vehicles being more connected and automated than ever before, they are also at higher risk of cybersecurity attacks,” Steve McEvoy, vice president for automotive at Expleo, told Wards Auto earlier this year. “EV vehicles do not need to be inherently more at risk than a modern ICE vehicle – it is just that an EV vehicle to maximize its performance will naturally be using the most modern electrical architecture, including all manner of connectivity, which by its nature can create a greater level of risk.”

Attacks on the nation’s vulnerable electric grid could soon lead to power outages, fuel shortages and hinder energy production.

Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine has served as a case study in just how dangerous attacks on a country’s power infrastructure can be, plunging Ukraine’s civilian population into darkness and cold as brutal winter temperatures spread across the country.

Experts have warned for years that the U.S. electrical grid is increasingly vulnerable to attacks, whether it be a cyberthreat from a state actor such as Russia or an international terrorist group.

“Will it surprise me if at some point an electric company has an outage because of a cyberattack? No. If that doesn’t happen within the next five years, I’d be very surprised,” Danny Jenkins, CEO of cybersecurity firm ThreatLocker, said in an interview with Forbes last year.

The Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has been preparing for such a possibility since 2015, investing $118 million in a project called Rapid Attack Detection, Isolation and Characterization Systems (RADICS).

The program, which ran through 2020, offered 15 utility companies the opportunity to test for vulnerabilities and drill for the event of an attack in realistic scenarios, which experts called an eye-opening experience for the companies.

However, other experts argue the U.S. still has not done enough to prevent what could turn into a devastating attack.

“How at risk is this country? Maybe a better question is: How much have we done to prevent something like those scenarios at RADICS from happening?” Ang Cui, founder of Red Balloon Security, told Bloomberg earlier this year. “I think it’s pretty clear that we haven’t done nearly enough.”

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Some of the tiniest humans on Earth struggle for warmth all year long as they face neonatal hypothermia in hospitals that may not be equipped with specific medical equipment.

Grace Hsia Haberl, a UPS vehicle asset specialist in Michigan, has developed the technology for an incubator blanket as part of her material science engineering capstone project in college.

To date, the resulting product, Warmilu, has warmed more than 37,700 babies in over 19 countries, she said.

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“I learned that around the globe, 140 babies die every day from hypothermia-related causes,” Hsia Haberl, 32, told Fox News Digital. 

“That really struck me because I was born preterm and [at] low birth weight,” she said.

“So if I had been born in any of these resource-scarce countries, I would’ve died. Being so small … the incubator where I spent my first 11 days saved my life.”

Hsia Haberl’s personal circumstances inspired her to create a robust, safe concept that could help others.

“It gave me a powerful drive and almost personal mission to provide infants and the teams serving them [with] the support they needed because I often reminded myself that my parents or [I] could have been in their shoes,” she said. 

Neonatal hypothermia occurs when a newborn’s body temperature is reduced to less than 36.5°C or 97.7°F. It’s a global problem in preemies born both at hospitals and homes, especially in developing countries, the NIH said.

Lawrence Fordjour, M.D., is a neonatologist and clinical associate professor of pediatrics at SUNY Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn, New York. Through the Making Every Baby Count Initiative (MEBCI), he and others are working to improve the survival of sick and small newborns in Sub-Saharan Africa, where there’s an inability to purchase incubators.

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Warmilu blankets are part of their strategy, he said.

“It allows us to transport the babies and resuscitate the babies in areas where there is a deficiency in providing thermal care,” Fordjour told Fox News Digital. 

Cost-effectiveness and ease of use are two reasons that Fordjour said Warmilu is working in hospitals that lack the resources for premature babies, he said. 

“We use something similar here in the United States, but it’s disposable and [has a] one-time use,” Fordjour said. 

A single Warmilu “can be reused 100 times. You can reactivate the gel and use it over and over again. So, it’s definitely cost-effective. It provides warmth for at least two or three hours for the babies once it’s activated.”

The feedback from doctors and nurses in Ghana confirms Warmilu’s ability to get the job done effectively, he said.

“The survival is better,” Fordjour said. “The providers really acknowledge the benefits of the product. It’s making a big difference.”

Warmilu stands for “Warm, I love you,” Hsia Haberl told Fox News Digital. 

In 2011, she and a team of engineering students at the University of Michigan designed and developed the blanket. It generates non-electric, regulated and long-lasting warmth for infants at risk of becoming hypothermic.

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It consists of a cozy blanket that’s specially designed to cradle a premature infant and an InstaWarmer heat pack, which can be reused up to 100 times, according to Hsia Haberl.

Warmilu’s development continued on through successes and challenges, Hsia Haberl said.

She visited hospitals around the world and often found resource-scarce teams providing warming care for infants on older or broken incubators — or no incubators at all.

Sometimes there were three to six infants placed in one incubator.

“These hospitals would often deliver and care for double the number of infants that might be cared for at the standard U.S. hospital,” Hsia Haberl said.

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Hsia Haberl said she’s traveled to India, Israel, Uganda and Kenya to learn about hospital staffs’ challenges in infant and maternal health.

The team then built a prototype, sought grants and other funding — with encouragement from members of the U.S. and global medical community who knew the need.

In 2017, Warmilu was awarded a U.S. patent — but there was still a long way to go, Hsia Haberl said.

As production, distribution and fundraising pressed forward, Hsia Haberl said she suddenly hit a roadblock that turned into an opportunity.

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“We had an order fall through with one of our ministries of health, and that’s when all of a sudden UPS came into my life,” she said.

“Not only were they able to help us break into these countries — we were in India, Kenya and Uganda at the time — but they gave us our first business shipping account.”

In 2018, Hisa Haberl began working at UPS as a package handler, loading three to five brown trucks a day with 200-400 packages in each. 

She was a small-framed 28-year-old at the time — competing with Eastern Michigan University football players to land a very physical job, she said.

“Most of [my paychecks] went straight to my seamstresses and my warming pack production team to make the blankets,” Hisa Haberl said.

But she said she quickly found out that working for UPS was more than just a job.

“We have a signed business account with them [UPS] and they gave us discounts and deals and resources that [we could not] get through other shipping companies,” she said.

Hsia Haberl credits her work at UPS for other aspects of Warmilu’s growth.

“I learned things like how to file customs paperwork as a small business owner, how to ship to countries like the Democratic Republic of the Congo or South Africa or Ghana. And that was tremendously helpful because, prior to my role at UPS, I lost $30,000 on an order because I messed up on my customs paperwork,” she added.

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UPS employees have even volunteered to be part of the effort by tracing and cutting fabric for the blankets that are now saving lives, Hsia Haberl said.

Hsia Haberl’s coworkers told Fox News Digital that her hard work and spirit inspires others. In addition to working at UPS and running Warmilu, Hsia Haberl is an adjunct lecturer at the University of Michigan.

“It’s amazing how she’s able to balance all those things in her life,” said Joe Zywol, a UPS industrial engineering coordinator who has worked with Hsia Haberl. 

“She always brings 150% energy — and people feed off that.”

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Michael Scott, a UPS corporate communications supervisor, said, “Her energy’s like a bolt of lightning. Grace is one of those people that when they walk into a room, you notice them. She’s on a mission to help people and she’s doing exactly what she set out to do.”

Warming babies in Ukraine is Hsia Haberl and Warmilu’s next big project.

It’s already underway now.

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“There are areas that don’t have electricity right now because of the bombing that’s happened,” Hsia Haberl said. 

“The Ukraine winter is cold and many maternity hospitals have moved their core teams and care facilities underground to protect patients from Russian bombs.”

Hsia Haberl said that as an engineer, it has meant a lot to her to work on “big and audacious” problems and come up with potential solutions.

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When asked what advice she has for students and young entrepreneurs, she said, “Step on up and really find ways where, if you see a problem in the real world, don’t just let it sit.”

She added, “Ask yourself: Is there an actionable step I could take to try to solve that problem?”

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Germany is working on legislation to enable the use of the much-discussed technology of underground carbon storage, a top government official said Thursday, adding that it is preferable to releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Speaking to an industry group in Norway, Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck, who is also Germany’s economy and climate minister, pointed to the prospects of a “new market” for carbon capture and storage, particularly in the lime and cement industry.

The technology has yet to be deployed at scale. Opponents maintain that it is unproven and has been less effective than alternatives such as solar and wind at decarbonizing the energy sector.

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Habeck, a member of the environmentalist Green party, said that “we are no longer in a situation (where) we can pick and choose.”

“Putting CO2 under the ground is quite simply better than releasing it into the atmosphere,” he said. “For this reason, Germany is now working on a carbon management strategy in order to create the legislation for the use of such technologies in this year, by mid-2023.”

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Data published on Wednesday by a respected environmental think tank indicated that Germany likely missed its target for reducing greenhouse gas emissions again last year, despite a big effort by the new government to expand renewable energy use.

The government has acknowledged that achieving the next big climate milestone — a reduction of emissions by 65% in 2030 compared with 1990 levels — will be a major challenge. Germany, which is home to many energy-intensive industries, aims to cut its emissions to “net zero” by 2045.

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The parents of North Carolina 11-year-old Madalina Cojocari were formerly indicted by a grand jury Tuesday for failing to report the girl missing for more than three weeks, as prosecutors reportedly pointed to a statute enacted in response to the 2008 Casey Anthony case in Florida years ago.

Cojocari’s been missing for 45 days as of Thursday after the girl was last seen on video exiting a school bus with other children on Nov. 21 by her home in the upscale Charlotte suburb of Cornelius. 

Her mother, 37-year-old Diana Cojocari, and the girl’s stepfather, 60-year-old Christopher Palmiter, each were indicted by a grand jury Tuesday on the charge of failing to report the disappearance of a child to law enforcement. That’s the same charge the pair were first arrested for nearly three weeks ago on Dec. 17, but prosecutors reportedly newly pointed to a state statute known as Caylee’s Law Tuesday. The indictment now advances the case to superior court. 

State Rep. Kelly Hastings, a Republican, said he sponsored the bill years ago in response to concerned constituents asking what would happen should something resembling the Anthony case happen in North Carolina. In 2008, Casey Anthony, then a 22-year-old single mother in Orlando, was charged with murdering her two-year-old daughter, Caylee, whom she failed to report missing for weeks. The girl’s skeleton remains weren’t found until months late, and Anthony ultimate escaped conviction in 2011. 

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When his team started to research North Carolina statute, Hastings said they recognized that “North Carolina had a loophole and didn’t have a time constraint on the reporting,” WSOC-TV reported. “That was a little surprising, but we clarified that and got it addressed in the statutory language,” he said.

In the Cojocari case, a school resource officer and counselor tried several times to contact the sixth-grader’s mother about extended absences, and the woman eventually agreed to bring her daughter to school. Instead, she showed up alone on Dec. 15, according to Cornelius Police Capt. Jennifer Thompson. 

That’s when the parents admitted they hadn’t seen the girl for three weeks since Nov. 23, according to the FBI. Palmiter reportedly took a trip to Michigan to visit family around that same time. 

The mother and stepfather remain held on $250,000 and $200,000 bonds respectively, but a judge ordered that the parents surrender their passport should they be released. The mother and daughter immigrated to the U.S. from the eastern European country of Moldova, where Palmiter also reportedly has family, and the couple and girl have resided in Cornelius, North Carolina, since 2017. 

The FBI cited more than 250 leads in the case and released a handwritten note from the girl’s other family pleading for information that might lead to her safe return. 

Investigators reportedly are focusing on the firepit in the backyard of the family’s two-story brick home not far from Lake Norman where couch cushions were burned around the time the girl went missing in November unbeknownst to police at the time. Last week, a court temporarily sealed search warrants related to the girl’s disappearance until at least March in order to preserve the integrity of the investigation, according to the Mecklenburg County District Attorney’s Office. 

When pressed by law enforcement on why she waited to report her daughter missing, the mother allegedly remarked that she felt doing so sooner could “cause conflict” between her and the girl’s stepfather, WCNC reported. The elder Cojocari also allegedly told investigators that she believed Palmiter “put her family in danger” but did not elaborate.

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