today on getting answers. a shakeup in the skies. alaska airlines has reached an agreement to acquire hawaiian airlines at a nearly $2 billion mega deal. and that big news could affect your travel plans in the future. then, most of us know we should eat more vegetables, fruits and whole grains. but now a new study from stanford is proving it by

putting twins to the test. what researchers found about the link between diet and heart health. but first up, if you live, work in or visit san francisco, you know there are several chronic issues facing the city right now. drugs crime, homelessness and businesses leaving downtown. those topics are a focus of take action. san francisco, a one hour live special streaming tonight at 7 p.m. wherever you stream abc7 news. you're watching getting answers. thanks so much for joining us on this monday. i am julian glover focusing on san francisco's challenges in finding solutions is a key part of our commitment here at abc7 to build a better bay area. that's why tonight we'll be putting questions directly to mayor london breed police chief bill scott and district attorney brooke jenkins . abc7 news reporter lyanne melendez who's one of the moderators, gives us a look at the struggles those who live and work in san francisco face every day. >> san francisco has problems can be summed up in four words all intricately connected drugs,

crime, homelessness and exodus as in the downtown area. let's start out with a drug crisis. according to the medical examiner from january to october 2023, there have been 692 accidental overdoses, yet convicting drug dealers has been a challenge. >> drug dealing has not been historically seen as something that's a serious crime. according to the dea, there are more than 500 cases in bench warrant status. >> this means that people who have been arrested, then released have not come back to court. >> people have to feel that there is a risk to their criminal behavior. and to the extent that they learn that they can be arrested over and over again and simply be released within 24 hours to go do it again, that's not teaching them anything. they believe they can get away with it. and so they continue the behavior when it comes to all crimes. >> recent data show that car break-ins and burglaries are down, but how much of that is because people are so frustra rated? they have stopped reporting them to police

property crime is typically he doesn't have consequences as other types of crimes. >> chief william scott has spoken on several occasions to abc7 political insider phil matier on policing a city despite a drastic shortage of officers. >> so we have 1200 for the whole nine yards. >> it comes to about how many a day a shift that we really are. >> you're looking at approximately about 300 officers. what effect is that having on on on policing? well, it's definitely it definitely is a strain to keep up with the calls for service. >> it's a strain to keep up with the demand of what our residents and community members want in the city. >> when it comes to the unhoused . the budget for the city department of homelessness and supportive housing in fiscal year 2023 was a whopping $672 million. yet on any given night, there are about 3400 people living in shelters and about

4400 on the streets. and so why is it so hard for san francisco to solve its homeless problem? so you would prefer to live out on the streets than get shelter? >> that's correct, ma'am. how is it that bad? yes, it is. yes, it is. it's awful how they treat you like garbage or or is it like former mayor willie brown said the homeless issue is not designed to be solved. >> it is designed to be perpetuate. >> and we cannot continue to make homelessness the number one political issue in our city. and so that one politician is trying to solve it, while another politician who wants to take their place is actually trying to undercut them, because the worse it gets, the better off their chances are. and so we need to have accountability from everyone. >> business closures downtown are also of great concern to the city. >> we're going to have millions and millions of extra square feet that are won't get filled for decades and mean maybe not ever during the.com bust.

>> 18,000,000ft■!s of business space downtown emptied out and it took that sector of our economy ten years to recover. the situation today after covid is much worse, as leon melendez, one of the moderators of take action, san francisco tonight, obviously joining us live now in studio to talk more about it. >> i'm so excited that you're going to be a part of this because you've been reporting here in san francisco for so long, you know the issues inside and out. and there are four key issues that you all are really zeroing in on tonight, homelessness, crime, businesses leaving downtown san francisco and what's the fourth one? drug use of the open air drug use. >> yeah, that's probably one of the most important ones. yeah. and they're all intertwined. absolutely so, you know, drug use is very interesting because a lot of people say, you know, the city didn't do enough to really focus on helping people during the pandemic. and so what happened was we had people already using fentanyl, but they

were using other drugs as well. and so when basically the city, i won't say gave up, but really ignored, if you will, is the criticism a lot of people then just went on to fentanyl and that's the problem now. i mean, it was bad before the pandemic and now much worse. and so you have when you talk about drug issues, you have people. well, what about treatment? how hard is it to get to these people, to reach them at this level? well, and you ask those people who are boots on the ground there and they will say really, really, really hard, ed, because they're so addicted. and let me tell you, fentanyl is not heroin. you know, fentanyl is very addictive . it's very potent. and it takes people a long time to get, you know, away from that drug. and a lot of people, you ask them, do you want help? how can i help

you and not me? but those people who are advocates and they will say, no, not right now. i mean, you know, there is hope for all those people, but it's very hard. julian, you know, and also you have issues for about, for example, should we some people say harm reduction. that's very controversial. >> clean needles and things. >> right. right. and, you know, a lot of people say, yes, we do need the clean needles because we don't want another aids epidemic. that's right. we want to help people and but at the same time, inside those harm reduction kits, you know, the criticism is that they have aluminum foil and pipes and they you know, the people who are for harm reduction kits say there is a reason why we include that there. but at the same time, others say, well, we're enabling them. and so really, you know, so inside those kits, there is no documentation, there's no

brochure, there's no way to really say to people, do you want help? do you want rehab? and that's where a lot of people say, you know, the department of health is over here and the mayor is over here. she wants rehab, but we're how do we get you know, in the middle there? yeah, she's the boss. >> and those two issues of drug use and obviously unhoused people living on the streets. so it's so are exposed for everyone to see. it directly affects businesses and it's been a tough time to be a mom and pop shop in downtown san francisco in the financial district where we are, for example, for it's tough to stay afloat. >> it's never recovered for a lot of these small businesses as a lot of the restaurants that it rely on people coming back to work. it has been a disaster continues to be a disaster. yeah. and i really feel for them and they will say, what is the city doing for us? what is the city doing to bring back business cases and how do you encourage, you know, the mayor

at the beginning said, well, we will, you know, try to encourage large private businesses to come back and to really allow workers to come back full time. but that really hasn't happened. it's i don't think it's ever going to happen. and even some city workers are not coming back full time. and a lot of people out there, our viewers don't even know that some some city workers work from home and so it's multiple. yeah and they don't want to lose those people to the private sector. i understand that. but at the same time, these businesses are suffering and all this square footage that we have, and that's taxes that aren't being collected or won't be collected. >> and we look at those bart ridership numbers, still only about 45% of those pre-pandemic levels. that's one easy way to tell if people are actually coming back to the city. they're not right now. >> we were not to mention muni muni two. >> exactly. and we were just talking about apec while your

piece was airing and how that really was another blow for those mom and pop shops that just did not have any foot traffic. however light the usual foot traffic, they're now used to is for a week right. and they're still trying to rebound from that. right. >> right. so they lost some businesses lost about a week, some people said we were across the street from the moscone center. we thought we were going to have mega business, but that wasn't the case. and a lot of them also said, you know, our shipments couldn't be delivered because it was closed, so we didn't have enough food, we didn't have beverages. so again, apec was not a good, you know, look for them at all home closeness is another issue. big big. you know, it's been an issue in san francisco for a very long time. we're also going to tackle that issue and crime i mean they're all homelessness, crime, drugs and then the effects of all those three on the downtown all interconnected. >> we only have about 30s left. yeah. what are you hoping to

hear from the mayor? from the police chief? from the plan attorney. a plan in one word. a plan. a plan. >> and really tell people in san francisco, we've got your back. we are doing this, and we are moving forward. and this is what we're going to do for our city and for you. >> okay. well hopefully we will hear that plan when you hear from them tonight here at 7 p.m. leanne, we appreciate it. thank you. thanks for being here. of course, you can watch take action, san francisco with leanne abc7 news anchor reggie aqui and abc7 news insider phil matier. it all streams live for you tonight at seven. mayor breed, police chief scott and district attorney jenkins will join them to answer those direct questions from abc7 news about the biggest issues facing san francisco and what does it mean for the future of the city. well a vegan diet and heart health. the stanford researchers put a new twist on the connection by testing twins. up next, two nutrition expert explains how they proved that a simple change can lead to a longer, healthi

they follow 22 sets of identical twins. one group ate a vegan diet and they had some major health benefits. joining us live now to tell us more about it is christopher gartner, nutrition scientist and professor of medicine at stanford and a set of twins who participated in the study. gene and janet, thank you all for being here. i can't hear you right now, hoping that it's just a temporary technical glitch. okay. they tell me that you all can hear us. don't worry about the zoom settings. you're all good, professor. i'd love to start with you. tell us about the results of the study. the twins that ate vegan saw changes

in everything from blood sugar to cholesterol. walk us through these findings. well and to be honest, the changes were somewhat more modest than that. >> so let's not exaggerate their ldl cholesterol dropped a lot by more than 10% and they didn't have much room for improvement. so that was maybe even bigger than expected. their fasting insulin dropped by about 20. and again, they were pretty healthy. so that was a pretty big jump in their they lost a few pounds and so it was about 3% of their body weight. so all the changes that were statistically significant favored the vegan group. but a lot of things didn't change. their blood sugar didn't change their blood pressure didn't change. but the things that did favored the vegan group. in just eight weeks, in just eight weeks, we'll get to that in a bit because it is remarkable that the changes were rather moderate, right? >> they were significant to talk about in just eight weeks of changes. gene and janet, i want to talk to you now. what was it like for you to be a part of this study to you know, use the

fact that your twins for the betterment of the planet, so to speak? >> well, i think we've always we've been registered with stanford for a while. we've participated in quite a few twin studies. and we thought that it was just really important to continue our efforts in helping advance science. and so it was a no brainer that we would join the study. >> and janet, i believe you are on the left in the blue, is that right? >> i'm janet. >> okay. and you were the vegan? yes i understand you even stuck with being a vegan a few months after the study concluded. is that right? what were some of the personal benefits you found? >> yeah, it it's really funny, right? when i started the diet, it took a little while to get used to 100% vegan intake, but once i started it, i felt so much better on so many different levels. and so i continued it for about 6 or 7 months after for the study was over. but i added, i became a vegetarian to add dairy dairy into my diet. again, that is fantastic that

you were able to stick with it for some time. >> professor, i want to get back to you. there were also changes to the biological clock of the twins who ate vegan. exactly what does that mean? and was that finding surprising at all? >> that was very surprising. i haven't heard much about this new technology. tsay one would think it would take years to make a modest difference, but this has to do with epigenetics. so, you know, we all have dna and that doesn't change. and interestingly, gene and janet have the same dna, so that was a really cool part of the study. but epigenetics is a modification ocean that shows what part of your dna actually gets expressed. and several biological clocks have been proposed. so it's actually more of your physiologic metabolic health than your chronological age. and in this study, the three different clocks all seem to line up together and suggest that the vegan twins ended up looking a little bit younger at the end of eight weeks. >> wow. again, so remarkable

that so much can happen in just a two month time frame. gene, you were allowed to continue eating meat and dairy during the study, but the meals, they still had to be healthy. did you learn anything about yourself as you were going along with this journey? and also as you were counseling your sister to keep it vegan, to don't give up, don't drop out of the study? well, we were counseling each other because we had to eat meat, eggs and potatoes for all three meals. >> that was a bit of a shift. that's something that i normally do not do. and so i think that was a hard part for me, is that it did change the way that i ate as an omnivore. i don't normally eat that for all three meals, but what i liked about the study is that we got the prepackaged food for the first month, which made it way easier and it was a smaller portion amount, which i think is really the way to go. you know, we weren't eating the traditional huge large meals that most americans eat. so i did really appreciate that about the study. and then we had to

replicate this on our own after that one month of getting the free food, which was way harder than i think either one of us even began to think about. so but we had help with the nutritionists and we had a dietary app that we were using every single day on our iphones and stuff. so we had a lot of support from the study, including christopher. >> so what i'm hearing now is that you all are both fantastic chefs and have so many different meal recipes in the repertoire. now there is. that's fantastic. so professor, last question to you. what was really most surprising to me reading the study and i mentioned this earlier, is that, you know, just doing this from may to july had such an impact, such a benefit for the folks who were vegan. what's the takeaway for those watching at home right now? is it if you go vegan for even a little bit of time, you might be able to have similar health benefits or but with the takeaway. be yeah, i think a lot of people don't appreciate that things like blood cholesterol and insulin and glucose and blood pressure can change in

weeks. >> and if you make a huge change in your diet, you could see some pretty large changes be even a more modest change over the course of a couple months. if you could make modest changes and maintain them, or you could have lifelong lower levels of risk factors and it would be that easy. >> i think the lesson here is everything in moderation with that. christopher, jean, janet, thank you all so much for being on the show today. we really appreciate your time. >> thank you. thank you. >> julian. thanks for being good sports. jean and janet. >> sure. thanks, chris. >> fantastic talk sports. >> we got to get some of those recipes from them now. up next here on getting answers, big news for west coast travelers is a major merger between alaska airlines and hawaiian. a travel expert will be joining us with what you need to know not a choice, but getting help and finding treatment for your meth or cocaine addiction is up to you.

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the big change that could soon

affect hawaiian and alaska airlines, two major airlines that service our bay area airports. if you don't have the abc7 bay area app, download it now so you don't miss out on big news. well, alaska announced over the weekend a nearly $2 billion deal to purchase hawaiian airlines. so what does this mean for your next vacation. joining us live now is katie nastro, travel expert with going.com. katie, thanks for being here. so if the merger goes through, alaska could be the fifth largest airline in the country. there are still a number of hurdles this deal has to overcome before the two companies merge. what's the likelihood that this could actually happen? >> and, you know, the likelihood is looking promising. but i think what people have to understand is that this will likely take 12 to 18 months to come to fruition, even if it in fact does so it's not likely that we'll see any of its effects over the next course of the year. but, you know, due to the administration being pretty,

pretty hardline on on consolidated industries like air transportation, can we definitely expect to hear regulators, you know, take a fine tooth comb to this? >> okay. so they're likely to look at this one very closely. but your guess is it will likely go through because we know the justice department sued to block a merger between jetblue and spirit earlier this year. what's the difference between the two merger proposals on the table? >> it's a great question. you know, even though there is some overlap between these two airlines as it's not a ton, you know, it's not a large portion of their businesses. and so this overlap versus is the overlap that we would see with jetblue and spirit much, much different has much more larger ramifications for the consumer that jetblue spirit merger versus in alaska and hawaiian merger. >> okay. >> good point there. we know both alaska and hawaiian, they're both known for giving fliers some decent deals out there. so will that change with

the merger? that's probably the question. all the viewers watching right now are most concerned about, for sure. >> i mean, you know, at the very baseline, less competition means less availability for cheap flights. however you know, these two airlines are going to be operating still as two brands, but under the same umbrella. and, you know, they've made it very clear that they want to keep that brand ethos of both of them intact. and they have to be careful not to alienate their loyal customers, which, you know, means not coming out with super aggressive prices to then, you know, detract lead people to fly elsewhere or you know, with another carrier. so it's definitely a fine line that they have to walk down. >> well, that's a really interesting point. i wonder if they're trying to learn something from that failed bid as we were just talking about, between jetblue and spirit airlines, by keeping the entities at least separate in name. speaking of those loyal customers, is there could be

some unexpected benefits for those hawaiian loyalty customers out there for sure. >> you know, benefits to those who have hawaiian loyalty are, you know, they are now able to have more connectivity due to the one world alliance that they will now be a part of. and this will allow them to get miles by flying, you know, various other airlines like american airlines, british airways, things of that nature. so it really kind of opens up their world in terms of being able to redeem miles, you know, that they accrue with flying and through credit cards. >> and speaking of those miles, what could potentially happen to popular routes for both hawaiian and alaska? could we see the majority of those routes stay in place? could there be changes? what do you foresee? i know we're still a year or two out from this happening, but what could happen, you know, what could happen with those popular routes is nothing at all or, you know, the entities. >> take a closer look at what is

the most profitable routes, maybe do some shifting, take away some routes which actually could lead to other competitors coming into that market. and you know, trying to compete. now that they've actually taken away a route. so, you know, that could be something that we see down the road. >> okay. that's good to know. we know that hawaiian had kind of been hurting for some time because of southwest coming in there and trying to step up competitive ness. right. and reach some of the routes that hawaiian had serviced for quite some time. katie, with going.com. we appreciate you joining us. thanks so much for being here. >> thanks so much for having me. >> of course, i'm sure we'll be talking soon. there's always airline news to talk about and a quick reminder here, you can get our live newscast, breaking news and weather with our abc7 bay area streaming tv app. we'll take a short break here. we'll how are you doing between practices? i feel pretty good. surrounding myself with a great team.

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seven, then you can catch after the game followed by a special edition of abc seven news at nine, a wheel of fortune will air at 10 p.m. jeopardy! airs at 1030. world news tonight with david muir is up next. we hope you join us for tonight, the images coming in. israel expanding its ground attacks into southern gaza. also, the u.s. with a deadly strike on militants who the pentagon says were about to target u.s. forces. here in the u.s. tonight, holiday shopping turning deadly at a macy's. and the boston woman killed by a shark on vacation. first tonight here, israel's war with hamas. the ground offensive moving south. where are civilians to go?