rvillain? if you could say one thing to big tobacco, what would it be? it's so important in this time of change that we reclaim our sacred ways. i had to open my eyes. you can't continue to do this. deep breath. i'd want to ask them “why?” (♪) at three. a deadly wrong-way crash in the south bay, killing

two people, including a teenager. the stunning new video moments before the impact, and the school bus fleet of the future. there's an innovative new way some oakland school kids are getting to class. it's marking a first in the nation achievement. and the heat is here to stay. we've got a look at the labor day travel forecast ahead. good afternoon and thanks for joining us for abc seven news at 3:00 i'm stephanie sierra. our top story we're following today. new dash cam video showing the moments before a wrong-way driver slammed head on into a car in south san jose, killing a woman and a teenage boy. you can see a toyota truck speed pass a vehicle on state route 85. then moments later, the driver would hit a tesla, killing a 47 year old woman and a 14 year old boy from san jose. the chp says a 39 year old man driving the pickup with florida plates suffered major injuries and remains in the hospital.

>> we're going to have to wait until we are able to complete some more investigation on this specific crash before we can say why this driver was driving the wrong way. >> the names of the victims, as well as the driver of the truck, have not been released yet. investigators are still looking into whether the driver was drinking or using drugs that led up to this crash and this dramatic video out of santa cruz county, where a car slammed head on into a school bus this morning near watsonville. you can see the big plumes of smoke as the bus caught fire. 43 students from aptos junior and high schools were on board. witnesses say the bus driver ushered the kids safely off the bus. at least one student was injured but is expected to be okay. the driver of the car was handcuffed by police and later taken to the hospital. now we want to get on a check of your accuweather forecast. the heat is still here and is going to continue throughout the workweek. let's check in with abc seven news meteorologist

drew tuma. >> here are the accuweather headlines. it's a toasty tuesday today. today is the hottest day on the seven day forecast. we will keep it pretty warm through friday. above average temperatures for the rest of the week, but heading into the holiday weekend, we do cool off. those temperatures go back to average in the 70s and 80s with morning fog to afternoon sunshine. looking at weather wellness today. air quality is moderate, pollen levels are moderate as well. in the uv index is an eight out of 11. that is very high. future tracker showing you later this afternoon. we're well into the 90s inland. widespread 80s around the bay shoreline. even later this evening we hang on to some warm air. here's a look at 820 after the sun goes down. some fog rolling over the city in the 60s and 70s around the bay shoreline. still well into the 80s. inland at that hour. so today, highs in the microclimates. hottest day of the week, 80s and 90s in the south bay along the peninsula. 90 in redwood city, 86 mountain view, upper 60s near 70. along the coast, across the city.

today we have sunny skies, a range of upper 60s to the mid 70s. this afternoon in the north bay. it is hot today 92 in napa. the same in petaluma, up to 99. in ukiah, 91 in san rafael, napa to 92. the east bay. it is warm. 84 in oakland, 89, castro valley, 88. in fremont and then inland. it is a hot day. 97 in walnut creek, 99 in livermore. 100 the high in brentwood overnight tonight we'll keep some patchy cloud cover along the coast away from the coast, we will have clear skies overnight lows will be in the 50s and the low 60s. here is the accuweather seven day forecast. today is the hottest day of the week, but we still keep it pretty warm through thursday. cooler air really arrives here by friday, and then over the holiday weekend, those temperatures cool to near average. it's a mild start to september here on sunday, a little bit warmer for the holiday itself on monday, but do

expect morning clouds to afternoon sunshine through the holiday weekend in the east bay. >> we're getting a look at the campus where hundreds of richmond school kids are now attending classes. following the closure of their school. the west contra costa county school district is giving us a tour of the temporary campus for steeg elementary. the district closed the school in july after discovering asbestos during repair work. the temporary campus is located at dyson middle school, about a mile and a half away from steeg. the closure came after the district was named in a civil rights lawsuit, calling out dangerous facilities and chronic staffing shortages at steeg and other campuses. now, the oakland unified school district is taking an historic step in the effort to build a better bay area and a better planet. it's the first school district in the entire country to replace its fleet of busses with electric models. abc's becky worley has the story.

>> 8:20 a.m. fred korematsu elementary drop off, normally punctuated by loud diesel bus engines. it's instead pretty quiet. oakland unified is the first district in the country to go all electric, with the 72 busses in its fleet. >> they are dope. if i yes. the. >> these electric busses, which can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars, are not actually owned by the district. they're contracted from a company called zoom. zoom offsets the district's cost by using the busses batteries to sell power to the electric company during peak hours in the evening, enough to power about 300 homes when they're not used for transportation, they are getting discharged and giving energy back to the grid. >> what that means is that school busses acting like a large battery, and it is feeding the energy back to the grid through the renewable sources. >> but the busses have even more tangible effects on families like the real time tracking app

that tells parents exactly when the bus will arrive at their house each morning, and later, that their child has been dropped off. >> there's a place right here where you set the child in. >> another plus for drivers and riders. electric busses have no fumes or emissions. >> the diesel engine at the end of the day, when you go ahead and you look at the side of the bus, it'll be black. so that that if it's on the bus, that'll be in my lungs. >> this area, as in many areas in urban districts, has a high asthma rate. we know a lot of emissions contributes to that high asthma rate. oakland busses, all 1300 of its special needs students. >> and for parent lizbeth zamora and her son mateo, these new busses are a major plus. i'm glad that they thought about the environment and the kids health. >> when he got home, he was like, mom, mom, clean, clean and i was like, they are clean. i saw that, so he was excited. >> my bus, my happy. >> your bus makes you happy? yeah it makes him happy. and

it's so good for the environment. this vehicle to grid technology is amazing. it also helps defray the cost of the investment and it lets us use more renewable energy during peak evening hours. plus, those busses were quiet, they were air conditioned. and our bus driver, margery said kids behave better on them. becky worley for abc7 news. >> in the south bay. levi's stadium is about to get some major upgrades. the 40 niners just announced a $200 million renovation for the now ten year old stadium. the team says the stadium and club areas will get a new look and luxury suites will be remodeled. there will also be new state of the art video boards, upgraded wi-fi and new led lights to brighten the playing surface. the renovations will be completed by 2026, when levi's hosts the world cup and the super bowl in that same year. and get excited. the 40 niners kick off a new season in

less than two weeks from now. they'll play at levi's stadium against the new york jets. monday night football september ninth, right here on abc seven. coming up next here at three. a new warning about text message scams. they're happening more often, especially in this election year. but the better business bureau has some tips to share so

a growing increase in text message scams. the agency says. over the past year, it has received more than 250 scam reports, with victims actually losing a total of nearly $430,000. and the scammers are getting more sophisticated,

oftentimes impersonating legitimate agencies. joining us live now to talk more about this and tell us how to avoid getting scammed, is ama galvin, a spokesperson for the b-b-b. ama, thanks for joining us. >> thank you so much for having me. pleasure to be here again. >> so when did you become aware of more scammers using text messages instead of emails? >> well, phishing scams are the number one scam across, you know, the whole entire us. and phishing has a lot of different ways, whether it's by phone, by email, which is very common, but text message. i started looking at our scam tracker report, which we get to see all the scams reported throughout the whole entire us, including here in the bay area. and i noticed a higher increase in people submitting uh- scam tracker reports. when it comes to text message scams, there was some dealing with impersonating fastrak. others were impersonating well-known utility companies like p-g-and-e's or retailers that are very well

known throughout the whole entire us. so we wanted to make sure that consumers knew how to one spot these text message scams, and two, what to do in case you do get one and three, understand that it could happen to anyone. they are getting a little bit more sophisticated. you know, when i was reading these scam tracker reports, unfortunately, one consumer did lose a total of $330,000 and that was dealing with a romance scam that went through a text message scam. >> wow. yeah, these scams certainly have been around for quite a long time, but the fact that they're getting so creative now, can you give us some examples of text fraudsters may send? >> we all use amazon. it's when you know we have amazon prime day. we have the holidays coming up here before we know it. so a lot of times when consumers receive text messaging with large retailers, most of us do use it. so we click on the links and verify information. and this is this is one way to really see if it's a scam, is the way that

the link looks. you can see on the screen they pretend to be, you know, cvs in this case. and if it's coming from cvs again, keep in mind that it should have cvs on the domain. so you want to make sure that you understand the text that you're receiving. and the retailer know their website. it's really important to understand that. and again you can see some of the samples that you have there on the screen that kind of show you a little bit about how to spot a scam when it comes to text messaging, one of the most easiest things is that we live in a state where you have to basically give permission for these retailers to reach out to you via text message. so if you know that you did not give any of these retailers the permission to send you a text message, that is the first red flag that should put you into an area where, hey, this might be a scam and not click on the links that you get others. you know, we like to engage with the scammers just for fun. you know, i've seen people do that. please do not do that. it gives them just another way of keeping you, you know, entertained with what they might do to you. >> and it's interesting, i've

seen cases where scammers will actually research their victims. they'll go to your social media sites, see you attended event last week per se, and then text you saying, great seeing you last week and start a conversation that way. so they try to build that trust. you know, i know you mentioned that the b-b-b has a lot of these scam texts that can look like from their legitimate agencies. can you walk us through which ones are especially, you know, important to look out for the ones that we receive when for example, utility company make sure again that it is an actual company trying to reach out to you. >> look at the domain a lot of the times. again, these links are super long, really weird looking. i understand you know, some of us are in marketing when we understand the utm codes, but just keep in mind that it does have to have the company name somewhere in there look for grammatical errors. that's another way to really see if it's a real company. you know, the simplest words are spelled incorrectly. even their company name uh. sometimes we just look at things really fast and not realizing that, you know, their

name might have an extra r. so keep in mind that you do see that as well. and again, just take the time to read. and if they're asking you to do this instantaneously or you're going to miss out on a product, those are also red flags. as you can see, some of the information that you see on your screen. it's just they're simple, but it will get you into a situation where you don't lose money. and again, some of our scam tracker reports range from, you know, losing $25 all the way to $330,000, which unfortunately did happen to a consumer here in the bay area. >> yeah, it's awful to hear tha. great tips though. certainly looking for those typos and the link that the copyright date. i know you mentioned earlier. what's your advice for someone if they do click on a bad link in a text? >> if you did, unfortunately click on a bad link, you know, just delete the message instantly. change your passwords if you can on your phone. if you have applications on your phone that you left open, close them. change your passwords. that way. a lot of times when you do

receive these links that are not asking you for payment, information that are not asking you to verify your name or anything like that, most of the time they're trying to find a way to get into your personal information or your phone, which is access to your personal apps that you have on there. and that's always why we do recommend that you change your wi-fi passwords at least three times a year. and don't have the same password from your social media accounts to your bank. again, it's an easy way for scammers to unfortunately take advantage of you that way. so change your passwords as often as you can and don't have one universal password. i know it's hard to remember it sometimes, but write them down in a place that could be safe. that way you don't actually maybe become a victim of a cyber attack that way as well. >> as the saying goes, if it looks too good to be true, it probably is. so stay vigilant. all my galvin, thanks so much for your time. >> thank you so much for having me. >> absolutely. well, coming up next, a whale watching trip lands governor newsom in some hot water. you may be wondering

why our media partner, the san francisco stan we have a drug, homelessness, and economic recovery crisis, because the system that's supposed to fix things is the problem. record budgets. fewer officers. business killing bureaucracy. the insiders won't change a system built for their benefit. i'm daniel lurie and san francisco needs a mayor unafraid to take on the status quo, bring accountability, and stop the excuses.

involving governor gavin newsom last year, newsom took part in a whale watching tour in mexico that his staff had initially called a personal trip. but as the standard reports in this new article, the governor's staff has since changed their story. and we're learning a nonprofit actually paid for this excursion. joining us live now is gabe greszler, the standard's political reporter, who wrote this article. gabe, thanks for being with us. >> thank you so much for having me, stephanie. appreciate it. >> absolutely. so what was governor gavin newsom's initial explanation for this march 2023 trip to mexico? >> yeah. so let's rewind to march 2023. gavin newsom declares a state of emergency because of a big snowstorm

coming to hit california. and then shortly after he leaves, and while he's gone, conservative media and some other people were criticizing him, saying, hey, where is the governor? he returns after four days and his staff say to inquiring journalists, the governor was away on a personal trip in mexico, but we did not hear any other details about that. we didn't see anything on social media. and the story really ended there. >> so just silence. how did newsom's office later reclassify then? the purpose of this trip? >> yeah. so basically every year politicians and some city employees, they have to fill out a form 700, which is basically a financial disclosure form showing, hey, where did you get gifts? where did you travel,

what kind of stocks do you have? and i noticed that on the form underneath a bunch of official travel that he had done and that had been widely publicized, there was a $3,595 whale watching tour in baja california, i spoke to governor newsom's team and what they told me was a bit of a what i would consider to be kind of a word salad. they said that he was on an educational trip on his personal time. and so really, the story is kind of shifted from he's in baja california you know, on a personal trip to oh, no, now he's actually on an educational trip. his office also told me that a number of his staff were there as well, including his senior climate policy adviser, lauren sanchez,

and then also some people in the environmental protection space, but his office was not willing to share many details. and the nonprofit that i reached out to was not willing to share too many details either about the purpose of the trip. but we were able to find out a little bit why he went there. >> yeah, i got to say, educational purposes is a pretty vague term just to stay on that for a moment, did they specify any type of educational related purpose for, you know, why he was there or why whales were involved in this case? >> yeah. so the form that i originally looked into had a nonprofit that apparently because of some sort of error that had been made, was actually the wrong source of the gift. we later learned that the source of the gift came from a nonprofit called re earth initiative, and the re earth initiative is a group of climate change focused

group run by some pretty young folks in their 20s and late teens. they do a lot of advocacy around uh- and have a documentary, actually, that they're working on right now. that's about whales and whale migration and the human impact on these whales, and so what we kind of know at this moment, and maybe some more will come out, is that gavin newsom was invited down by this nonprofit, uh, to help sort of be off camera and meet the people that were, you know, in this documentary and sort of in this world of trying to protect the whales that are along the coast. >> all right, gabe, that's all the time we have for now. but very interesting story. thank you for joining us. >> thank you so much. >> you can check out gabe's story and more from the san francisco standard's original

reporting let's go! hustle! is getting started. well, we did that 30 years ago, when california first took on the tobacco industry. this is not just about access. it's about the message it sends... now smoking is down 60 percent. lung cancer 42 percent. a couple of our cities have already ended tobacco sales. a california without big tobacco isn't just possible, it's already happening.

live at levi's stadium in san jose. live in oakland? >> yeah. you're watching abc seven news live. anytime. anywhere. >> we are, we are, we are, we are we are. we are where you are. >> never miss a moment of the news that matters to you. download our abc seven bay area streaming app. join us and start watching. >> as we first told you yesterday, barney and explosives detection k-9 at sfo has now

been crowned the winner of the tsa's 2024 cutest canine contest. a well-deserved honor, might i add. barney beat out dozens of other furry contenders to take home that top prize today. abc seven news reporter gloria rodriguez got to meet barney in person with his new crown. >> five year old german shorthaired pointer. barney was crowned tsa's cutest canine for 2024. the tsa passenger screening canine was celebrated at sfo tuesday. >> he's my dog. i'm biased. so you know i feel like he's the cutest. but for everyone to vote him the cutest is pretty exciting. >> barney captured america's heart as well. voted top dog among tsa pooches from all over the country. tsa has trained more than 1000 canine teams that work at airports and mass transit facilities across the nation. we saw barney in action in this demo with a decoy. he

shows how he would be able to sniff out explosives on a passenger. >> he finds things all the time. so he's he's trained on, you know, dozens of explosives. so i can't really get into specifics, but there are, you know, certain medications or creams or, you know, things like that, that have chemical components that are the same, that are in explosives. so, you know, he finds things like that. >> and when he finds something, he is rewarded with this squeaky ball. barney started his career with tsa in 2022 and has been with his handler, michelle koegel, since then. for winning this honor, he'll be on the cover of the 2025 tsa calendar, and it looks like he's ready to pose. >> you see us walking around the airport and you think, oh, you know, they're cute and we're just walking around for fun, but it's really serious. and, he's really good at what he does.

>> while many of us are getting ready for labor day trips, barney and michelle will be getting ready for a busy few days working here at the airport. they expect 900,000 people will be traveling to and from sfo from thursday through tuesday. and of course, barney will be out here working to keep us all safe at sfo. gloria rodriguez, abc seven news. >> an important job he has. congrats to barney. well, on the heels of national dog day, lyft is now letting passengers bring their pets along for the ride. the new option will pair drivers who are comfortable having pets in their car, with riders who want to bring their furry friends. lyft is also encouraging pet adoptions. thank you all for joining us for abc seven news at three. world news tonight with david muir is next tonight, breaking news involving donald trump. this new revised indictment against the former president. what this move from jack smith now means. also tonight, we're t