2 videos, and a quick demo. you can change your color here. and all of this, started here, detoured here, and ended... down here. and this pizza wasn't delivery. this was. i wonder if they have... they do have it! we do. so whenever you start a project... don't worry. you're not alone. we can do this together. so what are you working on? (♪) the fed is slashing interest rates for the first time since the start of the pandemic in a landmark policy shift. good afternoon. i'm kristen sze. thanks for joining us. this is a critical point in the fed's fight to lower inflation. the federal funds rate will now move down to between 4.75% and 5%.

the lowest level since march 2023. now, the half point reduction paves the way for lower borrowing costs on everything from mortgages to credit cards. but as abc news reporter reena roy tells us, experts say our wallets won't necessarily see an immediate impact. >> a pivotal move from the federal reserve today, cutting interest rates for the first time in four years. the fed reducing rates half a percentage point this recalibration of our policy stance will help maintain the strength of the economy and the labor market, and will continue to enable further progress on inflation as we begin the process of moving toward a more neutral stance. americans have been dealing with high borrowing costs for everything from mortgages to credit cards. if you've been carrying a balance on your credit card, you've felt the sting of high rates. with the average apr now near 21%, according to bank rate. a rate cut could mean a slight decrease there. >> you might just see a couple

of dollars difference in your monthly payment due on your credit card. about under $10 a month less for that car loan and about $50 a month on on an average interest rate for a mortgage. >> the fed dialing back its years long fight against inflation, which has slowed dramatically from its peak of about 9% in 2022. >> we're now at 2.5%. we have dramatically come down much closer to the fed's 2% target. but look at here the unemployment rate has ticked up at the same time to 4.2%. and that's what's troubling for the fed. >> the fed remaining cautious. >> we will continue to make our decisions meeting by meeting. we know that reducing policy restraint too quickly could hinder progress on inflation. at the same time, reducing restraint too slowly could unduly weaken economic activity and employment. >> the good news here this is expected to be the first of many interest rate cuts from the fed. they could last through next year. credit card rates could possibly be even two percentage points lower than what we're seeing today. reena roy, abc

news, new york. >> all right. in about ten minutes, we'll talk to an economic expert to better understand how today's interest rate cut could impact your wallet. a special session to address california's rising gas prices is underway at the state capitol. governor gavin newsom wants lawmakers to pass a bill to require oil companies to maintain a backup supply of gas. he says it would avoid shortages and price spikes during refinery shutdowns. but oil companies say the idea will drive up prices due to storage costs. republican state lawmakers want to tackle high prices by reducing gas taxes and delaying the state's low carbon fuel standard. a final vote on newsom's gasoline storage measure is scheduled for october 1st. building the future with ai is the topic of the day. during day two of salesforce's dreamforce conference happening right now in san francisco, abc7 news reporter gloria rodriguez has a look into the tech future that's on display at the event. >> day two of dreamforce kicked

off wednesday in san francisco. some 45,000 people learning about the latest in artificial intelligence at salesforce's annual tech conference. music artist will.i.am talking about the launch of his ai powered radio station. >> so and we'll have like, we got to look at this air force launch zone when salesforce customers go here, they're able to create what they call a conversational ai agent or service agent. >> and that can be for example, the chat experience on a website to help customers. andrew russo went through the process and ended up with a prototype within minutes. he's with barca systems in michigan, which does robotics for the stone industry. >> we're not trying to think about how do we replace humans. we're really trying to how do we deliver the world class experience that matters to our customers and support and augment our team? and i have it, and i can go back and take this to our team and actually implement this in real life. this is super cool. >> and we found something else really cool here. there's this

robot that takes your picture so you can come up here. her name is rosie. you tap to start right there. wait a few seconds and then you can get it emailed over or text it to you. and wednesda, salesforce announcing plans to open a new ai learning center at its san francisco headquarters in 2025 for in-person community ai training courses. and we have dedicated floors where community members who might be scared of ai can come and get trained at no cost. gloria rodriguez, abc seven news. >> and tonight, the attention shifts from the moscone center downtown to oracle park for the dream fest concert. pink and the rock band imagine dragons are both set to perform. it's a charity concert, with proceeds going to ucsf benioff children's hospital tomorrow, uc regents are set to vote on requests for military equipment for campus police. the equipment includes drones, robots, pepper balls, projectile launchers and sponge bullets. the requests are from

several campuses, including uc berkeley, ucsf, and uc santa cruz. a spokesperson for uc's president says the nonlethal alternatives will allow police to de-escalate situations. the vote will come months after pro-palestinian protesters clashed with uc police at several campuses. stanford is issuing new freedom of expression policies in response to campus protests last academic year. those protests were in response to the conflict in gaza. the new rules prohibit unauthorized tents on campus and require students to remove face coverings if asked by an official. similar rules were issued last year, but were ignored when students set up camp to protest the israel-hamas war. developing out of the middle east, the death toll is rising. after a second wave of explosions in an apparent attack on hezbollah in this latest attack. at least 20 people were killed and 450 others were injured. it comes as israel announces a new phase of war, diverting its resources out of gaza to its northern border with

lebanon. abc news reporter perry russom has reaction from u.s. officials. >> reporter today, another round of electronics exploding in lebanon. this time, devices, including walkie talkies blowing up. abc's marcus moore in beirut only feet away from one of the blasts. >> crowds had just gathered for the funeral and we heard a loud boom. >> according to u.s. officials, israel only told the u.s. they were going to carry out an operation against hezbollah, providing no more details. >> the united states did not know about, nor was it involved in these incidents. >> this morning's attack comes a day after protesters exploded in lebanon, killing 12 people, injuring nearly 3000 more. iran's ambassador to lebanon among the injured. surgeons operating on eyes, faces and hands. hezbollah says 11 of members were killed in the first

round of explosions involving pagers. israel has not commented. sources tell abc news israel embedded explosives in the pagers that were then sold to hezbollah. >> what seems to be a very sophisticated operation by the israelis actually worked by using lower technology, the pagers that they use to implant with explosives that would have detonated on all of the hezbollah operators who were affected. >> this hezbollah official saying this aggression inevitably has its own punishment. the un warning of a serious risk of dramatic escalation in lebanon. >> everything must be done to avoid that escalation. >> as for the pager attack, hezbollah apparently using pagers to try to keep communications undetected after one of its leaders urged members to stop using cell phones, citing security concerns. perry russom abc news, washington. >> boeing is implementing cost saving cuts as thousands of assembly workers continue to strike. the company will begin furloughing workers, and the company executives will take pay cuts for the duration of the

strike. it comes after 33,000 boeing workers went on strike last friday. the striking workers want a 40% pay raise over four years. the company is offering a 25% raise. it comes after several turbulent years for boeing following deadly crashes of its 737 max planes and, more recently, the mid-air blowouts on a flight on alaska in january due to missing bolts. to the accuweather forecast now another cloudy day. a little drizzly, but abc seven weather anchor spencer christian tells us brighter and warmer weather is just on the horizon. spencer. >> and not a moment too soon. kristen because yesterday was really cool and sort of chilly. actually, today we had some light measurable rainfall. la honda in the santa cruz mountains had seven hundredths of an inch notice only 1 or 2 hundredths of an inch at oakland hayward union city, and livermore. castro valley four hundredths of an inch. here's why. we had rainfall in the bay area today. as you look at the satellite radar composite image, you see this low pressure system

spinning in its counterclockwise fashion. the center of it is just about over the bay area, over our or at least over our coastline right now. so it brought wave after wave of clouds and moisture into the bay area, producing some light rainfall. but the center of that system is going to drop southward in the evening hours and pull the showers away from us. right now, we've got breezy conditions with wind speeds up to about 20mph at sfo, at 15 to 20mph in most other locations near the coast and the bay. and you'll notice it's quite a bit warmer now than at this time yesterday. about 4 or 5 degrees warmer in most locations. it had to be a bit warmer because yesterday was almost cold. right now it's 65 degrees in san francisco, 70 in oakland and redwood city, we've got 73 in hayward, san jose, 77 and 63 at half moon bay. notice the clouds at different levels of the atmosphere here in this view from mount tam. high level, low level and mid level clouds. beautiful view. other temperature readings right now 72 to 73 degrees at petaluma, napa and santa rosa 75 or 76 at fairfield, concord and

livermore. not a very wide range of temperatures right now. and these are the forecast headlines. this evening will be partly cloudy with a chance of some isolated showers. not a very strong chance of showers. and if they do fall, they won't be very heavy at all. and tomorrow and friday it will be sunnier and warmer than it has been the last couple of days. fall begins on sunday this weekend will bring sizzling summerlike heat as fall arrives. here's the forecast animation for this evening. we'll see some breaks in the clouds and a little patches of clearing here and there, but the clouds will increase again overnight with some areas of drizzle just off shore. some of it may actually fall over land areas, but it will be mainly offshore. so going into midday tomorrow, we expect at least partial clearing and then a sunnier day in the afternoon. overnight low temperatures will be mainly in the mid to upper 50s and then highs tomorrow about 61 at half moon bay, some low to mid 60s in other coastal locations here in san francisco, we'll top out at about 67 degrees around the bay shoreline, mainly low or low to mid seconds. inland areas will

warm up a bit to low to mid 80s in the warmest spots, but greater warming is on the way. here's the accuweather seven day forecast. as you can see. we'll see some mid 80s inland on friday. but look at the weekend saturday low 90s inland up to about 80 around the bay shoreline. sunday first day of fall which arrives at 5:43 a.m. we'll see even warmer weather with mid mid 90s farther inland. mid 80s around the bay and then going into next week, upper 90s to nearly 100. in the first few days of fall in our inland areas and mid to upper 80s around the bay. so warmer, sunnier weather is coming. we may be happy to see it leave after those 98 degree days. kristen, i think so. >> it will be like bye bye. yeah. thank you spencer. a crackdown on retail crime across california appears to be having some success. governor newsom's office released data today that says so far this year, california's organized retail crime task force has made more than 1000 arrests related to retail theft. the chp says the

task force has also recovered $7.8 million worth of stolen goods. this year. officers conducted 573 investigations, surpassing the total for all of last year. up next, we'll take a closer look at today's federal federal reserve bold interest rate cuts. key takeaways and we'll get answers on the impact it could have on your finances. >> rapper sean diddy combs back in court attempting to get bail

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.

lending rate by half a point. that's the first cut since 2020 and marks a reversal from all

the increases the past four years to try to contain inflation. the stock market initially rose on the news, but investors quickly retreated and the dow finished down by about 100 points. so joining us live now to discuss this huge move by the fed today and what it says about inflation and how this plays into the presidential election is near ovarian research manager at beacon economics. thank you so much for joining us mary. >> thank you for having me. glad to be here. >> so what is the fed really signaling with this move today to cut interest rates for the first time in four years? and by, you know, half a point instead of the more modest quarter point. so pretty big. >> yeah. i guess most people were expecting a 25 basis point. decrease, which is a quarter percentage point, as you mentioned. so it wasn't necessarily what everyone was expecting to see, a 50 basis point. decrease in the interest rate. so a little bit surprising

as as to how large the change was the last time that they actually decreased it by the same amount. except for the covid pandemic, of course, was in response to the financial crisis, crisis back in 2008. so what it's really signaling is that the fed seems to believe that the labor market is softening and inflation is also softening to the point that it's okay to be, decreasing interest rates. and the fact that they're continuing to do quantitative tightening. so one of the things that they that they discussed today was that quantitative tightening is going to continue as, as it was happening. so they're trying to unwind the yield curve. and that's something that that's a term that probably your viewers have heard a lot recently. and the reason is that for the last two years, the yield curve has been inverted. and that's often a signal or it's perceived as a signal rather, for a recession,

since the inverted yield curve, often precedes a recession. so what the fed seems to be doing is trying to unwind the yield curve, because what they're doing is they're trying to increase the interest rates on one end of the spectrum. and lower interest rates on the other end of the spectrum. so they're trying to unwind, unwind, or invert the yield curve, you could say. >> so now let's just boil it down to the basics. for our average viewer average person. what will this help with. and what won't this help with. >> okay really good question. so when the federal reserve makes decisions about interest rates, what they're really doing is they're changing the target federal funds rate. so it's really one interest rate that they're changing. but that has ripple effects throughout the rest of the economy. so we could expect other interest rates to come down such as mortgage rates, credit rates, auto auto

borrowing rates. so all kinds of interest rates are expected to come down. however, it's not really a costless policy because what that means is that we're actually stimulating demand. so we can expect aggregate demand to go up. we're going to see more investment spending going on by firms. we're going to see more consumption spending on going on by households. and what that means is we're probably going to see a little bit more inflation going on. >> right. and of course, that's been something that's been giving americans a hard time. right. and it's an issue in the presidential campaign whether your groceries are costing a lot more than it did four years ago. so this move no doubt plays into the presidential election. and so that's where i want to take this conversation in the time we have left recently, a leading investment bank, goldman sachs, released its assessment that the economy would perform better under harris versus trump. what did they base that conclusion on? >> well, they're basing it on the economic plans that were released by both of the presidential candidates. and,

but let's get something clear to say that the economy will perform better under harris doesn't necessarily mean that the economy is getting the plan it needs. it just means that harris's plan is more expansionary compared to trump's, so when we're talking about performing better, we're often talking about the short term economy rather than the long term economy. so we could have a better short term performance under harris. but what does that come with? higher deficit spending, which in turn leads to higher debt to gdp ratio. >> all right. so you know they're going to argue both campaigns are going to argue you know in the long term which policy is better which plan is better. and of course, you know the rate cuts whether that stimulates it, whether that drives up inflation again, or whether that, you know, is something that's welcome because we can buy homes. who knows. time will tell. speaking of time, do you expect more rate cuts in the near future, >> it's not clear. i think they signaled that there would be a

few more in the upcoming year, but it's never it's never clear until it actually happens. >> okay, so lastly, i want to ask you, based on expectations, predictions and based on this rate drop, right. that that was issued today, which i know takes time to trickle down. what should we as consumers buying borrowing the way we normally do? what should we do right now and what should we maybe hold off on, >> that's a good question. so it's hard to give that kind of financial advice, but i would say that the savings rate is going down in the country and consumer spending is going up as a share of gdp. so maybe that's something to keep in mind. but it's yeah, it's really hard for me to give that kind of financial advice here. >> all right. now to veridian beacon economics. thank you so much for joining us. >> thank you. >> and we'll be righ

on the $50 million offer. his attorney made to try to secure diddy's freedom. >> hip hop star sean diddy combs is back in a manhattan federal courthouse today, fighting to be released on bail. his attorney, writing in a letter to the court wednesday that combs is eminently trustworthy and should be released on a $50 million bond. the rapper, offering to secure the bond with his $48 million miami home and the bond would be cosigned with his mother, sister and three adult sons and mothers of his two daughters. combs was arrested monday, and sources tell abc news he has not been incarcerated with the general prison population. a judge denied him bail tuesday after expressing concern that diddy's alleged crimes occurred behind closed doors, with law enforcement unable to monitor

his behavior. >> someone is presumed innocent, so you're presumed that you get bail. not in this kind of crime, in this kind of crime. bail is not presumed. furthermore, you've got the problem that he's accused of intimidating witnesses of trying to interfere with the investigation. none of that helps him in his argument that he should get bail. >> combs pleaded not guilty to charges of racketeering and sex trafficking. a 14 page indictment alleges combs manipulated women to participate in highly orchestrated performances of sexual activity with male prostitutes, called freak offs. prosecutors allege he subjected young women to violence, use of firearms, threats, coercion and verbal, emotional, physical and sexual abuse between at least 2008 and the present. >> combs abused, threatened and coerced victims to fulfill his sexual desires, protect his reputation, and conceal his conduct. >> combs attorney telling cnn those so-called freak offs were consensual. >> it was adults and consensual,

and everybody who was there wanted to be there. >> diddy's attorneys saying to the court that combs has never evaded or run from a challenge, and will not start now. if diddy is convicted of his alleged crimes, he faces decades in prison. jacqueline lee, abc news, los angeles. >> all right. remember, abc seven news is streaming 24/7. get the abc seven bay area app and join us whenever you want, wherever you are. passport change could mean the end to long wait times. the big change today designed to make getting a passport much easier. amazons fall prime days are coming next month, but you don't have to wait to save. how you c

to renew online for a fee. the service is available to anyone renewing a ten year passport that expired within the past five years. this only applies to adults 25 years or older who have had a passport before. to start the process, you have to set up an account on the state department's website. >> so many americans, when you get your passport picture, it's a whole ordeal. you have to go somewhere to get it taken. now you can do that on your phone. you can upload your photo and apply completely online without having to do anything in person or send anything through the mail. >> the modern change comes as more americans are traveling internationally. the state department processed a record 24 million passports last year. we're getting another prime day coming up next month. amazon will have 48 hours of deals from october 8th to ninth for amazon prime customers. and right now, amazon's deals hub is offering

early october prime day deals from some big brands. adobe analytics reported that during the summer, prime day shoppers spent $14.2 billion. that's an 11% increase from last year. and that's going to do it for now. thanks for joining us. world news tonight with david muir starts right now. and i'll see you back here at four. tonight, breaking news as we come on the air. the deadly explosions, one day after pagers detonated, today, our team at a funeral when walkie-talkies began exploding with deadly force. also tonight, the delta flight, the emergency landing. reports passengers bleeding from their ears. and the economy tonight. the fed taking drastic steps today to cut interest rates with gas prices now coming down, too.