low price with less than two weeks until election day. another voice has joined the recall against the alameda county district attorney. a new top cop in san jose after months in limbo. the police department

hires its interim chief for the permanent position and school strike. educators on the peninsula hit the picket lines as they bargain for better pay and benefits. good afternoon and thanks for joining us for abc seven news at three. i'm kristen sze those teachers on strike are in the las lomitas elementary school district. they held protest today outside las lomitas elementary and la entrada school in menlo park. they're demanding a 10% pay increase and full health benefits. teachers say they've been working without a contract for more than a year, and some say they can no longer afford to live in the district. >> with the rising costs of health care and the premiums increases, my paycheck is smaller today. after all these years. >> district officials offered a 5% salary increase plus $2,000 in additional health care benefits per employee. they say a 10% increase would put the district in debt by several million dollars over the next

few years. in a statement, the district said in part, quote, we stand strong in our commitment to reach a resolution and are willing to meet with our teachers union at any time to settle our differences. the schools are open during the strike, but all after school activities are closed or canceled. i should say the district is also limiting transportation and special ed services. former alameda county district attorney nancy o'malley is now endorsing the recall of current d.a. pamela price. o'malley joins congressman eric swalwell and several other groups in supporting price's removal. price's critics have said her policies have resulted in a lack of accountability for crime. supporters say price is doing exactly what she was elected to do. abc seven news reporter anser hassan has been following the story for us all year. he'll have a full report coming up on abc seven news at four. san jose city council member omar torres, who is under investigation for allegedly sexting with a minor, has been

removed from all the committees that he serves on. the city council says it's trying to limit his power and they have called for him to resign. torres has denied any wrongdoing, and his attorney said in a statement the messages were just fantasy and role play. the council did approve torres excused absence from a meeting earlier this month, but if he misses five meetings without the council's approval, his seat will become vacant after months in limbo. there is a new top cop in san jose. paul joseph, who was serving as the interim police chief, is taking over permanently. it comes as the department faces staffing issues and recent scandals. abc seven news reporter tim johns has the chief's message and reaction from the community. >> with thunderous applause, paul joseph was officially confirmed as the new chief of the san jose police department tuesday. joseph, who has been a part of sapd for decades, had been serving as the interim head of the department since march

after former chief anthony mata retired. >> and i got a very good understanding of what is what the chief's responsibilities are, what's required of the chief. and so i'm ready to go. >> joseph will take over a department that has been hit by several scandals in recent year, something he says they've learned from and that don't define the organization. >> we are certainly not perfect. we've made our mistakes, and sadly, we'll probably make a few more. but overall, this is a healthy organization with great men and women working here. >> joseph's confirmation was welcomed by many officials in both the city of san jose, as well as santa clara county, who believe he's the right man for the job. >> our prosecutors work collaboratively with the san jose police department, and certainly i've always worked collaboratively with police chief in san jose. >> that sense of excitement also present with many in the community. >> congratulations. congratulations. >> maria ortega is a part of the cadillac winchester neighborhood association. she tells me she believes joseph understands the most pressing needs of the

community. >> the most is safety. safety in the streets, because there's a lot of gangs. and my neighbors and i need to best life for young kids, families, among other things. >> joseph will have to rebuild the department short on staffing, as well as one that has seen morale dip in recent years. despite those challenges, joseph pledges to serve the people of san jose to the best of his ability. >> we will meet their expectations and that we will adapt. we will constantly work and grow and be better in every way. >> joseph will formally begin acting as full time chief next week. in san jose, tim johns, abc seven news. >> all right. now we want to turn to our weather. it certainly is a lovely day out there. one of those picture perfect fall days. so let's check in with abc seven weather anchor spencer christian to see how things are going to change or not change for us. >> oh, they're going to change a little bit. kristen. mainly because we are going to experience heightened fire danger over the next 12 to 18 hours. now, here's why we're looking at winds right now, which are relatively light and

breezy. not gusty, but the wind speeds and the wind direction will the wind speeds will increase late tonight and overnight. the direction will increase will change to a northeasterly flow as those winds flow out of the northeast and flow downslope over our hills and mountains, the air compresses. it dries out. so with increased winds and decreased humidity, of course, that gives us elevated fire concerns. so you see the wind speeds going into the overnight hours. we'll get stronger. gusty wind. not gusty but certainly stronger. but by mid-morning tomorrow, the winds will get tamer back into a much milder range and we will have. we'll be back into a lower fire danger range. but looking at the fire danger index right now, you can see that the north bay in particular is in that moderate to high range going into the evening hours. and the northeasternmost part of the bay area, that will be napa county and solano county, also in that moderate to high fire danger range going into the late night and overnight hours. but by late morning or midday tomorrow, we'll see all of the bay area basically back into the low fire

danger range. but during that time look for, of course, increased winds and decreased relative humidity. these are our current temperature readings under mainly sunny skies 65 degrees in san francisco, low to mid 70s at oakland and hayward, 81 at san jose. pretty warm for fall. redwood city 7463 at half moon bay. looking down into the bay from mount tam. a nice view there. 82 right now up north in santa rosa, petaluma 75, napa 77 and low 80s. low to mid 80s in fact in fairfield, concord and livermore. so we've got some warmth hanging around for a while now. these are our forecast headlines the next few days. bright skies and autumn warmth tonight. tomorrow morning, as i mentioned, heightened fire danger, but only for a brief time. there's no red flag warning. i want to point that out. and then sunday and monday, cooler with areas of drizzle. so for tonight, mainly, well, certainly dry conditions. increasing winds out of the northeast. low humidity overnight lows mainly in the upper 40s to low 50s. highs tomorrow mid 60s at the coast. low to mid 70s around the bay shoreline and only upper 70s

inland. a lovely day ahead and we'll give you a look at the seven days ahead on abc seven news at 4:00. kristen. >> all right. spencer. thank you. so today, if you want to know more about the current status of california's high speed rail project, here's your chance. officials are holding an open house at the salesforce transit center in san francisco. you can ask questions, take a virtual reality tour of future stations, and take photos with newly unveiled public art. the open house kicks off at 4:00. it goes until six tonight. it's free, but you are asked to rsvp through eventbrite. a federal jury will decide if bart has to pay up to six former employees fired during the pandemic. abc seven news has been following this story for years. those workers lost their jobs during the pandemic for refusing to get covid vaccines, claiming religious exemptions. bart did initially grant exemptions, but the workers argue they weren't accommodated. an accommodation could have meant they were able to work from home or get tested regularly, but they say none of

that happened and they lost their jobs. a jury ruled on friday that bart could have accommodated those workers. >> i've been homeless before, and this is what i told the bart board. you know, i'm not afraid to be homeless again. now they're they're tapping into people's rights. and i'm not going to stand for that. not on my watch. >> now, the jury will decide if each of the six workers did, in fact, have a religious conflict with bart's vaccine mandate. san francisco leaders are exploring what would become the city's largest subway project ever. the project would put a subway under geary boulevard, connecting downtown to the city's west side. it would go past san francisco state university, ending at daly city, bart. the geary and 19th avenue corridor is one of the busiest in the city. muni says 50,000 people ride busses in that area each day. right now, transit officials are surveying the community about the idea. there is no timeline for when this project could begin. new at three. home sales are on track

for the worst year since 1995. new numbers out today from the national association of realtors show september sales fell 3.5% from the same time last year, and overall in 2023, home sales hit their lowest point in 30 years. persistently high home prices and mortgage rates are continuing to sideline potential home buyers. frustration over the housing market has led both presidential campaigns to propose ways to bring down costs. and speaking of the presidential race, new controversy on the campaign trail today, more on that and what the feds just told elon musk over his attempt to lure swing state voters. plus, getting in shape and getting organized. whatever your new year's resolution, now is the time to get started. we'll explain the october theory that's taking over the

violate federal election law. musk is an avid supporter of former president donald trump. his offer states that people who sign a petition in support of the first and second amendments will be entered into a random daily drawing for $1 million prize. but to sign the petition, you must be registered to vote in certain battleground states. federal law prohibits paying people to register to vote. early voting is off to record breaking starts in several states in georgia. nearly 2 million votes have already been cast since the polls opened last week. >> georgia is having continuing records every day, it seems, with early voting turnout. this is proof. in georgia, it's easy to vote and hard to cheat.

>> texas is setting records to more than 881,000 people, cast their ballots on monday, when early voting started. that breaks the turnout record from the first day of early voting in 2020. and it all comes as the presidential race continues to heat up. former president trump's longest serving chief of staff called his former boss a fascist, with no concept or respect for the rule of law, and vice president harris weighed in on those comments ahead of a town hall in philadelphia tonight. abc's christiane cordero has more. >> for weeks, vice president harris has zeroed in on her opponent as an unhinged, unstable candidate. and today, that line of attack is fueled by a new scathing comments from former president trump's longest serving chief of staff. retired four star marine general john kelly. >> this is a window into who donald trump really is from the people who know him best. and in a second term, people like john kelly would not be there to be

the guardrails against his propensities and his actions. >> in an interview with the new york times, kelly says trump has no concept of the rule of law or constitution, and that he would praise adolf hitler. the nazi leader who orchestrated the murder of 6 million jews in world war two. >> so he certainly falls into the into the general definition of fascist, for sure. >> kelly's comments mirror similar reporting in the atlantic magazine. all of which trump's campaign calls an outrageous lie, adding in a statement, quote, john kelly has totally becloud himself, calling the stories fabricated and adding trump has always honored the service and sacrifice of all of our military men and women, that this is election about donald trump taking full control of the military to use against his political enemies. kelly stopped short of offering an endorsement for president, instead urging voters to consider character over policy. christiane cordero, abc news, washington. >> stick with abc seven news for election coverage. we have a

voter guide just for you. go to abc seven news.com and look under the election section. ai is transforming college applications and admissions. and now two former nasa engineers have created an ai platform specifically to help students land a spot at elite universities ethically. meet the co-founder of athena ai

before we dive into athena, i am going to make you a little uncomfortable by talking about you. even though you look like. okay, good. even though you look like you might be applying to college yourself, don't be offended. you're actually a caltech and nasa alum, right? that's right. i mean, and that is kind of an interesting story. it's quite frankly, what caught my attention at first because, okay, got to toot your horns a little bit. you were 16, i think, when you started at caltech. right. and isn't this how this kind of all started? and evolved? >> yeah, exactly. so i was studying ai at caltech for a while, and then actually kind of how athena started the nugget of where we began is after i graduated caltech on the side, i was an admissions coach, and i was helping a couple students work on their essays. and one student came to me with an essay that i knew he didn't write. and as a result, i asked him, hey, where did you get this from? and he said, oh, well, i used this great platform. chatgpt. and i used it to write a couple paragraphs and i was like, oh my god. like, if you do that,

colleges are not going to be happy. and so since i studied ai for so long, i knew that there was i mean, there had to be a better way that students could, you know, use this powerful technology, but in a way compliant with what universities deem as acceptable. >> okay, so you packed it up from nasa and said, you know what? i'm going to start this athena ai thing. so tell us how it is different, right? you said in that example just now that you think it's superior to chatgpt, which a lot of kids ars why? >> absol using, right? show us,eah, i cak a little bit about it, and then maybe i'll share my screen. i can walk you through a demo of the platform. but in a nutshell, if i had to describe what athena is, it's a personalized ai coach that helps students when they're writing their college application essays. specifically, we don't write anything for students, but what makes it unique is that it's actually trained on thousands of successful college application essays. so really, the kind of key differentiator here is that college, or rather, chatgpt, does not have that knowledge of what a successful college application essay looks like. versus we actually trained our ai models on thousands of these essays that actually work. >> can i just pause you there for a second? because i heard a

rumor that you got a hold of these essays of students who got into top tier colleges by offering a little exchange. >> that's right. yeah. we used boba. we don't really have. you know, we weren't going to go out there and pay like hundreds of dollars for people's essays. and so we literally went, i mean, yeah, we were not going to do that. we didn't have it. we're young. and so we thought, great, boba is the way to go. so we went to different college campuses and you see a picture right there. we would stand there with the crate of boba and offer students walking around on campus a boba in exchange for the essays that got them in. >> that cracks me up. only college students would like, offer up all their creative juices and tens of thousands of hours whatever put in for, you know, a boba. so there you go. boba. boba. okay, so you got those essays, and is that how you trained your platform? because what, you know, any ai platform is only as good as the information it's trained on. exactly. you hit it on the nail. >> yeah. that's right. so yeah, pretty much what we did is we had experts in this college admissions space review these thousands of essays and pick out

what are the subtle, nuanced patterns that make these essays successful. and so we use that to almost like chatgpt has a brain where, you know, it saw everything on the internet. our ai models, you can think of it as its brain being the set of thousands of successful essays, but also, you know, experts really picking out what are the patterns that matter. >> okay, maybe in a minute you can quickly run us through how if i were a student who was using this, how it would work. >> yeah. that's right. let me go ahead and share my screen. >> all right. screen share. okay. >> i think we're good to go. >> okay. >> yep. perfect. so as a student, you come to our platform. it's athena kohai. you would sign up for an account? in my case, of course, i have an account. so i just log in. but let's pretend i'm a student. i've written a college application essay, and i'm looking for some just quick feedback on it. i want to know if i wrote a good essay and i want feedback on how to improve. so for the demo purposes today, we'll do a personal statement. so i head over to the common application tab. i select the prompt that i have answered, and i'll just go ahead and paste in

a sample essay. we'll pretend that this is my essay. this is a student's essay we've gotten permission to use, and i just clicked grade. and so in about 30s, what we're going to see is about two pages of feedback come out where our ai models are looking at and analyzing the essay that the student has put in, and it's comparing it up against this database of successful essays, as well as the patterns that have been picked out that we know work for success. >> i just ask you something. it doesn't write or rewrite for you, does it? because ethically, that's under debate, right? like how much of it is written by ai? >> okay, that's right. yeah. so if students end up using ai to write part of their essay, if they're caught huge trouble, you know, your offer of admission could be rescinded. and so when we built this platform, we made sure that we're compliant with university policies. and we don't write anything for students at all. okay. >> but i see here you're a, you're a i gave it a grade of b plus and then gave it what some suggestions or improvement. that's right. >> exactly. that's right. so these requirements are the patterns that i was talking about which were picked out. so for personal statements as we can see, one thing that's really important is emotionally

connecting with the reader. so if you're able to get the admissions officer to really root for you, you're in a good position. so we give it a grade, an explanation. and then specifically, what are the actionable tips that the student can use to improve? >> okay. so i got to ask you because i looked it up, there seems to be a subscription model right where it's like from $15 to $90 a month. and, and i know one of your missions is to make the playing field of college admissions more equitable. but if you charge, how does it accomplish that? >> exactly? so we're just trying to the first thing we think the subscription model, the way we've priced it, we tried to make it as cheap as possible, as affordable as possible, but as well for low income students, we actually do partnerships with school districts where school districts can purchase this for their students at a much lower price, and that way, students that might not be able to access, let's say, a $15 per month price can also have access to our platform. >> i see. all right. well, and no matter what, i guess even the $90 is cheaper than the i don't know, $10,000 that a lot of people pay for a private college consultant essay coach. all right, aj, this is really interesting. keep us posted. let

us know come next year how admissions yields were for your uh. absolutely. >> i'll keep you posted. >> all right. take care. coming up next, the october theory why some people are making changes now instead of

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the golden bachelorette is down to the final four. and tonight joan hits the road and heads to the hometowns of each of the remaining men. this next step of the journey has her making some tough choices. >> it's hard meeting the families. it makes the decision so much harder because you don't feel like you're just choosing a person. you're also choosing their families, and you don't want to like, think that they did anything that made you not choose that person. it's really hard when you get down to the last four. those decisions are huge and you know, you don't

want to hurt somebody. >> you can watch joan's hometown daetz tonight when the golden bachelorette airs at 8 p.m. right here on abc seven. now to the latest trend taking the internet by storm. it's called the october theory. many say now is actually the time to jumpstart your goals ahead of the new year. abc's stephanie ramos explains a new way to strive for self-improvement is taking over the month of octobe, called october theory. >> october is like the month of change. >> instead of waiting to set resolutions in january, folks are using the last three months of the year to refocus and form new habits. >> i always think that my biggest changes are in january, but it's really october. >> it's all about taking stock of where you want to be in your life, and getting a jump start before the end of the year. >> the october theory is this idea that your life dramatically changes every october, and you will really plant the seeds of transformation. >> two octobers ago kelly seitz

really wanted to move back to the u.s. after living overseas, so she made the move in october. >> i thought, oh, maybe it's just me that i've had all these dramatic changes in october, but really seeing how it's so widespread has been really cool. i really recommend knowing that this is such a powerful time of change for everyone to really take a step back and think, okay, what do i want to accomplish in the next three months? where do i want to better my life? >> experts say october often feels like a time for reflection as the seasons change. the new school year kicks off and the year starts winding down. >> we're just 90 days out from the holidays. it's a great time to reassess because you still have some time to accomplish what's really important to you before the new year. >> that was stephanie ramos reporting. now, you don't have to wait to say new year, new you anymore. this theory, as we said, it's all about, you know, it's not too late. you still have time to accomplish your

goals before 2025. sticking with the october theme, this pug is ready for halloween. she's dressed as wednesday addams and illinois man came up with this costume. the pug appears rather unimpressed as pugs are, but the internet certainly loves it. the video already has 2 million views on tiktok. that's going to do it for now. thanks for joining us for abc seven news at three world news tonight with david muir starts right now. and i'll see you back here at four. bye bye. tonight, breaking news as we come on the air. the retired four-star marine general who was donald trump's longest serving chief of staff and his new warning tonight about donald trump, just days before the election. what he says trump said about hitler. kelly warning that trump, if elected again, would rule like a dictator. you will hear the aud