g on some honeybaked all day. ♪ every bite is a celebration with the honey baked ham company. starts right now. >> just devastated. i feel so sorry for those families. i can't imagine what they are going through. >> sympathy and signs of suppor.

at a growing tribute to three young people who died in a car crash today in the east bay. good afternoon. i'm kristen sze. thanks for joining us. we're learning more today about those involved in that crash. it happened just after 3:00. this morning at hampton road and king avenue in piedmont. abc seven news reporter gloria rodriguez was at the scene throughout the morning and tells us more about the victims. >> police are not giving us information about the victims, but we're learning that all four were graduates of piedmont high school and behind me, you can see people have been coming by to drop off flowers. one person who lives nearby did not know the victims but was in tears. this is certainly impacting this quiet, tight knit community. this tesla cybertruck, left mangled in a fiery wreck in piedmont that left three people dead and one in the hospital. police believe speed was a factor in the solo overnight crash. when first responders arrived at king avenue in hampton roads. the truck was up in flames. the piedmont fire

department responded and was ultimately able to extinguish the flames to the vehicle. piedmont police chief jeremy bowers says an iphone on someone in the truck alerted police to the collision. a nearby resident also called 9-1-1. >> this is a very tight knit community, and this is a community that's going to rally around uh- members that are affected by this tragedy. but there's no doubt this is going to be immensely impactful to this community. it already has been, and it will continue to be so. >> authorities say someone traveling behind the tesla helped get somebody in the truck out. >> anytime anyone gets somebody out of harm's way, that is helpful. we did assess that person also for any injuries. and they did not go to the hospital. so they were okay. but they they helped that person who's now at the hospital. well, it's good to know that that somebody was willing to help. they probably saved a life. >> and while police believe speed was a factor, they are

still investigating other factors. in piedmont, gloria rodriguez, abc seven news. >> an american businessman with ties to the bay area is one of three people released from chinese custody in a prisoner swap. kylie has spent the last eight years in a chinese prison after he was arrested in 2016 on a business trip to shanghai. the chinese government charged him with espionage. he was given a ten year prison sentence. the u.s. state department and the un called the conviction political and without merit. lee's son, harrison, is a stanford doctoral student and has publicly called on the biden and trump administrations to ask for his father's release. abc news reporter christiane cordero has details on the rare diplomatic agreement, and the three people released just two weeks ago. >> president biden met with chinese president xi on the sidelines of the asia pacific economic summit. among the topics the two leaders talked about was the fate of three americans held prisoner in

china. today, the white house says mark sweden, kai lee and john liang are now free men thanks to a prisoner swap. the three americans released in exchange for unidentified chinese nationals in u.s. custody. mark sweden from houston, texas, in a chinese prison for more than a decade and facing execution. arrested and sentenced to death in 2012 on drug charges. the u.s. considered him wrongfully detained. >> the world can see that the chinese communist party is trying to use hostages and hostage taking as a tool of statecraft. this ordeal has got to end. it has to end. for mark, it has to end for his mother has to end for his family. >> chi li, a chinese immigrant from new york detained in shanghai in 2016, accused of spying. john liang, also convicted on espionage charges and sentenced to life in prison.

the biden administration is now touting that they have helped bring more than 70 americans back home who have been classified as wrongfully detained from countries like russia, afghanistan and now, of course, china. and some believe beijing may be hoping that releasing the prisoners will pave the way for the state department to relax its current travel warning for americans headed to china. for president biden, a chance to point to a rare diplomatic agreement with china as part of his legacy. christiane cordero abc news with the president in nantucket, massachusetts. >> and we're following the story of the recall of oakland mayor chantel. the focus now turns to filling her seat. a special election will be held next year, and the group behind the recall is making sure their voices continue to be heard. yesterday, leaders of the group laid out their priorities. they want their next mayor to renegotiate union contracts to help close the city's massive budget deficit, which is already more than $100 million in the short term. plus, they're calling for no cuts to public safety and say

all nonprofits that receive city money should be audited. retired judge brenda forte says she does not want to see anybody run for mayor who did not support the recall, such as barbara lee, who said that the recall was anti-democratic. >> it's one thing to say, don't recall her because she's doing a good job, but to say that no matter what kind of job she's doing, it's anti-democratic for you to try to recall her. that's an entirely different message and an unfortunate message. >> mayor tao will step down once the votes have been certified, and city council formally accepts that certification, probably by mid-december. a special election will most likely be held in april. now, switching gears to the accuweather forecast. we want to head live outside. how about a picture of santa cruz beach? just gorgeous. it is sunny. our string of stormy days is finally over. just in time for thanksgiving. abc weather anchor spencer christian has a look at

your holiday forecast. >> highs this afternoon will reach 60 at san francisco and right around the bay shoreline. most locations will top out at about 60 going into the inland east bay, which is often our mildest or warmest region. it will be the coolest today with highs only in the upper 50s up in the north bay. 59 at napa, 62 at santa rosa and san rafael, and san jose wins the prize for the warmest spot. a high of 63 this afternoon. now, it's not going to be warm overnight. we have a frost advisory for tonight into tomorrow morning and tomorrow night into friday morning. it applies to the north bay interior mountains and interior valleys. the east bay hills and the interior east bay valleys and the east santa clara hills. temperatures will drop down to about 32 degrees. frost will form and could damage sensitive plants. overnight lows will drop to about 32 at fairfield 34 vallejo up in the north bay, 32 at lakeport, 33 at santa rosa. so you can see it's going to be quite chilly in many of our inland locations right around the bay shoreline, though, we'll see lows in the

upper 30s. san mateo 39 and some low 40s. 41 at oakland. here's the accuweather seven day forecast and it's just lovely. tomorrow. sunshine on thanksgiving day. high temperatures up around 60 degrees both along the bay shoreline and inland. on friday, just a little bit milder and a great day for shoppers on black friday. going to the weekend. we'll see a combination of fog and sun in the early morning hours. then the fog burns away in the afternoon. and look at this a warming trend begins on the first day of december, which is sunday. so from sunday through monday and tuesday, we'll see inland highs up in the mid 60s, about 6465 degrees. similar range around the bay shoreline mid 60s there and up to about 60 on the coast. not exactly sunbathing weather, but an improvement if you will. a milder range of highs than what we've had recently. kristen. thank you. >> well, the thanksgiving rush was on today. just look at all those cars waiting to get into the parking lot as a new costco opened up in pleasanton, sky seven was overhead and captured the scene in the parking lot. it

was so full, the line of cars waiting just to get in stretched well down the street. that's just a glimpse of how busy this day was for the new store. the long line of shoppers anxious to get in there well before the doors open early this morning, because there was a discount on alcohol, which drew a line of its own. this costco is located near the five 8680 interchange. a new strain of mpox confirmed here in california. we'll talk about that in the other major health headlines in our getting answers segment, including donald trump's nominee to head the primary agency for public health research. he's actually a stanford doctor who made controversial headlines for opposing covid

or hosting out of town guests for thanksgiving. some worrisome health news from bird flu detected in raw milk sold in california to the first confirmed case of a more severe strain of mpox in california. we're at the center of some big health concerns right now. plus, president elect trump's pick to lead the national institutes of health is a stanford doctor who backed herd immunity and criticized lockdowns during covid. a lot to talk about with us now. joining us, stanford infectious diseases doctor and researcher abroad. karen. doctor karen, thank you for your time today. >> thanks for having me. >> i want to start with bird flu, if we could, because you came on our show last week after an alameda county child became the first kid in the u.s. to get the h5n1 virus. this child is recovering. and now the bird flu virus has been detected in raw milk in california. that's the new headline this week. so tell us more about this detection and what it means. >> yeah. so what we knew before

this was that many of the dairy cows, you know, of more than 30% of the herds had infected cows. we knew the cows were shedding a lot of virus in the milk. we know pasteurization will kill the virus, but we also know that there are a number of people that consume raw milk. so there had been recommendations not to do that for a while now. for months now, we've actually detected in some of the raw milk that was sold commercially that there was virus detectable. the biggest risk is if this virus were to splash into someone's eye where the receptors are, there for this virus, or if there were other routes now just consuming it. we haven't seen any transmission by that pathway just yet. >> okay. but you would stick to pasteurized milk for sure, right now. right. just to be safe. >> of course. yes. >> i would highly recommend that. okay. what about poultry? is that safe? i mean, we've got turkey out there, of course, obviously, but just all birds. >> yes. poultry should be safe. you know, typically, of course, there are other risks. if you

eat poultry without cooking it. so i wouldn't recommend that. but, you know, as long as you're cooking it the way that we typically recommend you should be fine. there shouldn't be transmission there. now, of course, interacting with dead birds, we've seen even backyard poultry stocks get infected. certainly staying away from dead wild birds because, you know, there is transmission risk there. >> how are you feeling about bird flu overall right now as a researcher? >> yeah, i'm you know, as a researcher, there's a lot we're learning, but i'm not feeling great about it. and the reason is it's actually even more complicated than the covid response because you've got three different agencies fda dealing with the food aspect. so milk you've got usda dealing with the agriculture aspect, and then you have cdc dealing with the human aspect. so you're really across three agencies. it's a very complicated coordination. >> okay. that can be a whole nother episode or conversation. but i want to move on to mpox because a patient in california has tested for newer, more severe strain right. clade one versus clade two. that's the one that we had in 2022 circulating. how did this patient get it and

could it spread quickly here? >> yeah. great question. so we were expecting this would happen. there was an outbreak. there has been an outbreak ongoing from the democratic republic of the congo. that outbreak then started to spread into other countries like kenya, burundi, uganda. and so we know that this person had traveled in east africa and came back. they had suspicious lesions. they were tested. and we found that this is the strain that this patient is infected with. we've had these go into europe as well already to yes, it can cause more severe disease. thankfully this patient is actually doing well. they've they've recovered from what we've been told. and i think the risk of this turning into a big outbreak is still pretty low thankfully. but it's something we need to monitor. >> sure. but you know, it's been a couple years since it was really rearing its head. so how do we prevent catching it? >> yes, there's a good point. so you know, the clade two outbreak that we had and a big one in the bay area and even in southern california was primarily spread through sexual contact. we saw a

lot of spread in the msm community. and so that's where our efforts were focused with, with this clade, one we actually see there's even been transmission amongst children in heterosexual relationships as well. and so close contact is really how it spreads. so as as health researchers and officials, we need to keep a close eye and make sure we're testing any people who have suspicious lesions like this. but i don't think the general public has to do anything quite yet, but take regular precautions that you would take against sexually transmitted infections, for sure. >> okay, another big headline today. of course, someone who was considered controversial during covid. a stanford colleague of yours has now been picked by president elect trump to lead the national institutes of health. that's doctor jay bhattacharya. i want to play a clip from my interview with him four years ago. >> there's a thousand fold difference between, for instance, the risk that a child faces, which is something on the order of 1 in 100,000 of mortality from getting covid 19 to someone who's over over 70, which may be as high as 4 or 5 and 100, the harms from these

lockdowns are absolutely devastating, not just the economics, but also to health. so, for instance, during the lockdown, we've seen people who skip cancer treatments, who skip diabetes management, treatments, they've skipped their immunizations for their children. so we shouldn't take these lockdowns lightly as if they're just a zero cost kind of thing. and we should wait until we have a vaccine. they're causing health costs now. >> okay, that might have sounded different from what most bay area doctors were saying four years ago, and considered by many to be fringe at the time. but now many people do feel that california did do too many lockdowns for too long and kept kids out of school for too long. given their outcomes. so explain why. because i know you do take issues with his views. >> yeah. so i think that, you know, hindsight is 2020 when you're dealing with a virus that mutates like this. at that time, it was very hard to know which way things would be headed. for

instance, the first wild type strain was severe, but the next strain, the next sort of variation of that delta actually was even more severe. and then we had omicron, which caused actually, cumulatively, even more deaths than the other two. so the problem was we were dealing with something that was constantly changing and evolving. and we were at that time when the great barrington declaration was pushed forward, we were very close to vaccines, and vaccines have saved millions of lives. i know doctor bhattacharya would agree with that statement. and so, yes, looking back now, we know that you know, we were able to better quantify the harms of lockdowns. and i think everybody agreed that there were real costs to lockdowns. so i don't disagree with that stance, but i think it's much easier to look back than what we were dealing with in that moment. >> but you have concerns about him being the nih director. >> you know, it's the challenge here, actually, is that when you're the nih director, you're responsible for a massive research portfolio, including portfolio that focus on infectious diseases and other and other diseases where chronic disease and whatnot. and what we've heard is from, you know,

the robert f kennedy jr, is that he wants to take the spotlight away from infectious diseases, and that is the environment we're working in. and unfortunately, as we've discussed today, there's a lot going on with infectious diseases that can really be a big problem for the public. so i'm hoping that they approach this with what we are dealing with, not with what they hope we would be dealing with. >> okay, doctor karen, we are just about out of time, but real quickly, given this is thanksgiving in 30s, maybe you can share with us. are you still concerned about covid at all? i don't know if you're going to travel. are you still going to wear a mask? are you still going to take any test before gatherings? or do you think that's all behind us? >> you know, it's a great question. i think it's very important to know who's at your house, what their risk factors are like. doctor bhattacharya said in that video. right. if you have older people with comorbidities, we definitely do still see people getting sick with covid 19 and other respiratory infections too. so if you can test or if you're able to mask when you're in transit, which is what probably the highest risk of picking up any kind of viruses, that would

be advisable because i think nobody wants to be sick when they're with their family. so i would give that advice to people and we'll be giving that advice probably every year during the season when we have these viruses all right. >> stanford doctor abrar caron, thank you so very much for your insight today. happy thanksgiving. >> happy thanksgiving. >> okay. forget black friday. there's a new effort to get people to do green, to go green the day after thanksg your next favorite thing about this place is waiting to be discovered. did you know you can do this? ... pretty cool, right? ... and you don't want to miss that. you can also ride this ... and then race on over to do this... and before you leave? you definitely wanna see that.

going up in the new year. the increase is 5.5% across the board. you'll end up paying about $0.25 more per trip on average. bart says the increase is to keep up with inflation. if you want to check your commute, you can use bart's trip planner and just set the depart or arrive date after january 1st to see the new cost. abc seven is committed to building a better bay area and part of that effort focuses on the climate and environment. this thanksgiving, there's a new push to go green. the national park service is offering an alternative to

shopping on black friday. abc news chief climate news abc news chief climate correspondent ginger zee explains what they have in mind. >> the day after thanksgiving, it's been marketed as the biggest shopping day of the yea. but now you know those deals go all week, really all month. and consumption is encouraged at every corner. but what if this year you traded in black friday for something green? green friday is about skipping the shopping, saving your money, and spending the day at one of more than 400 national parks. >> these are america's treasure, and what a better opportunity than to spend a special holiday weekend when you do have time to spend with your family and friends to, instead of, you know, sitting in front of a television or going out into a really busy shopping mall and just making it more about connection. >> environmental protection agency metrics from 2016 showed that household waste can increase by up to 25% between thanksgiving and new years, and our holiday season consumption

has only increased since then. spending time outside can not only help the planet, but it also has mental and physical health benefits. >> if you spend thanksgiving and you eat all day, i know i do. and then you're getting outside the next day and you're getting those steps in. you're working on your fitness, but also on your mental health. and then just getting to disconnect from devices, hopefully. and really be and experience the moment with you and your loved ones, whatever your family looks like. >> and if you're looking for a national park to spend green friday, there may be one right near your home. you can go to the national park service website or download the app to find parks and events nearby for your own green friday celebration. with this climate minute, i'm ginger zee to find a recipe for the thanksgiving holiday or want new ideas on how to use all those turkey day leftovers, learn how ♪ home sweet home ♪ there's no place like the road home. receive a $5,500 bonus on a new 2024 audi q5 plug-in hybrid

during the season of audi sales event.

♪ i'm on my way ♪ ♪ home sweet home ♪ there's no place like the road home. receive a $5,500 bonus on a new 2024 audi q5 plug-in hybrid during the season of audi sales event.

the judge says there was, quote, clear and convincing evidence that the hip hop mogul is potentially dangerous. this is the fourth time he was denied bail. diddy is waiting for trial on charges of racketeering and sex trafficking, and faces a series of civil suits alleging sexual assault and physical violence. the gym chain, fitness sf is taking over a long vacant piece of property in san francisco. fitness sf will open its ninth location in the old lombardi, or lombardi sports building at polk and jackson. it's a two story, 44,000 square foot building. the new owners plan to create a gym that includes a recovery area and cryotherapy lounges, and space for specialized workout classes. a man in southern california can

be your kitchen helper for holiday meals or anytime he's created an ai driven recipe generator, platform reporter michael yoshida tells us about the benefit of robotic recipes using generative artificial intelligence to change the way people plan for and prepare meals. >> if you are just searching online or browsing through cookbooks, you might find a couple. but with ai, you can generate a lot of different ideas and then find the one that best suits your needs. >> andrew olson, a software developer who was also a food blogger for many years, is the founder of dish gen. com it's one of many ai powered recipe generators that have been created in recent years for dish gen. you go to the website, type in the ingredients you have or a dish you'd like to try, along with any dietary restrictions you might have. the ai will then generate a new recipe with description, ingredients, and steps. >> as a food blogger over 8 or 10 years, i maybe developed hundreds of recipes on dish gen. there have been millions of recipes generated over the last

year. >> what about food and recipe safety? olson says you should always use common sense when using anything generated by ai. but, he adds, dish gen has worked to make sure its recipes make sense and are safe. >> there are several layers, actually. part of it is just making sure that words that shouldn't be included in a recipe are blocked. it'll check itself. it'll have a sense of self-awareness to say, is this something that should be included in a recipe? in washington, i'm michael yoshida, reporting. >> all right, that's the future. remember, abc7 news is streaming 24 over seven. get the abc7 bay area app and join us whenever you want. wherever you are. thank you so much for joining us today. world news tonight with david muir starts right now. and i'll see you back here for abc seven news at four.

>> i'm reggie aqui i'm lyanne melendez, i'm luz pena, i'm tara campbell, i'm j.r. stone at abc seven news we deliver local stories with real answers to help make our city better. tonight, the major thanksgiving storm taking aim at the northeast, with millions of americans on the move. and the news just coming in, a security breach at jfk airport. a stowaway found on an international flight. and the fbi investigates