ter receiving the largest ethics fine in city history for breaking campaign laws. mark authorized a commission almost every year he was in office. he was even caught taking donations from people he would then appoint to commissions, including a felon convicted of bribery. san francisco's challenges demand urgency, not more of the same failed insiders. tonight, the second wave of deadly explosions involving wireless devices targeting hezbollah in lebanon. the new blasts across the country as a funeral was held for a hezbollah member killed in the first wave of attacks. another 14 people killed. 450 others injured on top of the thousands hurt tuesday. israel saying its war effort has moved to a new phase. did it booby trap

those devices with tiny explosives? also tonight, the federal reserve going big with its first interest rate cut in more than four years. what it means for your money. the race for the white house after both candidates courted the teamsters. the powerful union making a surprise move today, something it hasn't done in nearly 30 years. harvey weinstein back in court for the first time since emergency heart surgery. the new sex crime charge he faces. also back in court, sean "diddy" combs. why a second judge denied bail in his sex trafficking case as his lawyer slammed his jail conditions as horrific. the accident on a children's field trip to an apple orchard, the wagon ride overturning. dozens injured. and their story was immortalized in a hit movie. today the special honor on capitol hill for the hidden figures who helped america land on the moon.

>> we have a liftoff 32 minutes past the hour. >> announcer: this is "nbc nightly news" with lester holt. good evening, and welcome. for a second day in a row a wave of explosions from booby-trapped wireless devices rocked lebanon striking both fear and anger and calls for revenge by hezbollah, which blames israel. the latest explosions killing at least 14 and injuring hundreds. it follows yesterday's attacks in which pagers rigged with hidden explosives appeared to target hezbollah members who were known to carry the devices. two u.s. officials telling us they were made aware by israel that it was going to do something, but american officials say they had no details and were caught by surprise when the reports came out denying involvement or knowledge in the operation. today simultaneous explosions were traced to walkie-talkies. the unprecedented attacks striking at the heart of hezbollah's communications network and recasting the nature of the mideast conflict.

raf sanchez reports from israel. >> reporter: tonight a second wave of explosions tearing through lebanon. yesterday it was pagers belonging to hezbollah members. today it's walkie-talkies detonating simultaneously according to lebanese state media. this blast at a funeral today where a hezbollah member killed in yesterday's bombing. the lebanese army blowing up one walkie-talkie in a controlled explosion outside a hospital in beirut. the iranian backed militants unable to stop what u.s. officials tell nbc news is a vast israeli covert operation targeting hezbollah's personnel and its communications network. lebanon's health ministry says at least 14 people were killed in today's blasts on top of the 12 killed yesterday. two of them children, and hospitals struggling with an influx of more than 3,000 injured people.

doctors involved in treating the wounded in the pager attack say they saw many injuries to the face where people were looking directly at the device as well as the side where it was clipped to a belt or in a pocket. israel refusing to say if it was involved, but tonight the defense minister says the war is moving to a new phase with troops shifting from gaza to the fight against hezbollah on the lebanon border as israel vows to make it safe for thousands of its civilians displaced by the fighting to finally return home. "the new york times" citing two officials says israeli agents planted tiny explosives inside the pagers, which detonated after receiving messages that appeared to be from hezbollah leadership. many of the destroyed pagers bear the logo of taiwanese company gold apollo, but that firm says the specific model was made by a different company in hungary. hungary's government saying the company is an intermediary with no manufacturing or

operational site, meaning it's still not clear where in the shadowy supply chain these consumer devices were turned into deadly bombs. former fbi official clint watts says this was a highly sophisticated attack. >> the key point of all of this is this was a very coordinated attack against a very specific target. it's not something that would be easily undertaken by an individual or by random groups of criminals. >> reporter: with hezbollah now vowing revenge, israeli forces on high alert after a chain of blasts that could be the sparks for all-out war. >> and, raf, what are we to make from u.s. comments so far that they were aware that something was happening? >> reporter: well, lester, it's probably not a surprise that israel wouldn't share the specifics of an operation this sensitive to u.s. but officials tell nbc news they were aware israel was planning something in lebanon, but they were caught

off guard when those pagers started exploding, and they stress the u.s. was not involved in this attack. lester. >> all right, raf sanchez tonight, thank you. we turn to the long awaited move by the federal reserve finally cutting its key interest rate by half a point. it's the first cut since the covid pandemic and comes as the fed has spent years trying to bring down inflation. christine romans now on what it means for your money. >> reporter: the federal reserve today delivering a jolt to the u.s. economy. a half percentage point cut to its benchmark rate as inflation is making progress toward the fed's target of 2%. fed chair jerome powell today saying the economy is in good shape. >> it's growing at a solid pace. inflation is coming down. the labor market is in a strong pace. we want to keep it there. >> reporter: and powell indicated rates are likely to come down further this year and next. the fed's campaign to rein in inflation, which hit 9.1% in june

2022, drove borrowing costs for homes, cars, and credit cards to their highest levels in decades. for families like ben and hayley williams, the hope is lower rates will help the household budget. they have almost $11,000 in credit card debt, some with interest rates over 30%. >> we never had credit card debt prior to this. >> reporter: this was buying a house in indiana last december with a mortgage rate of 8.1%. >> i know we maxed out our housing budget, but we kind of had to because anything under the $250,000 mark here was selling quickly or they were getting cash offers, and we just couldn't compete with that. >> are you hoping that within the next couple of years you'll be able to refinance then? >> yeah, yeah, that's the goal. >> reporter: they feel house poor. about half of their income goes toward their home. >> only $176 went to principal last month, and so over $2,000 was interest and taxes and insurance. >> reporter: mortgage rates were already falling in advance of the fed's rate cut.

the average 30-year fixed rate down nearly two points from last october. also falling, gas prices below $3 a gallon in 16 states. nationwide a gallon of regular almost 70 cents cheaper than last year. >> and christine joining us here in the studio. there was a lot of conversation. would they go for a smaller cut? they went big. was that a surprise and what do you think the thinking was? >> chair powell says he sees inflation moving into the right direction and shifting to the job market and the fed is forecasting the unemployment rate to tick up in the coming months. they just don't want that to get out of control. >> christine romans, thank you. after vice president harris and former president trump courted the teamsters, the powerful union today making a surprise move, refusing to endorse either of them. it's something that hasn't happened since 1996. here's garrett haake. >> reporter: tonight, in a blow to vice president harris, the powerful teamsters union announcing it will make no endorsement in the

2024 presidential race. harris becoming the first democratic nominee not to win the backing of america's largest union in nearly three decades. the union releasing an internal poll showing 58% of its members support trump. 31% back harris. in a statement writing it was, quote, left with few commitments on top teamsters issues from either candidate and found no definitive support among members for either party's nominee. >> mr. president, any reaction to the teamsters' decision not to endorse? >> no, it's a great honor. they're not going to endorse the democrats. that's a big thing. >> big difference in the bit industrial state, do you think? will it make a difference? the bit industrial >> i think so. the teamsters carry a lot of weight. >> reporter: harris has won the backing of other unions including the united autoworkers and said teamsters locals across the country have already endorsed her alongside the overwhelming majority of organized labor and comes as we're seeing signs of new tighter security measures for trump. the fbi director

saying he's devoting the, quote, full force of the agency to investigate the two attempts on trump's life within just two months. trump overnight thanking vice president harris for calling him. >> today a little while ago i got a very nice call from kamala. [ booing ] no, it was very nice. >> reporter: meanwhile harris in a speech to the congressional hispanic caucus institute blasting trump's call for mass deportations of undocumented migrants. >> donald trump and his extremist allies will keep trying to pull us backwards. they have pledged to carry out the largest deportation, a mass deportation in american history. imagine what that would look like and what that would be. how is that going to happen, massive raids, massive detention camps? what are they talking about? >> and garrett is here right now. some good news for the vice president. there's battleground polling -- >> quinnipiac putting

out polls of the three blue wall states, wisconsin, michigan, pennsylvania, all showing harris with narrow margin of error leads, but holding those three states which joe biden won in 2020 still her clearest, easiest path to victory. >> thank you. also tonight harvey weinstein appearing in court for the first time since undergoing emergency heart surgery last week. the former movie producer pleading not guilty to a new sex crime charge. we get more from anne thompson. >> reporter: more legal troubles for harvey weinstein tonight. already serving a 16-year sentence for a rape that occurred in los angeles, the one-time movie mogul returned to a new york courtroom today to face a new indictment, charged with a criminal sexual act in the first degree, accused of assaulting a woman at a new york hotel in the spring of 2006. the 72-year-old pleaded not guilty. >> mr. weinstein has been very consistent from the time of his investigation. he never forced himself on anybody. >> reporter: weinstein will also be retried on the sex crimes

including rape he was convicted of in 2020. that guilty verdict, a landmark in the me too movement, was overturned this year. the state's highest court ruled it was wrong to allow women to testify about allegations against weinstein that were not part of the case. weinstein sat in a wheelchair with officers behind him. just last week he had emergency surgery to remove fluid from his heart and lungs. louise godbold is 1 of at least 80 women to accuse weinstein of sexual harassment or assault. >> well, justice looks like him being in prison and not able to hurt any more people. >> reporter: both sides will be back in court next month to argue if these charges should be tried together. anne thompson, nbc news, new york. and also back in court in new york today, sean "diddy" combs. a judge denying bail again in his sex trafficking case.

chloe melas is with us. chloe, a major blow to the music mogul. >> it is. this is the second time sean combs has been denied bail in his federal sex trafficking case. court prosecutors arguing that combs is a danger to the community, and they said that they feared combs would intimidate witnesses if released on bail. now, combs' attorneys argued today the brooklyn jail where he is being held which once housed michael cohen and ghislaine maxwell had horrific conditions that were not appropriate for a pretrail detention. but tonight the judge was not persuaded, and now combs will remain behind bars with trial not likely to begin for at least a year and if convicted he faces a maximum sentence of life behind bars, lester. >> all right, chloe, thank you. a terrible accident during a field trip to an apple orchard in wisconsin. a group of children and adults were on a wagon ride when one wagon lost control going downhill and abruptly overturned. 25 people were injured. at least one was air-lifted, but no deaths are reported.

in just 60 seconds u.s. intelligence sounding the alarm about foreign interference in the 2024 election. the stunning thing iranian hackers allegedly did with materials stolen from donald trump's campaign. nothing makes a gathering great like eggland's best eggs. they're just so delicious. with better nutrition, too. for us, it's eggs any style. as long as they're the best. eggland's best. ♪♪ missing out on the things you love because of asthma? get back to better breathing with fasenra, an add-on treatment for eosinophilic asthma that is taken once every 8 weeks. fasenra is not for sudden breathing problems or other eosinophilic conditions. allergic reactions may occur. don't stop your asthma treatments without talking with your doctor.

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are using artificial intelligence to create web pages that mimic traditional news sites pointing to one example, falsely claiming there were three potential shooters in the assassination attempt to former president trump in pennsylvania. the main goal of these false posts, senators warn, is not to push for a particular candidate, but to sow dissension and raise doubt in the american political system, and they say the tech companies need to do more to stop it. >> you don't need to have a big, expensive operation to pursue some of this. i think we should anticipate that in the years to come, and it's happening already. >> reporter: the tech platforms argue they've made great strides in detecting false posts, sometimes with the help of ai. >> just this morning, we saw a russian group put online an ai enhanced video putting into vice president harris' words at a rally words she never spoke. >> reporter: that post was taken down, and late tonight, more evidence that iran's efforts to interfere in the election continue. the fbi says they've discovered that iran attempted to send

stolen digital materials from the trump campaign to the biden campaign, but there's no evidence the biden campaign used any of it. lester. >> okay, ryan, thank you. and with the spread of misinformation and disinformation top of mind, we're back in a moment with a new high-tech way to fight conspiracy theories. can an ai chatbot actually change people's opinions? we put it to the test. e's my? mommy! hey hun - sometimes, you just need a moment to take care of yourself. nature made gummy vitamins. self-care has never been this easy. (♪♪) (♪♪) gummies from nature made, the #1 pharmacist recommended vitamin and supplement brand. you might wonder, john legend, how do you keep your voice sounding so... ...legendary?

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we have new reporting on the growing threat of conspiracy theories and the quest to debunk them. our hallie jackson puts a new high-tech solution to the test. >> reporter: conspiracy theories about everything from the assassination of john f. kennedy to what really happened on january 6th persistent in politics and beyond, but now new tech may point toward a potential breakthrough. meet debunkbot powered by openai and created by researchers at mit, cornell, and american who say it can help reduce people's beliefs in conspiracies significantly. >> let's go in that direction. >> reporter: we tried it out with one of the brains behind the bot, thomas costello, with a conspiracy that decades of debunking hasn't eradicated. >> that's one small step for man. >> i believe the moon landing is not real. >> right. >> i don't believe that. i don't actually believe that. >> reporter: the bot

asks us to elaborate on the belief. >> why is the flag waving? >> reporter: and to rate how strongly we feel about it. >> i'm going to say 99% true. >> reporter: then in a series of screens, the chatbot presents facts, lots of them. >> how can you be sure that what it's telling me here is accurate? >> absolutely. we found it tends to be quite accurate and hired a professional fact checker to go through the study in our subset, and in 99.2% of cases that we looked at, the fact checker rated it as true. >> reporter: at the end we reassess how strongly we feel about the belief now, and it's here where researchers found something surprising. >> on average they reduced their belief by 20%. >> reporter: and consistent over a wide series of topics, they found one in four participants disavowed the belief altogether. >> i think if you gave the facts to a semi competent lawyer, the lawyer would make a much more persuasive

case but the lawyer would have to do all this background research and ai can conjure it up in 12 seconds. >> reporter: in reality getting folks to engage at all could be tough. >> what makes you think somebody who believes in a conspiracy theory will type it in so their minds can be changed? >> i would say a lot of conspiracy theorists are motivated by truth and accuracy. going to a chatbot interface that provides factual information seems like a good way to do that to my. >> reporter: like technology, it can cut both ways. >> you could imagine a version of this that spreads conspiracy theories. >> reporter: the debunkbot team now working on refining the tech hoping it helps shine a light down conspiratorial rabbit holes. >> we can use facts to open up the top of the rabbit hole to begin to crawl out. >> reporter: a belief worth further research. hallie jackson, nbc news, washington. and when we come back, there's good news about the women who, indeed, helped nasa blast off in space and land on the moon.

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finally, there's good news tonight, a high-profile honor for the nasa heroes best known as the hidden figures. here's gabe gutierrez. >> reporter: for decades their names were in anonymity though their contributions were out of this world. >> their legacy will send us back to the moon. >> reporter: today on

capitol hill a congressional gold medal ceremony honoring the pioneering women of nasa from the 1930s to the 1970s who helped launch the space race including 82-year-old dr. christine darden. >> although we call them hidden figures, we shouldn't think of them merely as supporting characters in the american story of space exploration, they were the engineers and mathematicians who actually wrote the story itself. >> reporter: their story inspired a book, then -- >> there's no mathematical formula for that. >> reporter: -- an academy award winning movie, "hidden figures." katherine johnson, among them three trail blazers honored posthumously today, katherine johnson, dorothy vaughan, and mary jackson. >> to see the impact she made on the world i wish she were here to see it. >> reporter: their work on the apollo space program led to this. >> that's one small step for man. >> reporter: as johnson told us in 2016, john glenn insisted she verify

the calculations before his first orbit around the earth. >> he knew that if i had done it, it was right. >> reporter: tonight her daughter is in awe. >> she would have said, what's all the fuss about? i was just doing my job because she was a very humble. her work was important to her, and she did the best that she could. >> reporter: a generation of women hidden no more. gabe gutierrez, nbc news, washington. and that is "nightly news" for this wednesday. thank you for watching. i'm lester holt. please take care of yourself and each other. good night. >> we have a liftoff 32 minutes past the hour, liftoff on apollo 11.

host the plea from investigators as they search for a suspect. good afternoon. i'm audrey asistio. welcome to nbc bay area news at 4:30. our ian cull is talking to the victim's daughter as well as detectives. he's