Park Fire Becomes 6th Largest in CA History; Meta Settles TX Privacy Lawsuit for $1.4B – Jul. 30

Good evening. Welcome to NTD Tonight. I'm David Zhang. Here are today's top stories. The Park Fire is now the sixth largest wildfire in California history. We'll hear from a man and his son who saved their house from the blaze. We'll take a look at the latest from the presidential campaigns of Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Trump. Delta Airlines hires a famous lawyer, David Boyce, to reportedly pursue damages against a crowd strike in Microsoft. The Park Fire is now the sixth largest wildfire in California history. According to Cal Fire, it continues to roll through in an area northeast of San Francisco. But one man and his son were able to save their house just after the family lost their fire insurance. Let's take a look. Some 5,300 firefighters were building and strengthening control lines yesterday, hoping to increase the 14% they've contained so far. But the fire, which has destroyed more than 100 structures since it began six days ago, continues to grow quickly. The fire doubled in size between last Friday and Sunday. The things that surprised us all is how fast the fire moved in such a short amount of time. So we have not, I have not personally seen a fire grow so fast in such a short amount of time. We can kind of say that there was a lot of fuel in the area where the fire started. Officials say the Park Fire was started by a man pushing a flaming car into a gully. Ronnie Dean Stouts II was charged with arson Monday. The fire has now grown to more than 370,000 acres. There were no injuries or casualties reported. The fire has also forced officials to issue evacuation warnings and orders to several communities. We are focusing all our efforts to try to contain this fire, to put it out as quickly as possible. And one of our objectives is to have people move back in as soon as possible. And when we feel it's safe for them to do so. One amazing story emerged out of the chaos. Scores of homes in Cohasset, California were scorched in the blaze. But Ron Ward and his son, Ethan, were fortunate that a sprinkler system they ordered after losing their fire insurance arrived at the same time as the fire. The pump that I was talking about got delivered the same time the fire started. So we were unboxing a pump and trying to get it going at the same time the fire was going. So very, very high, high adrenaline, you know, high, very, very scary situation for sure. Meanwhile in Washington State, the Pioneer Fire has consumed more than 33,000 acres. The fire has been burning since June 8th. It has prompted evacuation orders and warnings. The steep, rugged terrain is making access difficult for firefighters. Efforts are focused on protecting critical assets along the Lake Chalon shoreline and keeping the fire from spreading to a nearby community. And a new wildfire is burning in Colorado. As of Monday evening, the Alexander Mountain wildfire has burned almost 1,000 acres west of Loveland. The local sheriff's office ordered an immediate evacuation of residents in the Alexander and Palisade mountain areas. Firefighters from across the state are battling the fire, but so far it's zero percent contained. Hundreds of wildfires across the western U.S. and Canada have put millions of people under air quality alerts. Turning to politics now, we look at the latest from the presidential campaigns of Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Trump. NTV's Daniel Monaghan breaks down some recent events. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's campaign on Monday said he would attend a question and answer session at the National Association of Black Journalists annual convention on Wednesday in Chicago. The Trump campaign has been encouraged by some polling, showing he may be gaining ground with that group of the electorate. The event is closed to the public, but it will be live-streamed on the association's YouTube and Facebook pages. In another event, Trump held a telephone rally with Senate candidate Carrie Lake on Monday evening. The former president urged supporters to go vote. Trump said Lake is fantastic and won't let people down. Lake is looking to win the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate in Arizona on Tuesday, setting up a fierce battle against Democratic Congressman Ruben Gallego. The seat could be crucial to deciding Senate control. Lake told Trump during the telephone rally that people were looking forward to getting the former president back in Washington. Turning to presidential candidate Kamala Harris, her list of potential running mates just got a little shorter. North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper has taken himself out of consideration as a VP pick. On social media, he said the timing of a national campaign is not right for himself or North Carolina. He also said he was honored to be considered and supports Harris' campaign. Cooper was viewed as one of the top contenders for the role. Other potential Harris running mates rallied for the vice president in a Philadelphia suburb on Monday. Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro and Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer spoke to 1,000 supporters at a high school. The governors highlighted Harris' accomplishments over the past four years. They emphasized her efforts in key swing states like Michigan and Pennsylvania, which are vital for the Democrats' presidential campaign in November. Shapiro described Harris as battle-tested, saying she is prepared not only to lead the party, but also to become the 47th president of the United States. Daniel Monahan, NTD News. Meta has agreed to a record $1.4 billion settlement with Texas to end a privacy lawsuit. Officials in the Lone Star State have alleged that the tech giant used biometric data of users without their permission. NTD's Andrew Thomas has more. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton said the settlement is the largest secured by a single state. In 2021, a judge approved a $650 million settlement with the company over similar claims in Illinois. That same year, Meta announced that it was shutting down its facial recognition system. The tech giant also deleted the face prints of more than 1 billion people. Meta said in a statement that it was pleased to resolve the matter. The company added that it looked forward to exploring future opportunities in Texas. The $1.4 billion settlement is unlikely to make a dent in Meta's business. The California-based tech company made a more than $12 billion profit in the first quarter of this year. Revenue was over $36 billion, a 27 percent increase from a year earlier. Meta is scheduled to report its second quarter earnings on Wednesday. Andrew Thomas, NTD News. President Biden now taking steps to respond to Venezuela's election results. That's as the protests in the country are beginning to grow, with the citizens toppling socialist statues. NTD's international correspondent Arian Pasdar has the story from Brazil. President Biden had a phone call with the president of Brazil on Tuesday afternoon. Now this comes as U.S. officials keep raising concerns about the elections in Venezuela. They say that the incumbent socialist government might have committed election fraud. Brazil was supposed to oversee these elections but withdrew from the committee just last week. Now the readout of Biden's call hasn't been released just yet so it's not exactly clear what they talked about. Protests have erupted in Venezuela after the electoral council declared that socialist president Nicolás Maduro won the election against challenger Edmundo González. These videos, exclusively obtained by NTD, show protesters taking down a Maduro campaign poster and then burning it on the street. A group of people also took down a statue of former socialist leader Hugo Chávez. In other parts of the country, people threw objects at the police as fires broke out and police in anti-riot gear showed up to stop the protests. On Tuesday, President Maduro denounced the protests against his regime. The extreme right planned this. They were screaming fraud 15 days before the elections. They didn't sign the agreement to recognize the election results. Venezuela's electoral council never released the actual voting results. The opposition had a strong lead in most polls and still hasn't accepted the results. On Monday, Venezuela's opposition said it gathered around 70 percent of the voting tallies, claiming it won the election against Maduro. Panama has now ended diplomatic relations with Venezuela, while Peru ordered Venezuelan diplomats to leave the country. The U.S. might consider sanctions but has not made an official decision yet. Reporting in Brazil, Ariane Pastor, NTD News. Delta Airlines hires famous lawyer David Boies to reportedly pursue damages against CrowdStrike and Microsoft. The faulty July 19th update costed up to $500 million, not including reputational damage. Here's the story. Delta Airlines has hired prominent lawyer David Boies to pursue damages against Microsoft and CrowdStrike. After CrowdStrike's faulty software update cost Delta up to $500 million, the airline has received over 176,000 refund requests after canceling almost 7,000 flights and suffered reputational damage as well. Boies successfully led the government's antitrust case against Microsoft back in 2001. Boies has experience with Microsoft, going after Microsoft in the past, so that is, I think, a good choice for them because he's familiar with how the company works, what documents they have, how their systems work, who to subpoena, who to get discovery from. Attorney Gerard Felitti says Boies is the perfect choice. His previous fight with Microsoft ended up in a settlement in which Microsoft agreed to major concessions. Boies also represented various Jeffrey Epstein accusers, including Virginia Guffrey, and he unsuccessfully represented high-profile individuals such as Al Gore and the Bush v. Gore, Harvey Weinstein, and Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes. Felitti says that despite Boies coming on board for Delta, the real fight may be elsewhere. Ultimately, this is going to be an issue for the insurance carriers, and the real litigation that I expect to happen will be by companies like Delta against their insurance carriers and the umbrella policies to make sure that they are compensated for their losses. Felitti says Microsoft and CrowdStrike probably made Delta sign a terms of service agreement, which likely protects them from liability to some extent, and the insurance carriers have the money Delta wants for compensation. But he says Delta could still win in its initial case against Microsoft and CrowdStrike. If Delta is successful, it could very well be the first domino in a hailstorm of lawsuits against CrowdStrike and potentially Microsoft. Entity reached out to Microsoft, CrowdStrike, and Delta, but did not hear back before airtime. We'll take a short break now, everybody, but here's a look at what we have for you when we come back. A full-time scientist, a part-time basketball player is chasing the 3X3 gold in Paris. More on his story. With the Paris Olympics starting, many seniors in Southern California decided to bring the Olympic spirit to them. Students are getting a head start on back to school. NTD visits a local center that's trying to do that one backpack at a time. Those stories and more coming up on NTD Tonight. Welcome back to NTD Tonight. I'm your host, David Zhang. A full-time scientist, a part-time basketball player is chasing for the 3X3 gold in Paris. He's also the son of the NBA legend. Canyon Berry is a part-time basketball player. His full-time job is system engineer for a defense and space contractor. Berry, who will take the courts at the Paris Games searching for a 3X3 gold medal for the U.S. men's team, has an undergraduate degree in physics and a master's degree in nuclear engineering. Scientist, engineer, problem solver, take your pick. When not with teammates preparing for the Olympics, the son of Hall of Famer and NBA champion, Rick Berry, is often on his laptop working on projects for his job. During his preparations for the Paris Games, Berry was still taking Zoom calls and doing his day job in the middle of the night while the rest of the team was sleeping. But the 30-year-old Berry is on vacation during the Olympics to devote his full attention to the chase for gold. While Berry's teammates appreciate his intellect and attention to detail on court, there are times when they tire of him correcting them off it. I've had some hard, smart teammates before, but he's always correcting us on stuff, and that's never fun. He's always trying to be like, no, this is how you say it, or this is the right way to do it. So he's always making sure that we're on our P's and Q's. But just an unbelievable guy, obviously super intelligent, super smart, and you can see it when he plays on the court. He has a similar thinking aspect of how he likes to play the game. I just like to poke at my teammates every now and then, just as a little running joke. We have the order of operations of always say yourself last in a sentence for grammatical purposes. So I like to drive them crazy with that one a little bit. But it's all in good fun. Like Jimmer said, we're so tight. We're all like brothers. And to be able to experience this Olympic moment with what I consider my family makes it that much more special. When Berry returns to his full-time job in Millburn, Florida after the Paris Games, he hopes to bring home a gold medal. Olympic enthusiast, the seniors in Los Angeles, brought the Olympic spirit to Southern California this week by hosting their own mock Olympics and competing against the fellow seniors from nearby retirement communities. NTV's Christina Corona has more on the games. Around 60 seniors gathered to watch athletes in their 70s, 80s, and 90s compete in a relay race, as well as in basketball, cornhole, and dancing competitions. Held at Belmont Village Senior Living in Hollywood Hills, the mock Olympics have generated significant excitement among the residents. I think what's important is that the program allows us to be ourselves. And many of us do come out of our shells, so to speak, and participate. I think they're very good bringing us together. Good for our brains and our hearts and our bodies. These seniors have been preparing and ready to compete. Our athletes have been so determined. We've had them practicing every day. We've added strength training. We've added coordination. We've added, obviously, the sports we were doing, the relay, the basketball, the golf, and they've been so excited. A 77-year-old retirement community resident who won the basketball gold medal described her win as fabulous. It was super fun, and I haven't really played basketball since I was in high school, so this was fabulous. Great time. Belmont Village Senior Living aims to continue inspiring seniors to find and pursue their purpose. So many people think of retirement, that it's over, there's nothing left. I'm past the best. At Belmont, we don't believe that. We believe there's still purpose, there's still meaning, there's still importance, and there's still the ability to keep pushing for that fulfillment and that meaning. She says seniors living at retirement communities are not too old for the gold. Christina Corona, NTD News. It's almost back to school day. That means new classes and potentially new supplies for some students. NTD's David Lam hears from people at the Peckaback Donation Center. Sacred Heart Community Service in San Jose, California, already has 4,000 bags to give out starting Tuesday, but they're asking for more help to send children to school with all the school supplies they need, as some families may not have funds for them. We know that a lot of families stress, especially at the beginning of the school year, to make sure their students are ready for school. Perez says the donations come from all over, and they start preparing the backpacks as early as this January. I knew when I was little, I didn't want to go to school if I didn't have the materials, and I know this gets them motivated because they're getting backpacks. They're coming and picking their own backpack, and they're getting a bag full of content with all the things they need, notebooks, pencils, color markers. Anthony Ajaku says he's excited to go into sixth grade in August. Because it's like a fresh start for another grade, and I'm going to a new school and stuff. I got this black backpack with brown details and stuff. The final day of the program would be on Thursday. Unfortunately, there's a shortage of backpacks for the teenage style ones from sixth to 12th grade, because Sacred Heart says people tend to donate more of the flashy and children's style backpacks with Super Mario and the likes. Today is day one, and at present, we're still about 500 backpacks short. We're really in need of backpacks for teens and older youth, and so there's still opportunity for folks to either come to our 1381 South First Street location in San Jose to donate over the next two days, or you can go to sacredheartcs.org, and there's information on how you can donate or buy something from our Amazon wish list. I'm really grateful. I'm really grateful for it. Ajaku says he's good at math and hopes to become a doctor one day. Just stay in school, get your grades up. David Lam, NTD News. Just in time for back-to-school shopping, Target is launching its first chain-wide denim take-back event, offering consumers a discount on new denim purchases. NTD's Christina Corona provides more details on the event. From August 4th through the 10th, customers can recycle their outgrown or used denim of any brand in-store and receive a 20% discount on new denim apparel with Target Circle. Customers can bring up to five items in any condition to a Target store and drop them off in designated boxes. They will then receive a 20% discount code towards Target-owned brands like Universal Thread and Wild Fable, as well as national brands like Levi's. Target stated in a press release, this limited-time event happens just in time for back-to-school shopping, making it easier and more affordable for families to stock up on new denim outfits and essentials. It goes on to say, it allows consumers to give their old items a new life and keep used denim out of landfills, as materials from the denim will be recycled and repurposed by Target's partners. The 20% discount can be used once on a denim apparel purchase. Consumers participating in the denim take-back event with a Target Circle card can save an additional 5% on their denim purchase, on top of the 20% Target Circle discount. Christina Corona, NTD News. Stay tuned for China In Focus with Tiffany Meyer coming up next. Taiwanese President Lai Ching-de praising a record-breaking group of nearly 50 lawmakers attending a key summit in Taipei, despite Beijing trying to block their trip. More on China In Focus with Tiffany Meyer at 9.30 p.m. Eastern. And that's all we've got for you tonight. We'd like you to join us again on NTD Tonight every weekday at 9 p.m. Our show is coming to a close this Friday, August 2nd, but NTD has plenty of informative shows and on-the-ground news coverage airing across our network. For more information, please visit NTD.com. I'm David Zhang. See you tomorrow.