WFIR News Express 7-24-2026

It is Friday, July the 24th. I'm Clark Palmer. Our topical story, Department of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, answered questions earlier this week on the price tag for the war on Iran to date. But one of Virginia's U.S. senators is skeptical of the figure he quoted. More from WFIRS. G. More from WFIRN. Pete Hegseth told Congress that the price tag for the war in Iran is $37.5 billion to date. Democratic U.S. Senator Tim Kaine is a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. I don't think the $37 billion number is accurate because the administration is saying we need $67 billion to replenish. the stockpiles that have been drawn down by the war. So how does the 37 match with the 67 billion? And there is an additional cost component that I think all acknowledge, which is the damage to U.S. infrastructure in the region. Kane bases that assumption on a committee hearing he took part in last week. Secretary Headseff, I think, acknowledged, as has the comptroller nominee when he was before our committee last week, that the cost estimates they're giving us on the war do not include repairing the damaged infrastructure in the region. Now, the reason they're using for that is, I mean, A, they haven't calculated the total damage cost, but B, they also haven't calculated what exactly it is that they will rebuild. Some of those Middle East U.S. military bases may be abandoned and not rebuilt, says Cain. total cost of the war does not include damage to the U.S. economy. Yesterday, the price per barrel of oil hit $100 again as Houthi rebels in Yemen attacked another narrow passage in the Red Sea that also seized considerable oil tanker traffic. Bernie Moreno, WFIR News. A member of Pulaski Town Council who previously served as a sheriff's deputy and corrections officer was arrested yesterday by the FBI for alleged child exploitation crimes. 48-year-old Stephen Erickson is facing charges including one count of distribution of child's sex abuse material. Authorities allege Erickson used the kick messaging app to receive hundreds of photos from another user's purported family, including elementary aged minors. Roanoke City Council candidates are facing growing voter scrutiny over police surveillance technology. More from WFIR and C. Ian Price. Public debate resurfaced at a Roanoke City Council meeting earlier this week over the city's contract with flock safety. Radford University, political science chair, and WFIR political analyst, Chapman Rackaway, says lawmakers are calling to end the program. Something that's very rare today, which is pushback from both political parties. You've seen Republicans like Senator David Sutterline and Joe McNamara, who's in the House of Delegates, and then a Democratic delegate from Roanoke, Sam Rasul. All of them has separately called for ending flock use in Roanoke altogether. When you see that, you combine it with the fact that there are other cities like Santa Cruz, California, and I found Dane County, Wisconsin as well, have cut their ties with flock.

The pushback follows questions about how private vendors handle sensitive user data. Rackaway notes that public records revealed unexpected data sharing between flock and federal agencies. Because they do not have federal contracts, but then it came out that they have been releasing data voluntarily to homeland security in assistance for ICE and immigration squad deployments and that there had been more than 730. thousand searches on different districts flock cameras over the last year. Ian Price, WFIR News. Rondo City's Elmwood Park will be hosting a vigil tomorrow at 10 a.m. And to honor the lives of Lorenzo Arajo and Johan Guerrero, who were killed by ICE agents in separate incidents this month. The demonstration is one of several that will be taking place across the country as part of National Ice Out Day. During a recent House of Representatives administration hearing, Salem area, Republican U.S. Congress and Morgan Griffith raised concerns that officials with the Smithsonian were not accurately telling the American people stories of our nation's history. Riffith says that includes key moments here in Virginia. In the Capitol, they get it wrong. They've got Pocahontas, Marion John Rolfe, after the Pilgrims are landing at Plymouth Rock, and Pocahontas was dead. had gone to Great Britain, got a fever, had a baby, and was dead before the Plymouth Puritans ever showed up. And they don't have any of that discussed in any way that, you know, Jamestown and all that was there. Griffith says revisionist history does not serve well are museum institutions like the Smithsonian. The U.S. Department of Defense is tapping Virginia Tech to host a revamp fellowship program for senior military officers. The Senior Service College Fellowship helps train and develop senior level civilians for military leadership roles. Congressman Griffith, who represents parts of the New River Valley, says Virginia Tech will continue to be a prime educational experience for aspiring military leaders. He says this recognition is long overdue. Researchers at Virginia Tech have found that human bias shapes what you see on social media, specifically when it has to do with rare events. More from WFIRs. Denise Allen-Mbrano. Have you been noticing exotic locations, unusual happenings, or dangerous challenges on your feed? Alice Jang, assistant professor, and Vishwanav Venkatesh, the Verizon Chair of Business Information Technology, both in the Pampland College of Business, have years of research pointing to why people choose to share certain posts. Professor Venkatesh. The rareness is what drives it. It's not the excitingness or the emotion. There are lots of different attributes that have been examined. in the past about what drives people to share. But what we're finding is that even accounting for all of those things, it's the rareness. Jang and Venkatesh say this is human bias. Zhang says this bias causes posts to go viral, impacting other people's feeds. And that's where the real problem comes into play. It distorts how people perceive the world. This becomes a bit more of a problem because now, based on Pew Research, 70% of young Americans are getting their news information via Seoul.

social media. So what that means is that they're going to perceive rare events as common ones and common ones not so common. So it kind of flips. Jang and Van Ketesh say knowing this bias exists is the first step. The second step is question what you see and look into its validity and see the posts of the exotic vacation and that horrifying crime for what they are, rare events. Denise Allen Membrano, WFIR News. Kids Square is holding its second annual fundraiser, Foam on the Farm. Layman Family Farm is once again the home of the foam on the farm event. The fun takes place on August 1st from 10 to 2, Felicia Branham, Executive Director of Kids Square, says more than 700 people came out last year and they're expecting more this year. Layman Family Farms opens up the farm completely free to us, including all of the fall things that they put out. So the carousel, the dumping pillow, everything you would see at the fall festival at Lehman, and then Kids Square and Elevation Church. They really step up and help us with this. And they provide the water slide, a slip and slide, all kinds of water play. That includes a foam pit provided by Flex LLC. The money helps Kids Square provide programming in the main museum and in the new Wonder Room, which opened last week in space formerly occupied by Starcade, which is now next to the Pinball Museum in Center in the Square. That's the latest. You can get our next update on Monday morning. Clark Palmer, WFIRE News.