Top News Headlines

Cosmo Welcome to Top News Headlines. [] It's Sunday, September thirteenth, twenty twenty-six. [] I'll be honest right up front, our source feeds came in thin today. []

Carrie They really did. [] But we've got several items worth your time, so let's get to them. [] Starting with the national side, Vice President Vance gave what one outlet is calling the speech of his life. []

Cosmo The headline frames it two ways. [] He talked about his hopes for his baby son, and at the same time laid down a marker for twenty twenty-eight. []

Carrie That's the presidential race two years out. [] We only have the headline, not the full text, so we can't tell you what he promised or who he called out. [] But the read from the coverage is that this was a speech meant to position him for a run. []

Cosmo Also in Washington, Senator Markwayne Mullin marked the anniversary of September eleventh with a call for Americans to reject the politicization of the Department of Homeland Security. []

Carrie Again, that's headline depth. [] We don't have his full remarks, so we won't speculate on who he was aiming that at. [] But it's a notable statement from a sitting senator on a day that usually stays above the political fray. []

Cosmo One more national item, and this one lands close to home for anyone who drinks their coffee scalding. [] Very hot drinks are being linked to a higher risk of cancer. [a]

Carrie We only have the headline, not the study details, so I'm not going to tell you what temperature counts as too hot or which cancers are involved. [a] What we can say is that the temperature of the beverage itself is being flagged as the risk factor, not the coffee or the tea. [a]

Cosmo So maybe let it cool a minute. [] Fair enough. [] On the world front, I've got nothing to give you today. [] None of our wire-service or international sources delivered usable content in this window. []

Carrie Rather than make something up, we'll say so and move on. [] We'll have the world picture back for you as soon as the feeds cooperate. []

Cosmo Let's head to Utah, where I do have a real story. [] Downtown Provo launched a brand new pregame celebration on Friday night called First Down Provo. [h]

Carrie Oh, tied to the B Y U game? []

Cosmo Exactly. [] It ran the night before the Cougars opened Big Twelve conference play against Arizona. [h] It was free, held right at the corner of Center Street and University Avenue. [h]

Carrie And this was organized by Explore Utah Valley along with Utah County. [h] The whole idea is to pull the Cougar fanbase into downtown Provo, not just into LaVell Edwards Stadium on game day. [h]

Cosmo One organizer put it plainly, saying they're all about tourism and bringing in visitors, and trying to get more people downtown. [h]

Carrie A first-time event, a new conference, and a reason to hang around Provo the night before kickoff. [h] That's a nice local win. []

Cosmo That's the rundown for today. [] Thanks for listening to Top News Headlines. []

Carrie We'll see you next time. []

Cosmo Welcome to Top News Headlines. [] Today is Saturday, September twelfth, twenty twenty-six, and we are working from a thin stack this morning. []

Carrie We really are, but let's start with the national picture. [] The headline drawing attention this morning is Vice President Vance talking about his hopes for his baby son, while at the same time positioning himself for the twenty twenty-eight race. [b]

Cosmo A personal story wrapped around a political one. [b] And that twenty twenty-eight framing is the part to watch, because it signals how early the next presidential cycle is already taking shape. [b]

Carrie Right. [] And on the anniversary of the September eleventh attacks, Senator Markwayne Mullin called on Americans to reject the politicization of the Department of Homeland Security. [d]

Cosmo That is a pointed message on a solemn day. [] We only have the headline on that appeal, not the details behind it, so we will leave it there rather than guess at the substance. [d]

Carrie Fair. [] One more headline crossing this morning: very hot drinks are being linked to a higher cancer risk. [] Again, headline only, so treat it as a flag, not a verdict. []

Cosmo Let's turn to the world. [] And I have to be straight with listeners here. []

Carrie Go ahead. []

Cosmo We did not receive any verified international coverage from Reuters or the Associated Press today. [] We do not have a world story to bring you, and we are not going to invent one. []

Carrie Absolutely not. [] If we cannot verify it, it does not go on the air. [] We will have the world roundup back when the feeds come through. []

Cosmo So let's go to Utah, where we do have a real story, and it is the biggest item of the day. []

Carrie It is. [] According to local Utah coverage, Turning Point U S A returned to Utah Valley University in Orem for a one-year memorial for its founder, Charlie Kirk. [h]

Cosmo Kirk was shot and killed while speaking at a Turning Point event on that same campus one year ago. [h] Five thousand people filled the U C C U Center for the night of remembrance. [h]

Carrie Many of them wearing America the Beautiful hats. [h] Speakers focused on Kirk's faith and his beliefs, and the evening blended the feel of a political rally with a worship service. [h]

Cosmo That fusion of faith and grassroots conservatism was the through-line. [h] Turning Point members and conservative commentators used the stage to reassure supporters that Kirk's mission continues. [h]

Carrie A five-thousand-person turnout one year on says a lot about the commitment of that base. [h] And for Orem and the wider Utah County community, it is a heavy anniversary. []

Cosmo That is where we leave it today. [] Thanks for listening to Top News Headlines. []

Carrie We will see you next time. []

Cosmo Welcome to Top News Headlines. It's Friday, September eleventh, twenty twenty-six, and I'm Cosmo.

Carrie And I'm Carrie. Cosmo, a quick heads-up for our listeners. Our national news feed came in thin today. Most of what we received was sign-up pages and filler, not actual reporting.

Cosmo So rather than fill sixty seconds with things we can't verify, we'll keep it short. The one national story we can stand behind today actually happened right here in Utah, and it has national weight.

Carrie It does. Turning Point U S A came back to Utah Valley University this week, one year after its founder, Charlie Kirk, was shot and killed while speaking at a Turning Point event on that campus.

Cosmo We'll give that story the full treatment in our Utah segment, because it deserves the time. Let's turn to the world.

Carrie World headlines were just as thin. The wire coverage we normally lean on didn't come through in today's material. We had one headline about divers uncovering ancient relics near a shipwreck.

Cosmo Which sounds fascinating. But the headline is all we got. No location, no date, no details on what was found or who found it.

Carrie If that story fills in, we'll bring it to you properly. Consider it a teaser for now.

Cosmo Fair enough. Now let's get to the story we do have, and it's a big one for Utah.

Carrie According to the local coverage we're working from, Turning Point U S A held a memorial event Thursday at the U C C U Center, the arena on the Utah Valley University campus in Orem. It came one year after Charlie Kirk was killed on that same campus.

Cosmo About five thousand people showed up. And here's a detail I loved: many of them wore America the Beautiful hats.

Carrie The event was described as part political rally and part worship service. Speakers highlighted Kirk's faith and his beliefs as central to who he was.

Cosmo And the through-line from the stage was continuity. Speaker after speaker assured supporters that Kirk's work will continue, even without him.

Carrie What strikes me is the setting. Orem is where the tragedy happened. The organization chose to come back to that same community to mark the anniversary, rather than hold it somewhere else.

Cosmo It's a statement of solidarity, and a refusal to stay away from the campus where it happened. For Utah residents, five thousand people gathering in Orem on a Thursday is a real community moment, whatever your politics.

Carrie That's our show for today. We'll be back with a fuller slate when the sources cooperate.

Cosmo Thanks for listening to Top News Headlines. See you next time.

Cosmo Welcome to Top News Headlines. [] It's Thursday, September tenth, twenty twenty-six. []

Carrie It is a lean day on the wires, so we're going to keep it tight and honest and give you what we actually have. []

Cosmo Fair enough. [] Let's start with the national story leading this morning's headline roundup. [] Donald Trump is publicly praising Alternative for Germany, the far-right party known as the A F D, after their election victory. [b]

Carrie And he did it in his signature style. [] The post was in all capital letters, and it said, quote, "They are on the rise." [b]

Cosmo And that's the thread here. [] An American president openly cheering a far-right European party's win is a headline on both sides of the Atlantic. [b]

Carrie Exactly. [] It matters at home because it signals where Trump wants American conservatism aligned overseas. [] And it matters abroad because Germany is the anchor of the European Union, and its mainstream parties have kept the A F D at arm's length for years. []

Cosmo So that story carries us straight into world headlines. [] The German election result itself is the big geopolitical development. [b] A far-right party winning, and then getting a public endorsement from the White House, is the kind of thing that reshapes how European leaders talk to Washington. []

Carrie We don't have the vote totals or the details of that election in front of us, so we won't guess at them. [] What we can say is the win happened and the president celebrated it. [b]

Cosmo Smart. [] One more international item, and it's a lighter one. [] Divers have uncovered ancient relics near a shipwreck. [a]

Carrie Oh, I love a shipwreck story. [] Do we know where? []

Cosmo We don't. [] The headline is all we've got. [a] No location, and no date on the artifacts. [a] If details land, we'll bring them tomorrow. []

Carrie Deal. [] Now to Utah, and this one has real substance. [] According to the Daily Herald, the old Dixon Middle School in Provo was demolished last month. [h]

Cosmo And there's already a plan for the site. [h] The Provo City School District said at Tuesday's board meeting that Timpanogos Elementary will be rebuilt right there on the former Dixon property. [h]

Carrie With a timeline, too. [] Bid plans for the new elementary school are expected to go out in December. [h] That rebuild was originally approved nearly a year ago, around September of twenty twenty-five, so this is the plan actually moving. [h]

Cosmo Here's where it got contentious. [] There was a motion to rename Timpanogos Elementary to Dixon Elementary, honoring the historic location. [h] The board voted it down. [h]

Carrie And the board remains divided on the naming question, so don't be surprised if that comes back. [h]

Cosmo There's also a consolidation piece. [] Other district programs will be moved into the Timpanogos building as part of the reorganization. [h]

Carrie So for Provo families, that's one demolition done, one rebuild bidding in December, and one naming fight unresolved. [h]

Cosmo That's the day. [] Thanks for listening to Top News Headlines. []

Carrie See you tomorrow. []

Cosmo Good afternoon, and welcome to Top News Headlines. It's Wednesday, September ninth, twenty twenty-six, and Carrie, we owe our listeners some honesty right at the top.

Carrie We do. Our wire came in thin today. So here's how we're playing it. We tell you what crossed, we tell you what we actually know, and we don't dress up anything we can't stand behind.

Cosmo Starting with national news. President Trump is insisting his ground zero story is exactly accurate, even after a wave of fact checks.

Carrie That one reached us as a headline with no story attached, so we're not going to characterize what the fact checkers found. What we can tell you is that the President is not backing off the claim at all.

Cosmo And that's the part with weight. Once a president digs in after a round of fact checks, the fight stops being about the original claim. It becomes about the standoff itself.

Carrie Our second national story has real operational teeth. Air traffic controllers are publicly criticizing the head of the Federal Aviation Administration, and the dispute is out in the open.

Cosmo That is not a small thing, Carrie. When the people sequencing airplanes are at odds with the person running their agency, that friction eventually shows up in your travel day.

Carrie Here again, we have the headline and not much else. No names, and no specifics on the grievance. We're flagging it because it matters, not because we can fill it in.

Cosmo Overseas, one international item surfaced, and it's a good one. Divers have uncovered ancient relics near a shipwreck.

Carrie I love a shipwreck story. And I'm going to resist the urge to invent a location, because we truly don't have one. No site, no era, and no list of what came up.

Cosmo Which is frustrating, but underwater archaeology tends to come out in pieces anyway. Today we have the fact of the find. The detail follows later.

Carrie Now to Utah, where we finally have some real reporting. This is from the Salt Lake Tribune. The Orem City Council has sent a letter to Provo Mayor Marsha Judkins and the Provo City Council opposing the Vesper Amphitheater project in Provo Canyon.

Cosmo So the opposition just changed shape. The project already had pushback from residents and from environmental groups. Now a neighboring city government is on the record.

Carrie And the tone of the letter is careful. Orem says it deeply values its longstanding relationship with Provo, and that it respects Provo's authority over land use inside Provo's own borders.

Cosmo Polite, but pointed. The letter has already gone out, and Orem plans to voice that opposition formally at its council meeting next Tuesday.

Carrie If you live along that canyon, that's your meeting. That's the news. Thanks for listening.

Cosmo Good afternoon, and welcome to Top News Headlines. It's Tuesday, September eighth, twenty twenty-six, and Carrie, we are working with a thin wire today.

Carrie We are, and we're going to be straight with you about it. Where the reporting is solid, you'll hear it. Where the reporting is thin, we'll say so.

Cosmo Fair enough. Top of the national file, and it's a business story. Conservative commentary out today makes the case that heavy state-level regulation is pushing large corporations to pack up and look elsewhere.

Carrie That's the whole through line. Regulation drives location. Companies weigh the rules where they sit, and when those rules get restrictive, they start shopping for friendlier ground.

Cosmo And that matters well beyond the boardroom. When a headquarters moves, the jobs, the tax base and the suppliers tend to follow it out the door.

Carrie One caveat, Cosmo. That came to us as a short summary, not a full report. No company names, no numbers, no destination states. So take the direction, not the detail.

Cosmo Noted. One more from the national desk, and this one's a charmer. A woman in Georgia has turned one hundred twelve years old, and the headline promises she's sharing her secret to a long life.

Carrie One hundred twelve. And here's the problem. The secret itself never reached us. We have the headline and nothing behind it.

Cosmo So we'll chase that one down and bring it back with the answer attached.

Carrie To the world desk. And Cosmo, this is where today gets genuinely lean.

Cosmo It does. We lead with wire copy, Reuters and the Associated Press, because that's the reporting that holds up under pressure. Today, none of it reached us.

Carrie What did reach us were subscription pages, navigation menus, and one copyright notice. That is not international news.

Cosmo So no conflict update, no summit, no election result from us today. Not because nothing happened, but because we don't have anything we can stand behind.

Carrie We'd rather hand you a short true report than a long invented one. The world desk will be back tomorrow.

Cosmo Home to Utah, and we do have something here. Down in Sanpete County, the county fair has wrapped, and this year's theme was Red, White and Moo.

Carrie Red, White and Moo. That is central Utah in four words.

Cosmo The write-up we got called the fair a success. Then, to its credit, it said plainly there were no facts or figures behind that. Just what the writer saw with their own eyes.

Carrie I'll take that over a made-up number any day. Also on the Utah file, and this one is about the news itself. The Salt Lake Tribune is asking readers to donate. It's a nonprofit newsroom, and it makes the case that independent local reporting in Utah runs on reader support.

Cosmo And that argument lands awfully close to home on a day like this one. Local coverage costs money. When it thins out, days like today are what you get.

Carrie That's the brief. Short, thin, and honest.

Cosmo Top News Headlines. We'll be back tomorrow with a fuller wire.

Cosmo Welcome in. It's Monday, September seventh, twenty twenty-six, and we are starting with national headlines.

Carrie And the big one is defense. The Pentagon has announced a long-term deal to significantly expand production of two missile systems.

Cosmo Which two?

Carrie The Patriot system, and T H A A D. That's Terminal High Altitude Area Defense.

Cosmo Those are the workhorses of American air defense. Patriot handles shorter-range threats. T H A A D is built to hit ballistic missiles high up, at the very top of the atmosphere and just beyond it.

Carrie Right, and the word doing the heavy lifting here is long-term. This is not a one-off order. It's a commitment to keep the lines running.

Cosmo Which tells you something about how stretched those stockpiles have gotten. Interceptors get used up fast, and they take years to build.

Carrie Details beyond the announcement are still thin, so we will watch for the numbers.

Cosmo One lighter note before we go global. A woman in the state of Georgia has just turned one hundred and twelve.

Carrie One hundred and twelve. That's a life that has outlasted two world wars.

Cosmo To the world desk. Carrie, this is the day's most consequential story.

Carrie It is. The Associated Press reports an Israeli airstrike destroyed a building today in southern Lebanon.

Cosmo Tell me where.

Carrie The village of Kfar Rumman. And the images are grim. Rescue crews are working the site with excavators.

Cosmo Excavators, not shovels. That tells you the building came down completely, and that crews believe people are still under the rubble.

Carrie That's the read. This is an active rescue operation, not a recovery. So the casualty picture is still unsettled.

Cosmo And it puts southern Lebanon back at the center of the regional picture. Any strike there raises the same question every time: does this stay contained, or does it escalate?

Carrie We don't have that answer yet. What we have is one destroyed building and crews digging.

Cosmo We'll follow it. Closer to home now, Utah headlines.

Carrie And this one is heartbreaking, Cosmo.

Cosmo It is. A sixty-three-year-old man was struck and fatally injured this morning in Provo while riding his bicycle.

Carrie Walk me through it.

Cosmo A vehicle coming off the freeway hit him, just after eight fifteen, near Lakeview Parkway and the University Avenue off-ramp from Interstate fifteen.

Carrie Right in the thick of the commute.

Cosmo Exactly. He was taken to Utah Valley Hospital, and he did not survive his injuries.

Carrie The Provo Police traffic team closed the road at that off-ramp for most of the morning while they worked the scene. And police said their condolences are with his family and loved ones.

Cosmo A reminder to give cyclists room, especially at freeway ramps where drivers are still carrying highway speed.

Carrie Well said. That's your update.

Cosmo Thanks for listening.

Cosmo Good afternoon, and welcome to Top News Headlines. It's Sunday, September sixth, twenty twenty-six, and we are leading with a public health story.

Carrie We are. A city has recorded its first death from a mosquito-borne virus. First death. That's the phrase that changes how a place talks about the rest of its warm-weather season.

Cosmo And let's be straight with our listeners. The report we received is thin. We don't have the person's age, we don't have the specific virus, and we are not going to fill those blanks in for you.

Carrie Agreed. Here's what we can say. A first fatality is usually the moment mosquito control districts step up spraying, and start pushing hard on the message about standing water.

Cosmo Our other big story is defense. Fox News is reporting that the Pentagon has announced a long-term deal to expand missile production.

Carrie Two systems specifically. The Patriot air defense system, and the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system. Those are the workhorses of American air and missile defense.

Cosmo And the key word is long-term. This is not a one-time order. It's a commitment to expand manufacturing capacity, which tells you the Defense Department expects demand to keep climbing.

Carrie The dollar figures and the timeline were not in the announcement we saw, so we will bring you those numbers once they are confirmed.

Cosmo Turning overseas, and here we owe you some honesty. We came up empty this cycle.

Carrie It happens on a Sunday. The curated feeds we pull from, the wire services and the international desks, did not deliver anything substantive in the last twenty-four hours that we could stand behind.

Cosmo So rather than pad this segment with speculation, we will leave it there. The missile production story is the closest thing we have to an overseas thread today, and it is a real one.

Carrie Back tomorrow with a fuller world roundup.

Cosmo Now to Utah, and this one is genuinely lovely. According to the Salt Lake Tribune, a family in Springville has turned their basement into something called the Springville Revolving Closet.

Carrie Elizabeth Delano runs it out of the family home. Free children's clothing. Newborn all the way up to age sixteen.

Cosmo Parents book a fifteen-minute appointment, walk in, and take what their kids need. No eligibility forms. No income check. No questions asked.

Carrie Think about what most basements are. Storage. A treadmill nobody uses. This one is a working clothing bank.

Cosmo Fifteen minutes, and no barriers. That is a good note to end on.

Carrie That's Top News Headlines. Thanks for listening.

Cosmo Welcome in, this is Top News Headlines. Today is Saturday, September fifth, twenty twenty-six.

Carrie Good to be with you, Cosmo. And I'll level with everybody right at the top. The material we pulled today came back unusually thin. So we're going to give you what we actually have, and we are not going to pad it.

Cosmo That is the deal we make every single day. Let's start national, because there is one story here with real weight. The Pentagon has committed to a long-term expansion of production for the Patriot missile system and the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense system.

Carrie And that comes straight from the Pentagon's own announcement. Cosmo, the words doing the heavy lifting there are long term. This is not a one-time order. This is a commitment to build out capacity.

Cosmo Exactly right. What we do not have is a dollar figure, a timeline, or a production volume. Those numbers were not in what reached us, so we are leaving them blank.

Carrie Appreciate that. The second national item is a public health story, and it is a sad one. A headline crossed our desk saying a city has recorded its first death from a mosquito-borne virus.

Cosmo And that headline is all we got. No city named. No virus named. No timing.

Carrie So treat it as a flag, not a finished report. If the details fill in, you will hear them here first.

Cosmo World news next. Nothing cleared for us from overseas in the last twenty-four hours.

Carrie Which does not mean nothing happened out there. It means our sources came back empty.

Cosmo Though I would argue the Pentagon story is a world story wearing a domestic jacket. Air and missile defense is what allies ask America for first. Expanding that production line will be read closely in a lot of foreign capitals.

Carrie That is a fair point. Let's come home to Utah.

Cosmo Please do. What have we got?

Carrie The Sanpete County Fair has wrapped for the year. The theme was Red, White and Moo.

Cosmo Now that is a fantastic theme. Any word on how the fair went?

Carrie The report we read called it a success, but the writer said plainly they had no figures to back that up. Just what they saw with their own eyes.

Cosmo We will take it. A county fair, a great theme, and a very light news day in the Beehive State.

Carrie A short show today, and that is on purpose. We would rather be brief than make things up.

Cosmo This has been Top News Headlines. We are back tomorrow. Thanks for listening.

Cosmo Good morning, and welcome to Top News Headlines. [] It's Friday, September fourth, twenty twenty-six, and we've got a busy one for you. []

Carrie We do indeed. [] Let's start with money in politics. [] Elon Musk's America P A C is officially in the twenty twenty-six midterms, and the spending has already started. [b]

Cosmo How much are we talking? []

Carrie More than eight hundred thousand dollars so far on campaign activity. [b] And remember, we are still early in this cycle. []

Cosmo That's the part that stands out to me. [] Eight hundred thousand this early is a floor, not a ceiling. [] Musk has the resources to make that figure look small by November, and both parties know it. []

Carrie Agreed. [] Right now the spending says more about intent than about any one race. []

Cosmo Over at the White House, Vice President J D Vance took questions from reporters in the James Brady Press Briefing Room yesterday afternoon. [c]

Carrie A vice president at the podium is always worth noting. []

Cosmo It is. [] Briefings are usually the press secretary's job, so when the number two steps up instead, the administration is making a point about who speaks for the White House. []

Carrie Also on the national front, a public health story we're watching. [] A city has recorded what's being reported as its first death from a mosquito borne virus. [a]

Cosmo Do we have a location? []

Carrie Not confirmed, and the rest of the details are thin, so we're not going to name a city and get it wrong. [a] But a first death changes how a city responds to an outbreak, and that's why we're flagging it now. []

Cosmo Fair enough. [] We'll bring you more as the reporting fills in. []

Carrie One more national story, and this one touches anyone who flies. [] United States Customs and Border Protection is unlocking what it calls a contactless experience at airports. []

Cosmo Contactless meaning what, exactly? []

Carrie The reporting frames it as the future of air travel, with the agency moving toward a process that doesn't require you to hand over a document at every stop. []

Cosmo That's a real change to the rhythm of a trip through an airport. [] Fewer stops at a counter, fewer documents out of the pocket, and a border agency that leans harder on technology to confirm who you are. []

Carrie Worth watching how it rolls out, and which airports see it first. []

Cosmo Turning overseas now, and this is where we have to be straight with you. []

Carrie Right. [] Our international wire feed came back light this morning. [] We pull world coverage from Reuters and the Associated Press, and nothing in the overnight queue met our bar for reporting. []

Cosmo So we're leaving this segment short rather than padding it with speculation. [] No invented headlines here. [] We'll be back with a full world block tomorrow. []

Carrie Let's head to Utah, where there's real news out of Provo. []

Cosmo The amphitheater fight. [] Provo City Council announced Wednesday evening that the applicant behind the Vesper Amphitheater is withdrawing its current application. [i]

Carrie So the vote's off? []

Cosmo Postponed. [i] The Council was expected to take it up as early as this coming Tuesday. [i] That's now delayed while the applicant prepares an amended proposal. [i]

Carrie And this is where it gets interesting for anyone following Provo development. [] The changes target two specific sticking points. [i] The first is the Critical Hillside Overlay Zone, which governs what you can build on steep terrain. [i]

Cosmo And the second? []

Carrie Parking. [i] That sounds mundane until you picture what an amphitheater does to a neighborhood on a concert night. []

Cosmo That's the real story here. [] A withdrawal isn't a defeat, it's a rewrite. [] The applicant looked at the room, counted the votes, and decided to come back with a stronger version. []

Carrie And it means Provo residents get another round of public comment before anything is decided. [] If you live near that hillside, that's your window. []

Cosmo Well said. [] That's your Friday briefing. []

Carrie Thanks for listening. [] We'll see you tomorrow. []

Cosmo Welcome in. It's Thursday, September third, twenty twenty-six, and we've got a short but interesting rundown for you today.

Carrie Short is the word, Cosmo. Let's start with money and politics, because that's where the clearest story is.

Cosmo Right. Elon Musk's America P A C has officially jumped into the twenty twenty-six midterms. The headline number is more than eight hundred thousand dollars in spending this cycle.

Carrie And that's the part worth sitting with. It's not the dollar figure by itself. It's the entry. This is the political action committee planting a flag in the midterm races.

Cosmo Eight hundred thousand is a modest opening bid in national terms. But an opening bid is exactly what it looks like.

Carrie Which is why it matters. Wherever that money lands, it tells us which races he cares about. We'll be watching the targets as they come into focus.

Cosmo Fair warning, listeners. The national news was quiet today. That's the one story we can stand behind, so that's the one we're giving you.

Carrie Honesty over filler. Let's go overseas.

Cosmo On the world side, the story we've got is a ferry capsizing, with passengers still unaccounted for.

Carrie That's the kind of report where the early numbers are almost always incomplete. A vessel goes over, and the count of who was aboard and who's been recovered keeps moving for hours.

Cosmo Exactly. What we know is that the ferry went down and passengers are reported missing. We don't have a location, a passenger count, or a cause.

Carrie And we're not going to guess at any of them. Ferry disasters usually come down to two things. How overloaded the boat was, and how fast rescue crews reached the water.

Cosmo Both of those are unknown to us right now. So we'll flag it and come back when the reporting firms up.

Carrie That's the responsible call. Let's bring it home to Utah.

Cosmo Utah news today is high school sports, and honestly, that's not a bad place to land in early September.

Carrie It really isn't. Start with Wednesday night volleyball. Skyridge beat Weber three sets to one, taking the match in four.

Cosmo Good result for Skyridge. And Friday night is loaded. Every game kicks off at seven o'clock.

Carrie Start with the road trip. Skyridge travels to Liberty in Nevada. That's a real haul for a Friday night.

Cosmo And the traffic goes both ways. Bishop Gorman comes to Lone Peak. Gorman making that trip is the marquee item on the schedule.

Carrie Then closer to home, Desert Hills plays Spanish Fork, and Farmington faces American Fork.

Cosmo Plus Ben Lomond takes on A L A. Five games, one kickoff time, a lot of Friday night lights across the state.

Carrie That's your Thursday. Musk's America P A C opening its midterm wallet, a ferry capsizing with people still missing, and Utah high school sports filling the week.

Cosmo Quiet day, straight talk. We'll be back tomorrow with more. Thanks for listening.

Cosmo Good afternoon, and welcome to Top News Headlines. It's Wednesday, September second, twenty twenty-six, and we have a heavy news day ahead.

Carrie We sure do, Cosmo. Let's start with the biggest national story. The Justice Department alleges Chinese hackers targeted the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the United States Senate, and the Federal Reserve.

Cosmo That is a stunning list of targets. The space agency, the legislative branch, and the central bank, all in one alleged campaign.

Carrie Right. Details on scope and timing are still thin, but the agencies named tell you how serious this is.

Cosmo And it comes from federal prosecutors, not an anonymous leak. That matters.

Carrie It does. What else is moving nationally?

Cosmo A postal whistleblower. Someone inside the United States Postal Service says the work to carry out President Trump's mail-in voting order is rushed and sloppy.

Carrie Rushed and sloppy is not what you want to hear about anything touching an election.

Cosmo No. And the claim comes from inside the agency doing the work. We will watch for the specifics as they come out.

Carrie Turning overseas now. Reuters is reporting that a ferry has capsized and that passengers are missing.

Cosmo That is the kind of alert where the numbers usually grow before they settle. Any word on location, or how many people were aboard?

Carrie Not yet. Right now it is a bare-bones report. The ferry has gone down, and people are unaccounted for. The search is the story to follow.

Cosmo We will bring you more as it firms up. The other major world item is out of Iran. Iranian state media, the news agency I S N A, reports that a home in Kuhestak, in southern Iran, was struck early this morning.

Carrie A home. Was anyone hurt?

Cosmo A wedding was being held there. At least one child was injured and taken to a hospital in Menab.

Carrie A wedding. That is about as civilian as a target gets.

Cosmo It is, and Iranian media is leaning hard on exactly that framing. We do not yet have independent confirmation of who carried out the strike.

Carrie Worth saying plainly. We are reporting what Iranian media has reported, and nothing beyond it.

Cosmo Closer to home now, and this is the Utah story of the day.

Carrie It is. According to the Salt Lake Tribune, a judge has ordered Tyler Robinson to stand trial in the shooting death of Charlie Kirk.

Cosmo The ruling came down Tuesday, just after five in the evening, from Judge Tony Graf at the Fourth District Courthouse in Provo.

Carrie It was the closing day of the preliminary hearing. Judge Graf found probable cause and sent Robinson to trial on all seven counts.

Cosmo All seven. That includes aggravated murder, which is the most serious charge Utah can bring.

Carrie Remind listeners of the timeline here, Cosmo.

Cosmo Kirk was shot and killed on September tenth of last year, at a Turning Point U S A event at Utah Valley University in Orem.

Carrie In front of thousands of students who watched it happen. That is what has made this case so raw for so many Utahns.

Cosmo Now, nearly a year later, the case moves toward trial.

Carrie That is your news for Wednesday. Thanks for listening to Top News Headlines.

Cosmo We will see you tomorrow.

Cosmo Welcome in. It's Tuesday, September first, twenty twenty-six, and this is Top News Headlines.

Carrie Good to be here, Cosmo. And I'll be straight with our listeners up front — this is a thin news morning on our national desk.

Cosmo It really is. Our national feeds came in almost empty. What we pulled from Fox News was a morning newsletter page, not a story — a promotion for the briefing the network sends out on weekdays.

Carrie Which is not news. So rather than dress up a slow cycle as something bigger, we'll tell you plainly. Nothing on the national desk cleared the bar in the last twenty-four hours.

Cosmo We'd rather give you nothing than give you filler. So let's spend our time where there is actual reporting. Carrie, take us overseas.

Carrie World desk. One item came across, and it is a serious one. A ferry has capsized, and passengers are reported missing.

Cosmo That's a story with real weight to it. What do we know about where it happened?

Carrie Very little, and I want to be honest about that. What reached us was the headline alone. No location, no passenger count, no word on how many are unaccounted for, and no cause.

Cosmo So we flag it and we don't guess. Ferry disasters tend to carry high casualty numbers, and we'd be doing you a disservice inventing details we don't have.

Carrie Agreed. We'll follow it and bring you the confirmed reporting once it lands.

Cosmo Which brings us home to Utah, and here we've got something substantial. This is from the Salt Lake Tribune.

Carrie Take it away.

Cosmo A Utah-based group, the Global EnviroHealth Initiative, is helping lead disaster relief in Nepal after catastrophic flooding. Hundreds of people were killed. Whole towns were devastated.

Carrie And the Utah connection runs deep on this one. The organization was founded by Spencer Crocker, a Utah native. Its chief science adviser is Doctor Bernhard Fassl, also a Utah resident.

Cosmo Here's what makes it more than a feel-good story. Nepal's central disaster relief platform placed the group on two of its official committees.

Carrie Which two?

Cosmo Healthcare, and water systems. Those two decide whether a flood turns into an epidemic — somewhere to treat the sick, and clean water so fewer people need treating.

Carrie That's a real seat at the table, not a donation drop. And they're working through an in-country implementation partner rather than flying in their own people.

Cosmo Which is the model aid experts have pushed for years. Local knowledge, local hands, outside expertise and funding behind it.

Carrie A small Utah organization sitting on a foreign government's relief committees. That's the story worth your time today.

Cosmo That's the news. Thin day, honest brief. We'll see you tomorrow.

Cosmo Good afternoon, and welcome to Top News Headlines. Today is Monday, August thirty-first, twenty twenty-six, and we are starting with the national picture.

Carrie And Cosmo, I am going to be straight with our listeners. The national wire was thin on our desk this morning.

Cosmo It was. The one national item in front of us is a commentary piece by Peter Laffin. The headline reads, Check your privilege, comrade. Socialism's Black voter firewall.

Carrie That is an opinion column, not a news report, and the headline is all we have of it.

Cosmo Right. So here is the rule we work by. We tell you what we know, and we do not fill the gaps with guesswork.

Carrie What is worth flagging is the subject. Socialism as a live argument in American politics, aimed squarely at Black voters. That fight is real, and we will bring you the substance once we have the column itself.

Cosmo Fair enough. Let's go overseas, where the reporting is much more solid.

Carrie This is the story of the day for me. In Tyre, in southern Lebanon, families whose villages were destroyed or occupied by Israeli forces are now living inside public schools.

Cosmo And the detail that lands, from a wire photograph filed on Thursday, August twenty-seventh, is exactly where those families are sleeping.

Carrie On a basketball court. Randa al-Taki, who is fifty-one, and her daughter Fatima Khashab, who is eleven, have a makeshift room set up right on the court floor.

Cosmo An eleven-year-old girl living on a gym floor. When displacement runs that deep, you are well past temporary.

Carrie Exactly. The villages are gone or taken over, and the schools are what is left.

Cosmo One more from overseas, and this one is a change of pace. Divers have found a shipwreck roughly twenty-four hundred years old.

Carrie Twenty-four hundred years under water. Remarkable. Though I have to tell you, once again, the headline is all we have. No location, no names, no word on the cargo.

Cosmo We will chase it. Now to Utah.

Carrie Utah's top local story is a hard one, and everything we know about it comes from the Nephi City Police Department.

Cosmo An officer shot and killed a woman while responding to a domestic violence call. The department says the call came in at five in the morning on Sunday, and that a weapon was involved from the very beginning.

Carrie The woman had left the scene before officers arrived. They found her at a residence already known to them, and moved to take her into custody.

Cosmo According to that same department statement, she was armed with a firearm at that moment, and the shooting happened as officers tried to arrest her.

Carrie Her name has not been released in anything we have seen, and the account of the shooting itself is still incomplete.

Cosmo So we will stop there rather than speculate. That is your Monday, across the country, around the world, and here at home.

Carrie We will be back tomorrow. Thanks for listening.

Cosmo Good afternoon and welcome in. [] Today is Sunday, August thirtieth, twenty twenty-six, and we start on the campaign trail. []

Carrie We do. [] Abdul El Sayed is pushing back hard on a proposal to preemptively ban sharia law. [b] He says a ban like that is discriminatory, full stop. [b]

Cosmo That is the civil liberties argument. [b] You don't write a law against a thing that isn't happening, because then the law is really just a message. []

Carrie And he did not keep it polite. [] Answering his rival, Mike Rogers, El Sayed called Rogers a beta. [b] That was the word he chose. [b]

Cosmo Which tells you exactly where this race is. [] The policy fight is real. [] The tone is pure primary season. [] Expect Rogers to answer that one. []

Carrie To Washington next, and a cybersecurity case. [] The Justice Department says Chinese hackers targeted NASA, the United States Senate, and the Federal Reserve, among other victims. []

Cosmo Look at that list. [] Space agency, legislature, central bank. [] Those are not random picks. [] That is a run at the machinery of the country. []

Carrie The department is the one making the accusation, so this is coming through a formal legal channel rather than a rumor. []

Cosmo Overseas now, and here is a billboard that matters more than a billboard usually does. [] In downtown Tehran, there is an image of Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, handing the national flag to his son. [c]

Carrie That son is Mojtaba Khamenei. [c] And off to the left in that same image stands the founder of the revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. [c]

Cosmo So the whole line is in one frame. [c] The founder, the father, and the son. [c]

Carrie That is succession made public. [c] Iran has always insisted its leadership is not hereditary. [] That billboard says something different, in a central square, where everyone walks past it. [c]

Cosmo The photograph of that billboard dates to March tenth of this year. [c]

Carrie One lighter item from abroad. [] Divers have turned up a shipwreck estimated at twenty-four hundred years old. [a] Details are still thin, but that is a vessel from the classical world. [a]

Cosmo Closer to home, Orem homeowners are going to feel this one. [] The city council approved a property tax increase of six point nine five percent. [i]

Carrie The vote was five to two, Thursday night, at a Truth in Taxation meeting. [i] The increase raises about four hundred fifty thousand dollars for the city. [i]

Cosmo And that money is earmarked. [i] Two new officers for the Orem Police Department. [i]

Carrie So what does it cost you? [] On a five hundred twenty thousand dollar home, the annual bill goes from about one hundred sixty-nine dollars to about one hundred eighty dollars. [i]

Cosmo Just under twelve dollars a year. [i] A commercial property at that same value goes from about three hundred seven dollars to about three hundred twenty-eight dollars. [i]

Carrie The meeting ran four hours. [i] And here is the interesting part. [] The council broadly agreed the police department needs the staffing. [i]

Cosmo The fight was over whether property tax is the right way to pay for it. [i] Two members said that it isn't, and they lost. [i]

Carrie That is your Sunday. [] We will see you tomorrow. []

Cosmo Welcome in, everybody. It's Saturday, August twenty-ninth, twenty twenty-six, and we are starting with the national desk.

Carrie And I'll be straight with you, Cosmo. The national wire came in thin today. What we do have is a campaign story with some sharp elbows.

Cosmo Sharp is the word. The candidate El Sayed is arguing that preemptively banning sharia law is discriminatory. He's making a religious liberty argument, essentially, that you don't write a ban for a thing before anybody's proposed it.

Carrie And he did not stop at the policy. He called his rival Rogers, and I'm quoting the reporting here, a beta.

Cosmo That's a schoolyard jab in a serious race.

Carrie It is, and that's the tell. This is the shape of a lot of campaign coverage right now. The substantive constitutional question gets one paragraph, the insult gets the headline.

Cosmo Watch which one voters actually remember. All right, let's take this overseas.

Carrie And this is the most consequential story on our board today. The occupied West Bank. Israeli settlers attacked the Palestinian village of Qusra.

Cosmo Injured Palestinians were carried out by ambulance. That's from the Al Jazeera report filed today.

Carrie And here's the detail that gives the whole thing context. Israeli soldiers were in the area, securing a building under construction.

Cosmo So the military presence wasn't a response arriving after the fact. It was already there, tied to construction.

Carrie Right. Settler violence in the West Bank is not new, but Qusra has lived with it for years. When soldiers are on scene for construction security and an attack unfolds around them, the question of who is protecting whom gets very difficult, very fast.

Cosmo And that's the thread to watch in the coming days. Carrie, take us home to Utah.

Carrie Happily, and this one hits your wallet. Orem City Council voted five to two Thursday night to approve a property tax increase of six point nine five percent.

Cosmo Five to two. What's the money buy?

Carrie About four hundred fifty thousand dollars a year, and it is earmarked for two additional police officers.

Cosmo Let's put real numbers on it. On a home valued at five hundred twenty thousand dollars, the annual bill goes from about one hundred sixty-nine dollars to about one hundred eighty dollars.

Carrie Eleven dollars and change.

Cosmo On a commercial property at that same value, it climbs from about three hundred seven dollars to about three hundred twenty-eight dollars.

Carrie And that Truth in Taxation meeting ran four hours.

Cosmo Four hours for eleven dollars?

Carrie For the principle, Cosmo. The council broadly agreed Orem police need the staffing. The fight was over whether a property tax is the right way to pay for it.

Cosmo That's the argument every Utah city is having right now.

Carrie One last one, and it's a palate cleanser. Divers have found a shipwreck estimated at twenty-four hundred years old.

Cosmo Twenty-four hundred years. That ship went down around the time of Socrates.

Carrie And it's still down there, its story still untold.

Cosmo Great note to end on. Those are your headlines. We'll see you next time.

Cosmo Good afternoon, and welcome to Top News Headlines. It's Friday, August twenty-eighth, twenty twenty-six, and Carrie, we are starting today in the skies.

Carrie We are. Fox News has the headline this hour. The Trump administration is racing to overhaul America's air traffic control system.

Cosmo And there is a deadline attached. Twenty twenty-eight. That is the target.

Carrie That is a tight window. Air traffic control touches every single flight in this country, every day. Rebuilding it on that timeline is a serious undertaking.

Cosmo Now, straight talk with you. What we have in front of us right now is the headline and the deadline. The cost, the scope, the how, none of those specifics have reached our desk.

Carrie So we are flagging the story rather than dressing it up. It is the biggest national story we have today, and we will bring you the details the moment they land.

Cosmo Honest is better than loud. Carrie, what is next?

Carrie Something completely different. Divers have uncovered a shipwreck that is twenty-four hundred years old.

Cosmo Twenty-four hundred years. That puts the ship at roughly four hundred years before the common era.

Carrie The ancient world. That is older than almost anything we pull off the seafloor in a given year.

Cosmo And the reporting we have is thin. Where the wreck was found, who found it, what it was carrying, what kind of vessel it was, all of that is still coming.

Carrie We are not going to fill the time with guesses. That is the story we are watching.

Cosmo Agreed. Let's bring it home to Utah, and this one we can hand you with real detail.

Carrie Finally. The local reporting out of Utah County says the Utah Transit Authority has launched a new On Demand Zone, and it went live on August sixteenth.

Cosmo This is low-cost public rideshare. You request the ride through the Utah Transit Authority On Demand app, the same way you would request any rideshare.

Carrie And the coverage area is big. Seventy-seven square miles across five cities. Eagle Mountain, Saratoga Springs, Lehi, American Fork, and Highland.

Cosmo The part that matters most is the connection. You can ride inside the zone, or you can ride straight to a FrontRunner station.

Carrie There are FrontRunner stations in Lehi and American Fork. So this is aimed right at the last mile problem, the one that keeps people in their cars.

Cosmo County sales tax dollars are helping pay for it. If you live out that way, it is worth a look.

Carrie That is your news for Friday.

Cosmo Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time.

Cosmo Good afternoon and welcome to Top News Headlines. It's Thursday, August twenty-seventh, twenty twenty-six, and we've got a genuinely interesting stack of stories for you today.

Carrie We do, Cosmo. And the biggest one at home is infrastructure. The Trump administration is moving to overhaul the entire United States air traffic control system, with a target completion date of twenty twenty-eight.

Cosmo Twenty twenty-eight. That is a tight window for a system that touches every flight in the country.

Carrie It is. And notice the framing here. This is not incremental patching. The reporting describes a system-wide replacement, and the language around it is all about racing the clock.

Cosmo Which tells you something about how the administration sees the current system. You don't set a hard deadline like that unless you think waiting is the bigger risk.

Carrie Right. Details on cost and scope are still thin, so we'll keep watching that one.

Cosmo On a very different note, a group of Navy veterans is riding bicycles across the country to mark the September eleventh anniversary. That is a long way to ride to keep a memory alive.

Carrie That's the kind of story that carries itself. Now let's go overseas, where the top story is Gaza.

Cosmo According to the Associated Press, an Israeli airstrike hit a house in Deir al-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip, on Wednesday, August twenty-sixth.

Carrie And the consequence is what makes it news. The strike damaged a food aid warehouse next door.

Cosmo A food aid warehouse. In a place where getting food to people is already the whole ballgame.

Carrie Exactly. The photographs coming out show Palestinians walking past the damaged building. That's the image the news agencies are leading with, and it makes the point better than a statistic would.

Cosmo The reporting emphasizes the humanitarian side of the strike. Not the military objective, but what happens to the buildings civilians rely on, and to the people who rely on them.

Carrie And Deir al-Balah sits in central Gaza, which has been a landing point for people displaced from elsewhere in the territory. So the aid pipeline there matters enormously.

Cosmo We'll stay on that as more details come in.

Carrie Closer to home now, and this one is about Provo, and about the night sky.

Cosmo The Provo City Council approved an update to the city's outdoor lighting code on Tuesday, aimed at dark sky compliance.

Carrie Here's what it actually does. New and replaced outdoor fixtures have to be fully shielded, and they have to run at a color temperature of three thousand Kelvin or less. That means warmer light, pointed down instead of sideways.

Cosmo And electronic billboards get their own brightness limits, measured in units called nits. Three hundred at night, five thousand during the day.

Carrie The council intern who presented the update was Britton Johnson. And the key detail for homeowners is that none of this is retroactive.

Cosmo That's the part people will want to hear. Your existing porch light is fine. The rules only apply to new installations and replacements.

Carrie Which makes it a slow change. Provo gets darker skies as fixtures age out, not overnight.

Cosmo A sensible way to do it. And that is your news for Thursday.

Carrie Thanks for listening. We'll see you next time.

Cosmo Welcome in, and good afternoon. It's Wednesday, August twenty-sixth, twenty twenty-six, and this is your Top News Headlines rundown.

Carrie Good to be here, Cosmo. And I'll be straight with our listeners up front. The national news we were able to gather today was thin.

Cosmo It was. Most of what came back this morning was newsletter sign-up pages and subscription prompts rather than actual reporting.

Carrie So we're not going to fill that space with guesswork. If we don't have the story, we don't have it.

Cosmo The one national item that did surface was a headline from Fox News. Navy veterans are taking on a cross-country bicycle ride marking September eleventh.

Carrie That's the kind of story that usually carries real detail. The route, the riders, the cause behind it.

Cosmo We weren't able to get the body of that piece, so we're leaving it as a headline and picking it up tomorrow when we have the full text in hand.

Carrie On the world side, it's the same situation. Nothing reached us from Reuters, and nothing from the Associated Press.

Cosmo So no conflict updates today, and no international developments we can stand behind. We'd rather tell you that plainly than guess.

Carrie A short show beats a padded one. Let's go where we do have solid reporting, and that's Utah.

Cosmo This is the story of the day. A sixteen-year-old has been charged in a double killing inside a Saratoga Springs home.

Carrie The Daily Herald reports the teenager faces two counts of aggravated murder, both first-degree felonies, plus one count of obstruction of justice, a second-degree felony.

Cosmo Authorities say he shot his mother and his half-brother inside the residence. One of the two victims, his mother, has been identified as Jessica Lyman.

Carrie And here's the piece that matters most legally. The Utah County Attorney's Office intends to prosecute him in adult district court.

Cosmo That's a major escalation. A minor facing aggravated murder charges in adult court is looking at a completely different sentencing landscape.

Carrie The Daily Herald has not released the teenager's name. We'll follow the case as it moves forward.

Cosmo And that's the rundown. Short today, but everything in it is solid. We'll be back with a fuller board tomorrow.

Carrie Thanks for listening.

[[S E G M E N T: National Headlines]]

Cosmo Good afternoon and welcome to Top News Headlines. [] It's Tuesday, August twenty-fifth, twenty twenty-six. []

Carrie We owe listeners some straight talk before we start. []

Cosmo We do. [] Our national feeds came back nearly empty today. [] What landed was mostly newsletter sign-up pages and subscription notices, not reporting. [d][h]

Carrie One national item did surface, but only as a headline. [] A group of Navy veterans is riding cross-country to commemorate the September eleventh attacks. []

Cosmo And that is genuinely all we have. [] A headline, with no story underneath it. [] No names, no route, no date. []

Carrie So we are not going to dress it up. [] We would rather hand you nothing than hand you something we cannot stand behind. []

Cosmo Agreed. [] If that ride story fills in overnight, we will carry it tomorrow with the detail it deserves. [] [[S E G M E N T: World Headlines]]

Carrie The world desk is the same picture, and honestly, it is an unusual one. []

Cosmo Nothing cleared from the wires at all? []

Carrie Nothing usable. [] No Reuters copy with facts attached, nothing from the Associated Press, no international reporting we could verify. []

Cosmo That is a gap in our pipeline, not a quiet day on the planet. [] Somewhere out there the news is happening. [] It just did not reach us. []

Carrie And a made-up world segment helps nobody. []

Cosmo So we skip it, we flag it, and we fix it. [] [[S E G M E N T: Utah Local Headlines]]

Cosmo Which brings us to Utah, and here we do have real reporting. []

Carrie This one comes from the Daily Herald, and it is a hard story. [i] A sixteen-year-old boy has been charged in the shooting deaths of his mother and his half-brother in Saratoga Springs. [i]

Cosmo The charges are two counts of aggravated murder, both first-degree felonies, plus one count of obstruction of justice, a second-degree felony. [i]

Carrie And the Utah County Attorney's Office intends to prosecute him as an adult, in district court, despite his age. [i]

Cosmo That is the piece that stands out. [] Sixteen years old, and the state is moving this out of juvenile court entirely. [i]

Carrie The incident itself goes back to March twenty-eighth of twenty twenty-five. [i] Officers were responding to what came in as a medical assist call at a Saratoga Springs home. [i]

Cosmo Authorities identified one of the two people who died there as Jessica Lyman. [i] The Daily Herald has not released the teenager's name, and given his age, that restraint makes sense. [i]

Carrie That is our episode. [] Thin at the top, but we told you why. []

Cosmo Back tomorrow with a fuller board. [] Take care of each other, Utah. []

Cosmo Welcome in. [] It's Monday, August twenty-fourth, twenty twenty-six, and I'm going to be straight with you right at the top. []

Carrie We don't have a full show's worth of news today. [] The source pull came back nearly empty. [] But one real story did land, and we're going to give it to you first. []

Cosmo Turning Point USA is coming back to Utah Valley University next month to memorialize Charlie Kirk, on the year mark of his assassination. []

Carrie The event is called the Freedom Built to Last Memorial. [] It's set for six thirty in the evening on Thursday, September tenth, at the U C C U Center in Orem. []

Cosmo In a news release, the organization said the gathering will honor Kirk as a faith-filled husband, father, and defender of free speech, and that the memorial is meant as a deliberate act of remembrance and a call for students and supporters to continue his life's work. [] Kirk was a conservative activist and the founder of Turning Point USA. []

Carrie That's the news. [] Now here's what else came through, because you should know what we're working with. []

Cosmo Most of what landed in front of us this morning was navigation menus, a newsletter signup page, a copyright line, and a donation appeal from the Salt Lake Tribune. [d][f][g][h] Those are page furniture. [] They are not stories. []

Carrie A few fragments did come through. [] There's a headline with no article behind it about Navy veterans riding bicycles across the country to mark the September eleventh anniversary. [] There's another about an appeals court reviving a Virginia locker room case, and a column from Byron York on the people who have tried to kill President Trump. [] Headlines only, no reporting underneath. []

Cosmo And there's a photo item about Syrian opposition fighters taking the Abu Duhur military air base east of Idlib, with decommissioned aircraft left sitting on the ground. [c] It's dated December seventh, twenty twenty-four. [c] That is not news. [] That is an archive file that wandered into today's folder. []

Carrie Here's the promise we make on this show. [] We will not invent headlines to fill three minutes. [] A short honest episode beats a full dishonest one every single time. []

Cosmo Once the feed gets fixed, we'll come back loaded. [] Until then, that's the whole report. [] Thanks for listening. [] We'll see you tomorrow. []

Cosmo Welcome to Top News Headlines. [] It's Sunday, August twenty-third, twenty twenty-six, and we're opening on the national desk. []

Carrie We are. [] And I'll be straight with listeners up front. [] It's a quiet news day, so we're bringing you what's actually solid instead of filling time. []

Cosmo Fair. [] Leading nationally, a commentary from Byron York about the people who have tried to kill President Trump. [e] York's argument is a sorting exercise. [e] He puts the attempts into three groups. [e]

Carrie Three groups. [e] Walk me through them. []

Cosmo Kooks. [e] Resistance activists. [e] And Iranians. [e] That's his framework. [e]

Carrie And the Iranians are the group that changes the conversation. [e] Kooks and activists are a domestic security problem. [e] Iran is a foreign government. [e] That is a different category of threat entirely. []

Cosmo That's the whole point of the piece. [] York says you can't treat all of these as one phenomenon, because the response to a lone individual and the response to a hostile government are not the same response. []

Carrie Staying on the national desk, there's a court development out of Virginia. [] An appeals court has revived a locker room case there. []

Cosmo Revived, meaning the case had been closed and now it's back on the docket. []

Carrie That's right. [] The case involves a transgender sex offender named Richard Cox. [] The appeals court ruling puts the locker room claims back in play. []

Cosmo We'll follow where that goes as the details come in. []

Carrie Also on the national wire, and this one is a change of pace. [] Navy veterans are riding bicycles across the country to mark September eleventh. []

Cosmo Coast to coast. [] That is not a small undertaking. []

Carrie Not remotely. [] We'll bring you more as the details come in. []

Cosmo All right, let's take it overseas. [] What's moving on the world desk? []

Carrie The name to know is Tom Barrack. [c] He is holding two jobs at once, and that's the interesting part. [c] He is the United States Ambassador to Turkey, and he is also the Special Envoy to Syria. [c]

Cosmo Two assignments, one person. [c] And those two assignments overlap. []

Carrie They do. [] Turkey and Syria share a border and a very long history. [] Barrack took part in a panel discussion at the Antalya Diplomacy Forum, in southern Turkey. [c]

Cosmo Antalya is where a lot of the regional diplomacy happens. [] When Washington sends one person to carry both the Turkey relationship and the Syria portfolio, that tells you how closely Washington thinks the two are tied. []

Carrie Exactly right. [] Closer to home now. [] What's the news in Utah? []

Cosmo This one is sad, and it is significant for the state. [] Colin Hilton has died. [i] He passed away Friday at his home. [i] He was the president and chief executive of the Utah Olympic Legacy Foundation for more than twenty years. [i]

Carrie That is a long stewardship of something Utah genuinely cares about. [] He spent those years keeping the legacy of the twenty-oh-two Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games alive. [i]

Cosmo And he had a real philosophy about it. [i] He didn't think the venues should be museums. [i]

Carrie He believed the measure of these venues was not simply that they were preserved, but that they kept being used, by athletes, by coaches, by families and whole communities. [i]

Cosmo Used, not just kept. [i] That is the difference between a monument and a living facility, and Utah's venues are still running today because that is how he ran them. []

Carrie A real loss for the state. [] And that's your headlines for Sunday. []

Cosmo Thanks for listening. [] We'll see you next time. []

Cosmo Good afternoon and welcome to Top News Headlines. [] It's Saturday, August twenty-second, twenty twenty-six, and we are starting on the national desk with a medical headline that stopped us cold. []

Carrie It really did. [] The headline says Parkinson's tremor can be stopped with treatment. [a] For millions of families, that tremor is the symptom they picture first when they hear the diagnosis. []

Cosmo So here is the honest caveat, and we are giving it to you up front. [] What we have today is the headline itself. [a] No treatment type. [a] No success rate. [a] No clinical numbers. [a]

Carrie So we flag it, and we do not oversell it. [] A claim that big earns the data behind it before anybody celebrates. []

Cosmo Exactly right. [] We are chasing the underlying research, and we will bring you the specifics the moment they land. [] Staying on the national desk, there is a court story out of Virginia. []

Carrie There is. [] An appeals court has revived a Virginia locker room case brought against a transgender sex offender named Richard Cox. []

Cosmo Revived is the key word there. [] The case had been shut down at a lower level, and the appeals court has now put it back in play. []

Carrie And the same caveat applies as with the medical story. [] What we have is the headline. [] No ruling text, no court name, no detail on what happens next. []

Cosmo Also on the national desk, and we are labeling this one clearly as opinion rather than reporting, columnist Byron York writes that the people trying to kill President Trump are, in his words, kooks, resistance maniacs, and Iranians. [e]

Carrie That is his argument, and it is his alone. [] We have the headline and nothing underneath it, so we are not going to characterize the cases he is grouping together or the evidence he brings to them. [e]

Cosmo Flagged, attributed, and left there. [] Let's go overseas. []

Carrie And overseas is where the hard picture is. [] According to Reuters, a photograph taken today in Deir al-Balah, in the central Gaza Strip, shows people picking through garbage dumps. [c]

Cosmo Not for food. [] For fuel. [c]

Carrie For fuel. [c] Anything in those waste piles that will burn. [c]

Cosmo The reason is a shortage of cooking gas across central Gaza. [c] When the gas runs out, a hot meal depends on whatever you can scavenge and set alight. [c]

Carrie And that is the whole story in one frame. [] No statement, no press conference, just a documented look at what fuel scarcity does to daily life. [c]

Cosmo Deir al-Balah sits right in the middle of the strip, and conditions there are the ones to watch as this continues. [c] Let's take it home to Utah. []

Carrie Happy to. [] According to the Salt Lake Tribune, Utah fruit farmer Kent Pyne walked his orchards after a spring freeze and found most of his crop gone. [i]

Cosmo About ninety percent of the crop at his Santaquin orchard. [i] Tart cherries and apples, wiped out by the first hard freeze of the season, in the first week of April. [i]

Carrie His second orchard, over in Genola, looked like it had dodged that first night. [i] Peaches, pluots, and other stone fruit came through it largely unharmed. [i]

Cosmo Then came April eighteenth. [i]

Carrie Then came April eighteenth, and a second freeze took what was left at both orchards. [i] The small fruit on the branches turned black, shriveled, and dropped. [i]

Cosmo That is the brutal math of Utah fruit farming. [] Even the orchard that survives the first cold night can lose everything on the second, and the timing lands right when the fruit is most vulnerable. [i]

Carrie Back-to-back freezes at the worst possible moment. [i] That is your news. [] We will see you next time on Top News Headlines. []

Cosmo Good afternoon and welcome to Top News Headlines. [] It's Friday, August twenty-first, twenty twenty-six, and we start with national politics. []

Carrie We do. [] The seat everybody is watching is Virginia's seventh congressional district. [b] Republicans are calling it their single best opportunity to flip a Democratic-held seat anywhere in the state. [b]

Cosmo That tells you where they plan to spend their money. [] Virginia is one of those places where a single district sets the tone for the whole cycle. []

Carrie It is. [] So far the party has named the district but not a candidate, and no polling has come out yet. [b]

Cosmo Also on the national side, the columnist Byron York is out with a piece on the assassination attempts against President Trump. [f] He sorts the people behind those attempts into three groups. [f] He calls them kooks, resistance maniacs, and Iranians. [f]

Carrie That's a blunt way to frame it, and it says something about how varied those threats have been. []

Cosmo One more national note, and this one is hopeful. [] A headline moving today says Parkinson's tremor can be stopped with treatment. [a] The research behind that headline hasn't been published yet, so treat it as early. [a]

Carrie Worth tracking closely. [] If it holds up, it changes life for an enormous number of families. [] Let's go overseas. []

Cosmo Gaza. [] The Associated Press published a new photograph today by Giannis Papanikos, and it brings back a name a lot of people will remember. [d] Hind Rajab. [d]

Carrie Hind was the Palestinian girl killed in Gaza City in January of twenty twenty-four. [d] She was riding in a car with relatives when the car came under Israeli fire. [d]

Cosmo The new photograph, taken today, shows her mother, Wesam Hamada. [d]

Carrie And that's what makes the picture land. [] The strikes and the headlines move on. [] For one family, the loss is still the present tense, more than two and a half years later. []

Cosmo It's a quiet image doing heavy work. [] Let's come home to Utah. []

Carrie And this is one you'll taste at the grocery store. [] The Salt Lake Tribune reports Utah's fruit orchards were gutted by frost this spring. [j]

Cosmo Kent Pyne runs Pyne Farms, a family operation going back to nineteen oh three. [j] His Santaquin orchard lost about ninety percent of its tart cherries and apples to a hard freeze in the first week of April. [j]

Carrie Then a second freeze on April eighteenth took the Genola orchard, and that one cost him peaches, pluots, and other stone fruit. [j] Pyne says the small fruit either turned black on the branch or shriveled and dropped to the ground. [j]

Cosmo The cause was a warm winter. [j] Utah just came through its warmest winter on record. [j] The trees blossomed early, and then the killing frost arrived right on schedule. [j]

Carrie The last time Pyne Farms lost a crop this completely was nineteen seventy-two. [j] Same pattern, fifty-four years apart. [j]

Cosmo That's your Friday rundown. [] Thanks for listening. []

Cosmo It's Thursday, August twentieth, twenty twenty-six, and this is your Top News Headlines rundown. [] Let's start on the campaign trail. []

Carrie Let's do it. [] Virginia's seventh congressional district is the story conservative outlets are circling. [b] It's a Democratic-held seat, and Republicans now call it their single best chance to flip a district anywhere in the state. [b]

Cosmo That's a strong claim to plant a flag on this early. []

Carrie It is. [] And it tells you where the money and the candidate recruiting go next. []

Cosmo Right. [] Parties don't name a top target casually. [] What we don't have yet is a candidate field or any polling, so we're not making predictions. [b] We'll come back when there are names attached. []

Carrie Fair enough. [] What else is on the national board? []

Cosmo One headline worth flagging. [] A report that Parkinson's tremor can be stopped with treatment. [a] That is the headline, and honestly that's all we have right now. [a] No details on the treatment, no study behind it yet. [a] Big, if it holds up. []

Carrie We'll chase that down and give it real time when there's substance. [] Overseas now, and this one is somber. [] In Syria, a former White Helmets volunteer named Mohammad Ghamira has died shortly after his release from jail. [d]

Cosmo The White Helmets are the civil defense group, the volunteers who pull people out of collapsed buildings. [d]

Carrie That's them. [] Fellow members carried his body for burial on Monday, August seventeenth, in the village of al Haffa, in Latakia province. [d]

Cosmo Latakia is a coastal province that's been through years of conflict. [d] And the detail that matters here is the timing. [] He was only just out of custody. [d]

Carrie That's the part people will want answered. [] There is no stated cause of death, and we are not going to guess at one. [d]

Cosmo That's the right call. [] But the burial itself says something. [] The organization turned out for a former volunteer. [d]

Carrie It does. [] Closer to home now. [] Utah lawmakers spent Wednesday at the state Capitol on one subject. [j]

Cosmo Data centers. [j] These were interim hearings, so no votes and no bills. [j] This was lawmakers listening to experts, to administrators, and to residents, ahead of the twenty twenty-seven session that convenes in January. [j]

Carrie And the listening is the point. [] According to the Salt Lake Tribune, opposition to new data center development has spread across the country, and it has now taken hold here in Utah, driven by one massive proposed project. [j]

Cosmo Loud and bipartisan. [j] That's how the public outcry was described. [j] You don't often see the left and the right lining up on the same side of a fight. []

Carrie So keep an eye on it. [] Interim meetings are where next January's bills get written. []

Cosmo That's your rundown. [] Thanks for listening. []

Cosmo Good afternoon and welcome. [] It's Wednesday, August nineteenth, twenty twenty-six, and this is Top News Headlines. [] We begin with the national headlines. []

Carrie I have to be straight with the listeners right up front. [] The wire came in thin today. []

Cosmo It really did. [] Most of what landed in our feed was newsletter signup pages, advertising supplements, and copyright footers. [c][e][h][j] Not news. []

Carrie So here's our rule. [] We tell you what we actually have, and we don't pretend to know more than that. []

Cosmo On the national side, there is one item, and it's a big claim. [a] The headline says Parkinson's tremor can be stopped with treatment. [a]

Carrie That is a striking line. [] What's behind it? []

Cosmo That's the honest problem. [] The story reached us as a headline only. [a] No mechanism, no success rates, no researchers named, no trial data. [a]

Carrie So we flag it and we hold it. [] If that claim holds up, it matters enormously to millions of families. [] But a headline is not a finding. []

Cosmo Agreed. [] We'll chase down the full reporting and bring it back to you with the details attached. []

Carrie There's a second national item, and it's political. [] El Sayed is taunting President Trump after a post from the president comparing wives. [] The quoted line is, come at us, bro. []

Cosmo That one also came to us as a headline and nothing more. [] We don't have the text of the president's post, we don't have the full response, and we don't have the context around either. []

Carrie So take it for what it is. [] A public back-and-forth, in those words, and we'll fill in the rest when the reporting reaches us. []

Cosmo The only other national item in our feed was an advertising supplement from the Washington Times about American energy, and it was dated back in April. [c] That's promotional material, not reporting, so we're leaving it there. [c]

Cosmo Now to the world headlines. [] Overseas, we do have something substantive, and it's grim. []

Carrie This one reached us as a wire photograph taken in Gaza City today. [d] An Israeli army strike hit a cafe at the Gaza port, and Palestinians were killed. [d]

Cosmo The photograph shows a funeral for the dead, held at Shifa Hospital in Gaza City. [d]

Carrie Shifa is a name listeners will recognize. [] That hospital has been at the center of the war in Gaza again and again, and today it's the site of a burial. [d]

Cosmo What we don't have is a casualty count. [d] No names, no ages, no confirmed total. [d]

Carrie And we're not going to guess at one. [] A number invented on air is worse than no number at all. []

Cosmo Here's why this matters. [] A strike on a cafe at the port means civilian gathering places are still in the line of fire, and every strike like this one puts more pressure on the effort to reach a ceasefire. []

Carrie We'll bring you the confirmed details as soon as reporters have them. []

Cosmo One more from overseas. [] President Trump says he called off a strike he described as at the level of the Second World War, and he says he did it after a request from Gulf allies and from Iran. []

Carrie That is an enormous claim, and again we have the headline and not the reporting. [] We don't know what the target was, we don't know when the order was given, and we don't have confirmation from the Gulf governments or from Tehran. []

Cosmo So we're passing along what the president says, attributed to him, and nothing more than that. []

Cosmo And that brings us home to Utah, where I'm afraid we come up empty. []

Carrie Everything that arrived in our Utah feed today was navigation menus and boilerplate. [g][h][i][j] A copyright notice from the Deseret News. [h] A donation appeal from the Salt Lake Tribune. [i] Not a single Utah story with facts in it. []

Cosmo No politics, no public safety, no schools, no weather. [] Nothing we can responsibly put in front of you. []

Carrie So we're calling it. [] That's a short show, and we'd rather give you a short honest one than a long invented one. []

Cosmo We'll be back with a fuller feed. [] Thanks for listening. []

Cosmo Good afternoon and welcome to Top News Headlines. [] Today is Tuesday, August eighteenth, twenty twenty-six, and I want to be straight with you right at the top. [] Our source feed came in thin today. []

Carrie Very thin indeed. [] So here is the deal. [] We give you exactly what we have, and nothing we cannot stand behind. []

Cosmo Starting national. [] The story with the most weight is coverage of President Trump, who described himself as the most consequential president. [e] The report also referred to threats, but the wording we received was not clear enough to say more. [e]

Carrie That is the headline, and that is honestly where our detail runs out. [e] We did not get the body of that report, so we are not going to guess at when he spoke or what the threats were about. [e]

Cosmo Agreed. [] If it firms up, we carry it properly tomorrow. []

Carrie Staying with the President, there is a second item on the same board. [] El Sayed taunted Trump with the line, come at us, bro, after a post by the President comparing their wives. []

Cosmo That is the whole of it. [] Headline only. [] We did not receive the post itself, the full name, or any response, so we are flagging it and leaving it there. []

Carrie One more national item, and this one needs a caveat. [] The Washington Times ran a special advertising supplement titled American Energy Unleashed. [c] That is promotional material, not reporting, and we want you to know that going in. [c]

Cosmo Good catch. [] And on the lighter side, one outlet ran a piece on an heiress to the Kansas City Chiefs football family sharing her wellness routines. [a] We only received the headline. [a] No practices, no names, no numbers. [a]

Carrie Which brings us to world headlines, and here is the honest answer. [] We have nothing. [] Not one wire dispatch. [] Nothing from Reuters or the Associated Press reached us today. []

Cosmo No conflicts, no elections, no diplomacy to report. [] We would rather tell you the feed was empty than fill a minute with speculation. []

Carrie That is the standard, and it should be. [] Empty beats invented. []

Cosmo On to Utah. [] What we received from the Salt Lake Tribune was a donation appeal to readers, not a news story. [i] The Tribune runs as a nonprofit newsroom, funded by the people who read it. [i]

Carrie The one genuine Utah item we do have is a death notice. [j] Drusilla Warner Small of Springville passed away on Friday, August fourteenth, at the age of eighty-two. [j] Services are under the direction of Wheeler and Sundberg Funeral Homes. [j]

Cosmo Our condolences to her family and friends. []

Carrie And that is the whole board. [] No weather event, no legislative news, no public safety alerts in today's feed. []

Cosmo We will be back tomorrow with a fuller slate. [] Thanks for listening to Top News Headlines. []

Carrie Take care of each other. []

Cosmo Good afternoon and welcome in. [] It's Monday, August seventeenth, twenty twenty-six, and we've got a compact rundown for you today. []

Carrie We do, and I want to be straight with you up front. [] The national wire came in thin for us this cycle. []

Cosmo It really did. [] A lot of what landed on the national desk was newsletter promotion and advertising material rather than reporting. [c][e]

Carrie The Washington Times, for instance, was pushing a special advertising supplement on American energy. [c] That's a paid section, not a news story, and we're not going to dress it up as one. [c]

Cosmo Right. [] We'd rather tell you the cupboard was bare than invent something to fill the minute. []

Carrie So there's no national headline today that clears the bar. [] Let's move to where we do have real reporting. []

Cosmo Overseas, and this one is heavy. [] An Israeli airstrike in Lebanon killed a Hezbollah member named Ali al-Haj Hassan, along with his wife and four of their children. [d]

Carrie Six people in one family. [d] One combatant, and five who were not. [d]

Cosmo The strike came on Saturday, August fifteenth. [d] The funeral was held the very next day, Sunday, in the southern suburbs of Beirut. [d]

Carrie And the coverage we saw led with the grief rather than the military detail. [d] The picture that carried the story was a woman mourning at that funeral. [d]

Cosmo Leading with the grief is a deliberate editorial choice, and it tells you something about how this campaign is being received on the ground. []

Carrie It does. [] And the turnaround from strike to burial was about twenty-four hours. [d]

Cosmo Today's material doesn't give us a picture of the wider conflict, so we'll leave it there rather than speculate. []

Carrie Closer to home now. [] Utah has a genuine development in a case that's been open a long while. [j]

Cosmo This is the Saratoga Springs murders. [j] A mother and her son, killed back on March twenty-eighth of twenty twenty-five. [j]

Carrie And police have made an arrest. [j] A seventeen-year-old was taken into custody on Friday and booked into a juvenile detention center. [j]

Cosmo Detectives have sent two counts of first-degree murder to the Utah County Attorney's Office for review. [j]

Carrie So the charges aren't formally filed yet. [j] The prosecutor has one big decision to make first. [j]

Cosmo Whether to charge this teenager as a juvenile or as an adult. [j]

Carrie That decision is the whole ballgame. [] It changes the possible sentence, and it changes where the case is heard. []

Cosmo Nearly seventeen months from the killings to an arrest. [j] That's a long stretch for a family in Utah County waiting on answers. []

Carrie And we should expect that charging decision to be the next real news out of this one. []

Cosmo A short show today, and that's the honest version of it. []

Carrie When the material is thin, we'd rather give you two real stories than thirty minutes of filler. []

Cosmo We'll be back tomorrow. [] Thanks for listening. []

Cosmo Good afternoon and welcome in. [] It's Sunday, August sixteenth, twenty twenty-six, and this is Top News Headlines. []

Carrie I want to level with our listeners right at the top. [] Our national feed came back thin today. []

Cosmo It did. [] A lot of what landed was newsletter signup pages and donation banners rather than reporting. [e][i] So we're only going to tell you what we can actually stand behind. []

Carrie Here's what did come through. [] The Washington Times ran a special section called American Energy Unleashed. [c] That's a sponsored supplement, not straight news, and the contents never reached us. [c]

Cosmo So we flag it and move on. [] The other national item was a headline with no story attached to it. [] The subject was the leftward drift of the Democratic Party, and the framing was that socialists are rising while voters want moderates. []

Carrie That's a genuinely interesting fight inside the party. [] But a headline is all we have. [] No names, no polling, no vote counts. []

Cosmo And we're not filling that in from memory. [] If we didn't get the facts, you don't get invented ones. []

Carrie One more thing did land in the national batch, and I'll name it rather than quietly drop it. [] A lifestyle piece, headlined that a Chiefs heiress shares her wellness routines. []

Cosmo We received the headline and nothing else. [] Even if the full piece had come through, it isn't news, and this is a news show. [] So we're telling you it arrived and telling you we're leaving it there. []

Carrie There's one more headline in the same category, and it's a big one. [] The line we received says President Trump called off a strike he described as World War Two level, after a request from Gulf allies and Iran. []

Cosmo And that is the entire item. [] No target, no date, no confirmation from any of the parties named. [] We are telling you we received it precisely because of how large that claim is. []

Carrie If a story that size holds up, it deserves far more than a single sentence. [] We'll chase it. []

Cosmo Agreed. [] Let's go overseas. []

Cosmo The one international item that reached us comes from the Associated Press. [d] It's a photograph by Ohad Zwigenberg. [d]

Carrie Set it up for us. []

Cosmo Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel's Minister of National Security, was photographed at the Western Wall in Jerusalem's Old City, observing Tisha Bav, a Jewish day of mourning. [d]

Carrie The Western Wall is the holiest place where Jews are permitted to pray, so the setting carries real weight. [d] Where a cabinet minister chooses to show up is always read closely. []

Cosmo It is. [] But I'll be straight with you. [] That photograph is dated July twenty-second. [d] It's more than three weeks old. [d]

Carrie And all we have is the caption. [d] No statement, no policy announcement, no reaction. [d] We'll chase the full story for you. []

Cosmo Now to Utah, and this is the one place today where we have real detail. []

Carrie Go ahead. []

Cosmo In Lehi, Holdman Studios is producing ten thousand square feet of stained glass art for a new multistory building. [j]

Carrie Ten thousand square feet. [j] That's not a window. [] That's an entire architectural skin. []

Cosmo Tom Holdman and his team are behind it. [j] The work depicts ancient stories, culture, history, and the world around us, and the stated goal is to capture the depth of humanity. [j]

Carrie And there's one panel I can't stop picturing. [] A red dragon breathing fire down on a man who lifts his shield to block it. [j]

Cosmo That's a striking thing to render in glass. [] Light coming through fire and a shield. []

Carrie I will say the report we have on the studio doesn't carry a byline, so we're crediting Holdman Studios and stopping there. [j]

Cosmo That's our show. [] A thin day on the national and world wires, and we'd rather tell you that than pad it out. []

Carrie We'll be back with a fuller feed. [] Thanks for listening. []

Cosmo Good afternoon, and welcome to Top News Headlines. [] It's Saturday, August fifteenth, twenty twenty-six, and we begin with breaking news. []

Carrie President Trump says he called off a strike he described as World War Two-level. []

Cosmo He says the decision came after a request from Gulf allies, and from Iran. []

Carrie That is a rare thing to say out loud . that the plan existed, that it was ready, and that he pulled it back. []

Cosmo And the shape of the request matters. [] Gulf partners and Tehran, asking for the same thing at the same time. []

Carrie We'll be watching for the details behind that decision, because right now the account we have is his own. []

Cosmo Now to the story running through the conservative press this weekend: the fight inside the Democratic Party. [b]

Carrie The socialist wing keeps picking up influence. [b] That's the through-line. []

Cosmo And the pushback is coming from the voters themselves. [b] Democratic voters still say they favor moderates. [b]

Carrie So you have a party drifting one way and an electorate leaning the other. [b] That's a realignment, and realignments don't settle quickly. []

Cosmo Watch the primaries. [] That's where this gets decided, not on cable television. []

Carrie Overseas now, and this one is grim. [] Wire reporting out of southern Lebanon. [d]

Cosmo An Israeli airstrike hit a house in the village of Deir al-Zahrani today. [d] At least one person was killed. [d]

Carrie Rescue workers were photographed pulling a body from what was left of the building. [d]

Cosmo One house, at least one death, and a border region where nothing stays contained for long. [d]

Carrie And that's the part that stays with you. [] It was a home, not a military site. [d]

Cosmo Right. [] We'll follow it as more comes in. []

Carrie Closer to home now. [] Utah, and this story is a genuine pleasure. [] Local coverage of Holdman Studio, in Lehi. [j]

Cosmo Stained glass. [j] Ten thousand square feet of stained glass running through the studio's headquarters. [j]

Carrie One panel shows a red dragon breathing fire, and a man raising an arm to shield himself. [j]

Cosmo The work pulls from ancient stories and from history. [j] The goal is capturing human depth in glass. [j]

Carrie And the studio isn't done. [] A multistory building is in development to display the glass. [j]

Cosmo Countless hours in, and still going. [j] And that's where we'll leave it. []

Carrie Those are your headlines. [] Thanks for listening, and we'll see you next time. []

Cosmo Welcome in. [] It's Friday, August fourteenth, twenty twenty-six, and we are starting with a headline that stopped us cold this morning. []

Carrie Go ahead, because I think I know which one. []

Cosmo President Trump says he called off a major military strike. [f] His own words for the plan were a World War Two level operation. [f]

Carrie That is enormous language. [] Why does he say he pulled it back? []

Cosmo He says Gulf allies asked him to. [f] And he says Iran asked him to as well. [f]

Carrie Now, here is where I want to be careful with our listeners. [] The reporting we have is thin. [f] We do not have the targets, we do not have the timeline, and we do not have the specific requests. [f]

Cosmo Right. [] So we are telling you what was claimed, not confirming what was planned. []

Carrie And if the claim holds up, a called-off strike on that scale is the biggest national story of the day by a wide margin. [] Everything else waits behind it. []

Cosmo Two more headlines before we go long on the rest. [] First, the cause of death for an elite rock climber has been revealed. []

Carrie That is one people have been waiting on. [] What are we able to say? []

Cosmo Only that it has been revealed. [] Our source is the headline itself, so we do not have the cause, we do not have the name, and we are not going to guess at either. []

Carrie Good. [] Better a short item than an invented one. [] And the second? []

Cosmo Politics. [] The story is socialists rising while voters want moderates, and the leftward drift of the Democrats. []

Carrie So that is a tension inside one party. [] The activist energy moving one direction and the electorate asking for something more centrist. []

Cosmo That is the frame we have. [] Again, headline level only, so treat it as a signpost rather than a full report. []

Carrie Noted. [] Let's take it overseas. [] This one is mine. []

Carrie Our world lead comes out of the occupied West Bank, and it is a hard one. [d] Three Palestinian families in the village of Qusra, south of Nablus, have been under siege by Israeli settlers for six days. [d]

Cosmo Six days. [d] What does that actually look like on the ground? []

Carrie The road to their homes is cordoned off by the Israeli army. [d] So people cannot get in, and food and water cannot get in either. [d]

Cosmo And activists have stepped into that gap. [d]

Carrie They have. [d] Activists are stacking up food and water supplies right in front of Israeli soldiers at the blockade line. [d]

Cosmo That image tells you the whole story. [] A small village, three families, and now a standoff over whether basic supplies reach people's front doors. [d]

Carrie It also fits a broader pattern of settler pressure pushing Palestinian families off their land. [d] That is the thread to watch. []

Cosmo Well said. [] Now home to Utah. []

Carrie Take it away. []

Cosmo Eagle Mountain. [j] Residents there are trying to undo a property tax increase of one hundred eighty-three percent. [j]

Carrie One hundred eighty-three percent. [j] Say that slowly, because people are going to think they misheard it. []

Cosmo They did not. [] That increase was approved by the Eagle Mountain City Council last week, and on Tuesday, thirteen residents filed a referendum application to repeal it. [j]

Carrie One of those thirteen is a resident named Alex Washburn, who confirmed the filing is under review. [j] So the clock is running. []

Cosmo What is the bar they have to clear? []

Carrie Signatures from at least eight and a quarter percent of Eagle Mountain residents. [j] Clear that, and the repeal goes on the November ballot. [j]

Cosmo That is real work, but it is not out of reach for a motivated group. []

Carrie And city hall noticed. [] Since the filing, Mayor Jared Gray and council members have reached out to the residents to talk about a possible compromise. [j]

Cosmo So the referendum may have already done part of its job just by existing. []

Carrie That is the read. [] Watch for whether a deal lands before those signatures ever get counted. []

Cosmo Good place to leave it. [] Thanks for listening. []

Carrie We will see you next time. []