VOL. 48 | NO. 13 | Friday, March 29, 2024
RICHARD COURTNEY: REALTY CHECK
There were 2,247 closed sales in February compared with 2,186 in February 2023, an increase of 3%, Greater Nashville Realtors reports. Those 2,247 sales were 19% higher than those in January when 1,886 transactions were registered.
REAL ESTATE
Top Davidson County commercial real estate sales for February 2024, as compiled by the Nashville Ledger.
NASHVILLE PREDATORS
It’s a game of skill, positioning, cunning, intelligence and, yes, even a little luck.
Even more rare than the traditional hat trick in which a player scores three goals in a game is the elusive Gordie Howe hat trick, in which a player scores a goal, records an assist, and engages in a fight in the same game.
As the calendar turns to April and the number of games remaining in the regular season moves into single digits, the Predators look to continue on their torrid stretch built over the last month plus with the playoffs appearing on the horizon.
NEWSMAKERS
Bass, Berry & Sims has appointed five attorneys across its offices in Nashville, Knoxville, Memphis and Washington, D.C. to serve in the following firm leadership roles:
BRIEFS
The Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation and partner agencies will host the third annual Food Waste Prevention Week April 1-7.
BEHIND THE WHEEL
Even with much of the country blanketed by rain and snow, it’s not too early to think of the thaw. March and April bring one of the most anticipated parts of the calendar – spring – and with it thoughts of adventure and the open highway.
BUSINESS BOOK REVIEW
You threw a perfect fit. You stomped into your room, kicked a chair and knocked things off a table. You ranted. Screamed. And though you were tempted, you stopped just short of throwing yourself on the floor because your colleagues would talk.
PERSONAL FINANCE
Financial stress is so common that certified financial planner Katie Lindquist says almost every client she has tells her they are feeling it.
MILLENNIAL MONEY
In January, I received an email from my apartment complex stating I could now divide my monthly rent into two payments via a product called Flex.
CAREER CORNER
It’s no longer acceptable for a company to ask an interview candidate how much money they currently make. It’s also not terribly good to ask the candidate how much they want to make. These days, the standard is to share the pay range for the role. Then, the candidate can decide whether or not the range is acceptable.
NASHVILLE PREDATORS
NASHVILLE (AP) — Linus Ullmark made 32 saves and had an assist on Charlie Coyle's short-handed goal in the third period that led the Boston Bruins to a 3-0 victory over the Nashville Predators on Tuesday night.
UT SPORTS
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Dalton Knecht of Tennessee, Zach Edey of Purdue and Tristen Newton of UConn are among the five finalists for the John R. Wooden Award as the nation's outstanding men's college basketball player of the season.
NASHVILLE AREA
NASHVILLE (AP) — Police arrested a Tennessee man who is suspected of opening fire during Easter brunch at a Nashville restaurant, killing one person and injuring five more.
COURTS
NEW YORK (AP) — Two Florida brothers pleaded guilty Wednesday to insider trading charges, admitting making over $22 million illegally before the public announcement in 2021 that an acquisition firm was taking former President Donald Trump's media company public.
WASHINGTON (AP) — A Washington state man who used a megaphone to orchestrate a mob's attack on police officers guarding the U.S. Capitol was sentenced on Wednesday to more than seven years in prison.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal prosecutors chided the judge presiding over former President Donald Trump's classified documents case in Florida, warning her off potential jury instructions that they said rest on a "fundamentally flawed legal premise."
AUTO INDUSTRY
DETROIT (AP) — New vehicle sales in the U.S. rose nearly 5% from January through March, as buyers stayed in the market despite high interest rates. But electric vehicle sales growth slowed during the first three months of the year, with mainstream buyers wary of limited range and a lack of charging stations.
TECHNOLOGY
BOSTON (AP) — In a scathing indictment of Microsoft corporate security and transparency, a Biden administration-appointed review board issued a report Tuesday saying "a cascade of errors" by the tech giant let state-backed Chinese cyber operators break into email accounts of senior U.S. officials including Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo.
WASHINGTON (AP) — NASA wants to come up with an out-of-this-world way to keep track of time, putting the moon on its own souped-up clock.
TRAVEL
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Belgian family of four was on their fourth trip to the United States. They had been dreading the long line at passport control when they entered the country but had heard about a new app they could use to ease their way and decided to give it a shot. Within minutes, they had bypassed the long line at Washington Dulles International Airport and were waiting for their luggage.
MEDIA
LOS ANGELES (AP) — The estate of George Carlin has agreed to a settlement with the media company it sued over a fake hourlong comedy special that purportedly used artificial intelligence to recreate the late standup comic's style and material.
ECONOMY
WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal Reserve officials will likely reduce their benchmark interest rate later this year, Chair Jerome Powell said Wednesday, despite recent reports showing that the U.S. economy is still strong and that U.S. inflation picked up in January and February.
FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) — The inflation that has squeezed European shoppers fell more than expected in March to 2.4%, as cost spikes in the grocery aisle eased and overall price rises headed down in the two biggest economies, Germany and France.
NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS
NEW YORK (AP) — Stocks closed mostly higher, as Wall Street steadied itself following its worst day in weeks.
BURBANK, Calif. (AP) — Disney shareholders rallied behind longtime CEO Robert Iger, voting Wednesday to rebuff activist investor Nelson Peltz and his ally, former Disney Chief Financial Officer Jay Rasulo, who had sought seats on the company's board.
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Donald Trump is suing two co-founders of Trump Media & Technology Group, the newly public parent company of his Truth Social platform, arguing that they should forfeit their stock in the company because they set it up improperly.
NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL POLITICS
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden teamed up with Sen. Bernie Sanders on Wednesday to promote his administration's efforts to lower the cost of inhalers and other health care needs, as the White House continues its effort to highlight Biden's legislative achievements to voters ahead of the November elections.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Despite the country's deep political polarization, most Americans share many core beliefs about what it means to be an American, according to a new poll.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Last year, President Joe Biden hadn't even spoken a word at the White House celebration of Ramadan before someone shouted out "we love you." Hundreds of Muslims were there to mark the end of the holy month that requires fasting from sunrise to sunset.
TUESDAY, APRIL 2
NASHVILLE AREA
NASHVILLE (AP) — Jeremiah Armstead moved around so much he wasn't even eligible to play high school basketball until his senior year.
TENNESSEE TITANS
NASHVILLE (AP) — The Tennessee Titans revamped their secondary with a pair of brand new starting cornerbacks, signing Chidobe Awuzie and trading with Kansas City for L'Jarius Sneed.
STATE GOVERNMENT
NASHVILLE (AP) — Tennessee state Sen. Steve Southerland experienced a medical emergency during a floor session Monday and was taken to the hospital.
COURTS
NEW YORK (AP) — The judge in Donald Trump's April 15 hush-money criminal trial declared his family off-limits to the former president's rancor on Monday, expanding a gag order days after Trump assailed his daughter and made false claims about her on social media.
NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump posted a $175 million bond on Monday in his New York civil fraud case, halting collection of the more than $454 million he owes and preventing the state from seizing his assets to satisfy the debt while he appeals, according to a court filing.
WASHINGTON (AP) — A judge refused Monday to toss out a tax case against Hunter Biden, moving the case closer to the possible spectacle of a trial as his father campaigns for another term as president.
YOUR MONEY
NEW YORK (AP) — Tax season can come with several headaches, from gathering documents to finding the time to sit down and file. But one pain that you want to avoid is falling for a tax scam.
HEALTH CARE
WASHINGTON (AP) — Anti-smoking groups sued the U.S. government Tuesday over a long-awaited ban on menthol cigarettes, which has been idling at the White House for months.
ENERGY
The Biden administration approved a new wind project off the Massachusetts coast Tuesday that is large enough it will provide more electricity than the state's former coal-fired generating station.
AUTO INDUSTRY
DETROIT (AP) — Tesla sales fell sharply last quarter as competition increased worldwide, electric vehicle sales growth slowed, and price cuts failed to lure more buyers.
MEDIA
NEW YORK (AP) — Taylor Swift and her Super Bowl-winning boyfriend Travis Kelce, along with Sydney Sweeney,Ryan Gosling and Timothee Chalamet, are among the nominees for this year's Webby Awards, recognizing the best internet content and creators.
With hundreds of U.S. newspaper closings leaving legions with little access to local news, a college newspaper in Iowa has stepped up to buy two struggling weekly publications.
JERUSALEM (AP) — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday vowed to shut down Al Jazeera's operations in Israel, calling it a "terror channel" that spreads incitement, after parliament passed a law clearing the way for the closure.
ECONOMY
WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. job openings barely changed in February, staying at historically high levels in a sign that the American job market remains strong.
NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS
NEW YORK (AP) — Stocks had their worst day in four weeks, as Wall Street hits the brakes on what's been a nearly unstoppable romp.
NEW YORK (AP) — Embattled co-working space provider WeWork says it expects to emerge from bankruptcy by the end of May, touting lease-restructuring efforts that it estimates will bring $8 billion in future rental savings.
NEW YORK (AP) — More and more businesses are taking advantage of the total solar eclipse set to dim skies across North America on Monday.
General Electric, long a symbol of American manufacturing and steeped in a rich history, is officially moving on from its existence as a sprawling conglomerate.
NEW YORK (AP) — The IRS says it's making progress with initiatives to claw back money improperly distributed under the Employee Retention Credit.
NEW YORK (AP) — Less than a week after a flashy stock market debut, Donald Trump's social media company on Monday disclosed that it lost nearly $58.2 million last year, sending its stock tumbling more than 21%.
NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL POLITICS
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping discussed Taiwan, artificial intelligence and security issues Tuesday in a call meant to demonstrate a return to regular leader-to-leader dialogue between the two powers.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Top American and Israeli officials held virtual talks Monday as the U.S. pushed alternatives to the ground assault against Hamas under consideration by Israelis in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, a move the U.S. opposes on humanitarian grounds and that has frayed relations between the two allies.
MONDAY, APRIL 1
UT SPORTS
Tennessee fired Kellie Harper as the Lady Vols coach on Monday after five seasons.
DETROIT (AP) — Dalton Knecht was dazzling for much of the day, looking like the prospect who's being projected as an NBA lottery pick.
DETROIT (AP) — By the time all the scrapping and scratching and diving on the floor was over, it felt like a shame that both those teams, and both those players, weren't moving onto the Final Four.
NASHVILLE AREA
NASHVILLE (AP) — A man was killed and five other people were injured during a shooting inside a Nashville restaurant on Easter Sunday, police said.
COURTS
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Google has agreed to purge billions of records containing personal information collected from more than 136 million people in the U.S. surfing the internet through its Chrome web browser.
ELECTION 2024
ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — An appeals court ruling that weakened a key part of the Voting Rights Act is spurring lawmakers in several states to enact state-level protections to plug gaps that the ruling opened in the landmark federal law aimed at prohibiting racial discrimination in voting.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The video shared by former President Donald Trump features horror movie music and footage of migrants purportedly entering the U.S. from countries including Cameroon, Afghanistan and China. Shots of men with tattoos and videos of violent crime are set against close-ups of people waving and wrapping themselves in American flags.
HEALTH CARE
WASHINGTON (AP) — Through his office window at what was then one of Africa's few modern clinics dealing with HIV and AIDS, the man who now oversees the United States' threatened global AIDS effort used to hear the sound of taxis pulling up throughout the day.
AUTO INDUSTRY
DETROIT (AP) — U.S. traffic deaths fell 3.6% last year, but still, almost 41,000 people were killed on the nation's roadways, according to full-year estimates by safety regulators.
DETROIT (AP) — In September, Hyundai and Kia issued a recall of 3.4 million of its vehicles in the United States with an ominous warning: The vehicles should be parked outdoors and away from buildings because they risked catching fire, whether the engines were on or off.
NEW YORK (AP) — Kia is recalling more than 427,000 of its Telluride SUVs due to a defect that may cause the cars to roll away while they're parked.
TRANSPORTATION
BALTIMORE (AP) — The U.S. Coast Guard has opened a temporary, alternate channel for vessels involved in the clearing of debris at the site of the collapsed Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, part of a phased approach to opening the main channel leading to the vital port, officials said.
United Airlines is asking its pilots to take time off in May because of delays in receiving new planes that the airline ordered from Boeing, which is struggling with production due to manufacturing problems.
MILITARY
WASHINGTON (AP) — A senior defense department official who attended last year's NATO summit at Vilnius, Lithuania, had symptoms similar to those reported by U.S. officials who have experienced "Havana syndrome," the Pentagon confirmed Monday.
NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS
NEW YORK (AP) — Stocks slipped from their record heights after a surprisingly strong report on U.S. manufacturing raised worries about how much interest rates could ease this year.
NEW YORK (AP) — Less than a week after a flashy stock market debut, Donald Trump's social media company is disclosing that it lost nearly $58.2 million in 2023.
UPS will become the primary air cargo provider for the United States Postal Service. The Atlanta shipping company said Monday that it had received an air cargo contract from the U.S. Postal Service that significantly expands an existing partnership between the two.
NEW YORK (AP) — The theft of sensitive information belonging to millions of AT&T's current and former customers has been recently discovered online, the telecommunications giant said this weekend.
NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL POLITICS
WASHINGTON (AP) — American and Israeli officials are holding virtual talks Monday to discuss the potential expansion of Israel's war against Hamas to the southern Gaza city of Rafah, a move the U.S. opposes on humanitarian grounds.
FRIDAY, MARCH 29
NASHVILLE PREDATORS
TEMPE, Ariz. (AP) — Logan Cooley had his first NHL hat trick, Clayton Keller added a goal and three assists and the Arizona Coyotes snapped the Nashville Predators' point streak at 18 games with an 8-4 victory Thursday night.
STATE GOVERNMENT
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — Republicans in the Tennessee House and Senate both plan to offer businesses new tax help worth upward of $1 billion.
NASHVILLE (AP) — Trustees of Tennessee's only publicly funded historically Black university were removed Thursday under legislation signed into law by Republican Gov. Bill Lee. Black lawmakers and community leaders said state leaders, a majority of whom are white, are unfairly targeting Tennessee State University.
NASHVILLE (AP) — Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee on Thursday signed off on the repeal of police traffic stop reforms made in Memphis after the fatal beating of Tyre Nichols by officers in January 2023, despite pleas from Nichols' parents to GOP lawmakers and the governor to give them a chance to find compromise.
ELECTION 2024
Former President Donald Trump's campaign is seeking to outraise President Joe Biden next week, aiming to take in more than $33 million to top a new single-event fundraising record set by Biden on Thursday with $25 million, said a person familiar with the Trump event who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal planning.
AUTO INDUSTRY
DETROIT (AP) — U.S. auto safety regulators are investigating complaints that more than 540,000 Ford pickup trucks can abruptly downshift to a lower gear and increase the risk of a crash.
TRANSPORTATION
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Environmental Protection Agency on Friday set strict emissions standards for heavy-duty trucks, buses and other large vehicles, an action that officials said will help clean up some of the nation's largest sources of planet-warming greenhouse gases.
MEDIA
Meta will be sunsetting Facebook News in early April for users in the U.S. and Australia as the platform further deemphasizes news and politics. The feature was shut down in the U.K., France and Germany last year.
ATLANTA (AP) — Georgia could join other states in requiring children younger than 16 to have their parents' explicit permission to create social media accounts.
BANKING
NEW YORK (AP) — A Texas federal judge on Thursday accused the major banking industry groups and U.S. Chamber of Commerce of venue shopping in their lawsuit against the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a major win for the federal regulator.
ECONOMY
WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell on Friday reiterated a message he has sounded in recent weeks: While the Fed expects to cut interest rates this year, it won't be ready to do so until it sees "more good inflation readings'' and is more confident that annual price increases are falling toward its 2% target.
WASHINGTON (AP) — A measure of inflation that is closely tracked by the Federal Reserve slipped last month in a sign that price pressures continue to ease.
NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS
ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP) — Rebuilding Baltimore's collapsed Francis Scott Key Bridge could take anywhere from 18 months to several years, experts say, while the cost could be at least $400 million — or more than twice that.
NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL POLITICS
DALLAS (AP) — The Texas attorney general has opened an investigation into a key Boeing supplier that is already facing scrutiny from federal regulators over quality of parts that it provides to the aircraft maker.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Americans are more worried about legal immigrants committing crimes in the U.S. than they were a few years ago, a change driven largely by increased concern among Republicans, while Democrats continue to see a broad range of benefits from immigration, a new poll shows.
NEW YORK (AP) — One of the nation's most prominent news outlets has found itself in an embarrassing mess over the hiring — and quick firing — of someone who isn't even a journalist in the first place.
WASHINGTON (AP) — House Republicans on Thursday invited President Joe Biden to testify before Congress in what appears to be a last-ditch effort to deliver on their stalled monthslong impeachment inquiry into the Biden family businesses.
THURSDAY, MARCH 28
NASHVILLE PREDATORS
Barry Trotz watched his Nashville Predators lose a game at home 9-2, their second consecutive defeat and a third poor effort in a row and he decided they'd be better without a trip to see U2 perform at the Sphere in Las Vegas.
NASHVILLE AREA
NASHVILLE (AP) — Thousands of people linked arms across Nashville on Wednesday, forming a human chain on the one-year anniversary of a shooting at the Covenant School that killed three 9-year-old children and three adults.
WEST TENNESSEE
MEMPHIS (AP) — A Tennessee criminal court judge was sent to jail Wednesday after her bond was revoked for testing positive for cocaine while she was out of custody pending a trial on charges of coercion of a witness and harassment.
COURTS
NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump lashed out Wednesday at the New York judge who put him under a gag order ahead of his April 15 hush-money criminal trial, making a fallacious claim about his daughter and urging him to step aside from the case.
LOS ANGELES (AP) — A judge has recommended that conservative attorney John Eastman lose his California law license over his efforts to keep former President Donald Trump in power after the 2020 election.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The second day of the disciplinary hearing for former Justice Department official Jeffrey Clark painted a picture of someone who, despite numerous attempts by his superiors to convince him otherwise, remained adamant that there were irregularities and fraud in the 2020 election that required deeper examination.
NEW YORK (AP) — Crypto entrepreneur Sam Bankman-Fried was sentenced Thursday to 25 years in prison for a massive fraud on hundreds of thousands of customers that unraveled with the collapse of FTX, once one of the world's most popular platforms for exchanging digital currency.
NEW YORK (AP) — Sam Bankman-Fried co-founded the FTX crypto exchange in 2019 and quickly built it into the world's second most popular place to trade digital currency. It collapsed almost as quickly. By the fall of 2022, it was bankrupt.
Sam Bankman-Fried went from cryptocurrency golden boy to the face of the industry's collapse. The founder and former CEO of the massive cryptocurrency exchange FTX was sentenced to 25 years in prison Thursday after being convicted of fraud for stealing at least $10 billion from customers and investors. The collapse of one of the largest crypto exchanges in the world shook the digital currency world and sent prices plunging.
ELECTION 2024
WASHINGTON (AP) — A fundraiser for President Joe Biden on Thursday in New York City that also stars Barack Obama and Bill Clinton is raising a whopping $25 million, setting a record for the biggest haul for a political event, his campaign said.
U.S. federal agencies must show that their artificial intelligence tools aren't harming the public, or stop using them, under new rules unveiled by the White House on Thursday.
NEW YORK (AP) — Donald Trump will attend Thursday's wake of a New York City police officer gunned down in the line of duty, as the presumptive Republican presidential nominee has made crime a focus of his third White House campaign and accused President Joe Biden of lacking toughness.
RELIGION
WASHINGTON (AP) — At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, when many churches moved their services online, the Rev. William H. Lamar IV initially shuddered at the thought that he needed to morph into a "video personality" to stay engaged with his parishioners.
MEDIA
TORONTO (AP) — Four of the largest school boards in the Canadian province of Ontario said Thursday they launched lawsuits against TikTok, Meta and SnapChat alleging the social media platforms are disrupting student learning.
TRENDS
ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — For the first time in 27 years, the U.S. government is changing how it categorizes people by race and ethnicity, an effort that federal officials believe will more accurately count residents who identify as Hispanic and of Middle Eastern and North African heritage.
HEALTH CARE
BOSTON (AP) — Financially embattled hospital operator Steward Health Care has struck a deal to sell its nationwide physician network to Optum, a subsidiary of UnitedHealth Group, as it works to stabilize its finances.
ENVIRONMENT
BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — The Biden administration on Thursday restored rules to protect imperiled plants and animals that had been rolled back back under former President Donald Trump.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration issued a final rule Wednesday aimed at curbing methane leaks from oil and gas drilling on federal and tribal lands, its latest action to crack down on emissions of methane, a potent greenhouse gas that contributes significantly to global warming.
AUTO INDUSTRY
LONDON, Ohio (AP) — Within 24 hours of buying his red Ford Mustang Mach-E, Liam Sawyer set off on a camping trip.
DETROIT (AP) — Ford will drastically cut the number of hourly workers at its factory that builds the Ford F-150 Lightning as sales of electric vehicles slow, according to a media report.
BEIJING (AP) — Xiaomi, a well-known maker of smart consumer electronics in China, is joining the country's booming but crowded market for electric cars with a sporty high-tech sedan.
ECONOMY
WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. economy grew at a solid 3.4% annual pace from October through December, the government said Thursday in an upgrade from its previous estimate. The government had previously estimated that the economy expanded at a 3.2% rate last quarter.
NEW YORK (AP) — The number of Americans signing up for unemployment benefits fell slightly last week, another sign that the labor market remains strong and most workers enjoy extraordinary job security.
NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS
NEW YORK (AP) — Wall Street coasted to its latest winning month and quarter by rising to more records.
NEW YORK (AP) — Kroger is shuttering three of its e-commerce fulfillment facilities in Texas and Florida, the grocery chain confirmed this week.
Home Depot will buy SRS Distribution, a materials provider for professionals, in a deal valued at approximately $18.25 billion.
NEW YORK (AP) — Reddit and Trump Media are the first notable social media companies to begin trading publicly in the last five years. They're also, thanks to the rabid reception among investors coupled with the companies' fuzzy profit outlooks, the latest meme stocks.
NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL POLITICS
WASHINGTON (AP) — House Speaker Mike Johnson on Thursday indicated he will send articles of impeachment against Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas to the Senate shortly after Congress returns to Washington next month.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Talks have restarted aimed at bringing top Israeli officials to Washington to discuss potential military operations in Gaza, after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu canceled a planned visit this week because he was angry about the U.S. vote on a U.N. cease-fire resolution, the White House said Wednesday.
WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. Rep. Troy Nehls, R-Richmond, is under investigation by the House Ethics Committee, the bipartisan panel announced. It did not specify the focus of the investigation, but Nehls said it was related to his campaign's finances.