VOL. 46 | NO. 21 | Friday, May 27, 2022
RICHARD COURTNEY: REALTY CHECK
April home prices hit all-time highs, with median single-family prices rising dramatically from $385,000 in April 2021 to $480,000 for April 2022, data from Greater Nashville Realtors and Realtracs reveals.
REAL ESTATE
WASHINGTON (AP) — Average long-term U.S. mortgage rates fell this week for the second week in a row, though interest rates on the key 30-year home loan remain at decade-high levels.
NEWSMAKERS
Eric Setterlund has joined Bradley Arant Boult Cummings LLP in the firm’s health care and cybersecurity and privacy practice groups.
BRIEFS
EJF Capital LLC and Chartwell Residential has announced the close of an approximately $67.35 million construction loan to develop the first phase of a multifamily development in Nashville’s Metrocenter neighborhood.
BEHIND THE WHEEL
Wrapping a vehicle in vinyl to alter its look was once the domain of show cars, luxury and exotics but has now gone mainstream as part of a growing multibillion-dollar industry.
PERSONAL FINANCE
A successful yard sale involves hours of preparation and plenty of hard work. So does an unsuccessful sale. I’ve had both kinds and can confidently say the version that makes money is better.
Being in debt feels like you’re always a step behind. It doesn’t help that debt is spoken about as something that’s your fault – too much online shopping, or too many pricy pitchers of mimosas at brunch.
MILLENNIAL MONEY
There are many people out there who want to tell you what to do with your money. The problem is only some of them know what they’re talking about.
BUSINESS BOOK REVIEW
Everybody in. The meeting’s about to start, the train is leaving soon and the car is idling, so pack it up and let’s go. We’re not leaving anyone behind. With “Inclusion Revolution” by Daisy Auger-Domínguez, we can be sure that no one’s missed.
NASHVILLE AREA
MILWAUKEE (AP) — The Milwaukee Common Council on Wednesday unanimously approved an initiative that could move the city closer to winning the right to host the 2024 Republican National Convention.
STATEWIDE
NASHVILLE (AP) — Tennessee will celebrate National Trails Day by offering free guided hikes at all 56 state parks starting this weekend.
COURTS
FAIRFAX, Va. (AP) — A jury on Wednesday ruled in favor of Johnny Depp in his libel lawsuit against ex-wife Amber Heard, vindicating his stance that Heard fabricated claims that she was abused by Depp before and during their brief marriage.
WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge gave his final blessing Wednesday to full freedom for John Hinckley, the man who shot President Ronald Reagan in 1981, capping a four-decade journey through the court system for the once mentally ill Hinckley.
AUTO INDUSTRY
DETROIT (AP) — Ford's chief executive says he expects the cost of building electric vehicles to fall to the point that in coming years automakers will be battling each other for sales of EVs priced around $25,000.
TECHNOLOGY
WASHINGTON (AP) — The FBI thwarted a planned cyberattack on a children's hospital in Boston that was to have been carried out by hackers sponsored by the Iranian government, FBI Director Christopher Wray said Wednesday.
TOKYO (AP) — Ever dreamed of having a gingerbread house like Hansel and Gretel?
TRANSPORTATION
To hear it from Delta Air Lines, happy days are here again, with travelers gladly paying sharply higher fares just to get on an airplane and go somewhere this summer.
NEW YORK (AP) — A firm that advises investors on proxy voting said Tuesday that Spirit Airlines shareholders should oppose Frontier Airlines' bid to buy Spirit, saying that a competing offer by JetBlue is financially superior.
NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS
NEW YORK (AP) — A swift jump in Treasury yields rattled Wall Street Wednesday, weighing down stock indexes at the start of another month in what's been a turbulent year.
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Sheryl Sandberg, the No. 2 executive at Facebook owner Meta, is stepping down, according to a post Wednesday on her Facebook page. Sandberg has served as chief operating officer at the social media giant for 14 years. She joined from Google in 2008, four years before Facebook went public.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The white-hot demand for U.S. workers cooled a bit in April, though the number of unfilled jobs remains high and companies are still desperate to hire more people.
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden on Wednesday acknowledged the strain on families from nationwide shortages of infant formula as he met with manufacturers while his administration tries to address the situation by importing foreign supplies and using the Defense Production Act to speed domestic production.
LAS VEGAS (AP) — Las Vegas chapels of love that use Elvis Presley's likeness could find themselves becoming Heartbreak Hotels.
BERLIN (AP) — German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said Wednesday he wants to join employers and labor unions in a "concerted action" to find ways of cushioning the effects of rising prices while preventing a spiral of inflation in Europe's biggest economy.
JOHANNESBURG (AP) — South Africans are feeling the bite of fuel price increases as a result of Russia's war in Ukraine and the rise in the Brent crude oil price.
THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — The European Union has agreed to slash Russian oil imports in a tough escalation of the bloc's campaign of sanctions to punish Moscow for its invasion of Ukraine. It's a landmark decision that will hit Russian coffers in the long term, but could also hurt consumers across the European continent.
NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL POLITICS
WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. is headed for "a lot of unnecessary loss of life," the Biden administration says, if Congress fails to provide billions more dollars to brace for the pandemic's next wave. Yet the quest for that money is in limbo, the latest victim of election-year gridlock that's stalled or killed a host of Democratic priorities.
BRUSSELS (AP) — The European Union's chief executive said Wednesday that Croatia is ready to join the group of countries using the euro single currency at the start of next year.
UKRAINE
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration says it will send Ukraine a small number of high-tech, medium-range rocket systems, a critical weapon that Ukrainian leaders have been begging for as they struggle to stall Russian progress in the Donbas region.
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Western nations promised more and more advanced arms to bolster Ukraine's defense as its troops battled a grinding Russian offensive that was closing in on capturing a key city in the east.
BEIJING (AP) — China's support for Russia through oil and gas purchases is irking Washington and raising the risk of U.S. retaliation, foreign observers say, though they see no sign Beijing is helping Moscow evade sanctions over its war on Ukraine.
TUESDAY, MAY 31
VANDERBILT SPORTS
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. (AP) — The wind whipped dust in the air, flags and balls all around the golf course. Combined with fast, tricky greens, birdies were hard to come by.
COURTS
WASHINGTON (AP) — Former Trump adviser Peter Navarro revealed in a court filing Tuesday afternoon that he has been subpoenaed to appear before a grand jury this week as part of the Justice Department's sprawling probe into the deadly insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
WASHINGTON (AP) — A lawyer for Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign was acquitted Tuesday of lying to the FBI when he pushed information meant to cast suspicions on Donald Trump and Russia in the run-up to that year's election.
TRANSPORTATION
The unofficial start of summer over the Memorial Day weekend offers a troubling glimpse of what lies ahead for travelers during the peak vacation season.
NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS
NEW YORK (AP) — Stocks ended lower after another wobbly day on Wall Street Tuesday, closing out a rocky month.
SILVER SPRING, Md. (AP) — U.S. consumer confidence edged lower in May as Americans' view of their present and future prospects dimmed in the midst of persistent inflation.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Focused on relentlessly rising prices, President Joe Biden plotted inflation-fighting strategy Tuesday with the chairman of the Federal Reserve, with the fate of the economy and his own political prospects increasingly dependent on the actions of the government's central bank.
BERLIN (AP) — Authorities in Germany raided the offices of Deutsche Bank and its subsidiary DWS on Tuesday following claims that it was exaggerating the sustainable credentials of some of the products it sold.
LONDON (AP) — Eurozone inflation hit a record 8.1% in May amid surging energy and food costs fueled in part by Russia's war in Ukraine.
VATICAN CITY (AP) — The Vatican's longtime investment banker testified Monday that he repeatedly voiced concerns about a fund that was investing in a troubled London property, but said the Holy See's secretariat of state insisted on pursuing the deal even as it lost money.
NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL POLITICS
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden praised New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern on Tuesday for her success in curbing domestic extremism and guns as he tries to persuade a reluctant Congress to tighten gun laws in the aftermath of horrific mass shootings in Uvalde, Texas and Buffalo, New York.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Diane Murray struggled with her decision all the way up to Election Day.
UKRAINE
BRUSSELS (AP) — In the most significant effort yet to punish Russia for its war in Ukraine, the European Union agreed to ban the overwhelming majority of Russian oil imports after tense negotiations that exposed the cracks in European unity.
BUDAPEST, Hungary (AP) — Hungary's divisive leader has once again got his own way with the European Union — this time in tough negotiations on Russian oil at a summit in Brussels.
SLOVIANSK, Ukraine (AP) — Russian forces in a "frenzied push" have seized half of the eastern Ukrainian city of Sievierodonetsk that is key to Moscow's efforts to quickly complete the capture of the industrial Donbas region, the mayor told The Associated Press on Tuesday.
MONDAY, MAY 30
NASHVILLE SC
COMMERCE CITY, Colo. (AP) — Nashville ended the Colorado Rapids' team record 23-game home unbeaten streak, winning 3-1 Saturday night behind two goals from Hany Mukhtar.
UT SPORTS
OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — After finishing one of the most dominant runs in Southeastern Conference history, Tennessee was selected the No. 1 overall seed in the NCAA baseball tournament Monday.
HOOVER, Ala. (AP) — Camden Sewell threw five scoreless innings, Drew Gilbert had four RBIs and No. 1 seed Tennessee beat Florida 8-5 Sunday to win the SEC Tournament.
OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — The Southeastern Conference and Atlantic Coast Conference each had four teams selected as regional sites Sunday for the NCAA baseball tournament.
STATE GOVERNMENT
NASHVILLE (AP) — Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee has signed off on a new campaign finance and ethics face-lift, bucking objections from some of the state's most influential advocacy groups who opposed the measure.
COURTS
NASHVILLE (AP) — In 2013, the first of more than 200 workers who labored to clean up the nation's worst coal ash spill filed a suit against the contractor, blaming Jacobs Engineering for illnesses they believe were caused by exposure to heavy metals and radioactive particles in the ash. Nearly a decade later, not a single case has made it through the court system.
NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS
BERLIN (AP) — Germany's annual inflation rate accelerated to 7.9% in May, its highest level in nearly half a century, according to an official estimate Monday.
NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL POLITICS
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden said Monday that the "Second Amendment was never absolute" and that, after the Texas elementary school shooting, there may be some bipartisan support to tighten restrictions on the kind of high-powered weapons used by the gunman.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Still mourning a Texas mass shooting, Democrat Beto O'Rourke gave his long-shot campaign a jolt by imploring a national audience that it was finally time for real action to curb the proliferation of high-powered guns in his home state and across America.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Jim Pasco, the executive director for the Fraternal Order of Police, was watching football on a Sunday afternoon when he got a call from Susan Rice, the top domestic policy adviser at the White House.
BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said Monday that next month's summit in Madrid will be a "historic" opportunity to strengthen the alliance in the face of Russian aggression against Ukraine.
UKRAINE
MOSCOW (AP) — Russia said Monday it may use an arrangement similar to that used for payments for its gas supplies to pay its dollar-denominated foreign debts.
BRUSSELS (AP) — European Union leaders will gather Monday in a new show of solidarity with Ukraine, but divisions over whether to target Russian oil in a new series of sanctions are exposing the limits of how far the bloc can go to help the war-torn country.
KRAMATORSK, Ukraine (AP) — The Russian-battered eastern Ukrainian city of Sievierodonetsk appeared to be on the brink of becoming another Mariupol on Monday as the mayor told The Associated Press that Russian troops have entered, power and communications have been cut and "the city has been completely ruined."
FRIDAY, MAY 27
SPORTS
HOOVER, Ala. (AP) — Drew Gilbert went 2-for-4 with two RBIs and scored twice, five Tennessee pitchers combined to give up just five hits and the top-seeded Volunteers beat No. 8 seed Vanderbilt 10-1 on Thursday night in the SEC Tournament.
RELIGION
In response to an explosive investigation, top Southern Baptists have released a previously secret list of hundreds of pastors and other church-affiliated personnel accused of sexual abuse.
EDUCATION
NASHVILLE (AP) — Fisk University has won a five-year, $1.4 million grant to help low-income high school students in the Nashville area become the first in their families to attend college, the school announced this week.
ENVIRONMENT
BERLIN (AP) — Officials from the Group of Seven wealthy nations announced Friday that they will aim to largely end greenhouse gas emissions from their power sectors by 2035, making it highly unlikely that those countries will burn coal for electricity beyond that date.
NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS
NEW YORK (AP) — Stocks rose on Wall Street Friday and closed higher for the week, breaking a seven-week losing streak, the longest such stretch since 2001.
An inflation gauge closely tracked by the Federal Reserve rose 6.3% in April from a year earlier, just below a four-decade high set in March and the first slowdown since November 2020.
NEW YORK (AP) — More than 1,250 Thai workers who sewed bras for brands Victoria's Secret, Lane Bryant and Torrid — and who were laid off last year without their legally required severance — have received 281 million baht ($8.3 million) in compensation, according to worker rights groups Solidarity Center and the Worker Rights Consortium.
NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL POLITICS
WASHINGTON (AP) — Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy is making it clear that he will likely defy a subpoena from the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack, escalating a standoff with the panel over his and other GOP lawmakers' testimony.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Majorities of U.S. adults think mass shootings would occur less often if guns were harder to get, and that schools and other public places have become less safe than they were two decades ago, polling shows.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Democrats' first attempt at responding to the back-to-back mass shootings in Buffalo, New York, and Uvalde, Texas, failed in the Senate as Republicans blocked a domestic terrorism bill that would have opened debate on difficult questions surrounding hate crimes and gun safety.
WASHINGTON (AP) — A bipartisan group of senators is considering how Congress should respond to the horrific shooting of 19 children and two teachers in Uvalde, Texas, restarting gun control talks that have broken down many times before.
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden will travel to Uvalde, Texas, on Sunday to console families and honor victims of Tuesday's mass school shooting in which 19 children and two teachers were killed.
WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Friday he's confident Turkey's objections to Finland and Sweden joining NATO can be overcome swiftly, possibly in time for a summit of alliance leaders at the end of next month.
DETROIT (AP) — The Senate on Thursday confirmed former California pollution regulator Steven Cliff to run the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
UKRAINE
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian forces on Friday pounded the last Ukrainian strongholds in a separatist-controlled eastern province of Ukraine, including a city where authorities said 1,500 people have been killed and 60% of residential buildings destroyed since the start of the war.
WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — The United States on Friday won the latest round of a legal battle to seize a $325-million Russian-owned superyacht in Fiji, with the case now appearing headed for the Pacific nation's top court.
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Moscow pressed the West on Thursday to lift sanctions against Russia over the war in Ukraine, seeking to shift the blame for a growing food crisis that has been worsened by Kyiv's inability to ship millions of tons of grain and other agricultural products while under attack.
THURSDAY, MAY 26
NASHVILLE AREA
NASHVILLE (AP) — A civil rights advocate says he and two Dollar General store workers were denied access to the company's shareholder meeting Wednesday in Tennessee where they had been outside protesting for better pay and workplace safety improvements.
REGION
Ko Im always thought she would live in New York forever. She knew every corner of Manhattan and had worked hard to build a community of friends. Living in a small apartment, she found her attitude shifting early in the pandemic. After her brother accepted a job in Seattle in the summer of 2020, she decided to move there too.
EDUCATION
NASHVILLE (AP) — A state report says nearly half of Tennessee public high school seniors in the class of 2021 did not attend college or technical school right after graduating.
COURTS
WASHINGTON (AP) — With mass shootings in Texas, New York and California fresh in Americans' mind, the Supreme Court will soon issue its biggest gun ruling in more than a decade, one expected to make it easier to carry guns in public in some of the largest cities.
The Biden administration has sided against the airline industry and urged the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday to uphold a California law that would provide more rest and meal breaks than airline crews are guaranteed under federal rules.
TRENDS
NEW YORK (AP) — Even when regular workers win their biggest raises in decades, they look minuscule compared with what CEOs are getting.
NEW YORK (AP) — Pay packages for the women who run S&P 500 companies jumped in 2021 as the economy recovered and stock prices and profits soared.
Here are the highest paid male and female CEOs in the S&P 500 index for 2021, as calculated by The Associated Press and Equilar, an executive data firm.
NEW YORK (AP) — CEO pay is a tricky thing to explain.
TRANSPORTATION
LOS ANGELES (AP) — To drive, or not to drive? This Memorial Day weekend, with surging gas prices that are redefining pain at the pump, that is the question for many Americans as a new COVID-19 surge also spreads across the country.
MEDIA
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Tesla CEO Elon Musk on Wednesday revised the financing plan for his proposed $44 billion purchase of Twitter, raising investor hopes that the unpredictable billionaire still intends to pull off a deal roiled by market turbulence and Musk's not-entirely-explicable concerns about the number of fake accounts on Twitter.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Twitter will pay a $150 million penalty and put in new safeguards to settle federal regulators' allegations that the social platform failed to protect the privacy of users' data over a six-year span.
TECHNOLOGY
Computer chip and software maker Broadcom will spend about $61 billion to acquire the cloud technology company VMware, one of the biggest deals of the year despite an environment of rising inflation and economic uncertainty.
ENVIRONMENT
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Thursday allowed the Biden administration to use a higher estimate, challenged by Republican-led states, for calculating damages to people and the environment from greenhouse gas emissions.
BERLIN (AP) — Germany's energy and climate minister said Thursday that the Group of Seven wealthy nations can lead the way on ending the use of coal, a heavily polluting fossil fuel that's responsible for a large chunk of global greenhouse gas emissions.
COVID-19
PROVIDENCE, R.I. (AP) — As the nation marked 1 million deaths from COVID-19 last week, the milestone was bookended by mass shootings that killed people simply living their lives: grocery shopping, going to church, or attending the fourth grade. The number, once unthinkable, is now an irreversible reality in the United States — just like the persistent reality of gun violence that kills tens of thousands of people every year.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House on Thursday announced more steps to make the antiviral treatment Paxlovid more accessible across the U.S. as it projects COVID-19 infections will continue to spread over the summer travel season.
New U.S. research on long COVID-19 provides fresh evidence that it can happen even after breakthrough infections in vaccinated people, and that older adults face higher risks for the long-term effects.
NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS
NEW YORK (AP) — Stocks are ending higher on Wall Street Thursday as investors cheered a strong set of quarterly results from Macy's and other retailers.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Stagflation. It was the dreaded "S word" of the 1970s.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. economy shrank in the first three months of the year even though consumers and businesses kept spending at a solid pace, the government reported Thursday in a slight downgrade of its previous estimate for the January-March quarter.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Fewer Americans applied for jobless aid last week with the number of Americans collecting unemployment benefits already near five-decade lows.
NEW YORK (AP) — The fastest inflation in 40 years squeezed retailers during the first quarter, alarming investors worried about the broader economy's outlook.
NEW YORK (AP) — Shoppers' return to occasion dressing helped to power Macy's fiscal first-quarter results, and the department store chain raised its annual earnings outlook even as surging inflation is crimping Americans' budgets.
TOKYO (AP) — Troubled Japanese technology giant Toshiba announced some additions to its proposed leadership Thursday, ahead of a shareholders' meeting next month.
NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL POLITICS
WASHINGTON (AP) — Joe Biden, then the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, surveyed the collection of black, military-style rifles on display in the middle of the room as he denounced the sale of guns whose "only real function is to kill human beings at a ferocious pace."
WASHINGTON (AP) — Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said Thursday that he's ashamed the United States is "becoming desensitized to the murder of children" and that action is needed now to prevent more lives from being lost in school shootings like the one in Uvalde, Texas.
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden signed an executive order Wednesday to improve accountability in policing —a meaningful but limited action on the second anniversary of George Floyd's death that reflected the challenges in addressing racism, excessive use of force and public safety when Congress is deadlocked on stronger measures.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Thursday the Biden administration aims to lead the international bloc opposed to Russia's invasion of Ukraine into a broader coalition to counter what it sees as a more serious, long-term threat to global order from China.
UKRAINE
BERLIN (AP) — Western allies are considering whether to allow Russian oligarchs to buy their way out of sanctions and using the money to rebuild Ukraine, according to government officials familiar with the matter.
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia pressed Thursday for the West to lift sanctions imposed because of its war in Ukraine, claiming without proof that the punitive measures are preventing millions of tons of grain and other agricultural products from leaving Ukrainian ports, exacerbating a global food crisis.
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin issued an order Wednesday to fast track Russian citizenship for residents of parts of southern Ukraine largely held by his forces, while lawmakers in Moscow passed a bill to strengthen the stretched Russian army.