VOL. 46 | NO. 24 | Friday, June 17, 2022
RICHARD COURTNEY: REALTY CHECK
“Inventory rises to its highest level Since November 2020” reads the headline atop this month’s the latest news from the Greater Nashville Realtors.
REAL ESTATE
Top commercial real estate sales, May 2022, for Davidson County, as compiled by the Nashville Ledger.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Average long-term U.S. mortgage rates had their biggest one-week jump in 35 years with the Federal Reserve this week raising its key rate by three-quarters of a point in bid to tame high inflation.
UT SPORTS
From being in the conversation as potentially the greatest college baseball team of all time to not even making it to the College World Series.
NEWSMAKERS
Legal Aid Society, Tennessee’s largest legal nonprofit, has hired Jordan Stringer as managing attorney and director of its Volunteer Lawyers Program.
BRIEFS
Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt has once again been named the No. 1 children’s hospital in Tennessee and continues to be recognized among the top pediatric hospitals in the nation, the latest U.S. News & World Report’s Best Children’s Hospital rankings finds.
BEHIND THE WHEEL
Shopping for a new or used car over the last couple of years has become a more challenging endeavor. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic and its after-effects, we’ve had to deal with factory closures, supply chain issues, a worldwide shortage of semiconductor chips, vehicle shortages, price hikes on dealer lots and fewer discounts.
PERSONAL FINANCE
The cost of prescription drugs in the U.S. can be enough to make you sick. What you pay varies enormously depending on the drug, the pharmacy, your insurance plan and your deductible, among many other factors.
It’s been a rough couple of years, especially for teenagers. Between the shutdowns and the shift to contactless everything – including education – adolescents got a pretty raw deal. They could use a break this summer. Actually, they could use a job.
MILLENNIAL MONEY
Attendees of this year’s Coachella music festival have posted viral videos adding up their expenses from the weekend – with costs reaching the thousands for flights, hotels, food, drinks, outfits and rideshares. Plus, the ticket, which can start around $400 for a three-day pass to a popular festival like Lollapalooza or Coachella.
MIDSTATE
HARTSVILLE (AP) — Energy developer Enbridge is hosting a series of open houses this month to discuss its plan to build a 125-mile methane gas pipeline in Tennessee between Trousdale and Roane counties.
WEST TENNESSEE
BROWNSVILLE (AP) — Ford Motor Co. officials on Tuesday pledged to be good neighbors to those in rural west Tennessee who live near the automaker's planned electric truck factory, a project expected to create thousands of jobs and change the face of the region.
COURTS
WASHINGTON (AP) — A steady stream of protesters has turned the street in front of the Supreme Court building into an open-air forum encapsulating the fierce national debate over abortion after the leak of a draft opinion suggesting the justices would overturn Roe v. Wade, the 1973 landmark ruling that legalized abortion nationwide.
ENVIRONMENT
BRUSSELS (AP) — European Union lawmakers stepped up the fight against global warming Wednesday by requiring deeper emission cuts from power plants, factories and planes in the EU and by endorsing an unprecedented import tax.
Heat trapping carbon dioxide emissions from making cement, a less talked about but major source of carbon pollution, have doubled in the last 20 years, new global data shows.
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — A Houston dredging company has been ordered to pay a $1 million fine for an oil spill that occurred when a subcontractor cut through an oil pipeline during barrier island restoration work off Louisiana in 2016.
NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS
NEW YORK (AP) — A choppy day of trading on Wall Street ended with a modest pullback for stocks Wednesday, the latest bout of volatility for the market amid concerns about inflation and uncertainty over whether rising interest rates will help or hinder the economy.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell sought Wednesday to reassure the public that the Fed will raise interest rates high and fast enough to quell inflation, without tightening credit so much as to throttle the economy and cause a recession.
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden on Wednesday called on Congress to suspend federal gasoline and diesel taxes for three months — an election-year move meant to ease financial pressures that was greeted with doubts by many lawmakers.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Facing stubbornly high gas prices that average about $5 a gallon nationwide, President Joe Biden on Wednesday urged Congress to suspend federal gasoline and diesel taxes for three months.
WASHINGTON (AP) — In a pointed back and forth, the head of Chevron complained Tuesday that President Joe Biden has vilified energy firms at a time when gasoline prices are at near record levels and the president responded that the oil company CEO was being "mildly sensitive."
The National Labor Relations Board is asking a federal court to order Starbucks to stop interfering with unionization efforts at its U.S. stores.
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — South Korean prosecutors have barred dozens of people connected to Terraform Labs from leaving the country as they expand an investigation into a $40 billion collapse of the company's cryptocurrency that devastated traders around the world.
LONDON (AP) — Britain's inflation rate hit a new 40-year high of 9.1% in the 12 months to May, figures showed Wednesday, as Russia's war in Ukraine drove food and fuel prices ever higher.
NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL POLITICS
WASHINGTON (AP) — The House's Jan. 6 committee plans to continue its public hearings into July as its investigation of the Capitol riot deepens.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The House committee investigating the Capitol insurrection heard from election workers and state officials on Tuesday as they described President Donald Trump's pressure to overturn his 2020 election defeat. On Thursday, the nine-member panel will hear from former Justice Department officials who refused Trump's entreaties to declare the election "corrupt."
WASHINGTON (AP) — It's Groundhog Day at the IRS.
WASHINGTON (AP) — New footage of former President Donald Trump and his inner circle taken both before and after Jan. 6, 2021, is now in the possession of the House committee investigating the deadly attack on the Capitol.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection is turning to former President Donald Trump's pressure campaign on state and local officials to overturn his 2020 election loss.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The House 1/6 committee heard chilling, tearful testimony Tuesday that Donald Trump's relentless pressure to overturn the 2020 presidential election provoked widespread threats to the "backbone of our democracy"— election workers and local officials who fended off the defeated president's demands despite personal risks.
WASHINGTON (AP) — A Republican who was backed by Donald Trump at the last minute prevailed on Tuesday in an Alabama Senate runoff. But in neighboring Georgia, the former president's losing streak deepened.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Wandrea "Shaye" Moss testified Tuesday to lawmakers about how her life was upended when former President Donald Trump and his allies falsely accused her and her mother of pulling fraudulent ballots from a suitcase in Georgia.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Senate bargainers reached agreement Tuesday on a bipartisan gun violence bill, potentially teeing up final passage by week's end on an incremental but landmark package that would stand as Congress' response to mass shootings in Texas and New York that shook the nation.
UKRAINE
MOSCOW (AP) — A drone strike caused a fire at a refinery in southwestern Russia near the border with Ukraine on Wednesday, but no one was hurt and the blaze was contained quickly, officials said.
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — A Ukrainian photojournalist and a soldier accompanying him appear to have been "coldly executed" during the first weeks of the war in Ukraine as they searched in Russian-occupied woods for the photographer's missing camera drone, Reporters Without Borders said Wednesday.
TUESDAY, JUNE 21
TENNESSEE TITANS
NASHVILLE (AP) — The Tennessee Titans have added a handful of new coaches and scouts for training camp.
MIDSTATE
NASHVILLE (AP) — The Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation has issued fish consumption advisories for fish on the Cheatham, Center Hill and Dale Hollow reservoirs.
STATEWIDE
NASHVILLE (AP) — Tennessee's wildlife agency has appointed its interim executive director to serve in the position permanently.
EDUCATION
NASHVILLE (AP) — Vanderbilt University's School of Medicine Basic Sciences has tapped one of the world's leading structural biologists as its new dean, the school announced on Tuesday.
COURTS
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Tuesday limited the reach of a federal statute that requires stiff penalties for crimes involving a gun.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that Maine can't exclude religious schools from a program that offers tuition aid for private education, a decision that could ease religious organizations' access to taxpayer money.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court has rejected Bayer's appeal to shut down thousands of lawsuits claiming that its Roundup weedkiller causes cancer.
REAL ESTATE
NEW YORK (AP) — Facebook will change its algorithms to prevent discriminatory housing advertising and its parent company will subject itself to court oversight to settle a lawsuit brought by the U.S. Department of Justice on Tuesday.
Sales of previously occupied U.S. homes slowed for the fourth consecutive month as climbing mortgage rates and record high prices discouraged house hunters.
ENERGY
The U.S. nuclear industry is generating less electricity as reactors retire, but now plant operators are hoping to nearly double their output over the next three decades, according to the industry's trade association.
TRANSPORTATION
NEW YORK (AP) — JetBlue Airways on Monday increased its offer to buy Spirit Airlines, raising the stakes again in a battle over the nation's biggest budget airline.
COVID-19
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden visited a vaccination clinic Tuesday to celebrate that virtually all Americans can now get a COVID-19 shot Tuesday after the authorization of vaccines for kids under 5 over the weekend.
NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS
NEW YORK (AP) — Stocks are ending higher on Wall Street Tuesday, clawing back some of the ground they lost last week in their worst weekly drop since the beginning of the pandemic.
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy on Tuesday named a new head for the company's troubled retail business, which is dealing with a glut of warehouse space after a massive expansion during the pandemic.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell won praise for his deft leadership during the maelstrom of the pandemic recession. As threats to the U.S. economy have mounted, though, Powell has increasingly struck Fed watchers as much less sure-footed.
MILAN (AP) — Neither inflation nor the war in Ukraine are threatening to take a bite out of the luxury fashion market, according to a study published Tuesday.
NEW YORK (AP) — The wealth-generating hot streak for bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies has turned brutally cold.
Kellogg Co., the 116-year-old maker of Frosted Flakes, Rice Krispies, Pringles and Eggo, will split into three companies focused on cereals, snacks and plant-based foods.
NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL POLITICS
WASHINGTON (AP) — The House 1/6 committee outlined on Tuesday Donald Trump's relentless pressure to overturn the 2020 presidential election, aiming to show it led to widespread personal threats on the stewards of American democracy — election workers and local officials who fended off the defeated president's efforts.
WASHINGTON (AP) — A House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection is turning to former President Donald Trump's pressure campaign on state and local officials to overturn his 2020 election loss.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Ten years ago, the Texas Republican Party used its platform to oppose teaching critical thinking in schools. In 2014, it declared homosexuality a chosen behavior contrary to God and endorsed "reparative therapy" to reverse it. By 2020, the party was ready to remind the world that "Texas retains the right to secede from the United States."
WASHINGTON (AP) — A Native American is being appointed U.S. treasurer, a historic first.
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden has signed off on giving federal wildland firefighters a hefty raise for the next two fiscal years, a move that affects more than 16,000 firefighters and comes as much of the West braces for a difficult wildfire season.
UKRAINE
WASHINGTON (AP) — The State Department is confirming the death of a U.S. citizen in Ukraine who is believed to be only the second American to have been killed in the conflict there.
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russian attacks laid down a curtain of fire Tuesday across areas of eastern Ukraine where pockets of resistance are denying Moscow full military control of the region, almost four months after the Kremlin unleashed an invasion.
The headlines on the newsstands in Seoul blared fresh warnings of a possible nuclear test by North Korea.
MONDAY, JUNE 20
NASHVILLE SC
NASHVILLE (AP) — Graham Zusi's goal led Sporting Kansas City to a 2-1 win Sunday over Nashville.
STATEWIDE
NASHVILLE (AP) — A Tennessee court initiative to help residents in need of legal aid has found a new way to reach out. On Monday, officials launched the Tennessee Justice Bus — a mobile legal clinic that will travel the state providing free pop-up legal services.
STATE GOVERNMENT
NASHVILLE (AP) — Tennessee Secretary of State Tre Hargett was arrested Friday night for allegedly driving under the influence after leaving a music festival in the state.
EDUCATION
COLUMBIA (AP) — Students attending Tennessee's public community colleges and applied technology colleges will not face a tuition or fee increase for the upcoming academic year, officials said.
COURTS
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court seems poised to take on a new elections case being pressed by Republicans that could increase the power of state lawmakers over races for Congress and the presidency, as well as redistricting, and cut state courts out of the equation.
ENVIRONMENT
BERLIN (AP) — The German government said Monday that it remains committed to its goal of phasing out coal as a power source by 2030, despite deepening worries about a cut in Russia's gas supplies.
NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS
REHOBOTH BEACH, Del. (AP) — President Joe Biden said Monday that he's considering a federal holiday on the gasoline tax, possibly saving Americans as much as 18.4 cents a gallon.
OAKLAND, California (AP) — The price of a bitcoin inched above $20,000 on Sunday after the broader crypto selloff dragged it below the significant psychological threshold a day earlier.
REHOBOTH BEACH, Del. (AP) — Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said Sunday that she expects the U.S. economy to slow in the months ahead, but that a recession is not inevitable.
SEATTLE (AP) — Rossann Williams, Starbucks' North America president who's been a prominent figure in the company's push against worker unionization, is leaving the company after 17 years.
NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL POLITICS
WASHINGTON (AP) — Facebook on Monday removed a campaign video by a U.S. Senate candidate in Missouri for violating "policies prohibiting violence and incitement," because the ad showed the Republican brandishing a shotgun and declaring that he was hunting RINOs, or Republicans in Name Only.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Members of the House committee investigating the Capitol riot said Sunday they may subpoena former Vice President Mike Pence and are waiting to hear from Virginia "Ginni" Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, about her role in the illegal plot to overturn the 2020 election.
UKRAINE
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Russia's military machine persevered in its ferocious effort to grind down Ukraine's defenses Monday, as the war's consequences for food and fuel supplies increasingly weighed on minds around the globe after warnings that the fighting could go on for years.
FRIDAY, JUNE 17
NASHVILLE AREA
NEW YORK (AP) — The 16 cities of the first World Cup spread across three nations have been revealed — with Nashville left out — and FIFA President Gianni Infantino made a bold statement summing up the goal of the 2026 tournament, to be played largely in the United States.
COURTS
WASHINGTON (AP) — Former Trump White House official Peter Navarro pleaded not guilty Friday to contempt of Congress charges after refusing to cooperate with a congressional investigation into the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
WASHINGTON (AP) — An elected official who is a central figure in a New Mexico county's refusal to certify recent election results based on debunked conspiracy theories about voting machines avoided more jail time on Friday for joining the mob that attacked the U.S. Capitol.
TRANSPORTATION
Airlines canceled more than 1,500 flights in the U.S. on Thursday, one of the worst days yet for travel as the peak summer vacation season heats up.
TOURISM
The fast-growing legal sports betting industry is extending its reach to the middle of the ocean.
NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS
NEW YORK (AP) — Wall Street closed out its most punishing week since the 2020 coronavirus crash with a meandering day of trading Friday that left it a bit higher.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Securities and Exchange Commission moved closer Friday to a final rule that would dramatically alter what public companies tell shareholders about climate change — both the risks it poses to their operations and their own contributions to the problem.
ST. PETERSBURG, Russia (AP) — President Vladimir Putin said at Russia's showpiece investment conference Friday that the country's economy will overcome sanctions that he called "reckless and insane."
PRAGUE (AP) — Russia reduced natural gas to Europe again Friday, including cutting flows by half to Italy and Slovakia and completely to France, as countries have worked to ease their dependence on Russian supplies amid the war in Ukraine.
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden signed legislation Thursday meant to make shipping goods across oceans cheaper — a move the White House says will help lower retailer costs that have remained high since the start of the coronavirus pandemic and helped fuel record inflation.
GENEVA (AP) — After all-night talks, members of the World Trade Organization early Friday reached a string of deals and commitments aimed to limit overfishing, broaden production of COVID-19 vaccines in the developing world, improve food security and reform a 27-year-old trade body that has been back on its heels in recent years.
NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL POLITICS
WASHINGTON (AP) — In its first three hearings, the House panel investigating the Capitol insurrection has laid out the beginnings of its case against former President Donald Trump — that his lies about the 2020 election, and his pressure on his vice president to overturn it, directly led to the violence on Jan. 6, 2021.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Jill Biden, a lifelong teacher who recently mourned the 21 pupils and teachers killed at a Texas elementary school, issued a passionate call on Friday for parents and teachers to "speak up" and demand that Congress pass "common sense" gun safety measures.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The wreckage of Watergate and Jan. 6 are a half-century apart yet rooted in the same ancient thirst for power at any cost.
WASHINGTON (AP) — A timeline of the Watergate scandal, from the crime to the fall of a president:
WASHINGTON (AP) — For half a century, every major Washington scandal started with some form of this question: Is this another Watergate?
WASHINGTON (AP) — Equating the oil and gas industry to Big Tobacco, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said Friday that "fossil fuel producers and financiers have humanity by the throat." But President Joe Biden wasn't quite itching for a fight.
NASHVILLE (AP) — As religious conservatives gathered this week at a sprawling resort near the Grand Ole Opry House, Nikki Haley pressed the Faith and Freedom Coalition's "Road to Majority" crowd to look to the future.
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden said Thursday the American people are "really, really down" after a tumultuous two years with the coronavirus pandemic, volatility in the economy and now surging gasoline prices that are slamming family budgets. But he stressed that a recession was "not inevitable" and held out hope of giving the country a greater sense of confidence.
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden on Thursday sat down with the Associated Press to discuss the state of the economy, his concerns about the national mood, and his commitment to standing up to Russia's aggression in Ukraine.
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden signed a bill Thursday that will give around-the-clock security protection to the families of Supreme Court justices.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Democratic and Republican senators were at odds Thursday over how to keep firearms from dangerous people as bargainers struggled to finalize details of a gun violence compromise in time for their self-imposed deadline of holding votes in Congress next week.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump's extraordinary effort to overturn his 2020 election defeat came into ever-clearer focus Thursday, with testimony describing his pressuring Vice President Mike Pence in vulgar private taunts and public entreaties to stop the certification of Joe Biden's victory in the run-up to the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection.
UKRAINE
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — Four European leaders expressed their support for Ukraine on Thursday while meeting with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, vowing to back Kyiv's candidacy to eventually join the European Union and offering more weapons to fend off Russia's invasion.
BRUSSELS (AP) — Ukraine's request to join the European Union may advance Friday with a recommendation from the EU's executive arm that the war-torn country deserves to become a candidate for membership in the 27-nation bloc.
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — The Ukrainian navy claimed Friday that it struck a Russian boat carrying air defense systems to a strategic island in the Black Sea.
THURSDAY, JUNE 16
TENNESSEE TITANS
NASHVILLE (AP) — Jeffery Simmons showed off some of the slippery moves he uses to dodge offensive linemen when chasing opposing quarterbacks.
NASHVILLE AREA
NEW YORK (AP) — As FIFA prepares to announce the 2026 World Cup sites on Thursday — and make high-profile cuts — Alan Rothenberg thought back to when stadiums were picked for the 1994 tournament he headed in the United States.
STATEWIDE
NASHVILLE (AP) — Tennessee State Parks will offer volunteer work events at parks across the state this month for Tennessee Promise scholars to fulfill their community service hours.
RELIGION
ANAHEIM, California (AP) — The new president of the Southern Baptist Convention said Wednesday he will accelerate sex abuse reforms in the nation's largest Protestant denomination.
COURTS
NASHVILLE (AP) — As the Supreme Court appears on track to overturn the constitutional right to abortion, progressive prosecutors around the U.S. are declaring they won't enforce some of the most restrictive and punitive anti-abortion laws that GOP-led states have waited years to implement.
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — The California Supreme Court on Wednesday left intact a ruling that allows customers to sue Amazon.com for failing to warn buyers that some products it sells may contain hazardous substances such as mercury.
AUTO INDUSTRY
MILAN (AP) — Italian luxury sportscar maker Ferrari on Thursday outlined an electrification strategy that calls for 40% full-electric vehicles and 40% hybrid models by 2030.
ENVIRONMENT
CANBERRA, Australia (AP) — Australia's new government on Thursday formally committed to a more ambitious greenhouse gas reduction target of 43% by the end of the decade in fulfillment of a key election pledge.
MEDIA
WASHINGTON (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris will launch a new task force dedicated to fighting online harassment and abuse, according to senior Biden administration officials.
In an unusual move for what's been an unusual takeover bid for Twitter by the world's richest man, Tesla CEO Elon Musk met virtually with the social platform's employees Thursday, even though his $44 billion offer has not yet been completed.
NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS
NEW YORK (AP) — Stocks slumped again on Wall Street Thursday, erasing another 3.3% from the S&P 500 and bringing the index 23.6% below the peak it reached in January.
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden signed legislation Thursday meant to lower the cost of shipping goods across oceans, a move the White House says will help ease logistical costs for retailers that have remained high since the start of the coronavirus pandemic and helped fuel record inflation.
NEW YORK (AP) — Soaring gasoline prices have left many consumers with no choice but to cut spending on non-essentials, but it might be coming full circle by stopping some drivers from filling up their tanks.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell has pledged to do whatever it takes to curb inflation, now raging at a four-decade high and defying the Fed's efforts so far to tame it.
GENEVA (AP) — Talks went down to the wire Thursday as the World Trade Organization was set to wrap up its first ministerial-level meeting in more than four years, with no firm deal so far on issues like food security, the fight against overfishing in the seas, and efforts to broaden access to COVID-19 vaccines.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Fewer Americans applied for unemployment benefits last week as the U.S. job market remains strong in the face of rising inflation and interest rates.
NEW YORK (AP) — Cryptocurrency company Circle said Thursday that it will start issuing its first euro-denominated cryptocurrency, a stablecoin known as Euro Coin, later this month.
NEW YORK (AP) — Revlon, the 90-year-old multinational beauty company, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, weighed down by debt load, disruptions to its supply chain network and surging costs.
LONDON (AP) — The Bank of England raised interest rates by a quarter-percentage point Thursday, shrugging off pressure for a bolder move to combat price increases that have pushed inflation to a 40-year high.
ST. PETERSBURG, Russia (AP) — The head of the Russian Central Bank warned Thursday that the country's economy faces pressure from abroad that could persist indefinitely, dampening hopes that conditions could return to what they were before Russia sent troops into Ukraine.
BRUSSELS (AP) — A contest to lead Europe's financial rescue fund is drawing to a close with the spotlight on three candidates. But a question that has hung over the monthslong race looks certain to persist: Will the winner have enough to do despite fresh economic shocks?
BERLIN (AP) — Germany's vice chancellor is stepping up an appeal for the country's residents to save energy after Russia's Gazprom announced significant cuts in natural gas deliveries through a key pipeline.
NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL POLITICS
WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump's closest advisers viewed his last-ditch efforts to pressure Vice President Mike Pence to reject the tally of state electors and overturn the 2020 election as "nuts," "crazy" and even likely incite riots, witnesses revealed in stark testimony to the Jan. 6 committee on Thursday.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The House committee investigating the insurrection at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, focused at a public hearing Thursday on the pressure that then-President Donald Trump put on his vice president, Mike Pence, to delay or reject the certification of Joe Biden's election victory. The committee tried to show how that pressure incited an angry mob to lay siege to the Capitol.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Employees accused of misconduct at the Department of Homeland Security could face more stringent penalties under an overhaul announced Thursday that follows complaints about the handling of internal discipline in the third largest U.S. government agency.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol will ask Virginia Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, for an interview, the panel's chairman said Thursday.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Mike Pence won't be testifying at Thursday's Jan. 6 committee hearing. But he will be in the spotlight as the focus turns to former President Donald Trump's desperate and futile attempts to persuade his vice president to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and deliver them a second term.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The House committee investigating the Capitol riot plans to focus its hearing Thursday on the pressure that Donald Trump put on his vice president, Mike Pence, in a last-ditch and potentially illegal plan to stop Joe Biden's election victory.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate on Thursday approved a sweeping expansion of health care and disability benefits for Iraq and Afghanistan veterans in response to concerns about their exposure to toxic burn pits.
UKRAINE
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — The Russian military said it used long-range missiles Wednesday to destroy a depot in the western Lviv region of Ukraine where ammunition for NATO-supplied weapons was stored, and the governor of a key eastern city acknowledged Russian forces are advancing in heavy fighting.
IRPIN, Ukraine (AP) — French President Emmanuel Macron said Thursday that there are signs of war crimes in a Kyiv suburb following "massacres" by Russian forces.
BRUSSELS (AP) — NATO defense ministers gathered Thursday for talks focusing on bolstering forces and deterrence along the military alliance's eastern borders to dissuade Russia from planning further aggression.
LONDON (AP) — The European Union is beefing up its code of practice on disinformation by enlisting more tech companies beyond Google, Twitter and Facebook parent Meta and adding measures to prevent online purveyors of fake news from profiting.