VOL. 45 | NO. 23 | Friday, June 4, 2021
REAL ESTATE
WASHINGTON (AP) — Mortgage rates were flat to higher this week. The benchmark 30-year home loan remained below the 3% mark amid continued positive indications of the economy's recovery from the pandemic recession.
UT SPORTS
Will Heflin didn’t expect to be playing for the University of Tennessee baseball team this season.
NEWSMAKERS
Dr. Ronald “Ron” H. Kirkland, a board-certified otolaryngologist from Jackson, has been installed as the 167th president of the Tennessee Medical Association, the statewide professional association for more than 9,500 member physicians and their patients.
BRIEFS
Gibson, the iconic, American instrument brand based in Nashville, is debuting the Gibson Garage, which it bills as the “ultimate guitar experience.”
BEHIND THE WHEEL
The price of gasoline has increased more than a dollar on average in the last 12 months, the U.S. Energy Information Administration reports. Used car prices have increased nearly 25%, partly due to a lack of inventory on the used market.
SMALL BUSINESS
After more than a year of navigating lockdowns, mandates and COVID-19 protocols, small-business owners are starting to see a light at the end of the tunnel. But the debt many needed to take on to weather the pandemic still casts an ominous shadow.
MILLENNIAL MONEY
With $195,000-plus in student loan debt, Annika Hudak saw little harm in swiping her credit cards.
TENNESSEE TITANS
NASHVILLE (AP) — The Tennessee Titans have partnered with Williamson County to start the first interscholastic girls' flag football league starting in spring 2022.
MUSIC INDUSTRY
NEW YORK (AP) — The CMT Music Awards will honor acts in country music but will also share its stage with pop and R&B stars, including Gladys Knight, Pink, John Legend, Halsey, H.E.R. and Noah Cyrus.
STATE GOVERNMENT
NASHVILLE (AP) — Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee announced Tuesday that the state will pour $52 million into building a complicated wastewater discharge pipeline into a sprawling site that has failed to land potential tenants due to a lack of infrastructure buildout.
COURTS
CHATTANOOGA (AP) — A former Tennessee governor's administration helped fund a contract murder of a key federal witness decades ago while embroiled in the state's largest political scandal, law enforcement officials announced Wednesday.
KNOXVILLE (AP) — A University of Tennessee professor charged with hiding his relationship with a Chinese university to get research grants from a federal agency filed multiple reports with the school detailing his ties, according to court testimony.
ROME (AP) — European evaluators warned Wednesday that the Vatican's efforts to investigate and prosecute financial crimes were suffering from understaffing and inexperience, as well as the mistaken belief that its own cardinals and bishops were immune to criminal conduct.
AUTO INDUSTRY
DETROIT (AP) — The nation's largest automaker said Wednesday it can support greenhouse gas emissions limits that other car manufacturers negotiated with California — if they are achieved mostly by promoting sales of fully electric vehicles.
FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) — Former Volkswagen CEO Martin Winterkorn has agreed to pay 11.2 million euros ($13.6 million) in compensation for what the company called his failure to quickly get to the bottom of the 2015 scandal over diesel engines rigged to cheat on emissions tests, the company said Wednesday.
MILAN (AP) — Luxury sports carmaker Ferrari has tapped Benedetto Vigna, an Italian executive at Europe's largest semiconductor chipmaker, as its new CEO, the company announced Wednesday.
DETROIT (AP) — Startup commercial electric vehicle maker Lordstown Motors says it may not be in business a year from now as it tries to secure funding to start full production of an electric pickup truck.
MEDIA
NEW YORK (AP) — Former President Donald Trump reached less than a million measurable television viewers over the weekend in his return to the public stage at a North Carolina political event.
TECHNOLOGY
WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House dropped Trump-era executive orders that attempted to ban the popular apps TikTok and WeChat and will conduct its own review aimed at identifying national security risks with software applications tied to China, officials said Wednesday.
BOSTON (AP) — An outage at a little-known firm that speeds up access to websites knocked a lot of top internet destinations offline on Tuesday, disrupting business and leisure for untold millions globally. The problem was quickly resolved. The company, Fastly, blamed a configuration error in its technology.
ENVIRONMENT
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration began legal action Wednesday to repeal a Trump-era rule that ended federal protections for hundreds of thousands of small streams, wetlands and other waterways, leaving them more vulnerable to pollution from development, industry and farms.
VIRUS OUTBREAK
PARIS (AP) — After "a very bad year," Paris tour operator Marc Vernhet sees a ray of light with the promised return of tourists from the United States and elsewhere who are welcome in France as of Wednesday if they have been vaccinated against the coronavirus.
BRUSSELS (AP) — European Union lawmakers on Wednesday endorsed a new travel certificate that will allow people to move between European countries without having to quarantine or undergo extra coronavirus tests, paving the way for the pass to start in time for summer.
WASHINGTON (AP) — For months, President Joe Biden has laid out goal after goal for taming the coronavirus pandemic and then exceeded his own benchmarks. Now, though, the U.S. is unlikely to meet his target to have 70% of Americans at least partially vaccinated by July 4.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Once dismissed by most public health experts and government officials, the hypothesis that COVID-19 leaked accidentally from a Chinese lab is now receiving scrutiny under a new U.S. investigation.
NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS
BEIJING (AP) — Beijing has denounced a U.S. bill aimed at boosting U.S. technology to improve American competitiveness, calling it a thinly veiled attack on China's political system and an attempt to hinder its development.
LONDON (AP) — The U.K. is calling on the European Union to show pragmatism and "common sense," as the two sides meet to resolve differences over the implementation of their post-Brexit trade deal in Northern Ireland.
FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) — The European Central Bank is expected to leave its stimulus efforts running at full steam Thursday — even as the economy shows signs of recovery thanks to the easing of pandemic restrictions.
NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL POLITICS
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden ended talks with a group of Republican senators on a big infrastructure package on Tuesday and started reaching out to senators from both parties in a new effort toward bipartisan compromise, setting a summer deadline for Congress to pass his top legislative priority.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Set to embark on the first overseas trip of his term, President Joe Biden is eager to reassert the United States on the world stage, steadying European allies deeply shaken by his predecessor and pushing democracy as the only bulwark to rising forces of authoritarianism.
WASHINGTON (AP) — A Senate report examining the security failures surrounding the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol says missed intelligence, poor planning and multiple layers of bureaucracy led to the violent siege. It does not fault former President Donald Trump, who told his supporters to "fight like hell" to overturn his defeat just before hundreds of them stormed the building.
TUESDAY, JUNE 8
SPORTS
INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — The NCAA announced the schedule for the eight super regionals in the Division I baseball tournament Tuesday, with overall No. 1 seed Arkansas set to open at home against North Carolina State on Friday night.
TENNESSEE TITANS
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) — Derrick Henry continues to win awards in the state where he captured both the Heisman Trophy and a national championship.
MUSIC INDUSTRY
NEW YORK (AP) — Linda Martell, one of the pioneers for Black acts in country music and the first Black woman to perform solo at the Grand Ole Opry, will be honored at the 2021 CMT Music Awards.
STATEWIDE
NASHVILLE (AP) — Tennessee's annual free fishing day is Saturday.
TOURISM
GATLINBURG (AP) — Some visitors to Great Smoky Mountains National Park have been accused of feeding peanut butter to a bear.
COURTS
THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — Criminal gangs divulged plans for moving drug shipments and carrying out killings on a secure messaging system secretly run by the FBI, law enforcement agencies said Tuesday, as they unveiled a global sting operation they said dealt an "unprecedented blow" to organized crime in countries around the world.
KNOXVILLE (AP) — A University of Tennessee professor charged with hiding his relationship with a Chinese university while receiving research grants from the federal government is innocent of the federal charges, his attorney said during a trial in Knoxville.
WASHINGTON (AP) — A North Carolina engineering firm has pleaded guilty to conspiracies to rig bids and defraud the N.C. Department of Transportation, and was ordered to pay more than $1 million in restitution and $7 million in fines, the U.S. Department of Justice said.
ENVIRONMENT
CARSON CITY, Nev. (AP) — In Sin City, one thing that will soon become unforgivable is useless grass.
HEALTH CARE
Federal regulators have approved the first new drug for Alzheimer's disease in nearly 20 years, leaving patients waiting to see how insurers will handle the pricey new treatment.
NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS
Major indexes closed mostly higher on Wall Street, thanks largely to gains in a handful of Big Tech companies.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The rich really are different from you and me: They're better at dodging the tax collector.
WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. employers posted a record 9.3 million job openings in April with the U.S. economy reopening at break-neck speed.
NEW YORK (AP) — Many U.S. companies have rushed to appoint Black members to their boards of directors since racial justice protests swept the country last year.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The World Bank is upgrading the outlook for global growth this year, predicting that COVID-19 vaccinations and massive government stimulus in rich countries will power the fastest worldwide expansion in nearly five decades.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. trade deficit narrowed in April to $68.9 billion as an improving global economy boosted sales of American exports.
WASHINGTON (AP) — After completing a review of supply chains, the Biden administration announced Tuesday that it was forming a task force to address the bottlenecks in the semiconductor, construction, transportation and agriculture sectors.
LONDON (AP) — The U.K.'s chief negotiator called on the European Union to show "pragmatism and common sense," instead of threatening to retaliate, as the two sides meet to resolve differences over the deal that was supposed to keep trade flowing after Brexit.
NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL POLITICS
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate was on pace to approve legislation Tuesday that aims to boost U.S. semiconductor production and the development of artificial intelligence and other technology in the face of growing competition internationally, most notably from China.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin was unswayed Tuesday by civil rights leaders who implored him to rethink his opposition to a sprawling election bill that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said is crucial to countering a "Republican assault on our democracy."
BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — President Joe Biden's nominee to oversee vast expanses of public land in the U.S. West was criticized Tuesday by Republicans Tuesday over her past involvement in partisan politics as a longtime Democratic aide and environmentalist.
LONDON (AP) — When U.S. President Joe Biden flies to Europe this week, he will find his hosts welcoming but wary. His predecessor Donald Trump may be gone, but he leaves a long shadow.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Hopes for a big infrastructure investment are teetering. An ambitious elections and voting bill is all but dead. Legislation on police brutality, gun control and immigration has stalled out.
WASHINGTON (AP) — A Senate investigation of the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol found a broad intelligence breakdown across multiple agencies, along with widespread law enforcement and military failures that led to the violent attack.
WASHINGTON (AP) — A pipeline company CEO made no apologies Tuesday for his decisions to abruptly halt fuel distribution for much of the East Coast and pay millions to a criminal gang in Russia as he faced down one of the most disruptive ransomware attacks in U.S. history.
MEXICO CITY (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris is closing out her first foreign trip Tuesday with a visit to Mexico and a meeting with President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, a key but complicated ally in the Biden administration's efforts to curb the spike in migration at the U.S. border.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Liberals have cheered the highly public legal and financial jeopardy ensnaring the National Rifle Association, seeing the gun lobby's potential demise as the path to stricter firearms laws.
MONDAY, JUNE 7
MUSIC INDUSTRY
MEMPHIS (AP) — Singer Shemekia Copeland and guitarist Christone "Kingfish" Ingram are among this year's top winners at the Blues Music Awards.
SPORTS
NASHVILLE (AP) — Isaiah Thomas hit a grand slam in the top of the 11th inning and Vanderbilt beat Georgia Tech 14-9 on Sunday night to win the Nashville Regional.
KNOXVILLE (AP) — Drew Gilbert homered for the third straight game and No. 3 overall seed Tennessee beat No. 3 regional seed Liberty 3-1 in the Knoxville Regional final on Sunday night.
Eight teams closed out their regionals in the NCAA baseball tournament Sunday and moved one step closer to the College World Series.
TENNESSEE TITANS
NASHVILLE (AP) — The Tennessee Titans had been talking to the Atlanta Falcons about seven-time Pro Bowl wide receiver Julio Jones for nearly three weeks.
COURTS
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court agreed on Monday to decide whether a lawsuit can go forward in which a group of Muslim residents of California allege the FBI targeted them for surveillance because of their religion.
WASHINGTON (AP) — A unanimous Supreme Court ruled Monday that thousands of people living in the U.S. for humanitarian reasons are ineligible to apply to become permanent residents.
NASHVILLE (AP) — Two Tennessee men face hearings this week after their recent arrests on charges related to the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Monday said it won't take up a case that asked it to decide whether it's sex discrimination for the government to require only men to register for the draft when they turn 18.
HEALTH CARE
WASHINGTON (AP) — Government health officials on Monday approved the first new drug for Alzheimer's disease in nearly 20 years, disregarding warnings from independent advisers that the much-debated treatment hasn't been shown to help slow the brain-destroying disease.
TECHNOLOGY
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department has recovered most of a multimillion-dollar ransom payment made to hackers after a cyberattack that caused the operator of the nation's largest fuel pipeline to halt its operations last month, officials said Monday.
NEW YORK (AP) — Apple kicked off its second annual all-virtual developer conference with a keynote that outlined new updates to its software for iPhones and other devices. The presentation highlighted more privacy options for paid iCloud accounts and a "Find My" service that helps find errant AirPods, but included no major product announcements.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm on Sunday called for more public-private cooperation on cyber defenses and said U.S. adversaries already are capable of using cyber intrusions to shut down the U.S. power grid.
AUTO INDUSTRY
DETROIT (AP) — If the auto industry is to succeed in its bet that electric vehicles will soon dominate the roads, it will need to overcome a big reason why many people are still avoiding them: Fear of running out of juice between Point A and Point B.
TOKYO (AP) — Japanese automaker Toyota has reached a settlement with the family of an engineer whose suicide was ruled a job-related death due to harassment from his boss.
VIRUS OUTBREAK
GENEVA (AP) — A top World Health Organization official estimated Monday that COVID-19 vaccination coverage of at least 80% is needed to significantly lower the risk that "imported" coronavirus cases like those linked to new variants could spawn a cluster or a wider outbreak.
NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS
WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. economy is sparking confusion and whiplash almost as fast as it's adding jobs.
Stocks gave up some of their recent gains Monday, though the selling eased toward the end of the day, leaving the major indexes mixed.
WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. consumer borrowing rose by $18.6 billion in April, fueled by a big rise in auto and student loans that offset a drop in credit card use.
BANGKOK (AP) — China's exports and imports surged in May and its politically sensitive surplus with the U.S. grew as the pandemic was waning in important markets in the West.
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — A South Korean court on Monday rejected a claim by dozens of World War II-era Korean factory workers and their relatives who sought compensation from 16 Japanese companies for their slave labor during Japan's colonial occupation of Korea.
NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL POLITICS
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate's top Democrat is recommending President Joe Biden nominate two prominent voting rights attorneys to serve as judges on the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and on the federal bench in Manhattan.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Bracing for political trouble, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer warned Democratic colleagues that June will "test our resolve" as senators return Monday to consider infrastructure, voting rights and other stalled-out priorities at a crucial moment in Congress.
WASHINGTON (AP) — A key Democratic senator says he will not vote for the largest overhaul of U.S. election law in at least a generation, leaving no plausible path forward for legislation that his party and the White House have portrayed as crucial for protecting access to the ballot.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Louis DeJoy is uninterested in the niceties of Washington. The wealthy longtime businessman with an outer borough New York accent prides himself as a problem solver ready to disrupt an unwieldy bureaucracy. And he's facing potential legal troubles.
FRIDAY, JUNE 4
VANDERBILT SPORTS
Northwestern hired NCAA executive Derrick Gragg as its athletic director Friday, the Big Ten school's second time filling the position in a little more than a month.
UT SPORTS
STORRS, Conn. (AP) — Tennessee and UConn have agreed to extend their storied women's basketball rivalry for another two years.
SPORTS
OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — The NCAA baseball tournament, canceled last year because of the COVID-19 pandemic, opens Friday with play in 16 double-elimination regionals. Regional winners advance to best-of-three super regionals next week, and the final eight go to the College World Series in Omaha beginning June 19. Some of the top story lines:
STATE GOVERNMENT
NASHVILLE (AP) — Officials have set a special election to replace an eastern Tennessee state lawmaker who died after a fight with pancreatic cancer.
COURTS
BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — A U.S. judge has rejected the Biden administration's attempt to delay a lawsuit from several states and environmentalists who are seeking to end lease sales for coal mining on federal lands.
MEMPHIS (AP) — An expert hired by a state prosecutors' office can conduct a mental evaluation of a Tennessee death row inmate who claims he is intellectually disabled and should not be executed for the slayings of a mother and daughter more than 30 years ago, a judge ruled Friday.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department is stepping up its enforcement of hate crimes and other bias-related incidents, furthering a promise by Attorney General Merrick Garland to focus on civil rights violations.
HEALTH CARE
Regulators on Friday said a new version of a popular diabetes medicine could be sold as a weight-loss drug in the U.S.
ENVIRONMENT
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration said Friday it is canceling or reviewing a host of actions by the Trump administration to roll back protections for endangered or threatened species, with a goal of strengthening a landmark law while addressing climate change.
FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) — Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell says the central bank can help assess risks to banks from climate change but that addressing the broader issue is up to private companies and elected officials, underlining that U.S. central bankers are not climate policy makers.
TOURISM
U.S. officials say Florida's lawsuit against the federal government over conditions for cruise lines to resume sailing could threaten plans to restart cruising in Alaska.
MEDIA
WASHINGTON (AP) — One of the Biden Justice Department's first big moves has been to alert reporters at three major news organizations that their phone records were seized as part of leak investigations under the Trump administration, with President Joe Biden saying he would abandon the practice of spying on journalists.
LONDON (AP) — European Union regulators have opened an antitrust investigation into Facebook to look into whether the company distorts competition in the classified advertising market by using data it collects from rival services.
Facebook plans to end a contentious policy championed by CEO Mark Zuckerberg that exempted politicians from certain moderation rules on its site, according to several news reports.
NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS
Wall Street closed out a week of mostly choppy trading with broad gains Friday, pushing the S&P 500 to its second straight weekly gain.
President Joe Biden portrayed the May jobs report as a jumping off point for more spending on infrastructure and education to keep growth going — essentially an argument for his agenda. But the employment numbers issued Friday also hinted at the possible limits of how much government aid can be pumped into the world's largest economy.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The American economy delivered 559,000 added jobs in May.
WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. employers added a modest 559,000 jobs in May, an improvement from April's sluggish gain but still evidence that many companies are struggling to find enough workers as the economy rapidly recovers from the pandemic recession.
FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) — How can governments keep multinational companies from avoiding taxes by shifting their profits to low-tax countries?
China vehemently objected Friday to U.S. President Joe Biden's expansion of a list of Chinese companies whose shares are off-limits to American investors because of their purported links to the Chinese military and surveillance.
NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL POLITICS
WASHINGTON (AP) — Senate Republicans on Friday panned President Joe Biden's latest infrastructure proposal and are expected to make a new offer as talks grind toward next week's deadline for progress on a bipartisan deal.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The House Judiciary Committee is questioning former White House counsel Don McGahn behind closed doors on Friday, two years after House Democrats originally sought his testimony as part of investigations into former President Donald Trump.
THURSDAY, JUNE 3
TENNESSEE TITANS
NASHVILLE (AP) — Todd Downing has no plans to fill Arthur Smith's shoes as Tennessee's new offensive coordinator. His real challenge is keeping the Titans' offense clicking as well as possible.
STATE GOVERNMENT
NASHVILLE (AP) — A Tennessee state panel is proposing another $44.6 million in federal COVID-19 relief aid to increase the payouts businesses can receive for their losses due to the pandemic.
NASHVILLE (AP) — A Tennessee state panel is considering using federal coronavirus recovery money for big investments in water and sewer system upgrades.
EAST TENNESSEE
KNOXVILLE (AP) — The Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the Tennessee Valley Authority and the University of Tennessee System are partnering with Techstars to launch a startup accelerator that aims to grow 30 technology companies over three years.
WEST TENNESSEE
MEMPHIS (AP) — U.S. Department of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg traveled to Tennessee on Thursday to learn how the closure of the Interstate 40 bridge connecting that state and Arkansas has affected freight movement since it was shut down more than three weeks ago when a crack was found in the span.
COURTS
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department is investigating Postmaster General Louis DeJoy over political fundraising activity at his former business, a DeJoy spokesman said Thursday.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Thursday limited prosecutors' ability to use an anti-hacking law to charge people with computer crimes.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Military service leaders are privately expressing reservations about removing sexual assault cases from the chain of command, The Associated Press has learned, striking a note of caution as momentum builds toward changing a military justice system that has come under increasing criticism.
NASHVILLE (AP) — A federal appeals court on Wednesday heard arguments in a Tennessee case over whether a 48-hour waiting period is a substantial burden to women seeking abortions.
ENVIRONMENT
OROVILLE, Calif. (AP) — Each year Lake Oroville helps water a quarter of the nation's crops, sustain endangered salmon beneath its massive earthen dam and anchor the tourism economy of a Northern California county that must rebuild seemingly every year after unrelenting wildfires.
AUTO INDUSTRY
DETROIT (AP) — Shares of General Motors Co. rose to record highs Thursday after the company said its efforts to manage the global computer chip shortage have worked better than expected, so it's financial results will improve.
TRANSPORTATION
DETROIT (AP) — U.S. traffic deaths rose 7% last year, the biggest increase in 13 years even though people drove fewer miles due to the coronavirus pandemic, the government's road safety agency reported Thursday.
United Airlines aims to bring back supersonic travel before the decade is over with a plane that has yet to be built.
The airline industry is ratcheting up its campaign to ease border restrictions and allow more international travel — even by people who aren't vaccinated against coronavirus — despite high infection rates in many countries.
MEDIA
Twitter is rolling out a subscription service, starting in Canada and Australia, that offers perks like an undo button for subscribers.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump Justice Department secretly obtained the phone records of four New York Times reporters as part of a leak investigation, the newspaper reported Wednesday.
NEW YORK (AP) — In a designation that feels a little less significant every year, CBS has finished the 2020-21 television season as the nation's most-watched television network for the 13th consecutive time.
HEALTH CARE
WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. health regulators warned surgeons Thursday to stop implanting a heart pump made by Medtronic due to power failures recently tied to cases of stroke and more than a dozen deaths.
VIRUS OUTBREAK
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden announced Thursday the U.S. will donate 75% of its unused COVID-19 vaccines to the U.N.-backed COVAX global vaccine sharing program, acting as more Americans have been vaccinated and global inequities have become more glaring.
LONDON (AP) — The European Union unveiled plans Thursday for a digital ID wallet that residents could use to access services across the 27-nation bloc, part of a post-pandemic recovery strategy that involves accelerating the shift to an online world.
NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS
Stocks closed lower on Wall Street, led by more declines in big technology companies and putting the S&P 500 in the red for the week.
FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) — U.S. President Joe Biden's proposals for deterring tax avoidance by multinational companies will be a major theme Friday when finance ministers from the Group of Seven wealthy democracies start talks on economic cooperation in London.
SILVER SPRING, Md. (AP) — Growth in the services sector, where most Americans work, hit an all-time high in May as people flock to bars, restaurants and other venues across the country that now have fewer or no pandemic-related capacity restrictions.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The number of Americans seeking unemployment benefits fell last week for a fifth straight week to a new pandemic low, the latest evidence that the U.S. job market is regaining its health as the economy further reopens.
MOSCOW (AP) — Russia said Thursday it will completely remove the U.S. dollar from its rainy day fund, a move intended to counter American pressure two weeks before a summit of the two countries' leaders.
WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. productivity growth was unrevised at a 5.4% rate in the first three months of the year, though recent increases in labor costs accelerated.
AMC may sell up to 11.6 million of its shares with a trading phenomenon pushing stock in the movie theater chain up almost 3,000% this year, and 140% just this week.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Federal Reserve said Wednesday that it will start selling off the holdings of one of its emergency lending programs created last year to stabilize financial markets at the height of the pandemic crisis.
BEIJING (AP) — The Chinese government has accused H&M, Nike, Zara and other brands of importing unsafe or poor quality children's clothes and other goods, adding to headaches for foreign companies after Beijing attacked them over complaints about possible forced labor in the country's northwest.
NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL POLITICS
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration on Thursday proposed funding for dozens of conservation and recreation projects across the country as it allocates $2.8 billion in grants and programs authorized by a landmark conservation law enacted last year.
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden on Thursday instructed the federal government to elevate anti-corruption measures as a central U.S. foreign policy and national security issue.
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden will meet with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan while on his trip to Europe later this month, the White House announced Thursday.
President Joe Biden is trying to break a logjam with Republicans on how to pay for infrastructure improvements, proposing a 15% minimum tax on corporations and the possibility of revenues from increased IRS enforcement as a possible compromise.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump was calling into yet another friendly radio show when he was asked, as he often is, whether he's planning a comeback bid for the White House. "We need you," conservative commentator Dan Bongino told the former president.
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's opponents on Thursday pushed for a quick parliament vote to formally end his lengthy rule, hoping to head off any last-minute attempts by the premier to derail their newly announced coalition government.