VOL. 43 | NO. 27 | Friday, July 5, 2019
RICHARD COURTNEY: REALTY CHECK
It had to happen at some point. Prices in the Nashville residential real estate market have been flying skyward for seven years, and the appraisers have been able to keep pace, at times making upward adjustments when there were multiple offers on the same house.
NEWSMAKERS
Pat Raines, dean of Belmont University’s Jack C. Massey College of Business, has announced his retirement after 16 years of service to the school.
BRIEFS
The Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee is accepting applications for discretionary grants.
BEHIND THE WHEEL
Young athletes today compete year-round in a variety of clubs and travel to tournaments, usually with staggering amounts of equipment. Vehicle support is often key, and to that end Edmunds has selected its all-star lineup for the best cars, trucks and SUVs for families with active young athletes.
BUSINESS BOOK REVIEW
One foot in front of the other. That’s how you get anywhere: whether it’s a toe-sliding shuffle or a one-two-three-waltz, the only way forward is step by step.
PERSONAL FINANCE
The most important thing you can say to a new hire may well be: “Have you signed up for the 401(k) yet?”
CAREER CORNER
You may be wondering if you’ve missed your chance to get a new job. After all, you had a new year’s resolution to job search. And, you just didn’t get around to it. Or, maybe you did try but it didn’t work out the way you were expecting.
MILLENNIAL MONEY
My partner had a goal: He wanted to be a homeowner by 30.
STATEWIDE
NASHVILLE (AP) — Former Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam has told The Tennessean that he won't run for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Republican Sen. Lamar Alexander.
UT SPORTS
Former Tennessee Titans All-Pro defensive lineman Albert Haynesworth says on social media that he needs a kidney transplant.
TECHNOLOGY
SEATTLE (AP) — Amazon will spend more than $700 million to provide additional training to about one-third of its U.S. workforce.
PARIS (AP) — The launch of a European Vega rocket carrying an imaging satellite for the United Arab Emirates failed about two minutes after liftoff from the European base in French Guiana.
NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS
WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. consumer prices rose just 0.1% in June, as cheaper gas prices were offset by higher rents and auto costs.
LONDON (AP) — Virgin Group founder Richard Branson has warned that the pound's value would fall to that of the dollar if Britain leaves the European Union without a deal — a stark prediction that will fuel worries about the economic pressures facing the country.
NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL POLITICS
WASHINGTON (AP) — Congress might need to extend the government's crucial ability to borrow money before leaving the Capitol for its August recess, Trump administration officials said Wednesday. The timetable would heap extraordinary pressure on lawmakers to cut a deal on a measure that usually requires lengthy and politically delicate negotiations.
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump's July Fourth event has bankrupted a special fund used to provide security and protect the nation's capital from terrorist threats.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Some are watching old video of his previous testimony. Others are closely re-reading his 448-page report. And almost all are worrying about how they'll make the most of the short time they'll have for questioning.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The abrupt resignation of Britain's ambassador to the United States over leaked cables critical of the Trump administration may have jolted official Washington, but it's unlikely to have a lasting impact on the U.S.-British relationship or diplomatic practice.
WASHINGTON (AP) — At a pivotal moment Wednesday, Speaker Nancy Pelosi stood before House Democrats with a lofty message and a stark warning.
WEDNESDAY, JULY 10
STATE GOVERNMENT
NASHVILLE (AP) — A Tennessee lawmaker accused of sexual misconduct is denying he's been asked by Republican Gov. Bill Lee not to run for reelection next year.
STATEWIDE
NASHVILLE (AP) — A majority of Tennessee's prisoners are held in state-run facilities, yet the state's privately run prisons have more inmate homicides, according to a new report by prisoner advocacy groups.
HEALTH CARE
NASHVILLE (AP) — Tennessee health officials are launching a new public education and awareness campaign focusing on the impact of the opioid crisis.
LONDON (AP) — Alexa will see you now. Britain's health care service is teaming up with Amazon's digital voice assistant to help answer medical queries with advice from the service's official website.
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump is directing the government to revamp the nation's care for kidney disease, so that more people whose kidneys fail have a chance at early transplants and home dialysis — along with better prevention so patients don't get that sick to begin with.
COURTS
RICHMOND, Va. (AP) — A federal appeals court threw out a lawsuit accusing President Donald Trump of illegally profiting off the presidency through his luxury Washington hotel, handing Trump a significant legal victory Wednesday.
LIBERTY (AP) — Johnny Gibbs has been trying to get a valid driver's license for 20 years, but he just can't afford it.
PREDATORS
Former Nashville Predators captain Greg Johnson has died. He was 48.
ENVIRONMENT
BERLIN (AP) — Many companies in high-emission industries aren't doing enough to respond to climate change, according to a report produced for some of the world's biggest institutional investors that was published Wednesday.
NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS
Stocks finished higher Wednesday as Wall Street welcomed new signals suggesting the Federal Reserve is ready to cut interest rates for the first time in a decade.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Most Federal Reserve officials expressed concern at a meeting last month that the outlook for the U.S. economy was weakening, and many said the Fed should soon cut rates if uncertainty continued to weigh on growth.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Worker pay isn't rising fast enough to push up inflation, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell says, even with the unemployment rate near a five-decade low. Little inflation pressure makes it easier for the Fed to cut short-term interest rates.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Pointing to a weaker global economy, rising trade tensions and chronically low inflation, Chairman Jerome Powell signaled Wednesday that the Federal Reserve is likely to cut interest rates late this month for the first time in a decade.
BRUSSELS (AP) — The European Union said Wednesday it has trimmed its forecasts for economic growth next year as global trade tensions weigh on the bloc's export-focused manufacturers.
BEIJING (AP) — The top U.S. and Chinese trade envoys have spoken by phone in their first known contact since Presidents Donald Trump and Xi Jinping agreed to resume stalled talks on ending a tariff war.
NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL POLITICS
WASHINGTON (AP) — Insisting he got the best deal he could at the time, Labor Secretary Alex Acosta on Wednesday defended his handling of a sex-trafficking case involving now-jailed financier Jeffrey Epstein as Acosta tried to stave off intensifying Democratic calls for his resignation.
President Donald Trump's nominee to lead the Federal Aviation Administration won approval from a Senate committee Wednesday despite objections from Democrats who questioned the actions of the former Delta Air Lines executive in a case involving a pilot who raised safety issues.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration outlined "active threats" to U.S. elections as it briefed Congress Wednesday on steps the government has taken to improve election security in the wake of Russian interference in 2016.
WASHINGTON (AP) — A majority of military veterans approve of President Donald Trump's performance as commander in chief, reflecting continued support from a group that has strongly backed him throughout his presidency. Still, many veterans believe he doesn't listen enough to military leaders and they distrust his decisions on the use of force.
LONDON (AP) — Britain's ambassador to the United States resigned Wednesday after being made a diplomatic nobody by President Donald Trump following the leak of the envoy's unflattering opinions about the U.S. administration.
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump says he'll be looking "very closely" at Labor Secretary Alex Acosta's handling of a sex trafficking case involving now-jailed billionaire financier Jeffrey Epstein. But he also seemed to stand by his Cabinet official, praising Acosta's performance on the job and saying he felt "very badly" for him.
TUESDAY, JULY 9
COURTS
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A federal appeals court has ruled that Amazon can be sued over a defective product sold by one of its third-party vendors.
LONDON (AP) — An Austrian privacy campaigner's long-running legal battle against Facebook over its data transfers to the U.S. reached the European Union's highest court on Tuesday.
WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge Monday blocked a major White House initiative on prescription drug costs, saying the Trump administration lacked the legal authority to require drugmakers to disclose their prices in TV ads.
TRANSPORTATION
LONDON (AP) — Richard Branson's space-tourism venture, Virgin Galactic, is planning to go public, creating the first listed human spaceflight firm.
ENVIRONMENT
PARIS (AP) — The French government will implement an "ecotax" on plane tickets for flights departing from France from next year.
AUTO INDUSTRY
FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) — Volkswagen is halting production of the last version of its Beetle model this week at its plant in Puebla, Mexico. It's the end of the road for a vehicle that has symbolized many things over a history spanning eight decades since 1938.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Citing climate-damaging tailpipe emissions, 23 governors signed a pledge Tuesday backing California leaders in their showdown with the Trump administration over its plans to relax vehicle mileage standards .
BANKING
WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell the Fed's annual stress tests of the nation's largest banks will need to evolve to keep pace with a changing financial system.
TECHNOLOGY
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump is gathering conservative groups at the White House this week for a "summit" on social media that will prominently snub the tech titans who run big platforms on Facebook, Twitter and Google.
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Twitter now prohibits hate speech that targets religious groups using dehumanizing language.
Amazon and Microsoft are battling it out over a $10 billion opportunity to build the U.S. military its first "war cloud" computing system. But Amazon's early hopes of a shock-and-awe victory may be slipping away.
NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS
Wall Street capped a day of listless trading Tuesday with modest gains, narrowly avoiding a three-day losing streak for the S&P 500 index.
DALLAS (AP) — H. Ross Perot, the colorful, self-made Texas billionaire who rose from a childhood of Depression-era poverty and twice ran for president as a third-party candidate, has died. He was 89.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Job openings posted by U.S. employers slipped 0.7% in May, while hires that month tumbled 4.4% in a sign that the job market may be cooling slightly.
BRUSSELS (AP) — European Union authorities have fined the Japanese company behind Hello Kitty for restricting cross-border sales of toys, mugs, bags and other products featuring the cartoon cat girl.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Americans are generally satisfied with their personal finances, but many lack confidence in their ability to afford retirement, an emergency expense or even their daily living costs.
NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL POLITICS
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump said Tuesday he would be looking "very closely" at Labor Secretary Alex Acosta's handling of a sex trafficking case involving billionaire financier Jeffrey Epstein, though he also praised Acosta's Cabinet work.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The House Judiciary Committee is moving to authorize subpoenas for several people tied to special counsel Robert Mueller's report, including President Donald Trump's son in law, Jared Kushner, and former Attorney General Jeff Sessions.
WASHINGTON (AP) — A top adviser to President Donald Trump says Trump hasn't spoken to or had any contact with billionaire financier Jeffrey Epstein in "years and years and years."
WASHINGTON (AP) — A growing collection of congressional Democrats say President Donald Trump's labor secretary should resign because of his role in a 2008 plea deal that let a billionaire financier escape prison time for alleged sex crimes.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Amy McGrath, a Marine combat aviator who narrowly lost a House race to an incumbent Republican in Kentucky, has set her sights on an even more formidable target: Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The House Judiciary Committee says a former Trump administration official who was a vital witness in special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation was blocked by the White House from answering more than 200 of its questions.
MONDAY, JULY 8
NASHVILLE AREA
NASHVILLE (AP) — Religious publishers say President Donald Trump's most recent proposed tariffs on Chinese imports could result in a Bible shortage.
MIDSTATE
CLARKSVILLE (AP) — Police in Clarksville are cracking down with the city's curfew in response to a rise in car thefts and burglaries by juveniles.
TRANSPORTATION
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Boeing's campaign to restore the reputation of its best-selling plane after two deadly crashes suffered a blow with a Saudi airline canceling an order worth up to $5.9 billion in favor of a European rival of the U.S. manufacturer.
LONDON (AP) — Britain's data regulator said Monday it wants to fine British Airways 183 million pounds ($229 million) over a data breach that compromised information on half a million customers — the biggest to date under new, tougher data regulations.
NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS
WASHINGTON (AP) — Gradually raising the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2025 would boost pay for as many as 27 million workers, according to a new report.
NEW YORK (AP) — Stocks are closing lower for a second straight day as investors try to gauge the Federal Reserve's next move on interest rates.
WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. consumers borrowed more on their credit cards in May and also took out more student and auto loans, a modest sign of economic health.
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Workers at an Amazon warehouse in suburban Minneapolis said Monday they'll hit the online retail and entertainment giant with a brief strike next Monday — its heavily touted "Prime Day" — in a continuing push to improve pay and working conditions for the facility's heavily East African workforce.
BERLIN (AP) — The radical and painful restructuring of Germany's Deutsche Bank, which is cutting 18,000 jobs, is the end of a long, failed attempt to compete with the global investment banking giants that left it overextended.
CHICAGO (AP) — Nearly one-quarter of Americans say they never plan to retire, according to a poll that suggests a disconnection between individuals' retirement plans and the realities of aging in the workforce.
NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL POLITICS
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department is challenging a federal judge's decision to allow a case to go forward that accuses President Donald Trump of profiting off the presidency.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Lower than expected tax revenues now mean there is a "significant risk" that the federal government will run out of borrowing authority in the early part of September, according to a new analysis by the Bipartisan Policy Center, a Washington think tank and advocacy group.
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump is promoting what he is calling his administration's "environmental leadership" despite its sweeping rollbacks of landmark environmental and public health protections. Critics are calling it a credulity-straining gesture aimed at winning over voters worried about climate change and pollution.
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump says he will "no longer deal" with the British ambassador to the United States following the leak of frank cables assessing his administration.
EDGEFIELD, S.C. (AP) — Attorney General William Barr says Democrats are trying to create a "public spectacle" by subpoenaing Special Counsel Robert Mueller to testify before Congress about the Russia investigation.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States will not waver from its course of maximum pressure against Iran, Vice President Mike Pence said Monday, as tensions rise and the U.S.-brokered nuclear deal between the Islamic Republic and world powers appears unraveling with the Trump administration's pullout.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department is shaking up the legal team fighting for the inclusion of a citizenship question on the 2020 census but offered no specifics on why the change was being made.
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump is stretching the truth in his legally questionable bid to get a citizenship question added to the 2020 census.
NEW YORK (AP) — A federal grand jury in New York is investigating top Republican fundraiser Elliott Broidy, examining whether he used his position as vice chair of President Donald Trump's inaugural committee to drum up business deals with foreign leaders, according to documents obtained by The Associated Press and people familiar with the matter.
FRIDAY, JULY 5
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — South Korea's president said Monday the country is committed to finding a diplomatic solution to a bitter dispute over tightened Japanese control of exports of high-tech materials used by South Korean companies to produce semiconductors and displays.
HEALTH CARE
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump is promising an executive order that he says is intended to enable the U.S. government to pay lower prices for prescription drugs.
MEMPHIS (AP) — A Tennessee hospital system says it's suspending legal actions against patients who have unpaid medical bills amid mounting public outcry over the practice.
MEDIA
MURFREESBORO (AP) — The Tennessee Journalism Hall of Fame has announced its 2019 class of inductees.
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — MAD, the long-running satirical magazine that influenced everyone from "Weird Al" Yankovic to the writers of "The Simpsons," will be leaving newsstands after its August issue. Really.
AUTO INDUSTRY
FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) — BMW CEO Harald Krueger is stepping down after a four-year tenure in which the automaker lost its lead in luxury car sales and saw an early head start in electric vehicles evaporate.
LONDON (AP) — Jaguar Land Rover says it will manufacture a range of electric cars in the U.K., a boost to an industry braced for turmoil ahead of Britain's departure from the European Union.
NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS
Bond yields rose and stocks mostly bounced back from an early slide to finish with modest losses Friday, a downbeat end on Wall Street to an otherwise milestone-setting week for the broader market.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Economist Judy Shelton, tapped by President Donald Trump for a seat on the Federal Reserve board, said on Friday she does not favor credit tightening by the Federal Reserve that would harm investors.
NASSAU, Bahamas (AP) — Billionaire coal entrepreneur Chris Cline, who worked his way out of West Virginia's underground mines to amass a fortune and become a major Republican donor, was killed in a helicopter crash along with six other Americans, his lawyer's office confirmed on Friday.
WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. employers sharply stepped up their hiring in June, adding a robust 224,000 jobs, an indication of the economy's durability after more than a decade of expansion.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The unemployment rate for Asian Americans fell to 2.1% in June, its lowest level on records dating to 2003. The result reflects Asian Americans coming off the sidelines to look for work and finding it.
Some DirecTV customers saw blacked-out channels on Thursday where they would usually see local news.
NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL POLITICS
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department said Friday it will continue to look for legal grounds to force the inclusion of a citizenship question on the 2020 Census, hours after President Donald Trump said he is "very seriously" considering an executive order to get the question on the form.
WASHINGTON (AP) — On one of the rare occasions that President Donald Trump stuck to the script, he says the script failed him.
WEDNESDAY, JULY 3
REGION
FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) — A fire destroyed a massive Jim Beam warehouse filled with about 45,000 barrels of bourbon, sending flames shooting into the night sky and generating so much heat that firetruck lights melted, authorities said Wednesday.
STATEWIDE
GATLINBURG (AP) — Great Smoky Mountains National Park is offering volunteer opportunities during service days that continue over the next few months.
COURTS
NASHVILLE (AP) — A federal judge in Nashville says there are some "serious constitutional issues" with a new Tennessee law that prohibits ministers ordained online from solemnizing weddings.
LAS VEGAS (AP) — The family of a woman killed by a gunman raining down gunfire from a Las Vegas high-rise hotel suite filed a wrongful death lawsuit Tuesday against eight gun makers and three dealers arguing their weapons are designed in a way that could be easily modified to fire like automatic weapons.
TRANSPORTATION
Boeing said Wednesday that it will provide an "initial investment" of $100 million over several years to help families and communities affected by two crashes of its 737 Max plane that killed 346 people.
NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS
NEW YORK (AP) — Investors extended a rally through a holiday-shortened day and pushed the S&P 500 index to its third straight record high close on Wednesday. Other major indexes also closed at record highs.
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Wednesday accused China and Europe of playing a "big currency manipulation game." He said the United States should match that effort, a move that directly contradicts official U.S. policy not to manipulate the dollar's value to gain trade advantages.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. trade deficit rose to a five-month high in May as the politically sensitive imbalances with China and Mexico widened.
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — When President Donald Trump's administration announced a $12 billion aid package for farmers struggling under the financial strain of his trade dispute with China, the payments were capped. But many large farming operations had no trouble finding legal ways around them, records provided to The Associated Press under the Freedom of Information Act show.
WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. services companies grew at a slower pace in June as the pace of hiring, orders and production decelerated.
WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. companies added just 102,000 jobs in June, a possible turning point that could signal a coming increase in the unemployment rate.
LONDON (AP) — Britain's economy showed alarming signs of a sharp slowdown, possibly even into recession, as uncertainty over Brexit combines with a less benign global backdrop, according to a closely watched survey of business activity in the U.K. released Wednesday.
NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL POLITICS
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump is insisting that he is not dropping efforts to include a citizenship question on the upcoming 2020 census, even as the U.S. Census Bureau has started the process of printing the questionnaire without the controversial query.
SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — Beware the phishing attempts.
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump is marshalling tanks, bombers and other machinery of war for a Fourth of July celebration that traditionally is light on military might, while critics accused him of using America's military as a political prop.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Days after the U.S. Supreme Court halted the addition of a citizenship question to the 2020 Census, the U.S. Census Bureau has started the process of printing the questionnaire without the controversial query.
ELECTION 2020
WASHINGTON (AP) — Former Vice President Joe Biden has raised $21.5 million since launching his White House bid in late April, his campaign said Wednesday. While Biden's haul will put him in the top tier of Democratic fundraisers, he lags behind Pete Buttigieg, a 37-year-old Indiana mayor who was virtually unknown a few months ago.