VOL. 48 | NO. 35 | Friday, August 30, 2024
REAL ESTATE
The average rate on a 30-year mortgage eased for the second week in a row and remains at its lowest level in more than a year, good news for prospective homebuyers facing home prices near all-time highs.
TENNESSEE TITANS
They now play key role in passing game
As the Tennessee Titans turn the page on their run-heavy past and try to put a more modern offensive scheme on the field in 2024, there are some changes coming for their running backs.
There is perhaps no better example of the changes afoot in examining the new-look Tennessee Titans offense than with the running back position.
Now that the Titans have settled who will start on the offensive line, it is a matter of getting those five guys to play well together in order to finally solve a problem that has plagued this team the previous two seasons.
NASHVILLE (AP) — Looking at the recent history of the AFC South makes it easy to envision the Tennessee Titans winning the division, if only because they have Brian Callahan as their new coach.
UT SPORTS
Tradition is starting to take a back seat at many schools as the landscape of college athletics evolves. Finding ways to accumulate more money to share with athletes and not get left behind by other colleges has resulted in changes few could have imagined only a few years ago.
KNOXVILLE (AP) — Tennessee hired Josh Heupel in January 2021 with a mission of restoring the Volunteers to not just relevancy but championship contention.
Tennessee athletic director Danny White has a new contract extension bumping his pay to $2.75 million a year and extending his deal into 2030 with incentives included if the Vols reach the new College Football Playoffs along with rewards for teams winning Southeastern Conference titles and reaching the NCAA Tournament.
NEWSMAKERS
Carol Yochem has been selected co-chair of Partnership 2030, serving alongside Mayor Freddie O’Connell. Yochem, central region president of First Horizon Bank, succeeds Lee Blank.
BRIEFS
Kroger and Albertsons defended their plan to merge – and tried to overcome the U.S. government’s objections – in a federal court hearing that began Monday in Oregon.
BEHIND THE WHEEL
Now is a great time to purchase a used electric vehicle, as the average price for a used EV has dropped about 20% compared to this time last year, Edmunds transaction data reveals.
BUSINESS BOOK REVIEW
How far from your hand is a book? Probably not far and, look, you have this article in your fingers so you’re obviously someone who knows where to find reading material. Chances are you went to one of two main sources to get your book, right? Read about them in (guess what?) more new books....
COURTS
NEW YORK (AP) — A federal judge on Tuesday swiftly rejected Donald Trump's request to intervene in his New York hush money criminal case, spurning the former president's attempt at an end-run around the state court where he was convicted and is set to be sentenced in two weeks.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected Oklahoma's emergency appeal seeking to restore a $4.5 million grant for family planning services in an ongoing dispute over the state's refusal to refer pregnant women to a nationwide hotline that provides information about abortion and other options.
ELECTION 2024
WASHINGTON (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris used a New Hampshire campaign stop on Wednesday to propose an expansion of tax incentives for small businesses, a pro-entrepreneur plan that may soften her previous calls for wealthy Americans and large corporations to pay higher taxes.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration announced wide-ranging actions Wednesday meant to call out Russian influence in the upcoming U.S. presidential election, unsealing criminal charges against two employees of a Russian state-run media company and seizing internet domains used by the Kremlin to spread disinformation.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris plans to propose on Wednesday a tenfold increase in federal tax incentives for small business startup expenses, from $5,000 to $50,000, hoping to help spur a record 25 million new small business applications over her four-year term should she win the presidency in November.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump is betting that Americans crave trillions of dollars in tax cuts — and that growth will be so fantastic that it's not worth worrying about budget deficits.
ATLANTA (AP) — A federal judge in Atlanta ruled Tuesday that Donald Trump and his campaign must stop using the song "Hold On, I'm Coming" while the family of one of the song's co-writers pursues a lawsuit against the former president over its use.
AUTO INDUSTRY
DETROIT (AP) — About 1,000 workers at a General Motors joint venture electric vehicle battery plant in Spring Hill, Tennessee, will get big pay raises now that they have joined the United Auto Workers union.
TECHNOLOGY
How do you know if an artificial intelligence system is so powerful that it poses a security danger and shouldn't be unleashed without careful oversight?
MEDIA
NEW YORK (AP) — "Very demure, very mindful" has become the latest vocabulary defining the internet's summer. And TikTok creator Jools Lebron is now working to trademark uses of her now-viral words.
SAO PAULO (AP) — Elon Musk's satellite-based internet service provider Starlink backtracked Tuesday and said it will comply with a Brazilian Supreme Court justice's order to block the billionaire's social media platform, X.
ECONOMY
WASHINGTON (AP) — America's employers posted fewer job openings in July than they had the previous month, a sign that hiring could cool in the coming months.
NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS
WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House is signaling an openness to blocking the acquisition of U.S. Steel by Nippon Steel, as a government review of the proposed takeover by the Japanese company is on the cusp of ending.
U.S. stock indexes lost more ground Wednesday, with declines in the technology, energy and other sectors adding to Wall Street's losses a day after the market's worst skid in a month.
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — The chief executive officer of Kroger insisted Wednesday that merging with rival Albertsons would allow the two supermarket companies to lower prices and more effectively compete with retail giants like Walmart and Amazon.
NEW YORK (AP) — Members of the Nordstrom family with the help of a Mexican retail group are offering to take the century-old department store private for $3.76 billion per share cash, months after first expressing interest in a buyout.
Dollar Tree is slashing its full-year earnings and sales forecasts as its customers continue to struggle with higher prices and spend less.
DALLAS (AP) — Elliott Investment Management, a hedge fund urging Southwest Airlines to dump its CEO and chairman, said Tuesday it has acquired enough of the company's stock to call a special meeting of shareholders.
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 3
TENNESSEE TITANS
NASHVILLE (AP) — The Tennessee Titans are counting heavily on an almost completely revamped secondary and finally get to see them all work together Sunday in their season opener in Chicago.
UT SPORTS
KNOXVILLE (AP) — Defensive lineman Emmanuel Okoye will miss this season after injuring his knee in fall camp for the 15th-ranked Tennessee Volunteers.
COURTS
WASHINGTON (AP) — Three gun shops that sold nearly three dozen firearms to a man who trafficked the weapons in and around Washington, D.C., are facing a new lawsuit jointly filed Tuesday by attorneys general for Maryland and the nation's capital.
ELECTION 2024
LA CROSSE, Wis. (AP) — After a summer of historic tumult, the path to the presidency for both Kamala Harris and Donald Trump this fall is becoming much clearer.
WASHINGTON (AP) — When he first emerged on social media, the user known as Harlan claimed to be a New Yorker and an Army veteran who supported Donald Trump for president. Harlan said he was 29, and his profile picture showed a smiling, handsome young man.
PITTSBURGH (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris used a joint campaign appearance with President Joe Biden in the critical swing state of Pennsylvania on Monday to say that U.S. Steel should remain domestically owned — concurring with the White House's monthslong opposition to the company's planned sale to Japan's Nippon Steel.
AUTO INDUSTRY
DETROIT (AP) — U.S auto safety regulators have closed a five-year investigation into seat belt failures in some General Motors SUVs after the company issued extended warranty coverage.
SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP) — Despite slowing U.S. electric vehicle sales, Hyundai on Tuesday rolled out the 2025 versions of its Ioniq 5 electric SUV with improved battery range and charging aimed at broadening the appeal of vehicles to be built at a massive new Georgia factory.
DETROIT (AP) — Another death has been linked to dangerous Takata air bag inflators by U.S. regulators, the 28th in the United States.
FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) — Germany's Volkswagen says auto industry headwinds mean it can't rule out plant closings in its home country - and must drop a longstanding job protection pledge in force since 1994 that would have barred layoffs through 2029.
FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) — Former Volkswagen Group CEO Martin Winterkorn went on trial Tuesday on charges of fraud and market manipulation in connection with the corporate scandal over Volkswagen's use of rigged software that let millions of cars cheat on emissions tests and emit high levels of harmful pollutants.
TECHNOLOGY
THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AP) — The Dutch data protection watchdog on Tuesday issued facial recognition startup Clearview AI with a fine of 30.5 million euros ($33.7 million) over its creation of what the agency called an "illegal database" of billion of photos of faces.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Imagine a customer-service center that speaks your language, no matter what it is.
RESTAURANTS
NEW YORK (AP) — Parisa Imanirad, a scientist and cancer researcher from San Francisco, is married and has a wide circle of friends. But once or twice a week, she goes to a restaurant by herself.
NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS
NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stocks tumbled to their worst day since an early August sell-off after another report raised worries about the economy's health.
ECONOMY
NEW YORK (AP) — In 2020 and 2021, COVID-19 Economic Injury Disaster Loans were a lifeline for small businesses.
WASHINGTON (AP) — When Jerome Powell delivered a high-profile speech last month, the Federal Reserve chair came the closest he ever had to declaring that the inflation surge that gripped the nation for three painful years was now essentially defeated.
NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL POLITICS
LONDON (AP) — U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer's government said Monday that it's suspending exports of some weapons to Israel because they could be used to break international law — a move with limited military impact intended to increase pressure by Israel's frustrated allies for an end to the war in Gaza.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. government has seized a luxury jet used by Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro that officials say was illegally purchased through a shell company and smuggled out of the United States in violation of sanctions and export control laws.
FRIDAY, AUGUST 30
SEC SPORTS
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) — The Southeastern Conference will release player availability reports in football, baseball and basketball before league games this season as part of safeguarding efforts in college athletics amid the growth of legalized gambling, the conference announced Thursday.
SPORTS
EAST LANSING, Mich. (AP) — The 2026 World Cup is coming to North America with an ambitious plan, expanding the field by 50% and spreading the soccer spectacle over 16 cities in three countries with multiple climates and elevations.
WEST TENNESSEE
MEMPHIS (AP) — The Memphis City Council on Friday sued the commission that oversees the Tennessee city's elections for removing three gun control questions from the November ballot after top Republican state leaders threatened to withhold tens of millions of dollars in state funding.
COURTS
NEW YORK (AP) — Former President Donald Trump asked a federal court late Thursday to intervene in his New York hush money criminal case, seeking a pathway to overturn his felony conviction and indefinitely delay his sentencing next month.
ELECTION 2024
SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris on Thursday defended shifting away from some of her more liberal positions in her first major television interview of her presidential campaign, but insisted her "values have not changed" even as she is "seeking consensus."
After avoiding a probing interview by a journalist for the first month of her sudden presidential campaign, Vice President Kamala Harris' first one Thursday was notable mostly in how routine it seemed.
NEW YORK (AP) — After struggling to drum up interest following its Cannes Film Festival premiere, "The Apprentice," starring Sebastian Stan as a young Donald Trump, has found a distributor that plans to release the film shortly before the election in November.
POTTERVILLE, Mich. (AP) — Former President Donald Trump says that, if he wins a second term, he wants to make IVF treatment free for women, but did not detail how he would fund his plan or precisely how it would work.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump is scheduled to appear Friday at the annual gathering of Moms for Liberty, a national nonprofit that has spearheaded efforts to get mentions of LGBTQ+ identity and structural racism out of K-12 classrooms.
ATLANTA (AP) — The effort to make the peace between Donald Trump and Georgia's powerful Republican governor began in a sprawling neo-Victorian mansion in the exclusive Atlanta enclave of Buckhead.
NEW YORK (AP) — The reported altercation at Arlington National Cemetery involving Donald Trump's staff was far from the first time that veterans or the families of service members have criticized the former president for words or behavior they saw as disparaging.
NEW YORK (AP) — Swedish supergroup ABBA has asked Donald Trump to stop using their music at campaign rallies, but the Republican presidential nominee's campaign says it has permission.
NEW YORK (AP) — In a new book, former President Donald Trump calls his 2018 summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki "a GREAT meeting" and threatens to imprison Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg if the tech mogul does anything this year akin to his $400 million donation to local election offices in 2020.
MUSIC INDUSTRY
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Every day, millions of people use Spotify to stream music. A few years ago, it would've felt like an impossibility: Click, and bam — a seemingly endless catalog of recorded music opens up, right at your fingertips.
TRAVEL
Airports, highways, beaches and theme parks are expected to be packed across the U.S. this Labor Day weekend as a lot Americans mark the unofficial end of summer the same way they celebrated the season's unofficial start: by traveling.
HEALTH CARE
A Boar's Head deli meat plant in Virginia tied to a deadly food poisoning outbreak repeatedly violated federal regulations, including instances of mold, insects, liquid dripping from ceilings, and meat and fat residue on walls, floors and equipment, newly released records show.
YOUR MONEY
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Strong growth for stocks on Wall Street this year have helped juice gains for savers with retirement accounts.
ECONOMY
WASHINGTON (AP) — An inflation measure closely tracked by the Federal Reserve remained low last month, extending a trend of cooling price increases that clears the way for the Fed to start cutting its key interest rate next month for the first time in 4 1/2 years.
FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) — Inflation in the 20 European Union countries that use the euro fell sharply to 2.2% in August, opening the door for the European Central Bank to cut interest rates as the ECB and the U.S. Federal Reserve prepare to lower borrowing costs to support growth and jobs.
NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS
Stocks on Wall Street bounced back from a midafternoon fade Friday, and the market closed out its fourth-straight winning month with solid gains.
NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL POLITICS
BEIJING (AP) — Beijing and Washington will plan for a phone call in the coming weeks between Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Joe Biden, the White House said Wednesday after National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan met Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Beijing.
THURSDAY, AUGUST 29
MUSIC INDUSTRY
BERLIN (AP) — The suspects in the foiled plot to attack Taylor Swift concerts in Vienna earlier this month sought to kill "tens of thousands" of fans before the CIA discovered intelligence that disrupted the planning and led to arrests, the agency's deputy director said.
COURTS
PARIS (AP) — French authorities handed preliminary charges to Telegram CEO Pavel Durov on Wednesday for allowing alleged criminal activity on his messaging app and barred him from leaving France pending further investigation.
PHOENIX (AP) — Michael Lacey, a founder of the lucrative classified site Backpage.com, was sentenced Wednesday to five years in prison and fined $3 million for a single money laundering count in a sprawling case involving allegations of a yearslong scheme to promote and profit from prostitution through classified ads.
ELECTION 2024
WASHINGTON (AP) — An Arlington National Cemetery official was "abruptly pushed aside" in an altercation with former President Donald Trump's staff during a wreath-laying ceremony to honor service members killed in the Afghanistan War withdrawal, but she declined to press charges, an Army spokesman said Thursday.
NEW YORK (AP) — Next month's debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump won't have an audience, live microphones when candidates aren't speaking, or written notes, according to rules that ABC News, the host network, shared this week with both campaigns.
SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, sat down Thursday for their first major television interview of their presidential campaign as the duo travels in southeast Georgia on a bus tour.
Life, death, crime and taxes will be on ballots for voters to decide this fall.
LANSING, Mich. (AP) — Donald Trump is scheduled to campaign Thursday in Michigan and Wisconsin as the former president ramps up battleground state travel heading into the traditional Labor Day turn toward the fall election.
HINESVILLE, Ga. (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris and her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, dropped in on a high school band practice Wednesday as part of a two-day bus tour through southeast Georgia, a critical battleground state that Democrats just narrowly won four years ago.
EDUCATION
WASHINGTON (AP) — After a long summer of technical glitches, most of America's prospective college students finally applied for federal financial aid — an annual process upended by a redesign-gone-bad.
MEDIA
RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — A Brazilian Supreme Court justice on Wednesday threatened to shut down the local operations of X, formerly Twitter, unless its billionaire owner Elon Musk names a legal representative in Brazil within 24 hours.
TECHNOLOGY
Cybersecurity specialist CrowdStrike Holdings on Wednesday estimated it absorbed a roughly $60 million blow to its sales pipeline last month after its botched handling of a software update triggered a technology meltdown that stranded thousands of people in airports in addition to other exasperating disruptions.
LAW ENFORCEMENT
WASHINGTON (AP) — The FBI is failing to report all suspected child sexual abuse cases to appropriate law enforcement agencies, according to a Justice Department watchdog report released Thursday. The review found no evidence that the FBI complied with mandatory reporting requirements in about 50 percent of the cases examined by the inspector general.
AUTO INDUSTRY
DETROIT (AP) — Jaguar is telling owners of about 3,000 electric SUVs to park them outdoors and away from structures due to the risk of battery fires.
ECONOMY
WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. economy grew last quarter at a healthy 3% annual pace, fueled by strong consumer spending and business investment, the government said Thursday in an upgrade of its initial assessment.
The number of Americans filing for unemployment benefits fell slightly last week as the U.S. labor market remains healthy in the face of high interest rates.
NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS
Stocks closed with mixed results on Wall Street after some late-day selling.
NEW YORK (AP) — Best Buy, the nation's largest consumer electronics chain, on Thursday reported another quarterly drop in sales due to Americans pulling back on purchases of appliances and consumer-electronics gadgets to focus on essentials.
Nvidia has once again turned out quarterly results that easily exceeded Wall Street's forecast s. The company has seen soaring demand for its semiconductors, which are used to power artificial intelligence applications.
NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL POLITICS
BEIJING (AP) — Chinese President Xi Jinping met with U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan on Thursday in Beijing, on a visit with the stated aim of keeping communications open between the two powers, as the relationship between China and the United States has become increasingly tense in recent years.