VOL. 45 | NO. 3 | Friday, January 15, 2021
WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. long-term mortgage rates rose this week in an indication that the long period of record-low rates could soon be over.
TENNESSEE TITANS
For those who have followed the Titans in their 20-plus years in Nashville now, you know what a thorn the Baltimore Ravens have been for this franchise.
The four downs segment will be a little different this week since the Titans don’t have an opponent to plan for, thanks to their playoff loss to Baltimore. Instead, our focus will shift to the four remaining games in the NFL Divisional Round.
NEW YORK (AP) — The New York Jets completed their in-person second interview with Tennessee Titans offensive coordinator Arthur Smith on Thursday as their search for a head coach continues.
NEWSMAKERS
Patterson Intellectual Property Law has elected Scott M. Douglass to a shareholder of the firm.
BRIEFS
Amazon has partnered with the Nashville Children’s Theatre for its 90th anniversary season, allowing the organization to expand its reach and offerings to students across Tennessee.
BEHIND THE WHEEL
The immense popularity of small SUVs means that every manufacturer competing in this space has to bring its A-game.
PERSONAL FINANCE
None of us knows everything we need to know about money, so we may turn to experts for help. But some money professionals who offer advice are not qualified to do so – nor are they required to put our interests ahead of theirs.
CAREER CORNER
As the pandemic continues to rage on in the United States, many of us have felt locked indoors. We’ve felt isolated. It’s been lonely. It’s scary.
MILLENNIAL MONEY
As you lay the groundwork for 2021 financial resolutions, take inventory of your credit cards to see if they’re still in line with your goals and priorities.
PREDATORS
7:18amNASHVILLE (AP) — Filip Forsberg has been known to pinpoint his wrist shot with almost surgical precision. This one was so good it stirred up everyone on the bench — even the physicians.
STATE GOVERNMENT
7:17amNASHVILLE (AP) — Tennessee's GOP-dominant Legislature is poised to approve a contentious plan Friday for a drastic overhaul of the state's Medicaid program.
TRANSPORTATION
7:23amOMAHA, Neb. (AP) — Two major railroad workers unions have asked the Department of Homeland Security to beef up security on Amtrak and other passenger lines, including by creating a no-ride list akin to the no-fly list that prevents people identified as risks from boarding planes.
VIRUS OUTBREAK
7:21amATLANTA (AP) — The coronavirus vaccines have been rolled out unevenly across the U.S., but four states in the Deep South have had particularly dismal inoculation rates that have alarmed health experts and frustrated residents.
7:20amWASHINGTON (AP) — President-elect Joe Biden has picked a former Food and Drug commissioner to lead vaccine science in his drive to put 100 million shots into the arms of Americans in his administration's first 100 days and stem the COVID-19 pandemic.
7:20amMADRID (AP) — While most of Europe kicked off 2021 with earlier curfews or stay-at-home orders, authorities in Spain insist the new coronavirus variant causing havoc elsewhere is not to blame for a sharp resurgence of cases and that the country can avoid a full lockdown even as its hospitals fill up.
7:22amLONDON (AP) — Britain's government has banned travel from South America and Portugal to ensure a new variant of COVID-19 found in Brazil doesn't derail the country's vaccination program, although there are no signs the variant has reached the U.K.
NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS
7:52amNEW YORK (AP) — Retail sales fell for a third straight month as a surge in virus cases kept people away from stores during the holiday shopping season.
7:52amWASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. wholesale prices rose 0.3% in December led by a the biggest jump in energy costs since June.
7:26amWILMINGTON, Del. (AP) — President-elect Joe Biden has unveiled a $1.9 trillion coronavirus plan to end "a crisis of deep human suffering" by speeding up vaccines and pumping out financial help to those struggling with the pandemic's prolonged economic fallout.
7:21amCHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) — JPMorgan Chase & Co., the nation's largest bank by assets, said its fourth quarter profits jumped by 42% from a year earlier, as the firm's investment banking division had a stellar quarter and its balance sheet improved despite the pandemic.
7:22amLONDON (AP) — The British economy looks set to fall back into recession after official figures on Friday showed that it shrank by 2.6% month-on-month in November, when much of the country was in a second coronavirus lockdown.
NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL POLITICS
7:24amWASHINGTON (AP) — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has tapped nine of her most trusted allies in the House to argue the case for President Donald Trump's impeachment.
7:25amWASHINGTON (AP) — Now that the House has impeached President Donald Trump for the second time, Speaker Nancy Pelosi must figure out the best strategy for arguing the case before the Senate.
7:24amWASHINGTON (AP) — President-elect Joe Biden is nominating New York emergency department commissioner Deanne Criswell to serve as the Federal Emergency Management Agency administrator and has tapped former CIA deputy director David Cohen to return to the agency in the same role he served during the Obama administration.
7:23amWASHINGTON (AP) — As President Donald Trump's supporters massed outside the Capitol last week and sang the national anthem, a line of men wearing olive-drab helmets and body armor trudged purposefully up the marble stairs in a single-file line, each man holding the jacket collar of the one ahead.
7:25amWASHINGTON (AP) — Chuck Schumer is used to drinking from a firehose. But the incoming Senate majority leader has never taken on such a torrent of challenges, with the opening days of both the Biden administration and Democratic control of the Senate coming at the very moment an impeachment trial gets underway.
THURSDAY, JANUARY 14
STATE GOVERNMENT
NASHVILLE (AP) — A statue of country music icon Dolly Parton could be added to the Capitol grounds in Nashville, Tennessee, if one state lawmaker gets his way.
STATEWIDE
NASHVILLE (AP) — Former Gov. Bill Haslam's top deputy is joining the office of newly installed U.S. Sen. Bill Hagerty as his state director.
NASHVILLE AREA
NASHVILLE (AP) — Tennessee State University and a new global campus based in Atlanta will work together with the Historically Black Colleges and Universities community to offer leadership and career development programming, the school said.
EDUCATION
ATLANTA (AP) — Apple and a major utility are each giving $25 million to launch a learning center and business incubator for students of historically Black colleges and universities, part of an outpouring of giving to such schools in the wake of the summer's protests over racial injustice.
TECHNOLOGY
OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) — Encrypted messaging apps Signal and Telegram are seeing huge upticks in downloads from Apple and Google's app stores. Facebook-owned WhatsApp, by contrast, is seeing its growth decline following a fiasco that forced the company to clarify a privacy update it had sent to users.
MEDIA
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey defended his company's ban of President Donald Trump in a philosophical Twitter thread that is his first public statement on the subject.
AUTO INDUSTRY
DETROIT (AP) — A new government report says gas mileage for new vehicles dropped and pollution increased in model year 2019 for the first time in five years.
DETROIT (AP) — The number of people killed on the nation's highways rose 4.6% in the first nine months of 2020 despite coronavirus lockdowns that curtailed driving early in the year.
DETROIT (AP) — Tesla Inc. is balking at recalling about 159,000 vehicles with potentially defective touch screens, so U.S. safety regulators are moving to force the company to take action.
TRANSPORTATION
Airlines and airports say they are stepping up security before next week's presidential inauguration, with Delta, United and Alaska saying they will prohibit passengers flying to the Washington area from putting guns in checked bags.
JACKSONVILLE, Fla. (AP) — Flights were delayed when an air traffic control center near Jacksonville, Florida, had to close down for several hours for extensive cleaning after an employee tested positive for COVID-19.
Federal safety officials said Wednesday they stepping up enforcement against unruly airline passengers after confrontations on flights to and from Washington, D.C., around the time of the riot at the U.S. Capitol by supporters of President Donald Trump.
COURTS
WASHINGTON (AP) — Amid insurrection and impeachment, the Supreme Court's big news Thursday was a decision in a bankruptcy case. Wednesday brought arguments over the Federal Trade Commission's ability to recapture ill-gotten gains.
VIRUS OUTBREAK
The rapid expansion of COVID-19 vaccinations to senior citizens across the U.S. has led to bottlenecks, system crashes and hard feelings in many states because of overwhelming demand for the shots.
As vaccinations continue across the U.S., some companies are offering financial incentives to encourage their workers to get the shots.
WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) — A coronavirus action plan being unveiled by President-elect Joe Biden centers on a mass vaccination campaign and closer coordination among all levels of government.
WUHAN, China (AP) — A global team of researchers arrived Thursday in the Chinese city where the coronavirus pandemic was first detected to conduct a politically sensitive investigation into its origins amid uncertainty about whether Beijing might try to prevent embarrassing discoveries.
State leaders around the U.S. are increasingly pushing for schools to reopen this winter — pressuring them, even — as teachers begin to gain access to the vaccine against the raging pandemic.
WUHAN, China (AP) — The WHO team of international researchers that arrived in the central Chinese city of Wuhan on Thursday hopes to find clues to the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic.
BEIRUT (AP) — Lebanese authorities began enforcing an 11-day nationwide shutdown and round the clock curfew Thursday, hoping to limit the spread of coronavirus infections spinning out of control after the holiday period.
Germany has too many loopholes in its coronavirus lockdown rules, the head of the country's disease control agency said as figures published Thursday showed the highest number of daily deaths since the start of the pandemic.
PARIS (AP) — As the wan winter sun sets over France's Champagne region, the countdown clock kicks in.
NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS
A late slide in several Big Tech stocks left major indexes lower on Wall Street, even as small-company stocks marched to another record high.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell sought Thursday to tamp down any concerns that the Fed might soon withdraw some of its support for the U.S. economy and stressed that any such pullback would be signaled far in advance.
NEW YORK (AP) — Petco, the pet store chain, went public again Thursday, hoping to cash in on people's obsessions with their furry pets.
SAN RAMON, Calif. (AP) — Google has completed its $2.1 billion acquisition of fitness-gadget maker Fitbit, a deal that could help the internet company grow even stronger while U.S. government regulators pursue an antitrust case aimed at undermining its power.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The number of people seeking unemployment aid soared last week to 965,000, the most since late August and a sign that the resurgent virus has likely escalated layoffs.
Delta Air Lines closed the books on a disastrous 2020 with a comparatively small fourth-quarter loss, and executives expect a few more rocky months before — they hope — widespread coronavirus vaccinations and testing might salvage something of the upcoming summer travel season.
BEIJING (AP) — China on Thursday demanded Washington drop a ban on cotton and tomato imports from its Muslim northwest over complaints they are produced by forced labor, which a spokesman dismissed as the "lie of the century."
NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL POLITICS
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump's impeachment trial could begin on Inauguration Day, just as Democrat Joe Biden takes the oath of office in an ever-more-extraordinary end to the defeated president's tenure in the White House.
WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. officials say Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy has approved bringing in 21,000 National Guard members to Washington, D.C., to assist with security surrounding the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Constitution says the chief justice is to preside at the impeachment trial of a president. But what about an ex-president?
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump was impeached by the U.S. House for a historic second time, charged with "incitement of insurrection" over the deadly mob siege of the U.S. Capitol in a swift and stunning collapse of his final days in office.
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump has been impeached by the House days before leaving office, becoming the first American president to be impeached twice.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Now that President Donald Trump has been impeached by the House of Representatives a second time, keeping him from holding office again could be Congress' next step.
WASHINGTON (AP) — All through downtown Washington, the primary sound for several blocks was the beeping of forklifts unloading more fencing.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell pointedly did not rule out that he might eventually vote to convict the now twice-impeached President Donald Trump, but he also blocked a quick Senate impeachment trial.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The scene in the U.S. Capitol seemed jarringly disconnected. Inside the House chamber, the nation's lawmakers spoke with solemnity about democracy, the rule of law and the words of Abraham Lincoln as they undertook a vote to remove the president from office.
WASHINGTON (AP) — His place in the history books rewritten, President Donald Trump endured his second impeachment largely alone and silent.