VOL. 46 | NO. 25 | Friday, June 24, 2022
RICHARD COURTNEY: REALTY CHECK
Everyone knows the Federal Reserve raised rates last week by 0.75 percentage points, the biggest increase since 1994. But few know what it means in terms of residential real estate.
REAL ESTATE
WASHINGTON (AP) — Average long-term U.S. mortgage rates inched up this week following last week's mammoth jump, the biggest in 35 years.
TENNESSEE TITANS
The offseason work is in the books for the Tennessee Titans.
NEWSMAKERS
Ron Snitker has been named the first chief diversity officer at the Nashville-based Waller Lansden Dortch & Davis.
BEHIND THE WHEEL
If you’re in the market for a new midsize sedan like a Honda Accord and have the budget for a fully loaded trim, then there’s a good chance you can afford an entry-level luxury sedan. Luxury models typically offer more power, comfort, refinement and, of course, brand-name prestige. Two options to consider this year are the Audi A3 and Volvo S60.
PERSONAL FINANCE
Health care bills are about to become far less threatening to the financial well-being of millions of Americans.
CAREER CORNER
Employers are continuing to struggle to find and retain great talent with unemployment still relatively low. The huge jumps in inflation and the changing landscape of work are incentivizing employees to consider switching jobs, and employees are prioritizing themselves and their quality of life more than in the past.
BUSINESS BOOK REVIEW
You never had trouble saying “goodbye.” Goodbye, paycheck! Goodbye to the space in your closet and kitchen, spare change from the couch and the car console! Goodbye, everyone! You won’t be back any time soon because you’re heading for the mall now.
MILLENNIAL MONEY
Much can happen in six months. That’s why, as we close out the first half of the year, it makes sense to check in on your financial life.
MIDSTATE
BUCHANAN (AP) — Tennessee officials have opened a new lodge at Paris Landing State Park that features 91 guest rooms.
COURTS
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Tuesday put on hold a lower court ruling that Louisiana must draw new congressional districts before the 2022 elections to increase Black voting power.
NASHVILLE (AP) — A federal court on Tuesday allowed Tennessee's ban on abortion as early as six weeks into pregnancy to take effect, citing the Supreme Court's decision last week to overturn the landmark Roe v. Wade abortion rights case.
PARIS (AP) — A Paris court ruled on Tuesday that the French government failed to sufficiently stock up on surgical masks at the outset of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020 and prevent the virus from spreading.
AUTO INDUSTRY
WASHINGTON (AP) — Nissan is recalling nearly 323,000 Pathfinder SUVs in the U.S. because the hoods can unexpectedly fly open and block the driver's view.
HEALTH CARE
LONDON (AP) — The European Medicines Agency says it will begin reviewing data to decide if a smallpox vaccine made by the pharmaceutical company Bavarian Nordic might also be authorized for monkeypox, amid a growing outbreak of the disease across the continent.
MEDIA
WASHINGTON (AP) — Instagram is blocking posts that mention abortion from public view, in some cases requiring its users to confirm their age before letting them view posts that offer up information about the procedure.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Facebook and Instagram have begun promptly removing posts that offer abortion pills to women who may not be able to access them following a Supreme Court decision that stripped away constitutional protections for the procedure.
NEW YORK (AP) — The company planning to buy Donald Trump's new social media business has disclosed a federal grand jury investigation that it says could impede or even prevent its acquisition of the Truth Social app.
ENVIRONMENT
MANCHESTER (AP) — Since its debut on a rural Tennessee farm two decades ago, the Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival strived to be one of the country's greenest music festivals, investing in recycling, composting, solar energy and other improvements.
BERLIN (AP) — Members of the Group of Seven major economies pledged Tuesday to create a new " climate club " for nations that want to take more ambitious action to tackle global warming, putting them on a possible collision course with China.
TOURISM
TOKYO (AP) — The rickshaw men in Tokyo are adding English-speaking staff, a sure sign Japan is bracing for a return of tourists from abroad.
NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS
Stocks closed broadly lower on Wall Street Tuesday, after a discouraging snapshot of U.S. consumer confidence stoked investors' worries about the risk that sharply higher interest rates and pervasive inflation could trigger a recession.
WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. consumer confidence slipped to its lowest level in 16 months as persistent inflation and rising interest rates have Americans as pessimistic as they've been about the future in almost a decade.
JOHNSTOWN, Ohio (AP) — When President Joe Biden applauded a decision by Intel Corp. to build a $20 billion semiconductor operation on "1,000 empty acres of land" in Ohio, it didn't sit well with Tressie Corsi.
SINTRA, Portugal (AP) — The head of the European Central Bank said Tuesday that it will move gradually to combat soaring consumer prices with interest rate hikes in July and September but will keep its options open to "stamp out" inflation if it surges faster than expected.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Russia appears to have defaulted on its foreign debt for the first time since the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, and the U.S. and its allies are taking aim at the former Soviet Union's second largest export industry after energy — gold.
LONDON (AP) — British Prime Minister Boris Johnson's bid to rip up parts of the post-Brexit trade deal he signed with the European Union has cleared its first hurdle in Parliament, despite warnings from opponents that the move is illegal.
NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL POLITICS
WASHINGTON (AP) — Former President Donald Trump dismissed the presence of armed protesters headed to the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and even endorsed their calls to "hang Mike Pence," a key former White House aide told House investigators Tuesday, describing chaotic scenes inside and outside the executive mansion as Trump argued to accompany his supporters.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Just two years out of college, Cassidy Hutchinson said she watched as a valet mopped up the president's lunch after he had smashed his plate against a wall. Donald Trump was in a rage because his attorney general had refuted his claims that the election he lost had been stolen.
NEW YORK (AP) — The news story that reportedly caused former President Donald Trump to throw his lunch against a White House wall came because of an interview that former Attorney General William Barr had arranged with The Associated Press.
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden said Tuesday that the deaths of migrants who were in the back of a tractor-trailer in Texas was "horrifying and heartbreaking."
MADRID (AP) — Russia's invasion of Ukraine has sparked a "fundamental shift" in NATO's approach to defense, and member states will have to boost their military spending in an increasingly unstable world, the leader of the alliance said Tuesday.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The man who wounded President Ronald Reagan in 1981 apologized for his actions Tuesday and said he doesn't remember what he was feeling when he fired the shots that also wounded three others.
WASHINGTON (AP) — A conservative lawyer who aided former President Donald Trump's efforts to undo the 2020 election results and who has been repeatedly referenced in House hearings on the Jan. 6, 2021 assault on the Capitol said in a court filing Monday that federal agents seized his cell phone last week.
UKRAINE
KREMENCHUK, Ukraine (AP) — French President Emmanuel Macron said Tuesday that Russia "cannot and should not win" the war in Ukraine, a day after a Russian missile attack on a crowded shopping mall that killed 18 put the conflict's terrible toll on full view.
KREMENCHUK, Ukraine (AP) — Russian long-range bombers struck a crowded shopping mall in Ukraine's central city of Kremenchuk with a missile on Monday, raising fears of what President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called an "unimaginable" number of victims in "one of the most daring terrorist attacks in European history."
MONDAY, JUNE 27
AUTO RACING
LEBANON (AP) — To be clear, Chase Elliott will take a victory anywhere he can get one.
LEBANON (AP) — Chase Elliott salvaged a crummy day for Hendrick Motorsports and interrupted a potential Toyota rout by winning the rain-drenched race at Nashville Superspeedway on Sunday night.
LEBANON (AP) — The man who founded Speedway Motorsports had a presence Sunday during NASCAR's Ally 400 race at the track his company bought last November.
COURTS
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Monday ruled for doctors who face criminal charges for overprescribing powerful pain medication in a case arising from the opioid addiction crisis.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court said Monday that a high school football coach who sought to kneel and pray on the field after games was protected by the Constitution, a decision that opponents said would open the door to "much more coercive prayer" in public schools.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court made it easier Monday for certain prison inmates to seek shorter sentences under a bipartisan 2018 federal law aimed at reducing racial disparities in prison terms for cocaine crimes.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court ruling to overturn its 1973 Roe v. Wade decision is unpopular with a majority of Americans — but did that matter?
NASHVILLE (AP) — Licensed attorneys may apply for a vacant criminal court judge seat in Knox County.
MOSCOW (AP) — More than four months after she was arrested at a Moscow airport for cannabis possession, American basketball star Brittney Griner is to appear in court Monday for a preliminary hearing ahead of her trial.
ENVIRONMENT
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — The state-owned oil and gas company Qatar Energy said Monday it is joining a new industry-led initiative to reduce nearly all methane emissions from operations by 2030.
TECHNOLOGY
NEW YORK (AP) — People with hearing loss have a new ally in their efforts to navigate the world: Captions that aren't limited to their television screens and streaming services.
BANKING
ZURICH (AP) — A Swiss court on Monday said it has fined Credit Suisse more than $2 million for failing to prevent money laundering linked to a Bulgarian criminal organization a decade-and-a-half ago.
COVID-19
U.S. health authorities are facing a critical decision: whether to offer new COVID-19 booster shots this fall that are modified to better match recent changes of the shape-shifting coronavirus.
NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS
Stocks ended mixed after a day of wavering between gains and losses Monday as the market cools off following a rare winning week.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Furious about surging prices at the gasoline station and the supermarket, many consumers feel they know just where to cast blame: On greedy companies that relentlessly jack up prices and pocket the profits.
Russia is poised to default on its foreign debt for the first time since the Bolshevik Revolution more than a century ago, further alienating the country from the global financial system following sanctions imposed over its war in Ukraine.
BRUSSELS (AP) — European Union countries agreed Monday that all natural gas storage in the 27-nation bloc should be topped up to at least 80% capacity for next winter as they prepare for the possibility of Russia further reducing deliveries.
CAMARILLO, Calif. (AP) — The average U.S. price of regular-grade gasoline fell by 4 cents per gallon in the past two weeks to $5.05 for regular grade, it was reported Sunday.
NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL POLITICS
WASHINGTON (AP) — The House Jan. 6 panel is calling a surprise hearing this week to present evidence it says it recently obtained, raising expectations of new bombshells in the sweeping investigation into the Capitol insurrection.
WASHINGTON (AP) — During Brett Kavanaugh's 2018 Supreme Court confirmation hearings, then-California Sen. Kamala Harris asked the judge if he thought women's privacy rights extended to choosing to have an abortion. Kavanaugh declined to answer.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Public tours of the White House will return to a full operating schedule next month, after nearly a year and a half of disruptions due to the coronavirus pandemic.
ELMAU, Germany (AP) — In 1975, leaders of the world's wealthy democracies gathered to deal with an energy crisis sparked by a war and rampant inflation. Those same sore points are bedeviling their successors representing 46% of the global economy at this week's Group of Seven summit, with high consumer and energy prices threatening to trigger recessions in the U.S. and Europe.
WASHINGTON (AP) — A political shift is beginning to take hold across the U.S. as tens of thousands of suburban swing voters who helped fuel the Democratic Party's gains in recent years are becoming Republicans.
UKRAINE
WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. is planning to buy and send more medium- to long-range missile systems to Ukraine, a move officials hope will help Ukrainian forces hold onto the last remaining segments of land in the eastern Donbas that Russia has not yet been able to capture.
GARMISCH-PARTENKIRCHEN, Germany (AP) — Leaders of the world's biggest developed economies are weighing a cap on the price of Russian oil meant to strike at the main pillar of the Kremlin's finances following its invasion of Ukraine — and to limit the havoc that high energy prices are wreaking worldwide.
SAN DIEGO (AP) — A $325 million superyacht seized by the United States from a sanctioned Russian oligarch arrived in San Diego Bay on Monday.
SLOVIANSK, Ukraine (AP) — Russia was mounting an all-out assault on the last Ukrainian stronghold in the eastern Luhansk region, "pouring fire" on the city of Lysychansk from the ground and air, the local governor said Monday, as Western leaders met to discuss ways of bolstering support for Kyiv.
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — In one of the combat zones against Russia, the supply chief for a Ukrainian fighting brigade places his online order for war supplies — a long list ranging from drones, trucks and thermal sights to batteries, generators and tape. They are needed, he writes, to equip two new battalions and "combat against armed aggression."
FRIDAY, JUNE 24
MUSIC INDUSTRY
The arrival of the compact disc nearly killed off record albums, with vinyl pressing machines sold, scrapped and dismantled by major record labels.
STATE GOVERNMENT
NASHVILLE (AP) — The Tennessee attorney general's office filed an emergency motion on Friday asking a federal appeals court to let the state immediately begin banning abortions as early as six weeks into pregnancy.
NASHVILLE (AP) — Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee says he will appoint David Rausch to serve a second term as director of the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation.
COURTS
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Friday stripped away women's constitutional protections for abortion, a fundamental and deeply personal change for Americans' lives after nearly a half-century under Roe v. Wade. The court's overturning of the landmark court ruling is likely to lead to abortion bans in roughly half the states.
The U.S. Supreme Court's decision allowing states to ban abortion stirred alarm Friday among LGBTQ advocates, who feared that the ruling could someday allow a rollback of legal protections for gay relationships, including the right for same-sex couples to marry.
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden said Friday he would try to preserve access to abortion after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, and he called on Americans to elect more Democrats who would safeguard rights upended by the court's decision. "This is not over," he declared.
The U.S. Supreme Court has overturned Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that had provided a constitutional right to abortion. Friday's ruling is expected to lead to abortion bans in roughly half the states. In anticipation of the decision, several states led by Democrats have taken steps to protect abortion access. The decision also sets up the potential for legal fights between the states over whether providers and those who help women obtain abortions can be sued or prosecuted.
America was convulsed with anger, joy, fear and confusion Friday after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade.
The Supreme Court's decision Friday to overturn the constitutional right to abortion has only further fractured an already deep division between the states, where contentious legal battles are almost certain to erupt as legislatures and attorneys general grapple with the new landscape of abortion access.
MEDIA
WASHINGTON (AP) — With the Supreme Court ending the constitutional protections for abortion, four Democratic lawmakers are asking federal regulators to investigate Apple and Google for allegedly deceiving millions of mobile phone users by collecting and selling their personal data.
HEALTH CARE
Juul on Friday asked a federal court to block a government order to stop selling its electronic cigarettes.
TRANSPORTATION
DALLAS (AP) — The largest pilots union has approved a contract that would boost the pay of pilots at United Airlines by more than 14% over the next 18 months, potentially clearing the way for similar wage hikes throughout the industry.
AUTO INDUSTRY
TOKYO (AP) — Toyota is recalling 2,700 bZ4X crossover vehicles globally for wheel bolts that could become loose, in a major setback for the Japanese automaker's ambitions to roll out electric cars.
NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS
Stocks racked up more gains on Wall Street Friday, as the S&P 500 had its best day in two years and just its second winning week in the last 12 to provide a bit of relief from the market's brutal sell-off this year.
BRUSSELS (AP) — European Union leaders agreed Friday that Croatia will join the group of countries using the euro, bringing the number of nations sharing the currency to 20 starting in January.
NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL POLITICS
WASHINGTON (AP) — The House sent President Joe Biden the most wide-ranging gun violence bill Congress has passed in decades on Friday, a measured compromise that at once illustrates progress on the long-intractable issue and the deep-seated partisan divide that persists.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Highlights of the bipartisan gun violence bill the Senate approved Thursday and the House was expect to pass Friday:
WASHINGTON (AP) — Back-to-back world leader summits in Europe this weekend will focus on uniting Western nations behind Ukraine in its fight against Russia's invasion and overcoming Turkey's opposition to NATO membership for Finland and Sweden.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump hounded the Justice Department to pursue his false election fraud claims, striving in vain to enlist top law enforcement officials in his desperate bid to stay in power and relenting only when warned in the Oval Office of mass resignations, according to testimony Thursday to the House panel investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The House Jan. 6 committee used Thursday's hearing to show how Donald Trump tried to install a loyalist atop the Justice Department who would pursue his false claims of voter fraud and stop the certification of the 2020 election that Democrat Joe Biden won.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Highlights of the bipartisan gun violence bill the Senate approved Thursday and the House was expect to pass Friday:
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court has issued its biggest gun rights ruling in more than a decade. Here are some questions and answers about what the Thursday decision does and does not do:
UKRAINE
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — After weeks of ferocious fighting, Ukrainian forces will retreat from a besieged city in the country's east to avoid encirclement, a regional governor said Friday.
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — The Russian military extended its grip on territory in eastern Ukraine as it seeks to cut supply lines and encircle frontline Ukrainian forces, while the Ukrainian military announced Thursday the arrival of powerful U.S. multiple-launch rocket systems it hopes will offer a battlefield advantage.
Nike will fully shut down operations in Russia, joining other international companies that have withdrawn from the country after its brutal invasion of Ukraine.
THURSDAY, JUNE 23
PREDATORS
NASHVILLE (AP) — Herb Fritch wanted to start a transition away from his role as chairman of the Nashville Predators, and he saw a former Tennessee governor as the perfect person to take over as majority owner.
STATE GOVERNMENT
NASHVILLE (AP) — Top Tennessee Republican House leaders on Wednesday urged Gov. Bill Lee to delay the state's health department from distributing and promoting the COVID-19 vaccines to infants, toddlers and preschoolers.
EDUCATION
The Biden administration has agreed to cancel $6 billion in student loans for about 200,000 former students who say they were defrauded by their colleges, according to a proposed settlement in a Trump-era lawsuit.
NASHVILLE (AP) — Tennessee education officials have awarded $27 million in grants for five community organizations to start tutoring programs in the 2022-2023 school year.
NASHVILLE (AP) — The board that oversees Tennessee's community colleges and technology colleges says seven schools are getting a total of more than $5.7 million for career and technical education programs.
COURTS
WASHINGTON (AP) — In a major expansion of gun rights, the Supreme Court said Thursday that Americans have a right to carry firearms in public for self-defense, a ruling likely to lead to more people legally armed in cities and beyond. The ruling came with recent mass shootings fresh in the nation's mind and gun control being debated in Congress and states.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that law enforcement officers can't be sued when they violate the rights of criminal suspects by failing to provide the familiar Miranda warning before questioning them.
WASHINGTON (AP) — A U.S. Naval reservist who was assigned to an agency that operates spy satellites told an undercover FBI agent that he stormed the U.S. Capitol with members of the far-right Proud Boys extremist group and has espoused anti-government and antisemitic ideologies, federal authorities said in court records unsealed on Thursday.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court gave Republican legislative leaders in North Carolina a win Thursday in an ongoing fight over the state's latest photo identification voting law.
A Black former Tesla worker who said he was harassed and faced with "daily racist epithets," including the "N-word," while working at the company's Fremont, California, plant has rejected a substantially reduced award of $15 million in his lawsuit.
HEALTH CARE
WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. health regulators on Thursday ordered Juul to pull its electronic cigarettes from the market, the latest blow to the embattled company widely blamed for sparking a national surge in teen vaping.
LONDON (AP) — As the World Health Organization convenes its emergency committee Thursday to consider if the spiraling outbreak of monkeypox warrants being declared a global emergency, some experts say WHO's decision to act only after the disease spilled into the West could entrench the grotesque inequities that arose between rich and poor countries during the coronavirus pandemic.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration has started shipping monkeypox tests to commercial laboratories, in a bid to speed diagnoses for suspected infections for the virus that has already infected at least 142 people in the U.S.
AUTO INDUSTRY
TOKYO (AP) — An American executive who resigned from Toyota after being arrested in Japan in 2015 on suspicion of drug law violations is back at the Japanese automaker, the company said Thursday.
ENVIRONMENT
WASHINGTON (AP) — The White House is launching a formal partnership with 11 East Coast governors to boost the growing offshore wind industry, a key element of President Joe Biden's plan for climate change.
TECHNOLOGY
Instagram is testing new ways to verify the age of people using its service, including a face-scanning artificial intelligence tool, having mutual friends verify their age or uploading an ID.
BANKING
NEW YORK (AP) — The nation's 33 biggest banks have enough capital to withstand a severe economic contraction, the Federal Reserve said Thursday.
COVID-19
NEW YORK (AP) — An expert panel backed a second COVID-19 vaccine option for kids ages 6 to 17 Thursday.
WASHINGTON (AP) — A lack of clear, concise and consistent messaging about the seriousness of the novel coronavirus in the earliest months of its spread created a false sense of security among Americans that the pandemic would not be serious and resulted in inaction early on across the federal government.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation's top infectious disease expert, says his COVID-19 recovery is an "example" for the nation on the protection offered by vaccines and boosters.
NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS
NEW YORK (AP) — Stocks shook off a midday slump and ended higher, keeping major indexes on track for weekly gains.
WASHINGTON (AP) — As if their job weren't hard enough at a time of raging inflation, Chair Jerome Powell and his Federal Reserve colleagues have to do more these days than decide just how much to raise interest rates without triggering a recession.
WASHINGTON (AP) — An oil industry meeting with Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm to lower gas prices and boost domestic oil supplies was constructive, but did not produce a major breakthrough, administration and industry officials said Thursday.
SEATTLE (AP) — Amazon said Thursday it is providing $23 million to help minority-led organizations build or preserve more than 500 new affordable housing units in Seattle — the latest spending by a tech company to ease a severe housing crunch the industry has helped create.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Fewer Americans applied for jobless benefits last week as the U.S. job market remains robust despite four-decade high inflation and a myriad of other economic pressures.
NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL POLITICS
WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump hounded the Justice Department to pursue his false election fraud claims, contacting the agency's leader "virtually every day" and striving in vain to enlist top law enforcement officials in a desperate bid to stay in power, according to testimony Thursday to the House panel investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal agents searched a former top Justice Department official's home and seized records from key Republicans in at least four states linked to Donald Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election, in what were clear signs that authorities are ramping up their investigation of associates of the former president.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate pushed a bipartisan gun violence bill to the brink of passage Thursday as it voted to halt a Republican filibuster against the measure, clearing the way for Congress' most far-reaching response in decades to the nation's run of brutal mass shootings.
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 country has long endured a numbing succession of mass shootings at schools, places of worship and public gathering places. None forced Congress to react with significant legislation — until now.
UKRAINE
WASHINGTON (AP) — The United States will send another $450 million in military aid to Ukraine, including some additional medium-range rocket systems, U.S. officials said Thursday.
CLEVELAND (AP) — Coinciding with unrelenting cyberattacks against Ukraine, state-backed Russian hackers have engaged in "strategic espionage" against governments, think tanks, businesses and aid groups in 42 countries supporting Kyiv, Microsoft said in a report Wednesday.
KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — The Russian military expanded its grab of territory in eastern Ukraine on Thursday, capturing two villages and vying for control of a key highway in an offensive that could cut supply lines and encircle some frontline Ukrainian forces, British and Ukrainian military officials said.
BERLIN (AP) — Germany activated the second phase of its three-stage emergency plan for natural gas supplies Thursday, saying Europe's biggest economy faces a "crisis" and warning that storage targets for the winter are at risk due to dwindling deliveries from Russia.
BRUSSELS (AP) — European Union leaders on Thursday are set to make Ukraine a candidate for joining the 27-nation bloc, a first step in a long and unpredictable journey toward full membership that could take many years to navigate.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The House Jan. 6 committee held a surprise hearing Tuesday delivering alarming new testimony about Donald Trump's angry, defiant and vulgar actions as he ignored repeated warnings against summoning the mob to the Capitol and then refused to intervene to stop the deadly violence as rioters laid siege.