VOL. 43 | NO. 24 | Friday, June 14, 2019
TIM GHIANNI: STREET LEVEL
More than a decade and a half ago I took a beloved poet, picker, prophet and pilgrim down to “Music City Row,” as he likes to refer to that stretch of Nashville. He hadn’t been there really for 30 years, and he lamented what he saw. Or didn’t see.
RICHARD COURTNEY: REALTY CHECK
The bubble has not burst, but the city is set to explode. The Greater Nashville area is on its way to yet another record-breaking year with year-to-date sales totaling 15,698, compared with 15,606 sales through May 2017, the year the record was set.
REAL ESTATE
Home sales in Nashville and Davidson County heated up in May with major increases across the board.
WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. long-term mortgage rates were little changed this week, after six straight weeks of declines putting them at historically low levels.
NEWSMAKERS
Brian Heinrichs has been named president and chief banking officer of Tennessee Bank & Trust, effective July 1. Dan Andrews, Jr. will continue in his position as chairman and chief executive officer.
BRIEFS
Rooms To Go will locate its new warehouse and retail outlet store in Wilson County, investing $69 million and creating 200 new jobs.
BEHIND THE WHEEL
Model year 2019 marks the end of the line for some notable Ford and General Motors sedans. As a result, dealers will be slashing prices to try to move these discontinued models out of their inventory.
BUSINESS BOOK REVIEW
You just had your trenchcoat to the cleaners. There are new batteries in your undercover wrist-camera, and your listening device seems to be working well. You’ve even found a perfect hidey-place to watch from the shadows.
PERSONAL FINANCE
Researchers tell us most people would be better off waiting to claim Social Security benefits. Yet most people file early.
CAREER CORNER
If you’ve ever switched jobs, you know it can be hard – really hard. I’m not talking about getting the same job at a new company. Switching from one type of job to another can feel impossible.
MILLENNIAL MONEY
As a millennial couple, you and your partner might not be planning to blend finances even if you’ve been together for a while.
MIDSTATE
MANCHESTER (AP) — A group that partners with musicians on voter registration efforts says the 1,390 voters it signed up at Bonnaroo represent its all-time high for one festival.
PREDATORS
NASHVILLE (AP) — The Nashville Predators have hired Rob Scuderi, Sebastien Bordeleau and Dave Rook as development coaches to help polish their prospects for the NHL.
REAL ESTATE
WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. home construction slipped a bit in May as a sharp drop in single-family construction was only partially offset by a rise in apartment building.
TECHNOLOGY
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Facebook already rules daily communication for more than two billion people around the world. Now it wants its own currency, too.
NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS
NEW YORK (AP) — Stocks are closing broadly higher on Wall Street as traders hoped that a meeting next week between President Donald Trump and President Xi Jinping of China could ease trade tensions between the two economic powers.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Federal Reserve is likely — if not certain — to leave interest rates alone when its latest policy meeting ends Wednesday. But expectations are high that the Fed and its chairman, Jerome Powell, will signal that a rate cut may come soon for the first time in more than a decade.
NEW YORK (AP) — Amazon's fleet of jets is getting bigger.
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump said he'll hold trade talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping next week while he's at a summit of nations in Japan. And U.S. and Chinese negotiators will resume talks before the leaders meet.
FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) — The European Central Bank stands ready to cut interest rates and could re-start its bond purchase stimulus program if needed to help the economy, President Mario Draghi said Tuesday.
NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL POLITICS
WASHINGTON (AP) — After months of unexplained delays, Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan stepped down Tuesday before his formal nomination ever went to the Senate, citing a "painful" family situation that would hurt his children and reopen "wounds we have worked years to heal."
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran will surpass the uranium-stockpile limit set by its nuclear deal in the next 10 days, an official said Monday, raising pressure on Europeans trying to save the accord a year after the U.S. withdrawal lit the fuse for the heightened tensions now between Tehran and Washington.
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump is threatening to remove millions of people living in the United States illegally ahead of formally announcing his reelection bid .
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump captured the Republican Party and then the presidency in 2016 as an insurgent intent on disrupting the status quo. As he mounts his bid for reelection, Trump is offering himself as the outsider once again — but it's a much more awkward pitch to make from inside the Oval Office.
MONDAY, JUNE 17
NASHVILLE AREA
NASHVILLE (AP) — Red paint and the phrase "they were racists" were discovered on a Confederate monument in Nashville's Centennial Park.
VANDERBILT SPORTS
OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — Austin Martin is best known as Vanderbilt's .400 hitter. He's starting to get a reputation for his power.
MIDSTATE
MANCHESTER (AP) — Bonnaroo officials say a 27-year-old man has died while attending the Tennessee music festival.
RIDGETOP (AP) — A judge has blocked Ridgetop's decision to dissolve its police department amid budget constraints.
BANKING
NASHVILLE (AP) — First Tennessee Bank is becoming First Horizon Bank. So is Capital Bank.
STATE GOVERNMENT
NASHVILLE (AP) — Tennessee's governor says he will call for a special session to replace the state's House speaker, who plans to step down amid a scandal over explicit text messages.
COURTS
WASHINGTON (AP) — Virginians will elect members of the House of Delegates this year using a map seen as favorable to Democrats as a result of a ruling Monday by the U.S. Supreme Court.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court is upholding a constitutional rule that allows state and federal governments to prosecute someone for the same crime, a closely watched case because of its potential implications for people prosecuted in the Russia investigation.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court is siding with the state of Virginia in a case about the state's decades-old ban on mining radioactive uranium, and ruling that a lawsuit challenging the ban was properly dismissed.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court is throwing out an Oregon court ruling against bakers who refused to make a wedding cake for a same-sex couple.
TRANSPORTATION
LE BOURGET, France (AP) — The chief salesman for Airbus says his company already has the technology to fly passenger planes without pilots at all — and is working on winning over regulators and travelers to the idea.
LE BOURGET, France (AP) — Boeing executives apologized Monday to airlines and families of victims of 737 Max crashes in Indonesia and Ethiopia, as the U.S. plane maker struggles to regain the trust of regulators, pilots and the global traveling public.
ENVIRONMENT
BERLIN (AP) — Diplomats and climate experts gathered Monday in Germany for U.N.-hosted talks on climate change amid growing public pressure for governments to act faster against global warming.
NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS
NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stocks posted slight gains on Wall Street on Monday, adding a bit to the last two weeks of gains.
NEW YORK (AP) — Small business owners, their eye on the economy, are playing it even safer when it comes to hiring.
WASHINGTON (AP) — What happens if President Donald Trump carries out his threat to impose tariffs on the remaining $300 billion in Chinese goods that he hasn't already hit with 25% import taxes?
WASHINGTON (AP) — Jerome Powell has tantalized the financial world with the prospect that the Federal Reserve he leads may soon cut interest rates for the first time in over a decade.
NEW YORK (AP) — Gloria Vanderbilt, the intrepid heiress, artist and romantic who began her extraordinary life as the "poor little rich girl" of the Great Depression, survived family tragedy and multiple marriages and reigned during the 1970s and '80s as a designer jeans pioneer, died Monday at the age of 95.
NEW YORK (AP) — Pfizer is buying the cancer treatment company Array BioPharma in a deal worth $11.4 billion.
SHENZHEN, China (AP) — Huawei's founder said Monday that the Chinese telecom giant's revenue will be $30 billion less than forecast over the next two years, as he compared the company to a "badly damaged plane" as a result of U.S. government actions against it.
NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL POLITICS
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration found itself in the awkward position Monday of demanding that Iran comply with a nuclear accord that the president has derided as the worst deal in history.
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iran will surpass the uranium-stockpile limit set by its nuclear deal in the next 10 days, an official said Monday, raising pressure on Europeans trying to save the accord a year after the U.S. withdrawal lit the fuse for the heightened tensions now between Tehran and Washington.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration said Monday it is easing previously announced cuts in hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to the Central American nations of El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala but will not allow new funding until those countries do more to reduce migrant flows to the United States.
WASHINGTON (AP) — An eye toward his 2020 campaign, President Donald Trump is turning to a familiar playbook of exaggerated boasts about economic performance and overdrawn complaints about a race tilted against him.
FRIDAY, JUNE 14
MIDSTATE
FORT CAMPBELL, Ky. (AP) — Soldiers and others at Fort Campbell have marked the Army's 244th birthday with a celebration at the post on the Kentucky-Tennessee state line.
REGION
NASHVILLE (AP) — The nation's largest public utility has agreed to dig up and remove about 12 million cubic yards (9.2 million cubic meters) of coal ash from unlined pits at a Tennessee coal-burning power plant.
NASHVILLE AREA
BIRMINGHAM, Alabama (AP) — Sharing a stage with tearful survivors of sex abuse, the president of the Southern Baptist Convention apologized Wednesday for the abuse crisis besetting his denomination and outlined an array of steps to address it.
VANDERBILT SPORTS
NASHVILLE (AP) — Vanderbilt and SMU have scheduled a three-game series that starts in 2024.
COURTS
KNOXVILLE (AP) — A lawsuit by Tennessee Attorney General Herbert Slatery says Endo Pharmaceuticals sales representatives for years ignored warning signs of drug dealing at pill mills across the state.
KNOXVILLE (AP) — A Tennessee district attorney is reviewing all pending cases investigated by a detective who has said the government should execute gay people.
NASHVILLE (AP) — Lawyers for Metro public schools say it's not sexual harassment when students share secretly recorded videos of unwanted sexual encounters and then bully the victims.
AUTO INDUSTRY
NASHVILLE (AP) — Workers at Volkswagen's plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, are finishing a vote over whether to unionize.
CHATTANOOGA (AP) — Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee is not echoing warnings by fellow Republican officials that if a union vote passes at Volkswagen in Chattanooga, future talks about state incentives could become more difficult.
TECHNOLOGY
WASHINGTON (AP) — "Deepfake" videos pose a clear and growing threat to America's national security, lawmakers and experts say. The question is what to do about it, and that's not easily answered.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Lawmakers and experts said Thursday that videos altered with artificial intelligence software pose a threat to national security and the 2020 U.S. election.
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Twitter says it has deleted nearly 4,800 suspect accounts linked to Iran that the company says secretly pushed that government's agenda.
ENVIRONMENT
VATICAN CITY (AP) — Some of the world's major oil producers pledged Friday to support "economically meaningful" carbon pricing regimes after a personal appeal from Pope Francis to avoid "perpetrating a brutal act of injustice" against the poor and future generations.
WASHINGTON (AP) — A Trump administration national security official has sought help from advisers to a think tank that disavows climate change to challenge widely accepted scientific findings on global warming, according to his emails.
BERLIN (AP) — German chemical and pharmaceutical company Bayer says it plans to invest some 5 billion euros ($5.6 billion) over the next decade in developing "additional methods to combat weeds."
MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Cargill Inc. said Thursday the Minnesota-based agribusiness giant will spend $30 million to fund new ideas for ending deforestation in Brazil, and called on its peers, governments and organizations to work together to come up with real solutions.
BERLIN (AP) — The virtual currency bitcoin is responsible for the same amount of carbon dioxide emissions as a city like Las Vegas or Hamburg and efforts to reduce its climate footprint should be considered, researchers said Thursday.
HEALTH CARE
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration says it will expand options for small companies to use special accounts to help workers buy their own health insurance or upgrade job-based coverage, officials said Thursday.
MEDIA
ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — U.S.-based Bloomberg news agency says Turkish prosecutors are seeking up to five-year jail terms for two of its Istanbul-based reporters over their report on last year's currency crisis.
NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS
NEW YORK (AP) — Stocks ended a choppy week of trading with modest losses Friday as investors look forward to getting more clues about the direction of interest rates.
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump says he has no intention of ending his public attacks on the Federal Reserve's interest rate policies even though he knows he has made Chairman Jerome Powell's job more difficult.
WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. industrial production improved in May, but manufacturers showed weakness despite eking out a slight gain.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Americans stepped up their retail spending last month, a sign that recent worries about cautious consumers dragging on growth may have been overdone.
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Mysterious attacks on oil tankers near the strategic Strait of Hormuz this week show how one of the world's crucial chokepoints for global energy supplies can be easily targeted, 30 years after the U.S. Navy and Iran were entangled in a similarly shadowy conflict called the "Tanker War."
NEW YORK (AP) — How much would you be willing to pay to get those diapers within an hour or so?
SINGAPORE (AP) — World stocks mostly rose Thursday and energy prices surged after two oil tankers suffered a suspected attack in the Gulf of Oman, raising tensions over a key trade route for crude.
The fast-growing market for meat alternatives has a surprising new player: Tyson Foods.
Gains in energy and internet companies helped drive stocks broadly higher on Wall Street Thursday, snapping a two-day losing streak for the market in an otherwise choppy week of trading.
NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL POLITICS
NEW YORK (AP) — Ivanka Trump took in nearly $4 million in revenue last year from her stake in President Donald Trump's hotel down the street from the Oval Office, up slightly from a year earlier.
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump said Friday that "of course" he would go to the FBI or the attorney general if a foreign power offered him dirt about an opponent. It was an apparent walkback from his earlier comments that he might not contact law enforcement in such a situation.
WASHINGTON (AP) — White House press secretary Sarah Sanders, whose tenure was marked by a breakdown in regular press briefings and questions about the administration's credibility, as well as her own, will leave her post at the end of the month, President Donald Trump announced Thursday.
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump's assertion that he would be open to accepting a foreign power's help in his 2020 campaign ricocheted through Washington on Thursday, with Democrats condemning it as a call for further election interference and Republicans struggling to defend his comments.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The House's two top Republicans are avoiding directly addressing whether it was appropriate for President Donald Trump to say he'd listen to damaging information from a foreign entity about a political opponent.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday that the Democratic-controlled House won't pass must-do legislation to increase the government's borrowing cap until the Trump administration agrees to boost spending limits on domestic programs.
WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal watchdog agency on Thursday recommended that White House counselor Kellyanne Conway be fired for repeatedly violating a law that limits certain political activities of federal employees.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The House Intelligence Committee has subpoenaed former White House national security adviser Michael Flynn and former Trump campaign aide Rick Gates as part of its investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump says that if a foreign power offered dirt on his 2020 opponent he'd be open to accepting it and that he'd have no obligation to call in the FBI.