News - Friday, April 24, 2026

Losing your friends at a major music festival is an inevitability. It happens gradually. One person veers toward a food vendor, another disappears into a crowd pushing toward the stage, phones come out and then fail. Even when messages and calls connect, there’s no meaningful way to describe where you are in a sea of tens of thousands of people moving in every direction at once.

Totem cofounder Carter Fowler says the creators of Totem never seriously considered building an app to do what the device does because, at a fundamental level, a phone cannot do what Totem is designed to do.

Smartphones rely on centralized infrastructure – cell towers, Wi-Fi, satellites and power grids – but Totem’s technology is the opposite, he explains. It is decentralized, operating independently of those systems.

By David Laprad

On a warm Sunday afternoon, residents gathered at the Red Bank Community Center then spilled out toward a wooded trailhead that had been more than 60 years in the making. With a ribbon stretched across the entrance and a crowd of city leaders, partners and neighbors looking on, the city officially opened the Godsey Ridge Trail System – a project many described as both a milestone and a promise fulfilled.

As part of the opening of Godsey Ridge Trail System, Sunshine Loveless, director of SORBA Chattanooga, shared guidance on trail etiquette and safety for the new multiuse system:

• Before you ride or hike: Before heading out, riders should wear a helmet and perform a quick bike check, making sure tires are properly inflated, brakes are functioning and the crank and chain are in good condition. It’s also important to bring water and snacks and to wear appropriate clothing, including closed-toe shoes, for a safe and comfortable ride.

Long before Chef Kenyatta Ashford entered professional kitchens or won “Chopped,” he learned what food meant in a crowded Louisiana home, where meals were rooted in history and identity rather than presentation.

Growing up in a family in which his father was one of 13 siblings and his mother one of nine, gatherings were large, loud and anchored by dishes such as gumbo, red beans and rice and seafood-stuffed vegetables.

In a few months, we will observe the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. That document announced the formation of a new nation and laid the foundation for the rule of law in that new nation.

With its soaring, aspirational proclamations that all persons “are created equal” and “are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,” the Declaration laid the groundwork for federal courts to interpret the Constitution and give meaning to concepts such as liberty, equality and justice.

The real estate market changes quietly at first, which is why it pays to watch the signals. Slightly more choices for buyers, a little more time to make decisions and increased negotiating room can reshape the buying or selling experience from one week to the next.

The city of Chattanooga is launching a new Down Payment Assistance Program that will provide up to $21,000 to qualifying first-time homebuyers through a first-of-its-kind partnership with the Tennessee Housing Development Agency.

The program is designed to expand access to homeownership as housing costs rise and the average age of a first-time buyer climbs to 40 nationwide. Funds are available to households earning up to 120% of area median income – about $92,000 for a two-person household and $114,000 for a family of four.

The Hunter Museum of American Art will invite guests to step into an Alice in Wonderland-themed evening of entertainment April 24 on the museum’s River Terrace. Presented by Tremont Tavern and co-chaired by Amber and Dan Norton, the open-air event will feature heavy hors d’oeuvres, specialty cocktails and mocktails, themed activities and performances and a costume contest inspired by Wonderland. General admission includes food, drinks and dancing, while VIP tickets offer access to a private lounge, enhanced food and beverage options and valet service. Proceeds support the museum’s mission to provide arts education and community engagement.

Southern’s School of Education, Psychology and Counseling has received the 2025 Frank Murray Leadership Recognition for Continuous Improvement, a national honor awarded by the Council for Accreditation of Educator Preparation.

The award recognizes educator preparation programs that achieve a perfect accreditation score with no stipulations or areas for improvement. Southern was the only institution in Tennessee selected and is among just 22 programs nationwide to earn the distinction this year.

Food City officials recently presented a $12,000 check to the Gamma Pi Boule Foundation, continuing a partnership aimed at supporting scholarships and community-focused initiatives.

The presentation, held inside a local Food City store, brought together company leadership and representatives of the foundation to mark the latest contribution.

As a person of faith, I find it heartwarming to witness the piety with which our Republican leaders model spiritual values for the country.

It starts at the top, of course, with President “Two Corinthians” Trump’s social media depictions of himself – first as a pope, then as a Jesus-like figure delivering divine, hands-on healing to a reclining, apparently ailing figure. Who looks oddly like Jeffrey Epstein.

The Audi Q5 and BMW X3 are among the most popular options for shoppers interested in a small luxury SUV. Each one offers a practical size, a classy cabin and a relatively affordable way to get an SUV with a luxury badge.

Notably, the Q5 and the X3 also received full redesigns last year. The BMW X3 adopted a radically different design inside and out. The Audi Q5’s exterior didn’t change much, but inside there’s a new emphasis on technology.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The criminal indictment of the Southern Poverty Law Center this week was met with much outrage but little surprise from civil rights leaders, who have for more than a year prepared for heightened legal scrutiny from the Trump administration, and how to mount a coordinated response.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department's internal watchdog announced a review Thursday of the department's compliance with the law mandating the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files, stepping into a politically sensitive saga that has shadowed the Trump administration for the past year.

In a spate of recent appearances in Congress, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. recoiled almost every time a lawmaker referred to Medicaid cuts enacted in President Donald Trump's big 2025 tax and spending bill.

Throughout the budget hearings, many Democrats raised concerns about how the cuts could affect rural hospitals and leave vulnerable Americans without health insurance. Kennedy frequently interrupted them to claim no cuts existed.

OFF THE COAST OF RHODE ISLAND (AP) — Offshore wind turbines roughly three times the height of the Statue of Liberty were spinning off the coast of Rhode Island on Thursday, sending clean electricity to the region.

Wind farms are taking shape and operating along the East Coast, even as President Donald Trump seeks to end the U.S. offshore wind industry. He often talks about his hatred of wind power and calls turbines ugly.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — President Donald Trump has ordered the U.S. military to "shoot and kill" small Iranian boats that deploy mines in the Strait of Hormuz, he said Thursday, a day after Iran again displayed its ability to thwart traffic through the channel.

NASHVILLE (AP) — The Tennessee Titans hope Ohio State wide receiver Carnell Tate can team with quarterback Cam Ward and fix the offense while improving their relatively poor track record with receivers selected in the first round of the NFL draft.

FOXBOROUGH, Mass. (AP) — Patriots coach Mike Vrabel said he is taking accountability for actions that have created a distraction for New England without addressing specifics about photos published recently of him with longtime NFL reporter Dianna Russini at an Arizona resort.

PITTSBURGH (AP) — Eight teams are still waiting to make their first selection of the NFL draft after a chaotic opening round that featured a flurry of trades.

Just 16 of the 32 first-round picks chosen Thursday night were made by the original teams that owned them.

PITTSBURGH (AP) — Fernando Mendoza's journey from overlooked two-star recruit to the top of the NFL draft is complete after the Las Vegas Raiders took him with the first pick Thursday night.

Turning the Raiders into a contender is the next challenge for the Heisman Trophy winner who led Indiana to its first national championship.

KNOXVILLE (AP) — Tennessee forward Nate Ament declared Thursday that he's heading to the NBA draft after one season in college.

Ament helped the Volunteers go 25-12 and to a No. 12 ranking in the final AP Top 25 poll with a third straight Elite Eight berth in the NCAA Tournament. The 6-foot-10, 207-pound Ament started all 35 games he played, and he ranked second in scoring 16.7 points a game. He averaged 6.3 rebounds per game, as well.

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — South Korean prosecutors on Friday rejected a police request for an arrest warrant for music tycoon Bang Si-Hyuk, chairman of the agency behind K-pop supergroup BTS, questioning whether detention is necessary as he faces a high-profile investigation into alleged investor fraud.

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — A U.S. Army special forces soldier involved with the capture of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro is due in court Friday after being charged with using classified information about the mission to win more than $400,000 in an online prediction market.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Food and Drug Administration said Friday it will offer ultra-fast review to three psychedelic drugs being developed to treat mental health conditions, including depression, the latest step by the Trump administration toward possible approval of the experimental treatments.

BEIJING (AP) — China's top automakers are showcasing their latest models and technologies from intelligent driving to ultrafast charging in Beijing as they compete with global rivals in overseas markets.

Analysts say the biennial auto show in China's capital, which opened to media on Friday, shows how its auto industry is setting the global pace for cutting-edge technologies in areas such as electric vehicles and batteries, eclipsing many foreign brands that used to dominate the global market.

PANAMA CITY (AP) — Businesses have doled out up as much as $4 million to move boats through the Panama Canal with the Strait of Hormuz effectively closed, according to the Panama Canal Authority, in a move that has created a seismic shift in global trade flows.

NEW YORK (AP) — President Donald Trump said Thursday that he was weighing a taxpayer-funded takeover of Spirit Airlines with the intent of reselling the struggling budget carrier after oil prices drop.

The president confirmed his continued interest in offering Spirit a financial lifeline after a lawyer told a U.S. Bankruptcy Court that the airline was in advanced talks with the U.S. government on a financing deal that would allow Spirit to emerge from Chapter 11 protection.

HONG KONG (AP) — DeepSeek, the Chinese artificial intelligence startup that shook world markets last year, launched preview versions of its latest major update Friday as the AI rivalry between China and the U.S. heats up.

DeepSeek's V4 has been keenly anticipated by users looking to test how it compares to U.S. competitors like OpenAI's ChatGPT, Anthropic's Claude and Google's Gemini. Anthropic and OpenAI have accused DeepSeek of unfairly building its technology off their own.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration is vowing to crack down on foreign tech companies' exploitation of U.S. artificial intelligence models, singling out China at a time that country is narrowing the gap with the U.S. in the AI race.

In a Thursday memo, Michael Kratsios, the president's chief science and technology adviser, accused foreign entities "principally based in China" of engaging in deliberate, industrial-scale campaigns to "distill," or extract capabilities from, leading AI systems made in the U.S. and "exploiting American expertise and innovation."

PRAGUE (AP) — The Czech power company CEZ signed a deal on Friday with Rolls-Royce SMR on preparatory work for the British company to build the first small modular nuclear reactor in the Czech Republic.

CEZ chief executive Daniel Beneš said that the work includes the project plan and licensing documentation necessary for issuing building permits for the reactor.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Iran's top diplomat is expected to travel to Pakistan by this weekend for talks, two Pakistani officials told The Associated Press on Friday, raising hopes for revived negotiations in the Iran-U.S. war.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi was expected to be accompanied by a small government delegation and could arrive as soon as Friday, the officials said, without providing further details. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the media.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department has ended its probe into Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell, clearing a major roadblock to the confirmation of his successor, Kevin Warsh.

NICOSIA, Cyprus (AP) — Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez on Friday refused to be drawn into a dispute with the United States over reports that the Pentagon is weighing whether to punish members of NATO that fail to support American operations in the Iran war.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Just as the Senate prepared to launch into a late-night vote series, Republican Sen. John Kennedy of Louisiana went to the floor to vent.

Frustrated and seemingly exhausted Wednesday, Kennedy said he wanted more time to debate his amendments to a budget resolution to fund immigration enforcement agencies. But he had another complaint.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump, who helped push the term " fake news " into the mainstream, now seems to have a new favorite subject: fake math.

During a Thursday event announcing a deal with drugmaker Regeneron to lower the cost of its pharmaceutical products, Trump defended his past claims that prices on prescription medications had been cut by well over 100% — something that is mathematically impossible without manufacturers dropping prices to zero and then presumably paying consumers to use their product.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump said Israel and Lebanon have agreed to extend a ceasefire between Israel and the Hezbollah militant group by three weeks after talks at the White House on Thursday.

Trump said the meeting between the Israeli and Lebanese ambassadors to the United States, the second in the past week, went "very well," but during an Oval Office gathering he acknowledged that "they do have Hezbollah to think about." The Iranian-backed group has opposed the talks, and since the initial ceasefire went into effect last Friday, there have been multiple violations by both sides.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department will adopt firing squads as a permitted method of execution as the Trump administration moves to ramp up and expedite capital punishment cases, officials said Friday.

The Justice Department is also reauthorizing the use of single-drug lethal injections with pentobarbital that were used to carry out 13 executions during the first Trump administration — more than under any president in modern history. The Biden administration had removed pentobarbital from the federal protocol over concerns about the potential for unnecessary pain and suffering.

WASHINGTON (AP) — An appeals court on Friday blocked President Donald Trump's executive order suspending asylum access, a key pillar of the Republican president's plan to crack down on migration at the southern border of the U.S.

A three-judge panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit found that immigration laws give people the right to apply for asylum at the border, and the president can't circumvent that.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration is placing economic sanctions on a major China-based oil refinery and roughly 40 shipping companies and tankers involved in transporting Iranian oil.

The move, announced Friday and first reported by The Associated Press, makes good on the Trump administration's threat to impose secondary sanctions on companies and countries that do business with Iran. It's also part of the Republican administration's overall ramped-up campaign to cut off Iran's key source of revenue — its oil exports.