News - Friday, November 15, 2024

Every organization needs some to lead and others to follow and assist.

This was the message the Chattanooga chapter of the Women’s Council of Realtors conveyed to its members during the installation of its 2025 governing board Nov. 6 at The Walden Club.

San Diego-raised Amanda Williams was gazing at a Boston sky as snowflakes dropped onto her face for the first time.

Williams had crossed the continent to experience a new place and fresh things, making the wind-blown flurries of Beantown a hope fulfilled.

Attorney Elisa Fox will serve the real estate and construction practice areas at Chambliss, Bahner & Stophel, the firm announced this week.

“Given the rapidly changing real estate market and businesses continually adapting to meet demand, Elisa is a valuable addition to our team,” says Real Estate Section Chair Kirby Yost. “We look forward to leveraging her vast experience to further assist our clients in all areas of our real estate work.”

Wyatt Morrison has joined the Chattanooga office firm of Leitner, Williams, Dooley & Napolitan.

Morrison is an associate whose areas of practice include insurance coverage and defense, general liability, premises liability, transportation law and workers’ compensation law.

Katie Lamb has attended her last meeting as a commissioner for the city of Collegedale. After 15 years of service, Lamb relinquished her seat to a new candidate Nov. 4.

“From nursing patients and teaching the next generation to being a friendly face and listening ear for Collegedale city employees, elected officials and residents, Lamb’s understated approach has yielded big results for the city she calls home,” Collegedale officials collectively conveyed in a news release announcing Lamb’s retirement.

Chattanooga is the home of Tennessee’s latest Safe Haven Baby Box. Located at Fire Station 6 (4510 Bonny Oaks Drive), the box legally permits a parent in crisis to safely and anonymously surrender his or her newborn without fear of prosecution.

If you’re like me, the busy holiday season can take your already lengthy to-do list to a whole new level. Between holiday gatherings, family visits and festive events, getting your home guest-ready can be overwhelming.

Thankfully, Melissa Dittmann Tracey of Houselogic.com offers some great insights on how your personal hosting style can guide your cleaning routine.

The worst of the housing inventory shortage is coming to an end, mortgage rates are stabilizing and job additions are continuing, according to Lawrence Yun, NAR chief economist.

“2024 has been a difficult year on many fronts. We didn’t get the home sales recovery this year after an awful 2023,” says Yun.

Buyers and renters seeking inexpensive housing may want to head to the Midwest. A new Clever Real Estate study names Ohio the nation’s most affordable state. Of 100 U.S. cities analyzed, Toledo ranks the least expensive overall, with Akron, Cleveland, Cincinnati and Columbus all appearing in the top 30.

For the first time in four years, the Federal Reserve has cut short-term interest rates. The Fed has indicated that this cut may be followed by several others in the months ahead. What will these lower rates mean to you as a consumer and an investor?

Tennessee has long been a force in the entertainment business with its rich musical history. Now, as more motion picture productions pop up throughout the state, it has its eye on becoming the “Hollywood of the South.”

Nashville, Memphis and Chattanooga all have landed high-profile film or television projects this year that are either in or beginning production.

At first I thought maybe the landscaping company had laid some curious manner of sod in the front yard. A sort of spongy, randomly furrowed fescue that sinks slightly when walked upon.

Before long it became apparent that something else was going on. Something subterranean and active. Two and two came together: I’d been invaded by moles.

Steve Angle, who has served as chancellor of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga for the past 11 years, will transition from his leadership role to join the faculty beginning Jan. 1. Angle is the second-longest tenured chancellor since the university joined the University of Tennessee System in 1969.

Perhaps the worst part about the Titans’ loss Sunday to the Los Angeles Chargers is this: We have just now crossed the halfway point of the NFL season.

The Titans are 2-7 with eight more games left to endure in what has become a rinse-and-repeat season thus far for Tennessee.

SUVs are popular in part due to their elevated ride height, commanding view of the road and roomy interiors. Yet many midsize and large SUVs feel cumbersome in city driving.

Smaller and more agile vehicles are a great alternative to help make city driving less of a chore.

ATHENS, Ga. (AP) — NIL money has added a new variable to the long-held practice of college coaches trying to flip recruits who have given verbal commitments to other schools.

The NCAA rules providing college athletes the ability to earn revenue from their name, image and likeness provide new artillery for recruiting wars. When the recruiting spotlight is on a top recruit, millions of dollars are on the line.

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump on Wednesday said he will nominate Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida to serve as his attorney general, putting a loyalist in the role of the nation's top prosecutor.

In selecting the congressman, Trump passed over some of the more established attorneys whose names had been mentioned as being contenders for the job.

NASHVILLE (AP) — Check the stats. The Tennessee Titans ' struggles after halftime are easy to see.

Two-time Pro Bowl defensive lineman Jeffery Simmons said Wednesday those issues are why the Titans are 2-7.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Burt Bacharach, one of the most celebrated and popular composers and songwriters of the 20th century, will have his papers donated to the Library of Congress.

Bacharach's widow Jane Bacharach, who made the donation, and the Library of Congress, announced the acquisition in a statement Thursday.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Demand Justice, a progressive organization focused on the judiciary, is set to bombard Capitol Hill with a message for the closing weeks of the 118th Congress: Do "whatever it takes" to confirm President Joe Biden's nominees as a second Donald Trump presidency looms.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Special counsel Jack Smith asked a court Wednesday to pause prosecutors' appeal seeking to revive the classified documents case against President-elect Donald Trump in light of the Republican's presidential victory.

DETROIT (AP) — Ford Motor Co. will pay a penalty of up to $165 million to the U.S. government for moving too slowly on a recall and failing to give accurate recall information.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Those ever-present TV drug ads showing patients hiking, biking or enjoying a day at the beach could soon have a different look: New rules require drugmakers to be clearer and more direct when explaining their medications' risks and side effects.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Social media site Bluesky has gained 1 million new users in the week since the U.S. election, as some X users look for an alternative platform to post their thoughts and engage with others online.

Bluesky said Wednesday that its total users surged to 15 million, up from roughly 13 million at the end of October.

MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — Australia plans to require social media platforms to act to prevent online harms to users such as bullying, predatory behavior and algorithms pushing destructive content, the government said Thursday.

"The Digital Duty of Care will place the onus on digital platforms to proactively keep Australians safe and better prevent online harms," Communications Minister Michelle Rowland said in a statement.

WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal investigation into Chinese government efforts to hack into U.S. telecommunications networks has revealed a "broad and significant" cyberespionage campaign aimed at stealing information from Americans who work in government and politics, the FBI said Wednesday.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Suicides in the U.S. military increased in 2023, continuing a long-term trend that the Pentagon has struggled to abate, senior defense officials said. The increase is a bit of a setback after the deaths dipped slightly the previous year.

Americans are fed up with the price of food, and many are looking to President-elect Donald Trump to lower their grocery bills.

Trump often railed on the campaign trail against hefty price increases for bacon, cereal, crackers and other items.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Wholesale prices in the United States rose last month, remaining low but suggesting that the American economy has yet to completely vanquish inflationary pressure.

Thursday's report from the Labor Department showed that its producer price index — which tracks inflation before it hits consumers — rose 0.2% from September to October, up from a 0.1% gain the month before. Compared with a year earlier, wholesale prices were up 2.4%, accelerating from a year-over-year gain of 1.9% in September.

WASHINGTON (AP) — A Federal Reserve official gave a lengthy defense of the central bank's political independence Thursday, just days after former President Donald Trump, an outspoken Fed critic, won re-election.

"It has been widely recognized — and is a finding of economic research — that central bank independence is fundamental to achieving good policy and good economic outcomes," Adriana Kugler, one of the seven members of the Fed's governing board, said in prepared remarks for an economic conference in Montevideo, Uruguay.

NEW YORK (AP) — Fashion company Tapestry on Thursday said it's terminating its proposed merger with Capri because the two luxury groups don't expect to overcome an antitrust challenge within an acceptable time frame.

The companies agreed to a $8.5 billion deal in August 2023 that would have united Capri, the maker of Versace, Jimmy Choo and Michael Kors shoes, handbags and accessories, with Tapestry, which produces the same products under the Coach, Kate Spade New York, and Stuart Weitzman brands.

NEW YORK (AP) — After ripping higher for much of this year, the price of gold has suddenly become not so golden since Donald Trump's victory in the presidential election.

Gold fell more than 4% in the four days since Election Day, when the broad U.S. stock market climbed nearly 4%. That's even though investors are expecting a Trump White House to drive tax rates lower and tariffs higher. Such a combination could push the U.S. government's debt and inflation higher, which are both things that can help gold's price.

MILAN (AP) — Global sales of personal luxury goods are forecast to shrink in 2025 for the first time since the Great Recession, according to a Bain consultancy study released Wednesday. The outlook could worsen if the sector is hit by tariffs promised by Donald Trump.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump has had few defenders in Congress as reliable as Matt Gaetz, who has thundered at one prosecutor after another for perceived bias against the president-elect and emphatically amplified the Republican's rallying cry that the criminal investigations into him are "witch hunts."

WASHINGTON (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump's pick for attorney general, Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida, was once embroiled in a sex trafficking investigation by the Justice Department he's been tapped to lead, and has been under scrutiny by the House Ethics Committee over allegations including sexual misconduct.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Just hours after Republican Sen. John Thune was elected as the incoming Senate majority leader on Wednesday, President-elect Donald Trump presented him with one of his first tests — an announcement that he intends to nominate controversial Rep. Matt Gaetz as attorney general.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden begins his six-day visit to Peru and Brazil on Thursday for the final major international summits of his presidency, while world leaders turn their attention to what Donald Trump 's return to the White House means for their countries.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Republicans have won enough seats to control the U.S. House, completing the party's sweep into power and securing their hold on U.S. government alongside President-elect Donald Trump.

A House Republican victory in Arizona, alongside a win in slow-counting California earlier Wednesday, gave the GOP the 218 House victories that make up the majority. Republicans earlier gained control of the Senate from Democrats.

WASHINGTON (AP) — House Speaker Mike Johnson won the House Republican nomination Wednesday to stay on the job, on track to keep the gavel after a morning endorsement from President-elect Donald Trump ahead of a full House vote in the new year.

ATHENS, Ga. (AP) — Georgia's playoff hopes are hanging by a thread.

Hardly what anyone expected from one of college football's powerhouse programs, a team that has been a perennial national championship contender during the Kirby Smart coaching era.

NASHVILLE (AP) — A nonprofit dedicated to opposing diversity initiatives in medicine has filed a federal lawsuit challenging the requirements surrounding the racial makeup of key medical boards in Tennessee.

The Virginia-based Do No Harm filed the lawsuit earlier this month, marking the second legal battle the group has launched in the Volunteer State in the past year.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration on Thursday released guidelines for using artificial intelligence in the power grid, water system, air travel network and other pieces of critical infrastructure.

Private industry would have to adopt and implement the guidelines announced by the Homeland Security Department, which were developed in consultation with the department's advisory Artificial Intelligence Safety and Security Board.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Chair Jerome Powell said Thursday that the Federal Reserve will likely cut its key interest rate slowly and deliberately in the coming months, in part because inflation has shown signs of persistence and the Fed's officials want to see where it heads next.

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Smithfield Foods, one of the nation's largest meat processors, has agreed to pay $2 million to resolve allegations of child labor violations at a plant in Minnesota, officials announced Thursday.

An investigation by the Minnesota Department of Labor and Industry found that the Smithfield Packaged Meats subsidiary employed at least 11 children at its plant in St. James ages 14 to 17 from April 2021 through April 2023, the agency said. Three of them began working for the company when they were 14, it said. Smithfield let nine of them work after allowable hours and had all 11 perform potentially dangerous work, the agency alleged.

WASHINGTON (AP) — As President-elect Donald Trump moves to set up a more forceful presidency than in his first term, he is choosing loyalists for his Cabinet and considering a tool known as recess appointments to skip over Senate confirmations for even some of the most powerful positions in U.S. government.

NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stocks are falling Friday toward their worst loss since Election Day as the big bump Wall Street got from last week's victory for Donald Trump and cut to interest rates by the Federal Reserve keeps fading.

The S&P 500 sank 1.1% and was heading for a losing week and its worst day since October. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 250 points, or 0.6%, as of 11:15 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 1.9% lower.

NASHVILLE (AP) — The Minnesota Vikings get another chance to clean up some offensive issues Sunday in their second of two straight road games against the dregs of the AFC South.

Sam Darnold has turned it over five times in the past two games, including three interceptions in last week's 12-7 win at Jacksonville. Minnesota's defense and kicker helped cover up Darnold's mistakes.

EDMONTON, Alberta (AP) — Connor McDavid scored early in the second period to become the fourth-fastest NHL player to reach 1,000 points, then assisted on Darnell Nurse's overtime goal in the Edmonton Oilers' 3-2 victory over the Nashville Predators on Thursday night.

ATHENS, Ga. (AP) — Trevor Etienne, the top running back for No. 11 Georgia, has been ruled out of the game Saturday against No. 6 Tennessee with a rib injury.

Etienne was hurt in a Nov. 2 victory over Florida, though he did get limited carries in a 28-10 loss to Ole Miss last weekend. He finished with 34 yards on nine carries.

DETROIT (AP) — General Motors is laying off about 1,000 workers worldwide, shedding costs as it tries to compete in a crowded global automobile market.

The workers, mostly white collar, were notified about the decisions early Friday. The company confirmed the layoffs in a statement but gave few details.

WASHINGTON (AP) — A computer expert who stole bitcoin worth billions of dollars at current prices — and then spent years laundering some of the hacked cryptocurrency with help from his wife — was sentenced on Thursday to five years in prison.

Ilya Lichtenstein masterminded one of the largest-ever thefts from a virtual currency exchange before he and his wife, Heather Rhiannon Morgan, carried out an elaborate scheme to liquidate the stolen funds, according to federal prosecutors.

Headlines from the satirical website the Onion on Thursday: "New Dating Site Suggests People You Already Know But Thought You Were Too Good For." "Trump Boys Have Slap Fight Over Who Gets to Run Foreign Policy Meetings." "Here's Why I Decided to Buy Infowars."

WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump's vision for education revolves around a single goal: to rid America's schools of perceived " wokeness " and "left-wing indoctrination."

The president-elect wants to keep transgender athletes out of girls' sports. He wants to forbid classroom lessons on gender identity and structural racism. He wants to abolish diversity and inclusion offices.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Americans stepped up their spending at retailers last month in the latest sign that healthy consumer spending is driving the economy's steady growth.

Retail sales rose 0.4% from September to October, the Commerce Department said Friday, a solid increase though less than the previous month's robust 0.8% gain.

TOKYO (AP) — Japan's economy eked out an annual rate of 0.9% growth in the July-September period as consumer spending held up, government data showed Friday.

The world's fourth-largest economy grew 0.2% in the fiscal second quarter, marking the second straight quarter of expansion, following 0.5% growth in April-June.

NEW YORK (AP) — Advance Auto Parts is closing more than 500 stores and shedding another 200 independent locations as part of its efforts to revive its struggling business.

North Carolina-based Advance Auto said Thursday that it would be reducing its U.S. footprint as part of a "strategic plan to improve business performance." The company said it is shuttering a total of 523 of its Advance corporate stores, as well as four distribution centers, and exiting 204 independent locations by the middle of next year.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Pete Hegseth, a popular Fox News host who is Donald Trump's nominee to lead the Department of Defense, was accused of sexual assault in 2017 after a speaking appearance at a Republican women's event in Monterey, California, according to a statement released by the city. No charges were filed in the case.

LIMA, Peru (AP) — Representatives from 21 members representing the Pacific Rim are meeting in Peru on Friday for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, the first global summit since U.S. President-elect Donald Trump's victory featuring several major world leaders.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Biden administration officials are working against the clock doling out billions in grants and taking other steps to try to preserve at least some of the outgoing president's legacy before President-elect Donald Trump takes office in January.

WASHINGTON (AP) — After a resounding election victory, delivering what President-elect Donald Trump and Republicans call a "mandate" to govern, an uneasy political question is emerging: Will there be any room for dissent in the U.S. Congress?

Trump is laying down a gauntlet even before taking office challenging the Senate, in particular, to dare defy him over the nominations of Matt Gaetz, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and other controversial choices for his Cabinet and administration positions.

NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stocks tumbled Friday as the "Trump bump" that Wall Street got from last week's presidential election, along with a cut to interest rates by the Federal Reserve, kept fading.

The S&P 500 dropped 1.3% for its worst day since before Election Day to close out a losing week. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 305 points, or 0.7%, and the Nasdaq composite sank 2.2%.

FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) — A battery manufacturer has selected Kentucky for a nearly $712 million project to produce industrial-sized batteries used to store and distribute energy, a process seen as increasingly important to help secure a reliable electric grid for the country, officials said Friday.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump announced Friday that North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum, Trump's choice to head the Interior Department, will also lead a newly created National Energy Council that will seek to establish U.S. "energy dominance" around the world.