VOL. 41 | NO. 33 | Friday, August 18, 2017
SPECIAL EMPHASIS: CONSTRUCTION
State faces construction labor shortage
Tennessee’s aging workforce is creating a shortage of welders, heavy-equipment operators, formwork carpenters, iron workers, concrete finishers and construction supervisors – all while the state is ramping up to spend an additional $350 million a year on road projects.
From learning on the job to earning degrees in civil engineering, there are many roads into the construction industry and its array of specialties.
Two years ago, the Tennessee General Assembly set up funding for Go Build Tennessee Inc., a nonprofit that would spread the word to high-school and postsecondary students about careers in construction.
Who designs and builds roads and bridges? Civil engineers do the design work. They prepare drawings, specify materials and address safety issues for construction workers and the traveling public while the work is being done. The civil engineers may be employed by the state to design the project, or the state may turn to private companies. Most states use both methods.
SAM STOCKARD: VIEW FROM THE HILL
Rep. Bryan Terry deals with patients from every demographic caught up in the web of opiates.
TIM GHIANNI: STREET LEVEL
Even beneath his Acme Feed & Seed ball cap, Jon Byrd looks as much like a professor as any other white-haired, balding man in spectacles as he sips coffee and checks his smart phone while enjoying a warm afternoon in the al fresco dining area of a Vanderbilt-area caffeine and pastry dispensary.
RICHARD COURTNEY: REALTY CHECK
Area real estate sales have increased 5.5 percent this year with 23,365 properties changing hands, 3,872 of them in August alone, Greater Nashville Realtors sales statistics show. That number is slightly less than the 3,887 closed sales in June, which was down from the 3,943 in May.
REAL ESTATE
Top residential real estate sales, June 2017, for Davidson, Williamson, Rutherford, Wilson and Sumner counties, as compiled by Chandler Reports.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Long-term U.S. mortgage rates edged lower this week.
DAVID CLIMER: OUT OF LEFT FIELD
Butch Jones let us in on a little secret recently when he said his freshman running backs will play for Tennessee this season. That’s plural – running backs. Jones’ plan is to use all three freshman backs – Ty Chandler, Tim Jordan and Trey Coleman – in some sort of rotation behind junior John Kelly. Given the nature of the game, putting the football in the hands of freshmen is risky business. But Jones is taking the plunge.
TERRY McCORMICK: TENNESSEE TITANS
Seven years ago, the Titans had a young, productive linebacker who was in the final year of his contract and wondering whether his future would be in Tennessee or elsewhere.
Coming off a lackluster performance in the preseason opener against the Jets, the Titans hope to redeem themselves in the preseason home opener against the Carolina Panthers (2 p.m. Saturday. TV: WKRN, NFL Network).
NEWSMAKERS
Ashish Shah, M.D., director of Heart Transplant and Mechanical Circulatory Support at Vanderbilt, has been named chair of the Department of Cardiac Surgery.
GUERRILLA MARKETING
The B2C (business-to-consumer) customer lifecycle is used to describe the phases a customer progresses through when making a purchasing decision and is generally broken down into these five phases: awareness, consideration, purchase, service and advocacy.
CAREER CORNER
One of the top questions I hear from job seekers is: “How long should my job search really take?”
BUSINESS BOOK REVIEW
From here to there. That’s where you need to move your stuff: from Point A to Point B. Take it out of one place and put it in another, possibly many miles away. And it’s not like you can wiggle your nose or wave a magic wand to do it, either; you need someone who knows what he’s doing.
STATEWIDE
MEMPHIS (AP) — State officials say tourists spent more than $19 billion in Tennessee in 2016, an increase of 5 percent compared with the previous year.
MEMPHIS (AP) — A city council in Tennessee plans to consider four different ways to deal with the growing uproar over the existence of two statues of Confederate leaders at city parks.
MIDSTATE
CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — The parent company of a West Virginia psychiatric hospital plans to sell the facility to Brentwood, Tennessee-based Meridian Behavioral Health Systems.
NASHVILLE AREA
NASHVILLE (AP) — Long security lines and big crowds are expected at Nashville's airport as visitors fly out from their eclipse-viewing trips.
COURTS
LOS ANGELES (AP) — A Los Angeles jury on Monday ordered Johnson & Johnson to pay a record $417 million to a hospitalized woman who claimed in a lawsuit that the talc in the company's iconic baby powder causes ovarian cancer when applied regularly for feminine hygiene.
AUTO INDUSTRY
BEIJING (AP) — Ford Motor Co. and a Chinese automaker said Tuesday they are looking into setting up a joint venture to develop and manufacture electric cars in China.
NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS
NEW YORK (AP) — Stocks around the world jumped on Tuesday, and the Standard & Poor's 500 had one of its best days of the year, as markets put a shaky last couple of weeks further behind them.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration has rejected a coal industry push to win a rarely used emergency order protecting coal-fired power plants, a decision contrary to what one coal executive said the president personally promised him.
NEW YORK (AP) — "Transformers: The Last Knight" star Mark Wahlberg has outmuscled Dwayne Johnson to become Hollywood's highest-paid actor in the past year with a transforming income of $68 million, according to Forbes magazine.
NEW YORK (AP) — Macy's says it has hired a senior eBay Inc. executive as president and is further streamlining its organization to make it more nimble in the face of increased competition.
NATIONAL POLITICS
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump's road to getting legislation through Congress this year to restore the nation's crumbling infrastructure appears increasingly precarious.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Reversing his past calls for a speedy exit, President Donald Trump recommitted the United States to the 16-year-old war in Afghanistan, declaring U.S. troops must "fight to win." He pointedly declined to disclose how many more troops will be dispatched to wage America's longest war.
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump is vowing to win what has seemed to be an unwinnable war.
MONDAY, AUGUST 21
STATEWIDE
NASHVILLE (AP) — Eclipse watchers in Tennessee donned protective eyewear Monday and trained their eyes on the sky as they gathered at parks, wineries, rooftops, baseball games and a zoo to watch the rare celestial event.
Millions of Americans gazed in wonder through telescopes, cameras and disposable protective glasses Monday as the moon blotted out the sun in the first full-blown solar eclipse to sweep the U.S. from coast to coast in nearly a century.
SPORTS
The NFL has signed a three-year deal to make its games available through digital streaming in China.
NASHVILLE (AP) — Marcus Mariota thinks the Tennessee Titans gave a glimpse of just how they can play this season in their second preseason game.
HEALTH CARE
WASHINGTON (AP) — Don't make things worse. That's the advice of former U.S. health secretaries of both parties to President Donald Trump and the GOP-led Congress, now that "Obamacare" seems here for the foreseeable future. The 2018 sign-up season for subsidized private health plans starts Nov. 1, with about 10 million people currently served through HealthCare.gov and its state counterparts.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Hispanics in the United States have a longer life expectancy, but a poll finds few older Latinos are confident that nursing homes and assisted living facilities can meet their needs.
NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS
NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stocks inched higher Monday, as the Standard & Poor's 500 index steadied following back-to-back losses the last two weeks.
SAN DIEGO (AP) — Sempra Energy is buying Texas power transmitter Oncor for $9.45 billion in cash, wresting it away from Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The nation's business economists believe that the Federal Reserve's long-awaited move to start reducing its massive bond holdings will push long-term bond rates higher but most think the impact will be fairly modest.
WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S., Canadian and Mexican negotiators are pledging to work quickly to update the North American Free Trade Agreement, a 23-year-old pact that President Donald Trump has called the worst trade deal in history.
NATIONAL POLITICS
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. (AP) — Federal mining regulators have told the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine to halt its study of the health risks for people living near Appalachian surface coal mines.
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump will use a nationally televised address to outline for a war-weary nation the strategy he believes will best position the U.S. to eventually declare victory in Afghanistan after 16 years of combat and lives lost.
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump's racially fraught comments about a deadly neo-Nazi rally have thrust into the open some Republicans' deeply held doubts about his competency and temperament, in an extraordinary public airing of worries and grievances about a sitting president by his own party.
ABERDEEN, Wash. (AP) — One-hundred-fifty baskets of pink petunias hang from the light posts all over this city, watered regularly by residents trying to make their community feel alive again. A local artist spends his afternoons high in a bucket truck, painting a block-long mural of a little girl blowing bubbles, each circle the scene of an imagined, hopeful future.
FRIDAY, AUGUST 18
STATEWIDE
WASHINGTON (AP) — Hiring increased in 11 U.S. states in July, while the unemployment rate tumbled to record lows in Tennessee and North Dakota.
MIDSTATE
NASHVILLE (AP) — The Tennessee Department of Children's Services has opened a new investigation into rape and sex abuse allegations at a private Christian school being sued for $30 million.
EDUCATION
KNOXVILLE (AP) — Tennessee has launched a national search for a Title IX coordinator to oversee the entire University of Tennessee system.
MUSIC INDUSTRY
NASHVILLE (AP) — The children of Johnny Cash are asking white supremacists and other hate groups not to wear or use the country singer's name or image.
COURTS
NASHVILLE (AP) — A Tennessee sheriff and judge violated the constitutional rights of jail inmates by promising to reduce their sentences if they underwent birth control procedures, an ex-inmate says in a federal lawsuit.
HEALTH CARE
NASHVILLE (AP) — Federal officials say 29 health centers in Tennessee are receiving a total of more than $2 million to further improve quality, efficiency and effectiveness.
AUTO INDUSTRY
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — Hyundai Motor said Thursday it plans to launch early next year a second-generation hydrogen fuel cell vehicle that will travel more than 580 kilometers (360 miles) between fill-ups under Korean standards.
TECHNOLOGY
NEW YORK (AP) — HBO says it has regained control of its social media accounts after the latest security breach to hit the entertainment company.
NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS
NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stocks slumped in the final minutes of trading Friday and ended a rough week with more losses. Bad news from sporting goods retailers weighed on the market.
NEW YORK (AP) — Sporting goods retailers can't shake their losing streak.
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Apple is donating $2 million to two human rights groups as part of CEO Tim Cook's pledge to help lead the fight against the hate that fueled the violence in Virginia during a white-nationalist rally last weekend.
NEW YORK (AP) — It took bloodshed in Charlottesville to get tech companies to do what civil rights groups have been calling for for years: take a firmer stand against accounts used to promote hate and violence.
NEW YORK (AP) — Walmart's recent spending spree to try to catch up to Amazon seems to be paying off.
WASHINGTON (AP) — A slump in the auto industry drove U.S. factory output down in July and has kept it flat for months.
NATIONAL POLITICS
WASHINGTON (AP) — Steve Bannon, a forceful but divisive presence in President Donald Trump's White House, is leaving.
NASHVILLE (AP) — U.S. Sen. Bob Corker says his sharp criticism this week of Donald Trump is meant to influence the president and those around him.
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — The Wisconsin Assembly approved a $3 billion tax break Thursday with bipartisan support for Taiwan-based Foxconn Technology Group to build a massive display panel factory in the state, a project President Donald Trump touted as a transformational win for the U.S. economy.
WASHINGTON (AP) — White House adviser Steve Bannon isn't alone in pondering America's possibly generation-defining question about China's emerging superpower status — but his call for an "economic war" puts him far outside the mainstream.
RIDGEWATER, N.J. (AP) — With prominent Republicans openly questioning his competence and moral leadership, President Donald Trump burrowed deeper into the racially charged debate over Confederate memorials and lashed out at members of his own party in the latest controversy to engulf his presidency.
WASHINGTON (AP) — A prominent Republican senator delivered a stinging rebuke Thursday of Donald Trump's short time in office, declaring he has not shown the stability or competence required for an American president to succeed.
NEW YORK (AP) — Another presidential advisory committee appears to be breaking up.