News - Friday, January 23, 2026

Joanna Nash remembers a time when the simplest way for her to be heard in a financial meeting was to put on a pair of heels – not for fashion or confidence but leverage.

Early in her career, Nash learned eye level mattered. In rooms dominated by men, she made sure she could look decision-makers directly in the eye. It was a small, calculated adjustment, but it reflected a larger reality: women were present in financial conversations without being centered in them.

Cathie Keegan did not walk into Joanna Nash’s office looking for a job. She arrived as a client navigating family responsibility, financial planning and the question of what comes next.

For nearly a decade, Keegan had stepped away from the professional world to care for her mother. Now her mother was living in assisted care, and Keegan felt ready to return to work. She mentioned this almost in passing.

When the Home Builders Association of Greater Chattanooga named Nerren Pratt its 2025 Developer of the Year, the recognition reflected more than a single project or milestone. It honored a development philosophy rooted in long-term thinking, careful stewardship of land and a commitment to building neighborhoods that endure.

One of the ways in which the courts reinforce public confidence in the judiciary and the rule of law is judicial restraint. Judicial restraint calls for modesty in judges’ rulings, language, temperament and official behavior. It requires the exercise of great discipline on the part of the judge.

iSustain is investing in the next generation of sustainability leaders. For 2025, that investment is centered on Jesse Roman, a dual-degree MBA and chemical engineering student whose work bridges business strategy and materials science.

Based in Chattanooga, iSustain annually supports graduate business students at the University of Tennessee who plan to apply their education to real-world challenges in manufacturing, materials and supply chains. Roman has been named the latest recipient of the iSustain Sustainability Endowment, a program designed to strengthen the workforce pipeline.

Baker Donelson has added Katie Philyaw Grayson as an associate in its Chattanooga office, expanding the firm’s Advocacy Department.

Grayson focuses her practice on a variety of litigation matters, assisting clients throughout all stages of the litigation process. Before joining the firm, she served as a law clerk for Judge Curtis L. Collier of the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee and previously worked as a judicial intern for Judge R. David Proctor of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama.

Hamilton County recorded more than $4.18 billion in property sales during 2025, along with more than $5.09 billion in mortgage loan value, according to the annual Sales & Mortgages Report from the Hamilton County Register of Deeds.

Total conveyance value generated $15.4 million in conveyance tax collected for the state on recorded property sales. Mortgage activity also remained strong, with recorded loan values totaling $5 billion and producing $5.7 million in mortgage tax revenue.

The Jewish Cultural Center will host an author event featuring Bea Lurie, co-author of “Life Must Go On,” a book that chronicles the life of her father, a child survivor of the Holocaust, beginning Jan 27 at 5:30 p.m. The event will take place at the Jewish Cultural Center, 5461 North Terrace Road, and will include a dessert reception. There is no cost to attend, though registration is requested at jewishchattanooga.org. Books will be available for purchase. During the program, Lurie will share the story of her father as portrayed in the book, which recounts his survival of six concentration camps during the Holocaust.

In addition to resolutions and fresh starts, the new year ushers in several tax changes that could affect your wallet. Whether you’re saving for retirement, funding your child’s education or supporting your favorite charity, here are a few things you need to know about the tax landscape in 2026.

The strongest collection of talent in Athletes Unlimited Basketball history will be on display this season in Nashville as the women’s professional league kicks off its fifth championship season.

The 40-player roster features a mix of veterans and rising pros, with 20 returning players and 20 newcomers gracing the court at Nashville’s Municipal Auditorium. 

As the Tennessee Titans move into a new era with Robert Saleh as head coach, let’s pause for a moment to ponder what might have been.

Is there an alternate reality football universe in which Amy Adams Strunk doesn’t fire Mike Vrabel two years ago, and it is the Titans who are in the AFC Championship Game just one step away from the Super Bowl with only Jarrett Stidham standing in the way?

If you had told Tennessee Titans fans back in October that former Jets head coach/current 49ers defensive coordinator Robert Saleh would be hired to coach the team in 2026, the reaction probably would have been mostly positive.

Now that the process has played out with Saleh being hired late Monday night by the Titans, is that same optimism still in place?

The NFL heads to the conference championship round this weekend with two intriguing matchups, including one for the third time in the NFC where the Los Angeles Rams and Seattle Seahawks settle things once and for all, at least for this season. Over in the AFC, the Denver Broncos’ hopes were dealt a severe blow with news that QB Bo Nix suffered a season-ending ankle injury in their overtime win against Buffalo.

A shortage of vehicles, rising prices and high borrowing costs have made it challenging in recent years for some people to purchase a new or used vehicle. Thankfully, the automotive market is shifting in ways that could be beneficial if you’re planning to buy a vehicle in the next few months.

PARIS (AP) — In a hypothetical nuclear war involving Russia, China and the United States, the island of Greenland would be in the middle of Armageddon.

The strategic importance of the Arctic territory — under the flight paths that nuclear-armed missiles from China and Russia could take on their way to incinerating targets in the United States, and vice versa — is one of the reasons U.S. President Donald Trump has cited in his disruptive campaign to wrest control of Greenland from Denmark, alarming Greenlanders and longtime allies in Europe alike.

BUFFALO, N.Y. (AP) — In two decades of kicking in doors for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, Joseph Bongiovanni often took on the risks of being the "lead breacher," meaning he was the first person into the room.

On Wednesday, he felt a familiar uncertainty awaiting sentencing for using his DEA badge to protect childhood friends who became prolific drug traffickers in Buffalo, New York.

LOS ANGELES (AP) — Federal immigration authorities allowed a suspect in a $100 million jewelry heist believed to be the largest in U.S. history to deport himself to South America in December, a move that stunned and upset prosecutors who were planning to try the case and send him to prison.

ATLANTA (AP) — Bags of ice-thwarting salt aren't usually a hot item at Bates Ace Hardware in Atlanta, but store manager Lewis Pane sold all 275 he had in stock in one morning as residents braced for a major storm to deliver heavy snow, sleet and freezing rain on a broad section of the U.S. in coming days.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Americans who smoke may soon be hearing a lot more about Zyn, the flavored nicotine pouches that have generated billions in sales while going viral on social media.

The Food and Drug Administration is holding a public meeting Thursday to consider whether Philip Morris International can advertise its pouches as a less-harmful alternative for adults who currently smoke cigarettes.

NEW YORK (AP) — Skydance-owned Paramount is again extending the tender offer window in its $77.9 billion hostile takeover bid for Warner Bros. Discovery, while doubling down on a coming proxy fight.

Warner stockholders now have until Feb. 20 to sell their shares to Paramount for $30 apiece in cash — a price that remains unchanged, giving the offer a total enterprise value of over $108 billion including debt. It marks the second extension the company has made since challenging Warner's merger agreement with Netflix last month.

ZÁRATE, Argentina (AP) — The vast field of over 5,800 electric and hybrid vehicles gleamed on the cargo deck of the BYD Changzhou, an Chinese container vessel unloading Wednesday at a river port in eastern Argentina.

In other places, such a scene would not be noteworthy. Chinese automaker BYD has sped up its exports and undercut rivals the world over, alarming Washington, upsetting Western and Japanese auto giants and unnerving local industries across Southeast Asia, Africa and Latin America.

WASHINGTON (AP) — A Cuban migrant held in solitary confinement at an immigration detention facility in Texas died after guards held him down and he stopped breathing, according to an autopsy report released Wednesday that ruled the death a homicide.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. Army has ordered several dozen additional active-duty soldiers to prepare for a possible deployment to Minneapolis if needed, a defense official said Wednesday, amid protests over the Trump administration's immigration enforcement crackdown.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Federal immigration officers are asserting sweeping power to forcibly enter people's homes without a judge's warrant, according to an internal Immigration and Customs Enforcement memo obtained by The Associated Press, marking a sharp reversal of longstanding guidance meant to respect constitutional limits on government searches.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Federal Reserve's preferred inflation gauge ticked up in November in the latest sign that prices remain stubbornly elevated, while consumers spent at a healthy pace.

Consumer prices rose 2.8% in November from a year earlier, the Commerce Department said Thursday, up from a 2.7% annual pace in October. Excluding the volatile food and energy categories, core prices also increased 2.8% in November from a year ago, slightly higher than October's 2.7%.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Powered by strong consumer spending, the U.S. economy grew at the fastest pace in two years from July through September, the government said Thursday in a slight upgrade of its first estimate.

America's gross domestic product — the nation's output of goods and services — rose at a 4,4% annual pace in the third quarter, the Commerce Department reported Thursday, up from 3.8% in the April-June quarter and from the 4.3% growth the department initially estimated. The economy hasn't grown faster since third-quarter 2023.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The number of Americans who applied for unemployment benefits inched up last week but U.S. layoffs remain historically low despite signs of a softening labor market.

U.S. filings for jobless aid for the week ending Jan. 17 rose by 1,000 to 200,000, up from 199,000 the previous week, the Labor Department reported Thursday. That's fewer than the 207,000 new applications that analysts surveyed by the data firm FactSet were expecting.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Anxiety about costs and affordability is particularly high among Asian Americans, Pacific Islanders and Native Hawaiians, even at a moment when economic stress is widespread, according to a new poll.

About half of Asian American and Pacific Islander adults said they wanted the government to prioritize addressing the high cost of living and inflation, according to the survey from AAPI Data and The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, which was conducted in early December. In comparison, a December AP-NORC poll found that about one-third of U.S. adults overall rated inflation and financial worries as the most pressing problems.

TOKYO (AP) — Japan posted a trade deficit for the fifth straight year in 2025, according to government data released Thursday, as exports were hit by U.S. President Donald Trump's tariffs and a diplomatic rift with neighboring China.

For the full year, Japan logged a 2.65 trillion yen ($17 billion) trade deficit, the Finance Ministry reported in its preliminary data.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Barely a month into his presidency, Joe Biden had a message for Europe.

"America is back," Biden told the Munich Security Conference in 2021. "The transatlantic alliance is back."

It was a promise Biden delivered often as he sought to cast the disruptions of his predecessor, Donald Trump, as an anomaly. But nearly five years later, Biden's assurances have proven short-lived.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The House will look to pass this year's final tranche of spending bills on Thursday, an effort that is being complicated by Democratic lawmakers' concerns that the measure funding the Department of Homeland Security inadequately addresses President Donald Trump's mass deportation efforts.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Republican lawmakers are grilling former Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith at a congressional hearing that's expected to focus fresh attention on two criminal investigations that shadowed Donald Trump during his 2024 presidential campaign.

WASHINGTON (AP) — A House committee advanced resolutions Wednesday to hold former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in contempt of Congress over the Jeffrey Epstein investigation, opening the prospect of the House using one of its most powerful punishments against a former president for the first time.

NASHVILLE (AP) — Robert Saleh is getting another shot at turning around a struggling franchise.

The Tennessee Titans are betting it goes better than the first.

LONDON (AP) — Elizabeth Hurley accused the publisher of the Daily Mail on Thursday of tapping her phones, putting microphones outside her windows and stealing her medical records among "other monstrous, staggering things" during testimony in a celebrity-studded privacy invasion lawsuit.

NEW YORK (AP) — President Donald Trump sued banking giant JPMorgan Chase and its CEO Jamie Dimon for $5 billion, accusing JPMorgan of debanking him and his businesses for political reasons after he left office in January 2021.

The lawsuit, filed in Miami-Dade County court in Florida, alleges that JPMorgan abruptly closed multiple accounts in February 2021 with just 60 days notice and no explanation. By doing so, Trump claims JPMorgan cut the president and his businesses off from millions of dollars, disrupted their operations and forced Trump and the businesses to urgently open bank accounts elsewhere.

ATLANTA (AP) — Bread was flying off the shelves, salt was being loaded into trucks and utility workers were nervously watching forecasts Thursday as a huge winter storm that could bring catastrophic damage, widespread power outages and bitterly cold weather was barreling toward the eastern two-thirds of the U.S.

The Trump administration announced Thursday that human fetal tissue derived from abortions can no longer be used in research funded by the National Institutes of Health.

The policy, long urged by anti-abortion groups, expands restrictions issued during President Donald Trump's first term.

NEW YORK (AP) — Skydance-owned Paramount is again extending the tender offer window in its $77.9 billion hostile takeover bid for Warner Bros. Discovery, while doubling down on a coming proxy fight.

Warner stockholders now have until Feb. 20 to sell their shares to Paramount for $30 apiece in cash — a price that remains unchanged, giving the offer a total enterprise value of over $108 billion including debt. It marks the second extension the company has made since challenging Warner's merger agreement with Netflix last month.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Google is leveraging its artificial intelligence technology to open a new peephole for its dominant search engine to tailor answers that draw upon people's interests, habits, travel itineraries and photo libraries.

The new option rolling out Thursday will give millions of people the option of turning on a recently introduced tool called "Personal Intelligence" within the AI mode that has been available on Google's search engine since last year. The technology will be first offered in the U.S. to Google AI Pro and Ultra subscribers, as well as an option within its experimental Labs division for anyone with a personal Google account.

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — A 5-year-old boy arriving home from preschool in Minnesota was taken by federal agents along with his father to a detention facility in Texas, school officials and the family's lawyer said, making him the fourth student from his Minneapolis suburb to be detained by immigration officers in recent weeks.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The federal agency in charge of enforcing workplace anti-discrimination laws on Thursday voted to rescind its own guidance on how to guard against harassment at work, marking another major shift in U.S. civil rights enforcement under President Donald Trump's second administration.

NEW YORK (AP) — An appeal for bankruptcy protection filing of the operator of Saks Fifth Avenue, Bergdorf Goodman and Neiman Marcus has left the luxury department stores' suppliers with unpaid bills and caused a rift with Amazon, one of Saks Global's minority investors.

BALTIMORE (AP) — Clothing retailer Under Armour is investigating a recent data breach that purloined customers' email addresses and other personal information, but so far there are no signs the hackers stole any passwords or financial information.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The House passed this year's final batch of spending bills on Thursday as lawmakers, still smarting from last fall's record 43-day shutdown, worked to avoid another funding lapse for a broad swath of the federal government.

The four bills total about $1.2 trillion in spending and now move to the Senate, with final passage needed next week before a Jan. 30 deadline to avoid a partial government shutdown.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The House was voting Thursday on a resolution that directs President Donald Trump to remove U.S. military forces from Venezuela as Democrats pressed the Republican-controlled Congress to curb the president's aggression in the Western Hemisphere.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration is expanding its ban on U.S. foreign aid for groups supporting abortion services to include assistance going to international and domestic organizations and agencies that promote gender identity as well as diversity, equity and inclusion programs.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S. imposed sanctions on five Costa Ricans and five Costa Rican entities for allegedly helping to transport tons of cocaine from Colombia, storing the drugs in Costa Rica, then shipping them to the U.S. and Europe.

The Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control alleges that Costa Rican national Luis Manuel Picado Grijalba, sanctioned Thursday, is the leader of the network and one of the most prolific international drug dealers in the Caribbean, along with his brother Jordie Kevin Picado Grijalba.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Former Justice Department special counsel Jack Smith defended his investigations of President Donald Trump at a congressional hearing Thursday in which he insisted that he had acted without regard to politics and had no second thoughts about the criminal charges he brought.