News - Friday, May 9, 2025

April Cameron didn’t grow up dreaming of becoming an airport CEO as she watched planes destined for far-flung cities slice across the sky over Dayton, Tennessee. In fact, when she first went to work for the Chattanooga Metropolitan Airport in 1997, she’d never even flown.

My grandfather was a preacher and a farmer, and he tended to his vegetable crop with the same dedication and care as he did his congregational flock. My father possessed those same talents – Sunday School teacher to President Carter and cultivator of the sweetest, reddest tomatoes in all of Tennessee. My father would nurture a tomato vine as if it were his fifth child in need of love, Southern sunshine, and a healthy drink of water.

When it comes to food, there are no right or wrong takes – just personal preferences. You might have a palate for coffee, but the bean makes me wince.

Even so, I’d wager that most people would agree on one thing: Mellow Mushroom makes great pizza.

As the Chattanooga Film Festival prepares for its 12th edition, its organizers are sending a clear message: In a world where film festivals are leaning into studio previews and AI-assisted spectacle, CFF remains committed to the strange, the indie and the offbeat.

Montessori Elementary at Highland Park (1805 Anderson Ave.) will host games, food and live entertainment for all ages Saturday noon-3 p.m. Guests will purchase tickets for attractions and food for 25 cents each. MEHP leadership intends this debut carnival to celebrate the school’s expanding presence in Highland Park. The school grew from 300 students at the end of the 2023-2024 school year to 350 in during the 2024-2025 school year and will soon accommodate over 400 students.

Selling a home can feel like a daunting task, even for those of us who work in real estate every day.

As a Realtor, I often hear the same questions from sellers: How should I prepare my home? Do I need to make updates? What are buyers really looking for?

Mayor Tim Kelly has appointed veteran journalist and communications strategist Stephanie Cepak as the city of Chattanooga’s new press secretary.

Cepak, who has called Chattanooga home since 2020, brings more than 20 years of experience in journalism and strategic communications to the role. She joins the city’s communications team under the leadership of senior adviser Eric Holl.

SVN | Second Story Real Estate Management is continuing its strategic growth with the opening of a new office in Atlanta, marking a significant expansion beyond its Chattanooga headquarters. This move enables the firm to better tap into the rapidly growing Southeast commercial real estate market, providing its renowned advisory services to a broader regional client base.

Do you have a parent or other elderly relative who may soon need a caregiver? If so, be diligent when selecting the right person for the job because choosing the wrong one could lead to big financial problems.

You might find a close family member or friend to serve as caregiver –someone who is honest and trustworthy, with good judgment and strong money management skills. However, in many cases, people hiring caregivers just don’t know how they’ll perform until the caregivers have begun work.

Reaching as high as 13 feet tall and weighing in at a scale-torturing 15,000 pounds, the African Elephant makes basically every other animal look tiny by comparison.

Despite its enormous size, even the largest land animal on Earth can be humbled by conditions in Africa’s Namib Desert. This harsh environment is inarguably one of the most-unforgivingly arid environments on the planet, with annual rainfall of less than 3.5 inches. (That’s just 6% of the 55 inches of rain Chattanooga receives annually.)

Just because an SUV is small and inexpensive doesn’t mean it has to be as bland as plain oatmeal for breakfast. The 2025 Buick Envista and 2025 Nissan Kicks are two great examples. They look good, have surprisingly big interiors and boast prices in the $20,000s regardless of trim level. That’s largely where the similarities stop, though.

Hey, that’s nice. It’s all good, you agree, 100% approval. You wish you had it, said it, thought it or thought of it first. You can’t argue with that.

As in the new book “Like: The Button That Changed the World” by Martin Reeves and Bob Goodson, it’s so good you feel like telling the world.

NASHVILLE (AP) — A Texas man associated with a neo-Nazi group was convicted on Wednesday of posting threats to lynch and kill Nashville District Attorney General Glenn Funk after another group member was charged with attacking a downtown bar worker.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump's administration asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to allow it to end humanitarian parole for hundreds of thousands of immigrants from four countries, setting them up for potential deportation.

The emergency appeal asks the justices to halt a lower-court order keeping in place temporary legal status for more than 500,000 people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela.

Cancer before age 50 is rare, but increasing, in the United States and researchers want to know why.

A new government study provides the most complete picture yet of early-onset cancers, finding that the largest increases are in breast, colorectal, kidney and uterine cancers. Scientists from the National Cancer Institute looked at data that included more than 2 million cancers diagnosed in people 15 to 49 years old between 2010 and 2019.

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Robert Prevost, the Chicago-born missionary who spent his career ministering in Peru and took over the Vatican's powerful office of bishops, was elected the first pope from the United States in the history of the Catholic Church on Thursday.

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis brought Robert Prevost to the Vatican in 2023 as the powerful head of the office that vets bishop nominations, one of the most important jobs in the Catholic Church. On Thursday, he ascended to become Pope Leo XIV — the first pontiff from the United States.

WASHINGTON (AP) — OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and executives from Microsoft and chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices testified on Capitol Hill about the biggest opportunities, risks and needs facing an industry which lawmakers and technologists agree could fundamentally transform global business, culture and geopolitics.

WASHINGTON (AP) — OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and executives from Microsoft and chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices testified on Capitol Hill about the biggest opportunities, risks and needs facing an industry which lawmakers and technologists agree could fundamentally transform global business, culture and geopolitics.

Newly-elected Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney visited the White House on Tuesday in search of common ground during an ongoing trade war that has shattered decades of trust between the his country and the U.S. Although the conversation was civil, President Donald Trump repeated erroneous rhetoric about how the U.S. provides Canada with billions of dollars in subsidies.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Federal Emergency Management Agency faced fresh upheaval Thursday just weeks before the start of hurricane season when the acting administrator was pushed out and replaced by another official from the Department of Homeland Security.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump said Thursday that he would pull his nomination of Ed Martin Jr. to be the top federal prosecutor for the nation's capital, bowing to bipartisan concerns about the conservative activist's modest legal experience and divisive politics.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump has agreed to cut tariffs on U.K. autos, steel and aluminum in a planned trade deal with Britain, which would buy more American beef and streamline its customs process for goods from the United States.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration announced a trade deal with the United Kingdom Thursday in grandiose terms, but with only limited details about what it will achieve.

The agreement will open up the British market to American beef, ethanol, and other agricultural products, the White House said. It will also allow British cars and steel better access to U.S. consumers.

NEW YORK (AP) — It was her night once again. Lainey Wilson took home the top prize at the 60th annual Academy of Country Music Awards — the title of entertainer of the year — for a second year in a row. And that was after she cleaned house, taking home trophies for both female artist and album of the year.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Retired Supreme Court Justice David H. Souter, the ascetic bachelor and New Hampshire Republican who became a darling of liberals during his nearly 20 years on the bench, has died. He was 85.

Souter died Thursday at his home in New Hampshire, the court said in a statement Friday.

NEW YORK (AP) — The founder and former CEO of the cryptocurrency lending platform Celsius Network was sentenced Thursday to 12 years in prison after a prosecutor labeled him a predator who "preyed on hope" by enticing vulnerable customers to risk their life savings for a supposedly safe investment.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Justice Sonia Sotomayor said Thursday that lawyers should stand up and fight in battles faced by the nation's legal system, comments that come amid attacks on federal judges and President Donald Trump's targeting of elite law firms in executive orders.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump said Thursday that he is naming Fox News host Jeanine Pirro, a former county prosecutor and elected judge, to be the top federal prosecutor for the nation's capital after abandoning his first pick for the job.

WASHINGTON (AP) — A majority of U.S. adults disapprove of President Donald Trump's handling of issues related to colleges and universities, according to a new poll, as his administration ramps up threats to cut federal funding unless schools comply with his political agenda.

VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Leo XIV, history's first U.S.-born pontiff, said Friday that his election was both a cross to bear and a blessing as he celebrated his first Mass as the head of the Catholic Church.

Leo spoke off-the-cuff in English in the Sistine Chapel to the cardinals who elected him to follow in the footsteps of Pope Francis, who put a commitment to social justice at the core of his papacy. He acknowledged the great responsibility they had placed on him before delivering a brief but dense homily on the need to joyfully spread Christianity in a world that often mocks it.

CHICAGO (AP) — After white smoke billowed Thursday from the Sistine Chapel, signaling that a pope had been chosen, students in every classroom at The Frances Xavier Warde School in Chicago had their eyes glued to TV screens.

As the image of the new pope, Chicago native Cardinal Robert Prevost, appeared onscreen, cheers erupted through the hallways. Children jumped out of their seats, pumping their hands in the air.

SCHIAVON, Italy (AP) — Pope Leo XIV 's choice of name signals a commitment to social justice that is very much in line with the late Pope Francis ' global ministry.

"I think a lot us had a question mark when they elected an American, and then he selected the name Pope Leo XIV," said Natalia Imperatori-Lee, the chair of religious studies at Manhattan University. "It really means to me he will continue the work of Leo XIII."

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Pentagon will immediately begin moving as many as 1,000 openly identifying transgender service members out of the military and give others 30 days to self-identify under a new directive issued Thursday.

Buoyed by Tuesday's Supreme Court decision allowing the Trump administration to enforce a ban on transgender individuals in the military, the Defense Department will begin going through medical records to identify others who haven't come forward.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Friday floated cutting tariffs on China from 145% to 80% ahead of a weekend meeting among top U.S. and Chinese trade officials as he looks to deescalate the trade war between the world's two largest economies.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump agreed Thursday to cut tariffs on U.K. autos, steel and aluminum in a planned trade deal but played down the possibility of other nations getting similarly favorable terms on his import taxes, which are roiling the global economy.

STONINGTON, Maine (AP) — Virginia Olsen has pulled lobsters from Maine's chilly Atlantic waters for decades while watching threats to the state's lifeblood industry mount.

WASHINGTON (AP) — FBI Director Kash Patel said Thursday that he would make the bureau's mission "work on whatever budget we're given," striking a different tone from comments a day earlier in which he called for the agency to be funded at far higher levels than what the Trump administration had proposed.

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump abruptly fired Librarian of Congress Carla Hayden as the White House continues to purge the federal government of those perceived to oppose the president and his agenda.

Hayden was notified in an email late Thursday from the White House's Presidential Personnel Office, according to an email obtained by The Associated Press. Confirmed by the Senate to the job in 2016, Hayden was the first woman and the first African American to be librarian of Congress.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Senate Democrats have blocked legislation to regulate stablecoins, a form of cryptocurrency, after arguing that the bill needed stronger protections and airing concerns that it could help President Donald Trump enrich himself.

The bill, which would regulate how stablecoin issuers operate in the U.S., had previously won some Democratic support. But it failed 49-48 on a procedural vote Thursday after Democrats said that they needed to see more changes to the legislation before they could back it.

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. regulators have approved the first cervical cancer testing kit that allows women to collect their own sample at home before shipping it to a laboratory, according to a medical device company.

Teal Health said Friday the Food and Drug Administration approved its Teal Wand for home use, offering a new way to collect vaginal samples that can detect the HPV virus that causes cervical cancer. Currently, HPV tests and Pap smears are performed at a health clinic or doctor's office.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Pentagon has ordered all military leaders and commands to pull and review all of their library books that address diversity, anti-racism or gender issues by May 21, according to a memo issued to the force on Friday.

It is the broadest and most detailed directive so far on Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth's campaign to rid the military of diversity and equity programs, policies and instructional materials. And it follows similar efforts to remove hundreds of books from the libraries at the military academies.

WASHINGTON (AP) — A top Federal Reserve official said Friday that massive uncertainty created by President Donald Trump's tariffs has caused some businesses to cut back on hiring and spending, threatening to slow the economy, but he added that it's not yet clear whether the central bank should cut its key interest rate.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration will welcome more than two dozen white South Africans to the United States as refugees next week, an unusual move because it has suspended most refugee resettlement operations, officials and documents said Friday.

WASHINGTON (AP) — After musing publicly and privately with the idea of raising the top tax rate for wealthy millionaires as Republicans draft his big bill in Congress, President Donald Trump early Friday backed off that call — sort of.

Trump posted on social media that hiking taxes on anyone, even the rich, could stir a political backlash, reviving the "Read my lips: No new taxes" warnings of the Bush-era that helped topple a president. The post came days after he floated the idea of higher taxes on those single filers earning $2.5 million and above.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The new head of the federal agency tasked with responding to disasters across the country warned staff in a meeting Friday not to try to impede upcoming changes, saying that "I will run right over you" while also suggesting policy changes that would push more responsibilities to the states.