For years, people have argued about what makes a sport an actual sport. Two intensely debated areas that come to mind are cheerleading and fishing — but now an effort is underway to get eSports into future Olympics.
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PYEONGCHANG, South Korea — Kevin Bickner seems like a polite, mature, smart 21-year-old from the Midwest. Except he’s nuts. Like certifiably crazy. And he doesn’t dispute that opinion. “You have to have something loose up here,” he said, pointing to his noggin, “to find that enjoyable.”
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Wall Street stocks finished a topsy-turvy session solidly higher Friday, surging in the final hour of trading and lessening the losses in a brutal week. The Dow Jones Industrial Average ended up 1.4 percent at 24,190.90 after swinging more than 1,000 points during the session.
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Tennessee State Senators Bo Watson (R-Hixson) and Todd Gardenhire (R-Chattanooga) joined State Representative Mike Carter (R-Ooltewah) to file Senate Bill 2656, which would end mandatory emissions tests for vehicles registered in those counties that still have the requirement. The bill’s summary, as it appears in the legislative database reads: Motor Vehicles – As introduced, bans counties in attainment status from entering into or renewing contracts regarding vehicle inspection and maintenance programs to maintain compliance with national ambient air quality standards. – Amends TCA Title 55 and Title 68. Annually, over 1.5 million vehicles across the half-dozen counties of Hamilton, Davidson, Rutherford, Sumner, Williamson and Wilson would see relief. “Vehicle owners in these counties should not be penalized as the standards have been met,” Senator Watson said in a joint statement about the measure. “Emission testing is not only time-consuming, but has costs attached, which are especially hard on low-income families. This legislation would relieve this burdensome regulation for citizens in these six counties.” The lawmakers explain that the 1990 Federal Clean Air Act required the State of Tennessee to develop more restrictive regulations to control air pollution from mobile sources in counties which were not meeting the Federal Standards for air quality. In August, the Tennessee Department…
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Jeremy H.G. Hayes has cancelled his challenge to State Representative Susan Lynn (R-Mt. Juliet), after Lynn reported Hayes to the state election commission for voting outside his district, triggering a very public raid by the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI) and an investigation into his actual residency. Wilson County District Attorney Tommy Thompson told the Lebanon Democrat, “Residency is one of the most evasive and one of the most difficult things to show,” said Thompson. “He used his grandmother’s address to be able to vote in the 2017 election. He may have had a move to his grandmother’s planned, but he hadn’t moved in our opinion.” The Lebonon Democrat reports: According to TBI public information officer Susan Niland, special agents executed a search warrant at Hayes’ townhome January 23 at 133 Noel Cove Circle in Hermitage in Davidson County. Hayes said TBI agents showed up at the door of his Hermitage townhome, as well as his grandmother’s Mt. Juliet home where he claims he lived at 120 Southwest Cook Road without a search warrant. Hayes said at the time he asked agents to leave after about four hours of questioning. Of the single vote cast by Hayes in 2017, Thomson told…
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With her latest tasteless stunt, actress and comedienne Bette Midler may be entertaining a knock at the door from the Secret Service. In response to the attempt by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) to derail passage of the federal budget yesterday — which could have led to another government shutdown — Midler crassly suggested the solution to Paul’s hour-long delay was a physical attack on him from behind.
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Any time you hear Washington talk about bipartisan agreement, America, grab your wallet and run! Once again, lawmakers in Washington have finally cut through all the thorny brambles of partisanship and discovered (yet again! yippie!) something they can all agree upon: spending scads and scads more of other people’s money that we don’t even have!
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Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) could be the next speaker of the House of Representatives — if she can manage her gaffes, that is, which doesn’t seem likely. The Democratic leader set a House record Wednesday for continuous speech. She talked from 10:04 a.m. to 6:11 p.m. to propound her view of why America must grant amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants, known as dreamers — for the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act — who were brought here as children.
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News Corp’s chief executive on Thursday took a swipe at Google and Facebook for fostering a “dysfunctional” and “debased” online environment which harms the news media and responsible journalism. Robert Thompson, CEO of the publishing arm of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, stepped up his criticism of the online giants as the company released its quarterly earnings.
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“Mayor Mitch Landrieu is on a crusade … to hide history,” said Fox News host Laura Ingraham on Thursday night. On “The Ingraham Angle,” which was broadcast from New Orleans, Ingraham and her panel engaged in a fierce debate about the ongoing removal of certain statues memorializing America’s military and Confederate history.
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The state of California sued the Department of Justice Wednesday to force the release of records relating to Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ order to withhold funding from so-called sanctuary states. California is one of several sanctuary jurisdictions—but the first state—to file a lawsuit relating to Sessions’ order to tie federal grants to immigration compliance.
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Democrats who howled about the debt during last year’s debate over tax cuts have stood silent over a comparably large increase in red ink projected from a budget-busting spending plan that cleared Congress and was signed by President Donald Trump early Friday.
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Since first admitting to a two year long extramarital affair with the head of her security detail, Sgt. Rob Forrest, Nashville Mayor Megan Barry has maintained that Metro Police Chief Steve Anderson insisted that a security detail travel with her at all times, and that all of Forrest’s travel with her was approved by the Metro Nashville Police Department. But in a blockbuster report that aired on Friday, NewsChannel5’s Phil Williams revealed that documents obtained from the Mayor’s office which purport to show Chief Anderson approved Forrest’s travel with her are factually incorrect. As The Tennessee Star has reported, Mayor Barry and Sgt. Forrest traveled alone together at taxpayer expense on nine occasions in 2017 on trips to Athens, Greece, San Francisco, California, and Washington, D.C., among other places. They also traveled together when accompanied by other Metro Nashville employees to other cities, including one memorable trip from October 20 to 25 of 2017 to Paris, France. “As the city hall scandal unfolded, Police Chief Anderson insisted he never approved Sgt. Rob Forrest’s travel with Nashville Mayor Megan Barry,” NewsChannel 5 anchor Rhori Johnston began the report. “But documents released today by the Mayor’s office say he did. So what’s…
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