Matt Shafer Powell

For some employees of the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, these last few days of December are bittersweet.  As of January 1, they’ll no longer be employed at the lab.

 Since 1942, the General Education Development (GED) exam has been a valuable tool for students who didn’t earn a traditional high school diploma.  But recent changes in the administration of the exam have moved the state of Tennessee to offer an alternative.

The changes began in earnest when Pearson VUE, the company that administers the exam, announced the cost of the exam would increase in Tennessee from $75 to $120.  More importantly, it would only be available on-line.  

 Tennessee has been named one of three states to receive a million-dollar grant to address the length of time it takes for a college student to graduate.

In most of the state’s four-year colleges and universities, it takes the average student about five years to earn a bachelor’s degree.  And it takes the average student at a two-year college approximately four years to earn an associate’s degree.

As Holiday shopping seasons go, this has been a strange one.

For starters, Thanksgiving came six days later this year than last.  “That’s significant,” says Ann Fairhurst, a retail professor and head of the Department of Retail, Hospitality, and Tourism Management at the University of Tennessee.  “That’s six fewer days that the retailers have to capture those dollars and so they’re really pushing promotions all the way to Christmas.”

It was one of the darkest moments in the Tennessee Valley Authority’s long history. 

Residents of the Swan Pond community living near the TVA’s Kingston Fossil Plant awoke early on the morning of December 22, 2008 to a sea of gray sludge barreling its way through the community.  More than a billion gallons of coal ash being stored in a nearby pond had broken through a retaining wall and blanketed more than 300 acres around the plant, destroying homes, killing fish and filling local waterways with a thick muck laden with toxic materials.  

 An important link to Oak Ridge’s nuclear history no longer exists.

This morning, crews completed the demolition of the K-25 plant, the giant U-shaped building that once served as the nation’s main source of bomb-grade uranium.  At the time it was built, the K-25 plant was the world’s largest building under one roof.

If you’re looking for one of the positive by-products of the Great Recession, consider the fact that holiday travel dropped off substantially in 2009.  That means those who did venture out on the open road found it decidedly less crowded.

Those days are gone.

AAA’s National Travel Forecast suggests a record 94.5 million Americans will travel 50 miles or more this holiday season.  That’s a .6% increase and represents the fifth consecutive year of increases in travel volume. 

  A week ago, Ryan Loskarn was still the Chief of Staff for Lamar Alexander, Tennessee’s Senior Senator in Washington. 

Since then, Loskarn’s been fired, replaced, arrested and charged with possession and distribution of child pornography.  U.S. Postal Service Inspectors raided Loskarn’s Washington D.C. home on Wednesday and claim he attempted to hide a portable hard drive from them, one allegedly containing “hundreds” of pornographic images of children.  They also claim he offered pornographic material for download from his computer.

New regulations by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) could lower the cost of phone calls between Tennessee inmates and their families.  But prison rights advocates say the regulations don’t go far enough.

Federal prosecutors say several local and federal law enforcement agencies have arrested 21 people in connection with an illegal drug distribution ring that involved the trafficking of $17.5 million dollars' worth of cocaine and crack cocaine.   All 21 appeared in court this week and entered "not guilty" pleas on charges ranging from conspiracy to distribute cocaine to money laundering.  One defendant also faces a felony firearms charge.   The cases will go to trial February 11.