Local News
in Memphis, TN

Midweek markets turn in mixed results.

The project will be completed over three years.

Some of Alabamas best and brightest young farmers were honored Aug. 4, despite restrictions which forced competitive events to be held via livestream.

The University of Memphis football team has been given the green light to compete, while the other fall sports still await plans. Following an announcement today, Aug. 5, by the American Athletic Conference on fall sports schedules, U of M athletic director Laird Veatch said in a statement that the schools staff continues to work with health, city, and stadium officials to develop plans for socially distanced fan attendance at Liberty Bowl Memorial Stadium. He also explained that more information

A collaboration between local universities has selected pandemic-related research projects to fund. In July, the University of Memphis U of M and the University of Tennessee Health Science Center UTHSC announced a joint effort to facilitate SARS-CoV-2 and COVID-19 research projects. Now, nine projects involving more than two dozen principal investigators will receive a collective total of $450,000 in one-year pilot funding. Each project team will receive $50,000, which is funded in

The famed long-distance triathlon series Ironman will no longer come to the Bluff City this year due to the global pandemic.Ironman organizers issued the following statement on Wednesday, Aug. 5, about the cancellation of the Memphis triathlon:An Ironman representative had recently told the Memphis Business Journal in a July 30 email that Ironman 70.3 Memphis was scheduled as originally planned for Oct. 3. However, COVID-19 had already caused several North American Ironman 70.3 events to either

As of Wednesday, August 5th, the Shelby County Health Department SCHD reported 194 new COVID-19 cases. That brings the countys total number of confirmed and probable cases up to 22,317. The most recent 7-day rolling positivity rate data from July 30th puts the positivity rate at 10.6 percent, with a 7-day moving average of 239 cases. New case counts in each SCHD graph usually lag by four to five days. The overall positivity rate of Shelby County, however, now stands at 10.6 percent. To date, the county has performed 210,903 tests. There are currently 4,758 active COVID-19 cases. SCHD also reported seven new deaths, bringing the number of fatal cases up to 293. Below is case demographic data provided by SCHD.

Try not to cringe. Weve all had those moments times when we said or did something that causes us, perhaps even years later, to wince inwardly or take a sharp breath at the thought of it: An email sent to the wrong person. A not-so-white lie exposed. An embarrassing party video. A mistake so dumb, the memory of it still makes you ... cringe. Sometimes we cringe for other people, especially for someone who might be making a fool of themselves usually because of their cluelessness but is totally unaware of it. Bless their heart, you think. Better him than me. If you havent seen Axios reporter Jonathan Swans interview with President Trump on HBO, please check it out. I havent cringed so much in years, mostly in a kind of weirdly sympathetic way for Trump, who is clearly suffering from some sort of mental disability that renders him incapable of hearing a factual statement or question and responding to it in kind. Swan points out the high death numbers from COVID-19 in the United States. Trump responds: Our death rate is one of the lowest in the world and pulls out some simple-looking bar graphs to prove it. Swan looks at the graphs and says, in effect, Oh, I see. Youre pointing out that the rate of death per case in the United States is fairly low. Im talking about the fact that the United States has by far the highest number of deaths in the world per person. No we dont, says Trump. Swan points out that South Korea, with 51 million people, has 300 deaths. How do you know that says Trump. By this point, Swan is trying to swim through the murk of Trumps brain. The United States is losing 1,000 people a day, he points out. The number of deaths per capita is the highest in the world, by far. No. That numbers going way down, says Trump. No, its not. Its going up. Youre wrong, Trump says. Look at the manuals. Look at the books. What manuals What books At this point, Trump is in so far over his head, so cringey and dense, I could barely watch. I imagine, for a brief moment, being a member of his staff charged with showing him proof of his magical thinking. He doesnt want facts. He wants evidence, no matter how absurd, that backs up his point of view. Its frightening that the president of the United States thinks this way that facts and statistics and scientific research are all considered nothing but malleable fodder, subject to debate and ideological manipulation. Dont think, just listen to me is Trumps real message. Trump says open the schools, and all across the country, cities and counties are striving to make that happen, despite the obvious dangers. But Trumps childs private school and his grandchildrens private schools will be closed. Trump says we should have fewer COVID tests, yet he and his staff and everyone who comes near him is tested every day. Trump says voting by mail is corrupt, yet he and his family vote by mail. His echo chamber on Fox News says wearing masks is silly and we need to get back to normal, yet all of them are still broadcasting from their homes. Dont think, just listen to me. And millions do just that: The fools who gathered at a Missouri county fair by the hundreds this week to sing along to country music. The morons who hang out in clubs on Broadway in Nashville and on Beale Street in Memphis, partying like nothing has changed. The 77 seniors who posed close together and maskless for a class picture on the first day of school at Etowah High School in Georgia. Magical thinking. The disease only happens in cities or to old people. Masks are for scaredy-cats. The flu is worse. Tell that to Herman Cain. Or John Prine. Or 160,000 other dead Americans, and counting. The pandemic has made one thing quite clear: There is a lot of ignorance proud and belligerent ignorance in this country. And Im afraid Trump is as much a symptom as a cause. Its enough to make you cringe.

Some fun facts: According to the calculations of Election Commissioner Bennie Smith, astatistician and professional elections analyst, some 81,000 voters took part in the early voting period in Shelby County, and the voting skewed Democratic, female, African-American, and relatively elderly. The final voting figures as of Saturday, August 1st, were 54,400 Democratic, 25,800 Republican 50,500 female, 30,500 male 34,400 Black, 26,200 white, and 26,200 other. Of the 81,000 voters, some 69,900 were over the age of 50. That last figure illustrates the disproportionatetendency of older voters to take part in elections, inasmuch as the over-50 segment of the society as a whole is only 45 percent. The average age of an eligible voter in Shelby County is 48.20. The eligible voting population comprises roughly 331,000 females and 240,000 males, a split of 57.97 percent to 42.03 percent. Ethnically, the voting population includes 199,000 African Americans, 139,000 whites, and 233,000 who consider themselves other. As the last week of the August 6th election round began, candidates were putting their best surrogates on display hitchhiking, as it were, on other, better established, or more well-known political figures. In the case of Tom Leatherwood, a Republican running for re-election to the state House of Representatives from District 99 Eads, Arlington, eastern Shelby, the doppelgnger was Governor Bill Lee, down from Nashville. The two held forth to a sizable late-Monday-morning crowd at Olympic Steak and Pizza in Arlington, while partisans of Leatherwoods GOP primary opponent, former Shelby County Republican chairman Lee Mills, picketed outside. A little later on Monday, U.S. Senate candidate Manny Sethi, a Nashville physician and Republican newcomer who styles himself Dr. Manny, hit the stage of another well-attended event at The Grove in Cordova. He had in tow U.S. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, and Sethi, who is opposed by former Ambassador Bill Hagerty, a Trump endorsee, fairly quickly disposed of any idea that he might be the moderate in the race. Im tired of this coronavirus, arent you Sethi said, addressing a seated crowd of which roughly a third were maskless. Lets fire Dr. Fauci he continued, going on to endorse the glories of hydroxychloroquine, the anti-malaria drug President Trump has touted as a potential antidote to COVID-19. James Mackler, a Democratic candidate in the Senate race, has condemned Sethis position as one making him unworthy of serving in the Senate. Sethi is one of two physicians in the Senate race. The other, Republican George Flinn of Memphis, has denounced Trumps response to the coronavirus pandemic as being woefully insufficient.

MICAH brings people together to change Memphis for the better.

Memphis takes to the streets.

Illustrated by Mia Saine, the cover of our annual City Guide issue reflects Memphis in the summer of 2020.

Without Jaren Jackson Jr., can the Grizzlies find a win against Mike Conley and the Jazz

As a movement to remove Confederate monuments from government and public ground takes hold, the debate continues on where the symbols should be based.

After three losses, there are five glaring issues the Grizzlies need to fix ahead of Wednesdays game vs. the Jazz.

A woman with no medical training relied on her instincts to save an 18-year-old man who was shot at a northeast Memphis gas station Friday night.

Two people were killed and another injured after an accident on US-51 Tuesday evening.

MEMPHIS, Tenn. Organizers of the St. Jude IRONMAN 70.3 Memphis triathlon have canceled the event for 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The inaugural event which was scheduled for October 3 at Shelby Farms Park has already been rescheduled for October 2, 2021. In what has been a continually evolving and challenging