Chattanooga area gas prices stay below U.S. average
Tennessee lawmakers are poised to add another 6 cents per gallon to the price of gasoline by raising the state gas tax over a 3-year period, but local prices still remain far below the U.S. average.
Even if the 6-cents-per-gallon increase included in Gov. Bill Haslam's IMPROVE act were in effect today, gas in Chattanooga would still average 25 cents per gallon less than the national average, according to a gas price survey released today.
Despite a continuing increase in gas prices nationwide, the average retail price of a gallon of gas in Chattanooga declined 1.4 cents last week, according to GasBuddy's daily survey of 170 gas outlets in Chattanooga released Monday. The average price of gas in Chattanooga at the start of this week was $2.11 per gallon, or 31 cents per gallon less than the U.S. average.
But Chatanooga gas prices this week are still up by 12.3 cents per gallon in the past month and are 18.7 cents per gallon higher than the same day one year ago, GasBuddy.com surveys show.
Patrick DeHaan, senior petroleum analyst for GasBuddy.com, said the price increases this spring have slowed in the past week and the increase was far less than a year ago, even though prices remain above last year's level.
Study finds Samsung's S8 prone to cracks
Samsung's latest phones feature big wraparound screens and lots of glass. SquareTrade, a company that sells gadget-repair plans, says the phones also appear to break more easily.
The nearly all-glass design of Samsung's Galaxy S8 and S8 Plus makes them beautiful, SquareTrade says, but also "extremely susceptible to cracking when dropped from any angle."
Samsung didn't immediately respond to a request for comment.
The new phones have received positive reviews from The Associated Press and other outlets. Samsung says advanced orders for the S8 were 30 percent higher than that for the Galaxy S7 phones. The company didn't release specific figures. The S8 starts at $750, which is about $100 higher than the S7.
Toilet Trouble boosts earnings for Hasbro
Business for Hasbro is in the toilet, which turns out to be a pretty good place.
The toymaker's revenue surpassed that of its rival Mattel for the first time in 17 years thanks in part to hot sales of a new board game called Toilet Trouble.
"I never thought I would actually get to talk about this on an earnings call but, you know, Toilet Trouble is off to a very good start," CEO Brian Goldner told analysts Monday after putting up very strong first-quarter numbers.
Profit in the quarter jumped 41 percent on rising demand for both mobile games and classics like Monopoly, which saw classic player pieces like the wheelbarrow, thimble and boot replaced by a dinosaur, a penguin and a rubber ducky.
The game Toilet Trouble follows another Hasbro game that became a viral sensation. In the earlier release, called Pie Face, players can get hit with a face full of whipped cream. In Toilet Trouble, players in the board game take turns flushing a plastic toilet that spits water at their faces.