Shaw donates floors for St. Jude homes
Shaw Floors said Wednesday it will continue its support of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital as a national sponsor and the exclusive flooring provider of the 2018 St. Jude Dream Home Giveaways across the country, including one planned in Chattanooga.
More than 120,000 square feet of carpet, carpet cushion, hardwood, luxury vinyl tile, ceramic tile and other Shaw Floors products have been donated for use in this year’s Dream Homes.
“Shaw associates are proud to know that through this program, our flooring helps fund St. Jude’s important work to end childhood cancer and save lives,” said Tim Baucom, executive vice president of Shaw’s residential division.
Trump urged to drop plan to sell TVA unit
Despite their partisan differences, the entire Tennessee congressional delegation, plus four other lawmakers in Kentucky and Alabama, appealed to President Trump Wednesday to abandon his proposal to sell the transmission assets of the Tennessee Valley Authority.
The 15 Tennessee Valley members of Congress wrote in support of keeping TVA in its present form contrary to a proposal in the White House budget plan to authorize TVA to sell its power transmission operations to another power company. In a letter to Trump, the members of Congress warned that splitting up TVA’s generation and transmission assets could threaten the low-cost power model offered by the federal utility, which was created to serve the 7-state Tennessee Valley in 1933.
“Previous administrations have proposed selling TVA and its assets and these proposals have all been soundly rejected by Congress,” the members wrote. “When President Obama proposed selling TVA in 2013, all it did was undermine TVA’s credit, raise interest rates on TVA’s debt, and threaten to increase electric bills for 9 million ratepayers.”
In the White House infrastructure plan unveiled in February, the Trump administration said TVA and other similar federal agencies should be given the authority to divest of their transmission assets “where the agencies can demonstrate an increase in value from the sale would optimize the taxpayer value for federal assets.”
IRS back online after tax day outage
The IRS says its processing systems are fully back up and running after an outage on Tax Day.
The agency said that a hardware issue caused an outage of some of its processing systems, which frustrated many visitors to its website on Tuesday. The IRS extended the tax deadline until Wednesday night following the massive snag.
The IRS said that as of Wednesday morning, it has accepted more than 14 million tax submissions since processing systems reopened.
Acting Commissioner David Kautter said that the IRS is current with all of the tax submissions and no backlog remains.
Amazon Prime tops 100 million members
Amazon says it has more than 100 million paid Prime members, the first time the company has given out a specific number on its paid subscriber base.
CEO Jeff Bezos said in the company’s annual letter to shareholders on Wednesday that Amazon shipped more than 5 billion items with Prime worldwide. The service offers free, unlimited two-day shipping for an annual or monthly fee.
Previously, the Seattle-based company has put the number at “tens of millions,” and estimates have been as high as 90 million.
Target adds drive-up service in some stores
Target stores in Florida and Texas are now offering drive-up service.
The retail chain announced Tuesday customers can buy items without leaving their car.
The service began last fall in Minneapolis, where the company is headquartered. Target hopes to expand the service to nearly 1,000 stores across the U.S. by the end of the year.
Orders can be placed with the Target mobile app and should be ready in less than two hours. Customers then park in designated spots outside the store and employees bring out the orders.
Other states with Target’s drive-up service are Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma and South Carolina.
Walmart offers a similar drive-up service for groceries at some locations, but Target’s service applies to any in-stock items at the store.
Both retailers have previously offered in-store pickup.