NASHVILLE (AP) — This week’s Southern Baptist Convention annual meeting will help kick off what may be the denomination’s most ambitious outreach effort ever — baptizing 1 million new members in a year. The 16.3 million-member faith is second in size to the Roman Catholic Church in the United States, but the number of new…

CHATTANOOGA (AP) — State Sen. Ward Crutchfield, one of seven people charged in a federal corruption sting, has resigned his Senate leadership posts but reiterated he plans to continue to hold his seat in the General Assembly. Crutchfield, D-Chattanooga, in a letter dated June 16 quit his posts as deputy speaker and secretary of the…

NASHVILLE (AP) — Roughly two dozen TennCare enrollees and advocates occupied the entrance to Gov. Phil Bredesen’s office Monday, demanding that he change his mind on plans to cut the expanded Medicaid program. The group wanted an audience with the governor, but Bredesen was in East Tennessee talking about his economic development plans. A spokesman…

NASHVILLE (AP) — Gov. Phil Bredesen on Monday vetoed a tax hike aimed at small cigarette manufacturers, saying the increase could interfere with a multistate settlement with the tobacco industry. Lawmakers passed the tax hike at the end of this year’s session, saying it was only fair to tag cigarette companies that don’t pay into…

CHATTANOOGA (AP) — With Tennessee’s unemployment rate at a 12-year high, Gov. Phil Bredesen hit the road Monday touting a $20 million economic development initiative. “We are going to have to try to make it go down,” the governor said of the state’s jobless rate, which was 6.2 percent in May, the highest since April…

WASHINGTON (AP) — High-dose folic acid pills — providing as much of the nutrient as 2.5 pounds of strawberries — might help slow the cognitive decline of aging. So says a Dutch study that’s the first to show a vitamin could really improve memory. The research, unveiled Monday at a meeting of Alzheimer’s researchers, adds…

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — In one instant, Rickey May thought a bomb had gone off outside his home. In the next, he realized a car had crashed through his home’s brick wall and landed on top of him in his bed. “It was something pretty wild to wake up to,” May said Monday from…

KNOXVILLE (AP) — State Senate Majority Leader Ron Ramsey is skeptical about ethics complaints being filed against senators and also questions the need for a special legislative session on ethics this fall. Gov. Phil Bredesen said recently that he is leaning toward calling lawmakers back to Nashville in the fall to pass special ethics legislation…

NASHVILLE (AP) — It might seem odd for an African American to join a faith that once supported slavery, but black pastors of the Southern Baptist Convention say much has changed since the issue split Baptists in America nearly 200 years ago. “Yesterday and today, they are different days,” said Robert Anderson, president of the…

NEWPORT (AP) — The weekly rooster battle for cockfighting enthusiasts here is more of a festive community event that local authorities don’t bother to break up than an illegal blood sport. Hundreds of people were gathered at the Del Rio community cockfighting pit, considered one of the largest and oldest in the country, when it…