News

Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author Rick Atkinson just finished his Liberation Trilogy, a history of World War Two. His final book is called The Guns at Last Light. Atkinson was a longtime reporter on national defense and military issues for the Washington Post, though now he concentrates on his books. He was in Knoxville and told WUOT's Chrissy Keuper that his near-obsession with the Second World War comes from his childhood on military bases…

The Knox County Health Department says 2010 vaccination guidelines have been adding up to weeks of middle school absenteeism across the county.

Sixth graders now need a proof of immunization certificate for chicken pox - tetanus - diphtheria and pertussis before they can start seventh grade.

But Mary Ann Harrison, nurse manager of the Immunization Program at the Knox County Health Department, says as many as 40% of rising seventh graders in Knox County public schools last year didn’t get the shots.

Saturday May 18th marks an important anniversary in the history of the Tennessee River Valley.  It was on that date in 1933 that President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the bill that created the Tennessee Valley Authority.  Throughout those 80 years, the agency has been the focus of both glowing praise and fervent criticism, all while fighting for its existence in the halls of Congress. To mark the occasion of the 80th anniversary, WUOT’s Brandon Hollingsworth sat down with Pat Ezzell, the TVA's resident historian.

The first female president of the Tennessee Bar Association and longtime Knoxville lawyer Pamela L. Reeves has been nominated for a seat on the US District Court for the Eastern District of Tennessee. President Barack Obama announced the nomination yesterday. If confirmed by the Senate, Reeves would replace US District Judge Thomas W. Phillips, who is retiring this summer. Reeves graduated from the University of Tennessee in 1976 and from UT's George C. Taylor College of Law in 1979. She was Tennessee Bar Association president from 1998 to 1999.