As Volkswagen experiences a management shakeup in Germany, the United Auto Workers is pressing harder than ever to unionize VW’s Chattanooga plant. Top union leaders say they’ve been patient long enough.

Gov. Bill Haslam has signed a measure that tightens regulations on some abortion providers in Tennessee.

Senate Bill 1280 requires facilities that provide more than 50 abortions a year to be licensed as "surgical treatment centers." Four of the state's seven abortion clinics already meet that requirement, but three do not.

Supporters say the measure will raise standards. Opponents say it forces providers who rarely perform surgical abortions to follow costly and unnecessary rules.

It's graduation season for Middle Tennessee's colleges and universities, with special traditions at each one. Over the past few years, it's become custom for Belmont University president Bob Fisher to deliver the commencement address.

He keeps it short and, in a nod to Belmont's music program and his own love of music, Fisher constructs it almost entirely out of song titles and lyrics.

Here's the speech from last year:

Tennessee’s largest higher education system is planning, as always, to raise tuition for students next year. That’s the bad news.

The good news? It could be the smallest tuition increase in the past decade.

In recent year, the Tennessee Board of Regents — which includes MTSU, Tennessee State and the state’s community colleges — has often raised its average tuition by more than 5 percent. In 2011, tuition increased 8.8 percent, according to TBR data.

A ceremony at Fort Campbell Thursday was another reminder that the U.S. Army is downsizing. Soldiers from the 159th Combat Aviation Brigade gathered on the parade field in their black berets to mark the unit’s deactivation.

It’s crunch time for a nuclear reactor in Spring City that’s been under construction for decades. Watts Bar Unit II is preparing to run tests with radioactive fuel and host Nuclear Regulatory Commission inspectors. 

Assuming nothing goes haywire, this will be the first nuclear reactor in the U.S. to start up in nearly 20 years. Tennessee Valley Authority CEO Bill Johnson told the utility’s board at it's quarterly meeting Thursday that only a handful of people within the agency have been through this process before.

As Volkswagen experiences a management shakeup in Germany, the United Auto Workers is pressing harder than ever to unionize VW’s Chattanooga plant. Top union leaders say they’ve been patient long enough.

Leaders in Nashville’s tech industry asked the mayoral candidates how technology should be used to drive the city’s growth. The answers at Wednesday's forum, hosted by the Nashville Technology Council, ranged from teaching coding in schools to keeping government data transparent.

David Fox is the mayoral campaign’s contrarian. He says he’s “suspicious of the giddiness” he senses from Nashville’s civic leaders. In his view, no one seems overly concerned that the city’s economic boom could be short lived.

Growing up in the Fox household, it wasn’t “dream big” or “reach for the stars.” Instead, he got a different kind of clichéd advice.

“There’s no such thing as a free breakfast. In the end, it costs you,” says Gil Fox, the candidate’s 94-year-old uncle.