Black Lives Matter is a seven-year-old movement with an ambitious platform beyond the protests of police abuses with which it has been most associated. And in the past month of protests, activists and academics locally have seen reaction to it shift — a shift explored on The Daily Memphian Politics Podcast and a recent Hooks Institute forum.

Thomas Bryant, a heart transplant survivor, was admitted to the hospital weeks after he had surgery for colon cancer. His COVID treatment and recovery will be part of body of research being gathered around the world that will help scientists know how to treat people with underlying conditions. 

Clerk Wanda Halbert says the seven locations will operate differently. They'll have appointments, and people will wait in their cars before being called into the office. Halbert warns there could be long lines and few employees at the counter until social distancing partitions are installed. The one-week shutdown was the second for the office since the global pandemic was declared in mid-March.

Nine ministers – who were all involved in the set of private meetings with the mayor that lead up to his City Hall announcement Thursday regarding moves toward police reform – put out a letter Friday critical of the reforms Strickland had announced.

According to the state’s Hospital Resources Tracking System, 84% of acute care and 83% of intensive care unit hospital beds are being used, overall, in Shelby County.

As local COVID rates continue to rise, Mayor Jim Strickland signed the City Council's mask ordinance, and also announced next steps on policing reform. Geoff Calkins looks at the initial negotiations on the FedExForum lease, and the surplus it's yielded. 

The time for “Taps” may have arrived for Memphians for America. The group anticipates its street-corner sales of U.S. flags may be the last after holding the event yearly for a half-century.

The county mayor also said in a "Behind The Headlines" interview that he has no regrets about his budget proposal that the commission rejected, which included a wheel tax hike with some budget cuts and an ambitious five-year plan to fund new school construction.

The Shelby County Commission is planning to install plexiglass barriers when it returns to its chambers next month. The Memphis City Council is making arrangements to find a new temporary meeting place. Its City Hall chambers are still undergoing a renovation that began before the pandemic.

This week on WKNO’s Behind the Headlines, Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris joins host Eric Barnes and Bill Dries.   

Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland has signed the ordinance that requires masks or face coverings inside public places within the city.

David Sweat, head of epidemiology at the Shelby County Health Department, said the age of those hospitalized has gone down since the pandemic started.

Josh Hammond at Buster's and other business owners, trying to do the right thing, aren’t entirely sure what the parameters are when employees test positive.

Those 294 new cases come from 2,963 tests, a 9.9% positivity rate.

The press conference comes after a month of private discussions with community and religious leaders and a move toward police reforms by the Memphis City Council as well as the Shelby County Commission. 

The FedExForum lease agreement between the Memphis Grizzlies and Memphis/Shelby County is on the cusp of a tricky new phase, even though all parties are more concerned right now with what everyone else is: Those COVID rates keep rising. 

Activists have painted Black Lives Matter on sidewalks surrounding the site where the statue of Nathan Bedford Forrest stood for decades before it was removed in 2017. 

PRSA Memphis and Memphis Association of Black Journalists emphasize in "Media and Racism" webinar how diversity at all levels in media help organizations paint a true picture.

Bellevue Baptist Church in Cordova is replaced by Briarwood Church among the 26 locations that open for July 17 for the early voting period in advance of the Aug. 6 election day. State and federal primaries as well as county general elections are on the ballot. And more than 5,000 citizens have applied so far to vote by absentee ballots in the election.

Shelby County District Attorney General Amy Weirich's office is launching a restorative justice initiative called the Community Justice Program. 

The civic group calling for MLGW to cut ties with TVA says TVA's estimate this week of hundreds of millions of dollars in expenses in the switch is wrong. And it says the draft report's recommendation of local power generation by MLGW is wrong too.

Shelby County Schools mostly relies on district-employed school resource officers as security staff. They do not carry guns but have pepper spray, the district said. 

The State Board of Education approved an emergency rule on Monday requiring districts and charter leaders to submit plans for how their school communities will teach students in 2020-21 while navigating the pandemic.

The Tennessee Supreme Court ruled Wednesday that it will not block a judge’s order offering a by-mail voting option to all eligible voters while the state continues to appeal.

Attorneys in Memphis march against racism in the community and legal system during a "unity march."