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Tennessee Tag

Tennessee emergency response officials are reporting that a wildfire has set 30 structures ablaze in Gatlinburg, including a 16-story hotel, and is at the edge of the famed Dollywood theme park.
The Tennessee Emergency Management Agency says 30 structures are on fire, including a 16-story hotel on Regan Drive and the Driftwood Apartments in Gatlinburg. The wildfire is also at the edge of the Dollywood property. Mandatory evacuations are in place for Mynatt Park, Park Vista and Ski Mountain in Gatlinburg. Evacuations have also been ordered for the north end of Pigeon Forge. There are no reports of fatalities from the fires, according to TEMA. There is one report of an evacuee suffering a burn injury.

I wrote just this past weekend about a "lurking clown" being arrested in Kentucky. Here's yet another "clown" arrest, but this time in Tennessee.  It doesn't appear that this clown was dressed as a clown or wearing a clown mask at the time of his arrest, but it is curious given all the other clown sightings across the South. WKRN reports:
A 64-year-old man claiming to be a clown threatening children in Coffee County has been arrested by Coffee County deputies. Coffee County Sheriff’s Office spokesman Lucky Knott told News 2 a man called the Coffee County Communications Center’s non-emergency line and identified himself as “the clown who has been threatening children.”

Tuesday, Tennessee's General Assembly passed a bill that would defund the University of Tennesee's Office For Diversity and Inclusion. The bill has been passed to the state Senate. Legislators would divert funds currently allocated to the Office of Diversity, "to minority scholarships for engineering students. It would also bar the university from using state funds to support the annual Sex Week programming or gender-neutral pronouns," reports The Tennessean. This year's Sex Week agenda: