The Friday Five 2.22.19

Happy Friday! Before you head into your weekend, check out five articles you may have missed this week.

(As more and more legitimate news sites charge for their content, we apologize if many of these articles are behind paywalls. You have to pay for good journalism.)

1.  VP Mike Pence tours Opportunity Zones in SC with Sen. Scott. On Thursday, Vice President Mike Pence and Second Lady Karen Pence toured a newly reopened movie theater in Greater Columbia as part of Scott’s successful “Opportunity Zone” investment. The investment, which was a portion of the 2017 tax reform bill, allows tax breaks to encourage investment in low-income areas. Pence applauded Scott’s efforts, stating, “It’s a magnet for more investment in this area, bringing people into the community and bringing new businesses into the community, and rebuilding it bigger and better than ever before.”
2. U.S. Education Secretary, Betsy DeVos visits SC School District. Yesterday, Secretary of Education Betsy Devos, joined by Congressman Tom Rice, SC’s Superintendent of Education Molly Spearman, and Lt. Governor Pamela Evette toured two Florence County Schools — the Timmonsville Educational Center and the Southeastern Institute of Manufacturing and Technology. Secretary Devos expressed her interest in seeing more schools push to offer non-traditional classroom opportunities that give students greater career options upon graduation. This tour comes while the SC State House is considering major educational reform legislation.
3. Nike’s stock falls 1.7% after Duke star Zion Williamson breaks shoe. In the UNC-Duke Basketball game this Wednesday Night, star forward Zion Williamson (former Spartanburg resident) left the game early due to a knee injury caused by his shoe breaking.  The shoe, manufactured by Nike, appeared to split down the side, where the top meets sole on the outside. In a now viral video, President Obama can be seen sitting courtside pointing at the broken shoe immediately after the incident. By Thursday morning, Nike shares were down by 1.7% in premarket trading. Nike issued a statement on Wednesday night expressing their concern over the incident and wishing Zion a speedy recovery.
4. GSP activity sets all-time record in 2018. Passenger activity at the Greenville-Spartanburg International Airport rose 8.8 percent from 2017 (2.13 million passengers) to 2018 (2.31 million passengers). “That was a fitting way to end the 2018 calendar year,” said Dave Edwards, GSP’s president and CEO. “We welcomed Frontier Airlines as our sixth passenger airline serving the airport, launched service to five new nonstop destinations and worked with existing airline partners to add 8.9 percent more seats to the market to serve Upstate travelers over what we had in 2017. We continue to outpace our projected growth.”
5. 4 Upstate BI-LO stores to close. Southern Grocers announced on Thursday that four BI-LO stores in the Upstate are set to close due to underperformance. According to WYFF 4, the decision to close was not an easy one for the company, however, the locations on Southport Road in Spartanburg, Gentry Memorial Highway in Pickens, S. Pleasantburg Drive in Greenville and Wade Hampton Boulevard in Greer, are all set to close on or before March 25th.

Bonus: “Miracle on Ice.” On this day in history (February 22, 1980 ), the underdog U.S. hockey team defeated the four-time defending gold-medal winning Soviet team at the XIII Olympic Winter Games in Lake Placid, New York.  The Olympic upset, to many Americans, was much more than a stunning triumph – it was an ideological victory during the midst of the Cold War.