Detroit Free Press
NATIONAL GUARD RECRUITS MICHIGAN TEENS WITH VR
Here, in one of Woodhaven High School’s gymnasiums, it was hard not to watch the teenagers try out some virtual reality technology and see that war, indeed, has a face. In this instance – on Friday, March 6 – it was a face partly covered by video-game...
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6 U.S. service members killed in crash
Six more U.S. service members were killed when their refueling aircraft crashed after a midair collision over western Iraq, officials said March 13, as the joint U.S.-Israeli war on Iran reached the two-week mark with few signs of slowing down. The...
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TERROR AT TEMPLE ISRAEL
A man drove a truck into Temple Israel, a Jewish synagogue, in West Bloomfield in a lunchtime attack on March 12 that left him dead, injured a security guard and set the building on fire, authorities said. The attacker was the lone death in the event,...
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Ships attacked in Strait of Hormuz
President Donald Trump said he would ensure safety in the Strait of Hormuz as oil tankers have come under fire and the U.S. military has attacked mine-laying ships during the Iran war. Iran has effectively closed the narrow strait, preventing Saudi...
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Many say they’ll rebuild amid massive cleanup effort
UNION LAKE — Flattened homes, cars and pickup trucks tossed and crushed like pop cans, and fallen and twisted trees mark a half-mile stretch of road where a tornado killed three people Friday, March 6 and left a massive cleanup for residents who say...
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Deadly tornadoes earliest recorded to be that strong
The tornadoes that tore through four southwest Michigan counties March 6, killing four people and injuring nearly two dozen others, were highly unusual not only for their intensity but their early arrival. The most severe of the four tornadoes that...
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Michigan tornado victims identified
Two of four people who died in tornados that devastated southern Michigan on Friday have been publicly identified. The Cass County Sheriff’s Department identified a 12-year-old boy who died near Edwardsburg in Cass County and a funeral home obituary...
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Sherrone Moore reaches plea deal
In a stunning shift, ex-Michigan football coach Sherrone Moore and prosecutors agreed to a plea deal instead of moving forward with a critical hearing, a move that avoids a trial and testimony from his former executive assistant who told police he...
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OUTER SPACE TESTS HAPPENING AT MSU
The complicated electronics now pervading our lives — in our hands, in our cars and orbiting us constantly in satellites — have their own version of Kryptonite: cosmic rays from space that can zap them and cause everything from temporary glitches to...
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Michigan Muslim leaders plead for Trump to end war
Muslim leaders in Michigan gathered in a Dearborn Heights mosque to call for peace and an end to the war against Iran as mourners gathered in religious centers for services remembering people killed in Iran and other parts of the Middle East. “We call...
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Metro Detroiters showing dissent for the war with protests
On a cold, sunny Monday afternoon, March 2, over 70 metro Detroiters gathered outside Royal Oak’s St. John’s Episcopal Church to voice their dissent to the ongoing U.S.-Iran war. The protest was organized by Peace Action of Michigan, which plans to...
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Trump administration: War won’t be ‘endless’
The Trump administration’s war with Iran will not be “endless,” Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said on March 2, as the United States and Israel’s joint air strikes against Iran expand, the death toll rises and a congressional debate over President...
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Tehran retaliates after leader killed in strikes
Three American service members were killed in action amid the ongoing conflict with Iran, U.S. military officials confirmed, one day after the United States and Israel launched strikes against the country and Tehran quickly hit back. Five others were...
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Clinton questioning shows a changed Democratic Party
WASHINGTON – In late February 2016, Hillary Clinton cruised to an overwhelming victory in the South Carolina Democratic presidential primary – an unambiguous statement of the former first lady and secretary of state’s dominance over her party as she...
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Whitmer pushes literacy, housing in her final address
LANSING — Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer touted seven years of work in her final State of the State address Wednesday, Feb. 25, but said there are still significant strides to be made in fields like literacy and housing before she leaves office at the...
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Bierschbach: We open doors ... We create opportunities
Wayne State University’s new president, Richard Bierschbach, said that when he sits down for lunch with students, they pour out their hopes and dreams to him. “I can identify with it,” he said. “My parents grew up on farms. My mom’s a first-generation...
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Seger sideman’s music treasures are headed to auction
In the years following the 2020 death of Alto Reed, his family faced a daunting challenge. As Bob Seger’s star saxophonist for nearly five decades, Reed accumulated a vast trove of musical instruments, rock memorabilia and touring mementos — enough to...
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Larkin plays huge role in USA gold medal run
MILAN – Dylan Larkin was still on his skates half an hour after the game ended, a gold medal around his neck. He didn’t want to take off either. “It’s just the best feeling I’ve ever felt with these skates on,” the Detroit Red Wings forward told USA...
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Battle for Trump’s brain at State of the Union
The state of President Donald Trump’s union is troubled. When Trump delivers the State of the Union on Feb. 24, the audience in the House chamber will likely include members of a Supreme Court that just outlawed the stiff tariffs that have been his...
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A golden goal moment for Farmington’s Keller
MILAN – Megan Keller threw her arms in the air, threw her equipment on the ice, and her teammates mobbed her. She had just scored a golden goal, completing a remarkable rally for the U.S. women in the final game of the 2026 Winter Olympics women’s...
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A dream of building tiny trucks in Detroit factory
The old factory where Andy Didorosi wants to build tiny trucks needs a new roof. This 50,000-square-foot complex on Detroit’s west side could probably do with a few other updates, too. The building, which more recently had been an old envelope plant,...
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Lenten time-saver: Cleric takes the ashes to the streets
It seemed counter to the spirit of Ash Wednesday, but Katy Kerch said her family would kill her if she didn’t observe the occasion. Fortunately, she was exaggerating. Also, fortunately, right at the entrance to Woodward Corner Market in Royal Oak was...
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Civil rights icon ‘kept the dream alive’
The Rev. Jesse Jackson, a towering civil rights icon who battled alongside Martin Luther King Jr., negotiated global hostage releases and shamed corporations for their lack of diversity and failure to support voting rights, died on Feb. 17. He was 84....
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Tigers’ prospects strive for edge to make roster
LAKELAND, FL – Maybe, it was the palm trees. Or the lake off in the distance. But a Jimmy Buffett song popped into my head: “As the son of a son of a sailor/ I went out on the sea for adventure.” But this was just a little different. This was...
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FAT PACZKI
People crowded into a couple of paczki parties in Detroit over the weekend, getting a head start on celebrating Fat Tuesday. The h party-goers — some dressed in paczki gear — drank paczki-flavored liquor and beer, and feasted on paczki, perogies and...
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DASHING IN THE SNOW
Jimmy Pelizzari says the Sno*Drift Rally is like no other road race. “It’s amazing going through the woods at like 90 mph sideways, and there’s just a bunch of people out in the middle of nowhere with bonfires going, cheering you on, so that’s really...
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U.P. town split over ‘deer prison’ and what to do with it
IRON MOUNTAIN — The deer are going to be killed. Unless something changes, unless someone steps forward to say they’ll take these flawed animals, the deer are going to be killed. And some people think that dying is better than how they now...
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SEEMS LIKE OLD TIMES
LAKELAND, Fla. − It felt like old times. Justin Verlander, the iconic Detroit Tigers pitcher, walked down a path, heading to the Tigers’ headquarters outside Joker Marchant Stadium. He had just finished his first workout — a day after agreeing to a...
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Michigan student walkouts: ‘We need to change things’
More than 200 Dexter High School students walked out of school 20 minutes early on Feb. 9. They stood outside of the school until the bell rang, then marched over a mile from their school to Monument Park, holding signs and chanting on Main Street in...
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Cash aid for moms and babies continues to grow
A cash aid program for moms and babies opened its application in Michigan's largest city and will soon reach the state's northernmost regions — continuing a rapid 6A expansion of the initiative, which aims to quickly offer financial security to...
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NO ESCAPE
In mid-December the last Ford Escape compact SUV — signed by many of the UAW workers who built it — rolled off the assembly line at Ford Motor’s Louisville Assembly Plant in Kentucky. It was an understated end to one of the automaker’s best-selling and...
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MAGA VS. BAD BUNNY SPLITS SUPER BOWL
Sen. Tommy Tuberville was thrilled to attend the Super Bowl in 2025 when he hitched a ride on Air Force One, joining President Donald Trump and several other Republican lawmakers for the big game. “Happy Super Bowl Sunday,” the Republican senator for...
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Report: Trump attacking pillars of democracy
WASHINGTON – President Donald Trump has attacked key pillars of U.S. democracy, Human Rights Watch warned on Feb. 4 in its annual report, citing the Republican president’s immigration crackdown, threats to voting rights and other policies. Human...
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Tigers’ lefty a mound legend
Legendary Detroit Tigers pitcher Mickey Lolich, whose three complete game victories in the 1968 World Series delivered a championship and earned him the series MVP, has died at age 85. As one of the anchors of the Tigers’ pitching staff in the 1960s...
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Usher, Big Sean blaze music path for city kids
In a darkened video production room Monday in Detroit, Usher and Big Sean stood before a large LED screen, watching a clip that had been created in that very space. There, on the fifth floor of the Station at Michigan Central, the two music...
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Obscure U.P. museum chronicles a lost world
K.I. SAWYER AFB – Sarge was pointing out the obvious. At least to him. “This little bird right here is the T37, of course,” he said, standing before a museum exhibit. “In Vietnam, they used it as the A37 dragonfly; slightly larger engines. But it...
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Homeless response system still needs work
Symone Wilkes and her children were homeless for about four months last year, as they bounced from one person’s home to the next and struggled to get into shelter. The single mom of two boys, ages 4 and 8, said a bug infestation forced her to leave her...
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METRO DETROITERS STRIKE AGAINST ICE
Small businesses throughout metro Detroit closed and high school students staged walkouts on Jan. 30, as part of a national shutdown general strike to protest Immigration and Customs Enforcement after a series of high-profile killings by the agency in...
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Democrats demand DHS fixes to avoid a partial shutdown
Less than three months after a record-breaking government shutdown, the country stood on the brink of a partial shutdown as the Senate failed to advance a massive spending package that must pass by Jan. 30. Just the week before, the six-measure bill...
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Bidding on a dream or just a bargain car
A dusting of snow covered the 2024 Ford Explorer, although the make and model would probably not be immediately clear to most in the crowd. The missing grille, hood and rear driver’s side door, rather than the snow, would have made those details less...
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Death toll climbs amid frigid cold, power outages
The death toll from the weekend’s winter storm climbed to at least 43 people as extreme cold temperatures persisted across the central and eastern United States on Jan. 27. Tens of millions of Americans were under alerts for severe cold as a blast of...
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Bitter cold lingers after winter storm
Extremely cold weather isn’t going away for a large swath of the United States as impacts linger from a deadly winter storm that resulted in at least 14 deaths. The monster storm dumped sleet, freezing rain and snow over much of the country,...
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MINNESOTA OFFICIALS VOW ACCOUNTABILITY
Minnesota leaders are vowing to hold federal officials accountable for the fatal shooting on Jan. 24 by a Border Patrol agent of a 37-year-old ICU nurse, whose death has sparked fresh protests in a state already rocked by the recent killing of Renee...
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Major winter storm is bringing brrrs, blahs
As part of a major winter storm that is forecast to spread heavy snow, sleet and dangerous ice and affect tens of millions of Americans across two dozen states through the weekend, cold air blasted into the central United States on Jan. 23, sending...
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Lawyer: Sherrone Moore is innocent
Former Michigan football coach Sherrone Moore is innocent of the charges against him and “the truth will come out in court,” a lawyer representing him said outside an Ann Arbor court on Thursday, Jan. 22. “Sherrone Moore is innocent of these charges....
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Trump: I won’t use force to take over Greenland
President Donald Trump said in remarks at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, that he was seeking “immediate negotiations” to acquire Denmark’s Greenland territory and that he does not intend to use military force to gain control of the...
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Cold brewing with a frozen weekend on tap
What will likely be the coldest temperatures of the winter are headed to metro Detroit this weekend. Every day this week except Wednesday is projected to see temperatures below normal, said National Weather Service Meteorologist Alex Manion at the...
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Civil Rights icon still inspires
Yvonne Jones was 12 when Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. came to Detroit in 1963. She lived on the eastside and her family carpooled with others from their neighborhood on Fischer Street to what was then Cobo Arena to hear him speak. They got seats near...
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Amid challenges, Stellantis CEO: I’m having a blast
After six months on the job, Stellantis’ new CEO, Antonio Filosa, said he is “having a blast” as he settles into the role leading one of the largest automakers in the world. Filosa met with members of the news media, including the Detroit Free Press,...
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Trump to Minnesota: Insurrection Act on tap
President Donald Trump on Jan. 15 threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act, which would give him power to deploy armed forces domestically, as tensions ratcheted up yet further in Minnesota following a second shooting involving a federal agent. The...
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TAKE A VICTORY LAP
The 2026 North American Car, Truck and Utility Vehicles of the Year were crowned Wednesday, Jan. 14, to kick off the Detroit Auto Show at Huntington Place downtown. The winners: Car of the Year: 2025 Dodge Charger Truck of the Year: 2025 Ford...
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U-M regents board approves Syverud as new president
The University of Michigan Board of Regents voted unanimously to name Syracuse University Chancellor and President Kent Syverud as the 16th president of U-M. Syverud, 69, is a lawyer who earned a masters degree and juris doctorate at U-M. He currently...
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Mayor Sheffield: ‘Let’s rise higher together’
Mary Sheffield is the 76th mayor of Detroit. But, as she noted immediately after a public ceremonial swearing-in as Detroit’s next leader, she is the first woman to helm a city founded in 1701. From the city’s poet laureate to the federal judge who...
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Stats tell the story: Crime way down in city
Homicides in Detroit continue to decline, with 2025 marking what officials have described as yet another historic drop: the fewest murders since 1964, Detroit Police Chief Todd Bettison announced on Wednesday, Jan. 7, surrounded by federal, state and...
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A PUSH TO GET PEOPLE BACK TO BUCKLING UP
On the morning of Jan. 6, 2024, Detroit resident Paradise Warsaw experienced a brutal car accident alongside her daughters, Lyliah Williams and Payden Pinson. The details remain fuzzy even a year later, but Warsaw, 30, recalls spinning out in her 2010...
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Maduro’s tight grip on power ends
Protests continued Jan. 4 across Detroit as advocates urged an end to the U.S. intervention in Venezuela. Dozens of protesters braved the cold Sunday to attend rallies in downtown Detroit, one at Grand Circus Park and the other along Michigan Avenue,...
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MSU AD brings sense of calm to the college chaos
EAST LANSING — J Batt comes across as someone who’s in control of the uncontrollable — in his demeanor, his decisiveness and in his initiatives. That’s a reassuring trait from an athletic director at a time when very little is certain in college...
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Sheffield turns focus to poverty on 1st day
On her first day as Detroit’s mayor, Mary Sheffield — the first woman elected to lead the city in its more than 300-year history — put a spotlight on one of the city’s most persistent problems: poverty. Sheffield, who had only taken the oath of office...
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UP, UP AND AWAY TO 2026!
LaiAnna Washington, left, and her next door neighbor Piper Hyles, right, of Flint, work together to try to capture balloons in a bag to take home as they fall after the noon countdown while celebrating during the sold-out Noon Year’s Eve event at the...
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Car with 2 front ends turns heads in Detroit
In Detroit, cars are built every day. None of them — seriously, none of them — looks like Zach Sutton’s ride. Maybe, if you happened to spot a ‘90s Chrysler minivan on the road, you could plausibly compare it to Sutton’s car. But even then, you...
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Sheffield team sets $2M goal for transition
The philanthropies backing Detroit Mayor-elect Mary Sheffield’s transition are expected to donate at least $2 million to what her team has called “the most ambitious and inclusive transition engagement effort in the city’s history,” putting it on...
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AI puts teachers, students at odds
There’s a difficult reality students and teachers are contending with in Michigan classrooms: There’s no foolproof tool to detect a student using artificial intelligence (AI) to cheat on an assignment. Some students are using AI to cheat. But many...
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Cass Tech marks century of lauded harp program
This year, Cass Technical High School marked a milestone musical anniversary. Cass Tech’s harp program, founded in 1925 by Clarence Byrne, then head of Cass Tech’s music department, opened the door for students to master one of the world’s most...
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Christmas miracle for Charlevoix crash survivor
CHARLEVOIX — The national anthem cracked over the loudspeaker in the Charlevoix High School gymnasium, and Joe Gaffney fought back tears, standing at the end of the bench. Gaffney swayed back and forth – looked down, looked back – and then pulled his...
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Trump named in newly released Epstein docs
WASHINGTON – The Justice Department released a new trove of 29,000 documents Dec. 23 from its investigation into convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein – including one in which a man accused Epstein and President Donald Trump of raping a woman he...
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MI front and center as data centers plans flare
The nearly 600 acres of property off of Michigan Avenue in Saline Township, where Related Digital wants to build a massive data center, is still just vacant land in a fairly rural community close to Ann Arbor and easily drivable to Detroit. It’s...
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How do you gauge your kid’s childcare? Rating may help
How do you measure the quality of your kid’s childcare? The answer is varied because childcare quality can look like many different things, experts say: a stable caregiverchild relationship, a predictable daily routine posted on a wall or annual...
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Neighbors worry about effects from Saline Twp. facility
LANSING — Michigan utility regulators signed off on DTE Energy’s agreement to power a hyperscale data center planned for Saline Township, despite at-times heated opposition calling for greater scrutiny of the project and the electric company’s plan to...
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Could Detroit end traffic stops for minor infractions?
Detroit police oversight board members hoping to limit minor traffic stops after a series of police shootings that started with issues including alleged license plate and tinted window violations can look to the experiences of at least three Michigan...
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DARKNESS SHADOWS FESTIVAL OF LIGHT
On a popular beach in Australia, the darkness of antisemitism intruded on the Festival of Light. Instead of celebrating a Jewish holiday, Jews were slaughtered. For the second time in two months, Jewish people on opposite sides of the world were...
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Person held in Brown University shooting
PROVIDENCE, RI – Authorities in Providence, Rhode Island, confirmed that police have a person of interest in custody after at least two students were killed and nine others were injured in a mass shooting at Brown University. “The people of Providence...
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Police: Case includes knives and threats
Fired Michigan football coach Sherrone Moore was arraigned on a felony home invasion charge and two misdemeanors Dec. 12 in 14A-1 District Court in Ann Arbor. A Washtenaw County prosecutor said that on Dec. 10 Moore went into the home of a woman with...
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Moore jailed as assault investigation continues
Recently fired Michigan football coach Sherrone Moore remains in jail, but it is unclear when he may appear in court in connection to a possible criminal assault investigation. Washtenaw County Prosecutor Eli Savit said in a statement the...
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Detroit schools turning in house to find new teachers
Naimah Wade doesn’t have to look far to find future teachers for Detroit Public Schools Community District: from classroom aides to substitutes to the support staff who give kids targeted help when they struggle to read. Those types of school staff...
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SECRET SANTAS PAY A VISIT
Elf 32A and Mrs. Claus did it again for the 18th straight year, handing out thousands of dollars in cash to strangers in and around Lincoln Park to celebrate Christmas and the spirit of giving. They handed out good cheer $100 at a time on Dec. 8,...
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