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MUSKEGON, Mich. (AP) — A western Michigan community is celebrating the 40th anniversary of its beloved singing Christmas tree. The Mona Shores Singing Christmas Tree, which features a 180-student high school choir and stands 15 rows tall, belted out 19 holiday tunes at a Muskegon theater this week and was set to perform two more shows on Saturday. The 67-foot-tall (20-meter-tall) tree is adorned with 25,000 LED lights and loads of greenery. "The Singing Christmas Tree is 100% a spectacle," said Shawn Lawton, who has directed the Mona Shores H...
SOUTHFIELD, Mich. (AP) — It rained marshmallows at a suburban Detroit park on Friday as children raced to snatch up thousands of the gooey treats being dropped from a helicopter. The annual Great Marshmallow Drop took place at Catalpa Oaks County Park in Southfield, hosted by Oakland County Parks. Hundreds of children waved and cheered as the helicopter passed by on its way to the drop zone. Once there, a passenger dumped the treats out of a sack and onto the grass below and children darted to collect them. Officials stressed that although t...
MAYFIELD TOWNSHIP, Mich. (AP) — A 19-year-old college student who has survived two deadly mass school shootings in Michigan says things are looking up, but she remains dismayed by continued gun violence in the U.S. Kylie Ossege was shot and temporarily paralyzed when an armed classmate attacked Oxford High School in 2021. Fourteen months later, Ossege huddled with suitemates in a bathroom when another gunman killed three students and wounded five others at Michigan State University. Ossege says surgery in New York this summer stabilized her spi...
EAST LANSING, Mich. (AP) — When the texts began coming in about a shooter at Michigan State University, training that many students started receiving as schoolchildren automatically kicked in. They ran. They found a place to hide. They locked and barricaded the doors. They turned out the lights. Then they waited as a gunman who killed three students and wounded five more eluded police for about four hours. They are part of a generation that has grown up with active shooter drills. Schools and districts across the U.S. implemented such t...
DETROIT (AP) — A Michigan police officer who killed Patrick Lyoya after a traffic stop pressed the gun against his head when firing the fatal shot, an expert who performed an independent autopsy for the Black man's family said Tuesday. Dr. Werner Spitz confirmed what was seen last week on video: Lyoya was shot in the back of the head while facedown on the ground during a vigorous struggle with a white Grand Rapids officer on April 4. Spitz appeared at a news conference with lawyers for Lyoya's family, who said they believe video collected a...
WINDSOR, Ontario (AP) — A tense standoff at a U.S.-Canadian border bridge eased somewhat Saturday after Canadian police persuaded demonstrators to move the trucks they had used to barricade the busy international crossing. But protesters still blocked access as night fell, snarling traffic and trade between the two countries for a sixth day. Since Monday, demonstrators angry at COVID-19 vaccine mandates and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau have choked off access from the Canadian side of the Ambassador Bridge linking Detroit and Windsor, Ontario,...
The University of Michigan announced a $490 million settlement Wednesday with more than 1,000 people who say they were sexually assaulted by a sports doctor during his nearly four-decade career at the school. The university said mediation led to the deal specifying 1,050 people will share in the financial settlement, the latest in several large payouts made by American universities following accusations of repeated sexual abuse by employees. Individuals and their attorneys will determine how to split $460 million, with no input from the...
BROOKLYN CENTER, Minn. (AP) — Daunte Wright's family members joined with community leaders Thursday in calling for more serious charges against a white police officer in Wright's death, comparing her case to the murder charge brought against a Black officer who killed a white woman in nearby Minneapolis. Former Brooklyn Center police Officer Kim Potter was charged with second-degree manslaughter in Sunday's shooting of Wright, a 20-year-old Black man, during a traffic stop. The former police chief in Brooklyn Center, a majority nonwhite s...
BROOKLYN CENTER, Minn. (AP) — A white police officer who fatally shot a Black man during a traffic stop in a Minneapolis suburb resigned Tuesday, as did the city's police chief — moves that the mayor said he hoped would help heal the community and lead to reconciliation after two nights of protests and unrest. The resignations from Officer Kim Potter and Police Chief Tim Gannon came two days after the death of 20-year-old Daunte Wright in Brooklyn Center. Potter, a 26-year veteran, had been on administrative leave following Sunday's sho...
BROOKLYN CENTER, Minn. (AP) — A white former suburban Minneapolis police officer was charged Wednesday with second-degree manslaughter for killing 20-year-old Black motorist Daunte Wright in a shooting that ignited days of unrest and clashes between protesters and police. The charge against former Brooklyn Center police Officer Kim Potter was filed three days after Wright was killed during a traffic stop and as the nearby murder trial progresses for the ex-officer charged with killing George Floyd last May. The former Brooklyn Center police c...
Dozens of angry supporters of President Donald Trump converged on vote-counting centers in Detroit and Phoenix as the returns went against him Wednesday in the two key states, while thousands of anti-Trump protesters demanding a complete tally of the ballots in the still-undecided election took to the streets in cities across the U.S. "Stop the count!" the Trump supporters chanted in Detroit. "Stop the steal!" they said in Phoenix. The protests came as the president insisted without evidence that there were major problems with the voting and...
LIVONIA, Michigan (AP) — At a convent near Detroit, 13 nuns have died of COVID-19. The toll is seven at a center for Maryknoll sisters in New York, and six at a Wisconsin convent that serves nuns with fading memories. Each community perseveres, though strict social-distancing rules have made communal solidarity a challenge as the losses are mourned. Only small, private funeral services were permitted as the death toll mounted in April and May at the Felician Sisters convent in Livonia, Michigan — a spiritual hardship for the surviving nun...
DETROIT (AP) — Protesters marched over the Brooklyn Bridge, chanted "We want justice now!" near St. Louis' Gateway Arch, prayed in Atlanta and paused for a moment of silence at the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial in Washington, as Americans marked Juneteenth with new urgency Friday amid a nationwide push for racial justice. The holiday, which commemorates the emancipation of enslaved African Americans, is usually celebrated with parades and festivals but became a day of protest this year in the wake of demonstrations set off by George F...
DETROIT (AP) — A rabbi who packs a gun. A church installing security cameras. A police car protecting a mosque. Houses of worship have traditionally been places of refuge where strangers are welcome. But high-profile attacks in recent years on an African-American church in Charleston, South Carolina, a synagogue in Pittsburgh and now mosques in New Zealand have made many worshippers and their prayer leaders rethink how protected sanctuaries really are. "People are fearful for their lives, for their houses of worship, for the sanctuary of t...
DETROIT (AP) — Former U.S. Rep. John Dingell, the longest-serving member of Congress in American history and a master of legislative deal-making who was fiercely protective of Detroit's auto industry, has died. The Michigan Democrat was 92. Dingell, who served in the U.S. House for 59 years before retiring in 2014, died Thursday at his home in Dearborn, said his wife, Congresswoman Debbie Dingell. "He was a lion of the United States Congress and a loving son, father, husband, grandfather and friend," her office said in a statement. "He will b...
LAKEVIEW, Mich. (AP) — A Michigan couple has 14 boys and no regrets, regardless of what online opinion-givers have to say about it. "There are some really mean people in the world. And it doesn't matter," said Jay Schwandt, the father of the boy brood. "We happen to be this great big family with 14 boys that has so much fun every second that we're together. And we still get horrible comments." Some comments focus on whether Schwandt and his wife, Kateri, 43, are capable of giving each child enough attention, a criticism their fourth son, B...
MACOMB TOWNSHIP, Mich. (AP) — Police looking for the remains of up to seven girls who have been missing for decades stopped digging Tuesday in suburban Detroit, suspending a multi-day effort while they decide whether to search elsewhere in Michigan or resume the excavation in roughly the same area. Authorities repeatedly have said they're confident they will solve the cold cases, raising the hopes of anxious family members who are desperate to learn what happened to their loved ones. The timeout could last a week, Warren Mayor James Fouts t...
MACOMB TOWNSHIP, Mich. (AP) — A Michigan man serving life in prison for killing a 13-year-old girl is a suspected serial killer, police said Wednesday as they dug up part of a forest in a search for as many as seven other girls who have been missing for decades. Using earth-moving equipment, as well as shovels and rakes, authorities have spent two days excavating a wooded site about 30 miles (50 kilometers) northeast of Detroit in the belief that Arthur Ream buried all of his victims in the same general area. The police commissioner in n...
DETROIT (AP) — Half a dozen teenage girls from Canada know exactly how to narrow the skills gap. Or at least how to get the process started. The Ontario-based Build a Dream Amazon Warriors were among the thousands of young people from nearly four-dozen countries competing recently for the biggest prize at the FIRST Championship in Detroit. The team members bill themselves as Canada's only all-female high school robotics team mentored and advised by women. "You know, nerds are the future. And here, nerds rule," said Yvonne Pilon, president a...
MOUNT PLEASANT, Mich. (AP) — Police in camouflage uniforms searched neighborhoods near Central Michigan University on Friday for a 19-year-old student suspected of fatally shooting his parents at a dormitory and then running from campus. The shooting happened on a day when parents were arriving to pick up students for the beginning of a week-long spring break. Police released a photo of James Eric Davis Jr., urging the public to call 911 if they see him but also warning that he shouldn't be confronted. Hours after a campus lockdown, police s...
CHARLOTTE, Mich. (AP) — A distraught father seething over sexual abuse suffered by three daughters tried to attack former sports doctor Larry Nassar in a Michigan courtroom Friday after a judge rejected his request to confront the "demon" in a locked room, a stunning rush that reflected the anguish felt by parents who trusted him with their children. Randall Margraves was blocked by an attorney, tackled by sheriff's deputies and hauled out of court. He later apologized, saying he had lost control. Eaton County Judge Janice Cunningham said t...
LANSING, Mich. (AP) — Once-renowned gymnastics doctor Larry Nassar listened silently as a prosecutor deemed him "possibly the most prolific serial child sex abuser in history" and a judge sentenced him to decades in prison for molesting some of the sport's top athletes, capping an extraordinary hearing during which more than 150 women and girls described his abuse. "I just signed your death warrant," Judge Rosemarie Aquilina told Nassar, who was sentenced Wednesday to 40 to 175 years for molesting young female athletes under the guise of g...
LANSING, Mich. (AP) — The former sports doctor who admitted molesting some of the nation's top gymnasts for years under the guise of medical treatment was sentenced Wednesday to 40 to 175 years in prison by a judge who proudly told him, "I just signed your death warrant." The sentence capped a remarkable seven-day hearing in which more than 150 women and girls offered statements about being abused by Larry Nassar, a physician who was renowned for treating athletes at the sport's highest levels. Many confronted him face to face in the M...
LANSING, Mich. (AP) — A former elite gymnast said Tuesday that a sports doctor who treated Olympic athletes overlooked what turned out to be a broken leg while he molested her in the basement of his home, one of the latest victims to testify at a Michigan sentencing hearing for Larry Nassar. Isabell Hutchins practiced for weeks at a Lansing-area gymnastics club and even competed at national events despite acute leg pain as a teen in 2011. She said Nassar did nothing to encourage her to get help and instead molested her during late-night a...
LANSING, Mich. (AP) — U.S. Olympian McKayla Maroney said being sexually assaulted by a Michigan sports doctor who molested her and other gymnasts scarred her mind in ways that may never heal. Dr. Larry Nassar won't be sentenced until next week to accommodate the many victims who want to speak. Since Tuesday, Judge Rosemarie Aquilina has listened to more than 60 who were molested after seeking his help for injuries, including a statement from Maroney that was read by a prosecutor on Thursday. "Dr. Nassar was not a doctor," said the 2012 O...
