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This is exclusive, and heart breaking for me and for the family and friends of the great Aretha Franklin. She is gravely ill in Detroit. The family is asking for prayers and privacy. Originally diagnosed with cancer in 2010, Aretha, who turned 76 in March, bravely battled back and refused to be knocked out by illness. Her last performance as on November 2, 2017 for the Elton John AIDS Foundation in New York. Her final public performance was at Philadelphia’s Mann Center in August 2017. It was a miraculous show as Aretha was already then fighting exhaustion and dehydration. Aretha...

This is exclusive, and heart breaking for me and for the family and friends of the great Aretha Franklin. She is gravely ill in Detroit. The family is asking for prayers and privacy. Originally diagnosed with cancer in 2010, Aretha, who turned 76 in March, bravely battled back and refused to be knocked out by illness. Her last performance as on November 2, 2017 for the Elton John AIDS Foundation in New York. Her final public performance was at Philadelphia’s Mann Center in August 2017. It was a miraculous show as Aretha was already then fighting exhaustion and dehydration. Aretha...

Charles Dickens wrote the classic A Tale of Two Cities a century and a half ago. It's a story about two famous cities of the times, Paris and London, around the time of the French Revolution. These cities were the height of sophistication and enlightenment in the world, long before American cities caught up. Three American cities did catch up and were at one time shining beacons of American success: San Francisco, Chicago, and Detroit. San Francisco was the gateway to the Pacific and lands beyond – beautiful city on hills with the Golden Gate Bridge connecting San Francisco to...

WASHINGTON -- A former Michigan state legislator is poised to become the first Muslim woman elected to Congress after emerging on top of a crowded Democratic primary Tuesday night to fill the seat vacated by Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.). Conyers, the sixth-longest serving member of Congress given his election in 1965, resigned in December due to sexual harassment and his use of taxpayer money to settle a harassment claim. His western Detroit district is all but a lock for Dems, as Republicans didn't put forth a candidate. Rashida Tlaib, a Palestinian-American and socialist Dem in the mold of Sen. Bernie...

Sec'y of State GOVERNOR Republicans Patrick Colbeck, Canton Brian Calley, Portland Jim Hines, Saginaw Township Bill Schuette, Midland Democrats Gretchen Whitmer, East Lansing Abdul El-Sayed, Shelby Township Shri Thanedar, Ann Arbor Libertarian Bill Gelineau, Grand Rapids John Tatar, Livonia U.S. SENATOR John James, R- Farmington Hills Sandy Pensler, R-Grosse Pointe *Debbie Stabenow, D-Lansing U.S. House of Representatives 1ST CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT *Jack Bergman, R-Watersmeet Matthew Morgan, D-Traverse City 2ND CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT *Bill Huizenga, R-Zeeland Rob Davidson, D-Spring Lake Nick Schiller, D-Grand Rapids 3RD CONGRESSIONAL DISTRICT *Justin Amash, R-Cascade Township Joe Farrington, R-Lyons Cathy Albro, D-Middleville Fred Wooden, D-Grand Rapids, 4TH...

This weekend, abortion activists will flock to Detroit for Planned Parenthood’s “biggest, baddest” grassroots training conference. The “Power of Pink” conference, taking place from July 27 to 29, is being touted as the abortion group’s largest training conference to date, mobilizing more than 3,000 women and pro-abortion advocates in light of the fall midterm elections. One of the pro-abortion organization’s latest strategies to sway voters is to have women brag about their abortions. Planned Parenthood’s website explains the mission of the conference in more detail: “Over the course of two days, thousands of Planned Parenthood Action Fund members and supporters...

Detroit recruiters can hire online teacher training graduates to help fill about 200 classroom vacancies this fall. Education reporter Koby Levin follows up on her Chalkbeat Detroit preview of the desperation move: Detroit’s main district is proceeding with a plan to hire teachers who are certified but have received no training in the classroom — adding an element of controversy to efforts to fill hundreds of teacher vacancies by the end of summer. The board of education on Tuesday approved a hiring plan proposed by Superintendent Nikolai Vitti, signaling that the district will lean partly on programs that offer so-called...

Reliably red on the political map, Huntington is a West Virginia town with a 191-year-old university, a storied football team and more than 100 churches. It’s where Will Lockwood graduated from high school. It’s where he enrolled at Marshall University. It’s where he first tried OxyContin. By the time Lockwood entered Marshall as a freshman, Detroit dealers were trickling into Huntington selling OxyContin and pills with OxyContin’s active ingredient, oxycodone. Even though Lockwood could step out his front door and get the drug, Detroit street dealers weren’t the preferred supplier. Florida was. It may be 1,000 miles away, but to...

WINDSOR, Ontario — The Canadian government is forging ahead with construction of a new Detroit River bridge designed to enhance trade as economic relations between the longtime trading partners grow strained — and the crossing could become a bargaining chip. Major construction of the Gordie Howe International Bridge is expected to begin this fall once a contract is signed with Bridging North America, the consortium of infrastructure companies chosen last week by the Windsor-Detroit Bridge Authority to build the bridge. The long-awaited move toward an official groundbreaking later this month comes as President Donald Trump threatens a tariff on Canadian-assembled...

A federal judge has concluded that the Constitution doesn't require schools to promote students’ literacy. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ What to do when a school is infested with vermin, when textbooks are outdated, when students can’t even read? Perhaps the answer is sue the government. That’s what seven students in Detroit have done. Their class-action suit filed against the state of Michigan asserts that education is a basic right, and that they have been denied it. Usually, such education-equity cases wend their way through state courts, as all 50 state constitutions mandate public-education systems, while the country’s guiding document doesn’t even include the...

Prospective Michigan teachers won't have to take the SAT anymore to be certified in Michigan, a move that might help attract more teachers to the profession and help districts struggling with classroom vacancies. The SAT has been the basic skills exam teachers have had to take since last year, but Gov. Rick Snyder signed legislation last week eliminating the Michigan law that requires a basic skills exam in the first place. "The basic skills test ... is not a strong indicator of how successful a teacher will be," said Sen. Marty Knollenberg, R-Troy, who sponsored the legislation, which passed the...

Fired Detroit Tigers pitching coach Chris Bosio said Thursday he was given the boot for using the word “monkey” in a conversation overheard by an African-American staffer. Bosio, 54, was cut loose earlier this week for what the Tigers called “insensitive comments.” According to WXYZ-TV, Bosio directed “racially charged language” at a team employee. But Bosio told USA Today he wasn't talking about the employee or using the word in a racial or disparaging manner. He said he was using it to describe pitcher Daniel Stumpf, a white player who's pitched for the Tigers since 2017.

I’m going on a picnic today,The Picnic, James Tissotso I suggest you take a break from the FBI as well and instead contemplate reasons # 587-89 why Democrats should never be allowed to be in charge of anything. (Shot/Chaser/Hangover format borrowed, with attribution, from the Instapundit)Shot: “WHY ARE DEMOCRAT MONOPOLY CITIES SUCH CESSPITS OF FISCAL PROFLIGACY?” Philadelphia’s government has the worst accounting practices among the nation’s 10 largest cities, with $924 million in bookkeeping errors alone last year…That’s on top of the now-infamous missing $33 million, the discrepancy between what the city’s records say it has and what is in...

Michigan .. Justin Lee killed in hit-and-run crash. A mother grieved the loss of her teenage son, who was killed while riding a bicycle in Wixom, as the man accused of hitting him learned about his charges Thursday. Miguel A. Ibarra Cerda is accused of fatally striking Justin Lee, 14, with a minivan and driving away. Lee was riding a bicycle Monday on Potter Road; police said Cerda ditched the minivan in Commerce Township and fled. "My little boy was my everything. He was the reason why I got up every day," said Justin's mother, Pattie Lee. Cerda is charged...

Former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick – a Democrat serving a 28-year sentence for corruption – is seeking President Donald Trump’s help to get out of prison early, according to reports. Kilpatrick, writing on the Free Kwame Project website, says he has undergone a spiritual transformation since resigning from office in 2008 following a text-messaging sex scandal. “By God’s grace, I have received a pardon from Him, through Christ Jesus. I pray that I will receive the opportunity for Pardon/Clemency from the President of the United States as well,” he writes.

The 105-year-old building that once handled all of Detroit's passenger rail traffic closed in 1988 due to a decline in ridership and took on a new life in the subsequent years as a must-see destination for urban explorers, the homeless and scavengers, who picked it clean of anything valuable. After years of failed short-lived plans to repurpose the dated 500,000-square-foot, 18-story building, its future may be crystalizing: The Ford Motor Co. is moving into the surrounding neighborhood of Corktown and — according to Ford board member Edsel B. Ford II — is in talks to buy the old station...

Says to GOP opponent: 'You may not hate Muslims, but Muslims definitely hate you!' Video @ link: Michigan's first-ever Muslim candidate for governor, Dr. Abdul al-Sayed, took a shot at fellow gubernatorial candidate Patrick Colbeck on Thursday that some Republicans are saying was below the belt. Colbeck, speaking at a candidate's forum in East Lansing, expressed his concerns about Sharia law and the extremist Muslim Brotherhood's tactic of civilization jihad. Colbeck took exception with an article he says was planted last month by Sayed supporters at the left-wing website Buzzfeed, which painted Colbeck as a fringe extremist using "unfounded conspiracy...

Detroit hip-hop station 105.1 The Bounce says it's pulling Kanye West songs off of its Morning Bounce playlist following a recent string of erratic episodes from the rapper, including West saying he believes slavery was a "choice." The station made the announcement on its Facebook page on Thursday morning. "We feel like Kanye has gone too far with his latest statement declaring that 'slavery was a choice.' We are over it," the station wrote on Facebook. "We don't want to hear Kanye's music, we don't want to play Kanye on our show, we don't want to talk about Kanye anymore....

Baltimore City students scored near the bottom in reading and math compared to children in other cities and large urban areas on an important national assessment given in 2017. In fourth- and eighth-grade reading, only 13 percent of city students are considered proficient or advanced. In fourth-grade math, 14 percent were proficient and in eighth-grade math 11 percent met the mark, according to the National Assessment of Educational Progress, a federally mandated test from the U.S. Department of Education... That put the Baltimore ahead of only Detroit and Cleveland, and sometimes ahead of Milwaukee and Fresno, Calif. — areas of...

Ted Nugent went on a conservative radio show Friday evening and lobbed another round of insults at the most outspoken survivors of the Valentine’s Day mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. During his guest spot on The Joe Pags Show, hosted by Joe Pagliarulo and syndicated from WOAI in San Antonio, Texas, the NRA board member was asked why the “media” had turned on the NRA. “The level of ignorance goes beyond stupidity. Again, the National Rifle Association are a bunch of American families who have a voice to stand up for our God-given constitutionally...