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OAKLAND TWP. (WWJ) - Federal agents searching for the body of former Teamsters chief Jimmy Hoffa believe they are about to crack one of America’s biggest unsolved mysteries. CBS News has confirmed a suspicious concrete slab was retrieved by investigators from the Oakland Township field where they have been digging for any sign of Hoffa. It’s too soon, however, to know whether the slab is anything more than part of an old foundation for a barn. The dig — the latest in what’s been nearly a 40-year search — is reportedly the result of extensive FBI interviews with former mobster...

The FBI saw enough merit in a reputed Mafia captain’s tip to once again break out the digging equipment in search of the elusive remains of former Teamsters union leader Jimmy Hoffa, last seen alive when he left for lunch with two mobsters 38 years ago. Federal agents brought excavation equipment Monday to a field in suburban Detroit where Tony Zerilli said Hoffa’s remains were buried. Zerilli, 85, told Detroit television station WDIV in February that he knew the location of the remains. …

In Detroit, bankruptcy lawyer turned city manager Kevyn Orr is playing hardball while preparing the city for a likely Chapter 9 bankruptcy. He’d like the various stakeholders to negotiate a “pre-packaged” bankruptcy in order to avoid a drawn-out and extremely costly legal battle, but reaching agreement could be incredibly tough, as Reuters points out: [G]etting everyone on board for a pre-packaged plan is easier said than done, said Douglas Bernstein, a bankruptcy attorney at Plunkett Cooney in the Detroit area.“When it comes to a pre-packaged plan, the big question is whether he (Orr) would have enough acceptance going into court,”...

If ever there was a region where incumbent Republican governors can experience the great GOP gubernatorial apocalypse, it is the upper Midwest. Three of the races involve Republican incumbents who rode the Republican wave of 2010 into office. They are Rick Snyder in Michigan, John Kasich in Ohio and Scott Walker in Wisconsin. That potential loss of three Governor’s offices may be mitigated by a Pat Quinn Democratic loss in Illinois. The problem is that Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin are less red than Illinois is certainly blue.

Thirty-three states including Michigan have refused to create Obamacare exchanges, and as many as half the states may also refuse the law's Medicaid expansion. Yet Republicans who control the Michigan Legislature appear close to caving to special interest pressure and accepting the Medicaid expansion. Some in the majority hope that cloaking their capitulation behind heavily diluted reforms and deeply implausible conditions will distract base GOP voters who have little tolerance for collaborating with Obamacare implementation. Leaving aside the politics, this is short-sighted. Even with the more rigorous conditions originally included in the introduced-version of House Bill 4714 (including a 48...

And so the next casualty of the inevitable municipal collapse appears, which is, as expected, that one-time symbol of all that was right with a (once upon a time) manufacturing America, having since been replaced with the anti-symbol of all that is broken: Detroit. DETROIT BEGINS MORATORIUM ON ALL DEBT SERVICE PAYMENTS FOR UNSECURED FUNDED DEBT DETROIT TO DEFAULT ON CERTIFICATES OF PARTICIPATION DUE TODAY And, true to from in the New Normal America, where the "fairness doctrine" rules supreme under Big Brother's watchful eye, the premise of the upcoming glorious recovery is a well-known one: "the shared-sacrifice." To wit:...

The Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) is pressuring public schools in this country to make special accommodations for Muslim students and to deny comparable accommodations for students of other faiths. For example, CAIR’s instructional material for teachers entitled “An Educator’s Guide to Islamic Religious Practices” advises schools to permit Muslim students who wish to attend Friday congregational worship (known as Jum’ah) to “request a temporary release from school.” In Michigan, CAIR went beyond dispensing general advice from its guidebook. In April, 2013, it pushed for public schools in Dearborn, Michigan to accommodate Muslim students who wish to comfortably...

The 2012 state gross domestic product release, which tallies the value of all goods produced and services delivered by businesses in the state, shows that Michigan continues its economic recovery. The inflation-adjusted size of its economy increased 2.2 percent, ranking 18th among the states. Due to a small population increase, Michigan also increased in per capita real GDP by 2.2 percent, ranking 8th in the country. The 2.2 percent real GDP increase was slightly down from the originally-reported 2.3 percent increase in 2011. But the new release also shows that last year’s real GDP was understated by 1.2 percentage points,...

An Island in Michigan has kept Victorian-era charm thanks to its ban on motor vehicles and has become a huge tourist draw for its quaint ways. Motor vehicles have been banned on the island since the start of the 20th century after an automobile frightened some of the horses. These days, people still travel by horse-drawn carriage, as well as by bike and by foot. Mackinac Island, located off the Straits of Mackinac separating Michigan's Upper and Lower Peninsulas, was an important outpost in the region's fur trade, but that gave way to fishing and eventually tourism. Among the main...

DETROIT — New numbers from Public Policy Polling show Rand Paul has a slight edge over a crowded field of Republican contenders in very early numbers for the 2016 primary. The poll showed 18 percent of primary voters in Michigan say he would be their first choice for 2016, followed by Jeb Bush at 16 percent, Chris Christie at 15 percent, Paul Ryan at 12 percent, Marco Rubio at 11 percent, Ted Cruz at 7 percent, Rick Santorum at 6 percent, Bobby Jindal at 4 percent, and Susana Martinez with less than 1 percent. On the Democratic side, recent polls...

**SNIP** The meeting, scheduled to be held at Detroit Metro Airport, is expected to include up to 150 bondholders, union leaders and pension fund representatives. The talks come amid growing speculation that the city could be headed for Chapter 9 bankruptcy.

Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), the Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, on Sunday had harsh words for the Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald revealing last week that the National Security Agency is looking at phone records of virtually all Americans. Appearing on ABC’s This Week, Rogers said, “I know your reporter that you interviewed, Greenwald, says that he’s got it all and now is an expert on the program. He doesn't have a clue how this thing works” (video follows with transcript): Congressman Rogers on NSA Phone Surveillance: ‘Greenwald Doesn’t Have a Clue How This Thing Works’ GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: Finally, we're just about...

Super-high-energy galactic gamma rays have trillions of times more energy than visible light, and they disappear in the atmosphere before they hit the Earth’s surface. So if you want to detect these mysterious phenomena, a regular telescope isn’t much help. To learn about the highest-energy gamma rays, scientists build elaborate observatories, and one of the most advanced is the new High-Altitude Water Cherenkov (HAWC) Gamma-Ray Observatory, high in the mountains about six hours from Mexico City. When it’s completed, it will be the only facility in the world that can detect the highest-energy gamma rays, with energies of up to...

The June 2, 2013 edition of Operation Freedom, a radio program hosted by Dr. David Janda and broadcast by WAAM radio in Ann Arbor, MI, featured a 25-minute interview with Dr. Jim Garrow. Dr. Garrow was a 2009 Nobel Prize nominee, runs over 250 English-language schools in China, and reportedly has rescued over forty-thousand baby girls from China through international adoption. You might recall that Dr. Garrow made news in January 2013 when he first stated publicly that a well-known retired US military leader had alerted him that President Obama was asking military leaders if they would help confiscate the...

The party has an outside chance of winning the five or six seats it needs to retake control, but needs to find top-tier recruits in several states and is running out of time to do so. ....Here are five states where the party needs to land strong candidates to broaden the battleground and have a hope of winning back the Senate. Michigan Iowa Montana Arkansas New Hampshire

The Motor City shows that the era of big government, big labor, and big business is long gone.Detroit, once one of the nation’s most vibrant cities, faces imminent bankruptcy. That’s the headline from the report last month of emergency fiscal manager Kevyn Orr, issued 45 days after he was appointed this spring by Michigan governor Rick Snyder to take over the city’s government. “The path Detroit has followed for more than 40 years is unsustainable,” Orr said. “And only a complete restructuring of the city’s finances and operations will allow Detroit to regain its footing and return to a path...

The booming deer population in the northern United States is bad for the animal's beloved hemlocks, a new study finds. During Michigan winters, white-tailed deer converge on stands of young hemlocks for protection from winter chill and predators. The same deer return every year to their favorite clumps of the bushy evergreens, called deeryards. The high concentration of deer in a small space saturates the soils with nitrogen from pee, according to a study published online in the journal Ecology. While deer pee can be a valuable source of nitrogen, a rare and necessary nutrient for plants, some deeryards are...

Proving again that golfers are the most volatile and violent athletes, a Michigan man was arrested yesterday after allegedly breaking a club over another duffer’s arm during a scoring argument. Glenn Lott, 59, was jailed yesterday for felony aggravated assault with a weapon following the confrontation at the Westwynd Golf Course in Oakland Township outside Detroit.

How is the radical Council on American-Islamic Relations bending public school policy to its will? Two stories from Michigan tell the tale. From a CAIR press release: The Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-MI) said today that a Detroit-area school district has apologized for handing out permission slips for Bible study classes to elementary school students. CAIR-MI sent a letter to Roseville Public Schools after receiving a complaint from two parents of children who attend Huron Park Elementary School about distribution by teachers of permission slips for the Bible classes at a local Baptist church. CAIR Executive...

This is an article from Bloomburg, and as such can only be linked to. Link

The American woman who was shot dead in Syria accused of being an Al Qaeda supporter married a Muslim man in a sham wedding for which she was paid cash and a van .. Nicole Mansfield entered in a 'deal' with Ayman Mohammed Bafil under which they would stay together until he got a green card. The pair met online, never lived together and did not even consummate their marriage - but after his papers came through he paid her what he owed. ... it was a marriage of convenience. He got his green card and she got a van....

The family of a 33-year-old Michigan woman says the FBI had confirmed that she was killed in fighting in Syria. She's identified as Nicole Lynn Mansfield of Flint. David Speelman of Flint says he is Mansfield's cousin. He told The Associated Press that FBI agents visited family members Thursday and informed them of her death.

Syrian state-run television reported Thursday that forces loyal to President Bashar al-Assad killed three Westerners, including an American woman and a British citizen, who they claim were fighting with the rebels and were found with weapons and maps of government military facilities. Syrian TV identified the woman, releasing what it claimed were images of her Michigan driver's license and U.S. passport. It also released what is said was the name and passport of a British citizen. It did not identify a third person who it claimed was a Westerner.

The IRS scandal that revealed targeting of conservative groups by the Treasury Department has reopened speculation that the Obama-orchestrated auto bailouts unfairly targeted Republican-leaning dealerships for closure. Republican Congressmen Mike Kelly (PA) and Jim Renacci (OH) have penned a letter to Treasury Secretary Jack Lew requesting documentation so that an investigation can determine what criteria was used to shutter dealers that appear to have had one thing in common: their political affiliations. The outrageous behavior of the IRS in targeting non-profit organizations with conservative roots, like the Tea Party, for extra scrutiny came at around the same time that General...

The language of budget cuts, austerity, and sequestration seem to dominate the media's landscape these days, instilling fear into Americans of vital government services being cut and chaos ensuing if governments aren't allowed to spend and borrow infinitely. Conservatives decry supposed cuts to the military-industrial-complex, and liberals bemoan that without government welfare transfer programs, there would be social Darwinism. ... Leaving aside the details on whether the U.S. budget is actually shrinking, one needs to look no further than the city of Detroit to find the spontaneous order, civic cooperation, and peaceful market forces that take over when government simply...

We have truly entered the world of "Alice in Wonderland" when the CEO of a company that pays $16 million a day in taxes is hauled up before a Congressional subcommittee to be denounced on nationwide television for not paying more. Apple CEO Tim Cook was denounced for contributing to "a worrisome federal deficit," according to Senator Carl Levin — one of the big-spending liberals in Congress who has had a lot more to do with creating that deficit than any private citizen has. Because of "gimmicks" used by businesses to reduce their taxes, Senator Levin said, "children across the...

President Obama’s lecturecommencement speech to the Naval Academy graduates on Friday left behind such a poor and lingering aftertaste, I thought this commencement speech from Sen. Ted Cruz to the graduates of Hillsdale might make a nice sort of belated palate cleanser. Sen. Cruz’s message was all about the inherent virtues of freedom, the American meritocracy, and the accompanying economic mobility, in which people’s rises and falls are directly related to their “talent, passion, perseverance, and willingness to fight for the American dream.� The best part about it all, of course, is that by pursuing and developing your own unique...

A team of U.S. wreck hunters, backed by the governments of France and Michigan, has revealed plans to dive next month to a site on the bottom of Lake Michigan, where one of the most important ships in Canadian history — the 17th-century barque Griffon — is believed to be lying in a tomb of sand awaiting conclusive identification. The first sailing ship on the Great Lakes, the Griffon was built in 1679 near present-day Niagara Falls, Ont., by the famed French explorer Rene-Robert Cavelier, Sieur de La Salle, and symbolized the ambitions of New France to construct and control...

Ford's B-24 Bomber Plant at Willow Run, MI, dedicated June 16, 1941 before the USA entered WW2. Henry Ford was determined that he could mass produce bombers just as he had done with cars. He built the Willow Run assembly plant and proved it. It was the world's largest building under one roof at the time. Even then FORD HAD A BETTER IDEA! This plant rolled one B-24 off the assembly line every 55 minutes. ADOLF HITLER HAD NO IDEA THE U.S. WAS CAPABLE OF THIS KIND OF THING.

Coming off the first batting Triple Crown in 45 years, Miguel Cabrera ­is making a bid to be the first hitter to do so in consecutive seasons. He currently leads the American League in batting average (.391), RBI (55) and is one home run off the pace at 14. In a recent piece here at FanGraphs, Jeff Sullivan commented on Cabrera’s impressive all fields hitting and ability to cover the full strike zone with power. I have put together some imagery to highlight this ability and show a bit of why Cabrera is such a threat.

ECORSE — With a healthy balance sheet, a two-year budget and an improved credit rating, Ecorse is back in the hands of local leaders. In April, Gov. Rick Snyder announced the city no longer is in a financial emergency. Former Gov. Jennifer Granholm put the Wayne County city under emergency management in 2009. Joyce Parker, the outgoing emergency manager, told Gov. Snyder recently that a $14.6 million cumulative deficit and a $5 million structural deficit were eliminated. And to make sure the city stays in good standing financially, there are several safeguards in place. The city must now work with...

Is Motor City getting its mojo back? After years of losing loyal customers frustrated by quality and reliability problems, domestic automakers are showing a new-found focus on customer service that is winning back skeptics – boosting sales, market share and profits.

DETROIT-Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan urged Detroit’s pastors and majority black population Friday to join him in an effort to buy neglected properties and take other steps to help revitalize the struggling city where the movement started more than 80 years ago. The fiery orator offered few specifics in a speech to the Detroit City Council, but made plain his displeasure with Gov. Rick Snyder’s decision to appoint an emergency financial manager. He likened the takeover to buzzards circling over a carcass. “The city abandoned, crime and violence rampant, and the governor has seen fit to take away the...

Two members of Congress are asking if the Treasury Department disproportionately targeted more Republican or conservative owned auto dealerships during the government-lead restructuring of General Motors in 2009. Breitbart.com reported today that Mike Kelly (R-PA) and Jim Renacci (R-OH) released a letter asking Treasury Secretary Jack Lew to release documents regarding the process and methodology that determined which GM dealerships were closed.

Two members of Congress are asking if the Treasury Department disproportionately targeted more Republican or conservative owned auto dealerships during the government-lead restructuring of General Motors in 2009. Breitbart.com reported today that Mike Kelly (R-PA) and Jim Renacci (R-OH) released a letter asking Treasury Secretary Jack Lew to release documents regarding the process and methodology that determined which GM dealerships were closed. GM was loaned $50 million by Congress as part of the restructuring included consolidating dealerships and closing some of the under-performing GM dealerships. In 2009 and 2010 there were several reports in the press raising the question whether...

If Alabamians got excited about former Chief Justice Roy Moore's granite monument of the Ten Commandments, imagine how they'll react when the world's oldest known copy of the Ten Commandments arrives in Alabama for display. The parchment from the Dead Sea Scrolls contains a complete handwritten Hebrew text of the commandments dated to within 30 years before the birth of Jesus of Nazareth. It will be part of a Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit that starts Jan. 20 and ends April 24 at the Gulf Coast Exploreum in downtown Mobile. The exhibit will feature 12 scrolls from the Israel Antiquities Authority,...

Shocking CCTV footage from a gas station in Detroit shows a 64-year-old man being stabbed in a brutal attack while witnesses stood by and watch. The horrifying images show the victim being repeatedly knifed by a hooded attacker, while two other men in the store look on without trying to intervene. Police are looking for the attacker and the two witnesses following the incident at the gas station off of Lodge Freeway near 8 Mile Road.

Scandal: Senate Democrats, including supporters of the Disclose Act, provided the names of groups they wanted targeted in a taxpayer-funded witch hunt overseen by an IRS employee and Obama campaign donor. Using the Citizens United case as a pretext, retiring Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., on July 27, 2012, wrote IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman to investigate 12 conservative groups he accused of violating their tax-exempt status and engaging in coordinated political activity. The groups Levin asked to be targeted for special scrutiny were Crossroads Grassroots Policy Strategies, Priorities U.S.A., Americans Elect, American Action Network, Americans for Prosperity, American Future Fund, Americans...

Sen. Carl Levin (D., Mich.) repeatedly pressed the Internal Revenue Service to investigate the tax-exempt status of specific conservative nonprofit organizations in letters to then-IRS commissioner Doug Shulman and director Lois Lerner in 2012.

After a tumultuous four years overseeing a city long riddled with blight, corruption, crime, and historic financial issues, mayor David Bing has had enough, telling a stunned audience at the Charles H. Wright Museum of African-American History Tuesday that he’d leave when his term ends in December. The 69-year-old Bing, a hall-of-fame NBA player who spent most of his career with the Pistons and then was a successful businessman in Detroit had never ran for office before narrowly winning the 2009 race to replace Kwame Kilpatrick, who in less than a term in office had gone from rising Democratic star...

<p>A Saudi man was arrested at Detroit Metropolitan Airport with a pressure cooker, less than a month after a bomb using one of the kitchen devices was used to kill three and injure hundreds.</p>

Federal agents arrested a Saudi Arabian traveler who arrived at Detroit Metropolitan Airport with a pressure cooker, a key component used in the Boston Marathon bombings last month. Hussain Al Kwawahir will be arraigned at 1 p.m. in federal court for allegedly using an altered passport and lying to a Customs and Border Protection Agent about the pressure cooker.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A top Republican on Sunday said he expected more witnesses to step forward with information about last year's deadly attack on a U.S. mission in Benghazi and how President Barack Obama's administration responded to the unfolding events. "I do think we're going to see more whistle blowers. I certainly know my committee has been contacted," Representative Mike Rogers, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said in an interview on "Fox News Sunday". Last week, Republican charges that White House covered up details of the September 11, 2012 attack gathered more steam after former U.S. diplomat Greg Hicks...

Shortly after Barack Obama won reelection in November, New Jersey governor Chris Christie pointed out that Republicans’ cloudy political prospects had a bright silver lining. “One of the reasons you have 30 Republican governors in America, and why we’re the only organization to add Republican strength,” Christie said, “is because people see us getting things done.” Christie’s stance countered most of the elite postelection commentary, which gleefully pronounced the Republican Party’s political irrelevance. But the governor was right. Since Obama first took office in 2008, Republicans have picked up a net nine governorships, bringing their total to 30 states,...

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• A statue of the Virgin Mary was beheaded and the head was stolen between April 27 and 30 out of the 2600 block of South Trenton Drive.

Another one of the Energy Department’s taxpayer-financed “investments” just went belly-up. This one died very quietly, without making a formal announcement, but USA Today noticed: A Michigan maker of vans for the disabled that received a $50-million Energy Department loan has quietly ceased operation and laid off its staff. Vehicle Production Group, or VPG, stopped operations after finances dipped below the minimum threshold required by the government as a condition of the loan, says its former CEO, John Walsh. Though about 100 staff were laid off and its offices shuttered, it has not filed for bankruptcy reorganization. For a change,...

City of Dearborn Apologizes for Arresting Christians at 2010 Arab Festival; Settlement Reached in Lawsuit In June of 2010, a few of us were on our way out of Dearborn's annual Arab International Festival, when some young Muslims began asking us questions, which we were happy to answer. Here's unedited footage of our last 20 minutes or so at the festival: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkfVAeG3rn4 Nearly three years later, thanks to our lawyers Robert Muise and David Yerushalmi, the City of Dearborn has apologized for arresting us. Detroit, Michigan (May 6, 2013) — After more than two years of intense motion practice and...

The city of Dearborn, Mich., has agreed to pay Christians who were arrested at its Arab International Festival in 2010, remove all criticism of them from a city website and post a public apology that will remain online for years, according to a legal team on the case. The American Freedom Law Center said today that the settlement follows more than two years of court negotiations and resolves the Christians’ claims against the city. It does not, however, remove the Dearborn Arab Chamber as a defendant in the case, which will continue. The Christians were arrested in 2010 by city...