Lansing Mayor Virg Bernero will give his first State of the City address at 7 p.m. in the Dart Auditorium at Lansing Community College in Lansing. Bernero is expected to outline his plans to address the city's budget deficit.
Chris Osborne jumped at the chance to enroll in MSU's new seven-week online course in forensic entomology when she first heard about it. "It is one of the bigger and more important pieces of the pie in forensic science," said Osborne, a lifelong education student who has studied forensic science for 11 years. The three-credit online course, which is new this semester, is titled "Forensic Entomology: The Role of Insects in Crime Scene Investigations." The course focuses on a specific branch of forensic entomology known as medico-legal entomology, in which insect growth can help estimate the time of a person's death, said Richard Merritt, chairperson for the Department of Entomology and teacher of the online course. Although Merritt has a similar course on campus in the fall semester, he said he created the online class so that a wider range of people could have access to the information. Forensic entomology is the study of how insects are used in the legal system. "It's become a lot more important in crime scene investigation in the last 10 to 15 years," Merritt said. "People are very interested in insects, and how they can be used in this way is fascinating." After a person dies, insects will colonize the body within minutes to hours after death.
MSU President Lou Anna K. Simon will speak at a reception in her honor at 5 p.m. today at the Arab American National Museum in Dearborn.
Hotels in and around downtown Detroit are filling up as Super Bowl fans travel to the area for the weekend celebration.
East Lansing and university officials are thinking about throwing their own Final Four after-party, with hopes it could prevent celebrations from getting out of control should the MSU men's basketball team make a run in the NCAA tournament this April. But the key questions remain unanswered — including what to do, where to do it and whether the city and university even want to do it. "I don't think anybody is dead set for or against this," said East Lansing City Manager Ted Staton. The independent commission that reviewed last April's disturbances — which followed the basketball team's Final Four loss — recommended the city and university consider holding an approved event. But the biggest question for any event, officials say, is finding out if students will come. MSU researchers hope to answer that question through an online survey which could be e-mailed to a random sample of about 1,800 undergraduates as early as today. The survey will ask students what kind of an event they'd be interested in attending, and where they would want such an event to be located. A special celebratory events committee, with representatives from both MSU and the city, will discuss and possibly plan an event, eventually recommending a course of action to the East Lansing City Council.
Fifteen-year-old Brittany Bergquist and her younger brother Robbie, 14, have collected more than 200,000 cell phones since 2004. With an effort that started with a car wash in their hometown in Massachusetts, "Cell Phones for Soldiers" has grown to become a nationwide effort. Cell phones are collected at different businesses and recycled for their parts, or sometimes resold.
Williamston — Congressman Mike Rogers, R-Brighton, spoke and fielded questions on Friday at a local cafe about prescription drugs, the war in Iraq, torture, trash imports and campaign finance reform. About 50 people gathered at Cappuccino Expresso Cafe to meet Rogers as part of a series of events held last week outlining his principles and agenda for House Republicans. He is seeking to become majority whip, the third-ranking position in the Republican caucus. Rogers represents the 8th district, which includes Clinton, Ingham and Livingston counties and part of Shiawassee and Oakland counties.
Abraham Pasternak, of Southfield, lost his father, mother and brother upon their arrival at the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland. West Bloomfield resident George Vine was taken to a concentration camp at 13 years old. Edith Berman, a Troy resident, would be dead today if the gas chamber she was taken into did not malfunction. In honor of the first International Day of Commemoration in memory of the victims of the Holocaust, the three Holocaust survivors lit candles Friday at the Holocaust Memorial Center in Farmington Hills. The United Nations General Assembly marked Jan.
A free public seminar, "American Policy Toward Saudi Arabia and Iran after the Invasion of Iraq," will be held at 4:30 p.m.
By Katherine LaLonde Special for The State News With 169 candles on its cake this year, the state of Michigan has a lot of history to look back on.
Students might be one step closer to receiving purified water in residence halls. A Culligan water machine will be located in the North Case Hall laundry room, tentatively beginning Feb.
The jury for the trial of Claude McCollum, a Lansing man charged with the murder and rape of Lansing Community College Professor Carolyn Kronenberg last year, was selected Friday at the Ingham County Circuit Court in Lansing. It took a full day at court to select 14 jurors from a pool of about 70 people.
A free, permission-based, campuswide text-messaging service could be available to students with cell phones if student government officials decide to pursue it.
An official from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, will speak at the Michigan Veterinary Conference today. Nina Marano will address the topic of "Avian Influenza: Why It Matters to Animals and Humans" at 3:30 p.m.
Bringing in a 10-point buck or a 10-pound salmon could cost more for Michigan hunters and fishers. The Michigan Department of Natural Resources, or DNR, is considering a change in hunting and fishing license fees to offset a structural deficit, said Chief of Staff Dennis Fox. "A large portion of the programs are funded through hunting and fishing licenses, so (increased revenue) would continue those programs," Fox said. Programs such as law enforcement, research and other programs in the fisheries and wildlife divisions would be affected by additional funding from a license increase. A work group comprised of representatives from various outdoors and conservation associations has been formed as a way to make recommendations.
The university has started investigating an animal biotechnology professor's involvement with falsified research, MSU officials said. Jose Cibelli reviewed a manuscript in 2003 for a research paper led by Woo-Suk Hwang, a former professor at Seoul National University in South Korea. Hwang claimed he had cloned human stem cells, and his paper was published in the journal Science in 2004.
Today marks the first International Day of Commemoration in memory of the victims of the Holocaust, and for the most part, area communities have not planned any events in honor of the day. East Lansing Deputy City Manager Jean Golden said the city must pass a resolution to pay homage to a particular day or week, but in this case, the city wasn't informed that the international commemoration day was happening. "Typically, we get information about a remembrance day or a special event that needs to be acknowledged, and typically, we pass a resolution acknowledging it," she said. The United Nations General Assembly, which designated the day of commemoration, chose today in recognition of when the Polish concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau was liberated — Jan.
A pilot Michigan antibiotic disposal program started this week intends to slow down possible antibiotic resistance in consumers. The program, Antibiotic Roundup, is a statewide public health initiative aimed to educate consumers about proper antibiotic use.