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Privacy and protests
Detroit and Michigan have a shadowy history of surveillance and spying on activists that traces back to the 1940s. That is when the Michigan State Police was in its infancy and the Detroit police and the state formed what are often referred to as the Red Squad. It was a unit that specialized in political surveillance and operated during the Civil Rights and Vietnam War eras. Undercover operatives attended meetings, surveilled offices and meetings of certain organizations, and


Agriculture gains pose aquatic life concerns
Land and water harmonize to compose Michigan into an outdoorsman’s paradise with lakes and streams and rivers bordered by four of the Great Lakes – Superior, Huron, Erie and Michigan. Much like a Lennon and McCartney masterpiece, land and water create the paradise but contaminants from residential, industry and agriculture threaten to break up that harmony.


Lead testing program for kids ready to start
After multiple years of testing the municipal water in the beleaguered city of Flint every six months, the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in May of this year determined that lead levels in Flint’s municipal water consistently measure at three parts per billion (ppb). That matches lead levels in drinking water supplies of Birmingham and Bloomfield Township and is far below the federal actionable levels of 15 ppb or state actionable levels of 12 ppb as of J


Added concerns over biosolids and farming
© Alexey Stiop | Dreamstime.com By StacÂÂÂy Gittleman In the early 1990s farmers across the nation, was well as in Michigan, began...


Pollinators’ threat of chemical over-use
By Stacy Gittleman With the heralding of summer comes the pressure to have the greenest, most weed and pest-free lawn in the...


The changing role of local libraries
With the coming of the digital age, how we look up information and access media has changed. The library catalog of index cards stored in…


Policing technology in local communities
According to Bloomfield Township police officers, on February 4 patrol officers tracked the driver of the gold Cadillac, Mohamad Qasim…


FDA: Controlling what goes in food products
Prompted in part by the publication of Upton Sinclair’s novel The Jungle and its examination of the unsanitary conditions of the Chicago…


Michigan immigrants: heightened concerns
Elizabeth Orozco-OrÂozco-Vasquez, executive director of Freedom House in Detroit, has seen it all before and, in the coming months, expects…
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