The US House voted Wednesday to sidestep President Obama, and authorize the first leg of a controversial pipeline project carrying tar sands oil to the US from Canada.

It could be a long, hot, NOISY summer in Warren, Michigan, along with many other communities.

The city's mayor, Jim Fouts, is one of the most vocal critics of the state's one-year-old fireworks law, which permits individuals to purchase commercial-grade fireworks, and set them off the day before, the day of, and the day after ten major holidays.

He says a modification to the law being considered by the state legislature will do no good.

A state House panel has approved a plan to tie teachers’ pay to student performance. But lawmakers on both sides of the aisle say they’re worried the bill would strip away local control.

Bill supporters say just because someone has been teaching for a long time, that doesn’t mean they’re a great teacher. They say educators should be paid more if their students are making progress, and less if they’re not.

A referendum to let voters decide the fate of a law that allows wolf hunts in northern Michigan will appear on the November 2014 ballot.

The campaign’s petitions to get on the ballot were certified today by a state elections board.

Jill Fritz leads the campaign Keep Michigan Wolves Protected.

"We’re going to start our educational campaign to get the issue out there and educate the voters about the issue, and look forward to seeing the people of Michigan speak out against wolf hunting and trapping in the November-2014 election," Fritz said.

The ballot campaign still has to make a decision on what to do about a second law that allows the state to establish wolf hunts, including one to be held in November of this year.

It was passed by the Legislature and signed by Governor Rick Snyder after the petition drive was launched earlier this year.

Fritz says a lawsuit is not out of the question.

The law was passed as a way to help control wolves that have moved into populated parts of the western U.P.

Car companies closed a lot of North American factories in the past ten years as the auto industry restructured.

That has made Jim Tetreault's job even more of an art and a science.

Tetreault is Ford's head of North American manufacturing.  He's responsible for maximizing the number of vehicles that any of the Detroit automaker's remaining plants can produce, while minimizing the downtime at each facility.

An Ohio baby is likely alive today because of the collaborative ingenuity of two University of Michigan doctors and their teams

Kaiba Gionfriddo has a condition called tracheobronchomalacia  -- a blockage of the airway to the lungs. The condition affects about 1 in 2,200 babies born in the U.S. Many grow out of it by the time they’re two or three years old. Sometimes the disorder is misdiagnosed as asthma.

Kaiba stopped breathing every day, and his parents, April and Bryan Gionfriddo, were told their child would probably not survive.

When one thinks of poverty in America, or in Michigan, what image comes to mind? Where are poor people living?

Chances are, an image of an inner-city neighborhood flashes in your mind.

Well, that would be wrong.

The Brookings Institute this week released its study called "Confronting Suburban Poverty in America."

Bottom line: poverty is moving into the suburbs.

Both here in Michigan and across the country, the suburbs are home to the largest and fastest-growing poor population in the country.

Scott Allard is an associate professor at the University of Chicago and a research affiliate of the National Poverty Center at the University of Michigan.

He joined us in the studio to talk about what this study means in terms of how we think about poverty in our state.

Listen to the full interview above.

Here's a question that colleges and universities across the country are grappling with: how does "liberal arts" fit into our futures?

We hear more and more talk about stem courses and careers: science, technology, engineering and math.

There's lots of talk about the fact that the U.S. needs people with these degrees to compete in a global economy.

So what will it take for liberal arts programs to matter to students who want to graduate with degrees that will secure a job that pays?

Those are some of the questions being tackled this week at a major conversation involving more than 50 deans at large research universities around the country coming to the University of Michigan for an unprecedented national conversation.

The focus -"The Liberal Arts and Sciences in the Research University Today: Histories, Challenges, Futures."

The Dean of the College of Literature, Science and the Arts at the University of Michigan, Dean Terrence McDonald was kind enough to join us in the studio.

Listen to the full interview above.

The Board of State Canvassers met today in Lansing. They took up two controversial issues: one involving abortion coverage and another about wolf hunting in Michigan.

The Lansing Bureau Chief for the Michigan Public Radio Network, Rick Pluta, was at the meeting earlier today. He joined us in the studio to talk about these two issues.

Listen to the full interview above.

Tomorrow night will bring Game Four in the Western Conference semifinals between the Detroit Red Wings and archrivals Chicago Blackhawks.

The Wings handed the Blackhawks a pair of stinging losses in Games Two and Three, so tomorrow night’s game at the Joe finds the Wings up two games to one.

John Keating covers the Red Wings for Fox Sports Detroit, and he has done so for many years, so he’s seen this team through its ups and downs. He joined us today in the studio.

Listen to the full interview above.

An eyesore has grown on the Detroit skyline.

It's a three-story pile of black petroleum coke that could cover an entire city block and it's the by-product of oil sands bitumen drilling in Alberta, Canada. 

The pile is most visible to Canadians in Windsor, Canada where the view of the pile isn't hidden by buildings. 

Ian Austen is the "New York Times" Canada correspondent who wrote a story on pet coke last week. 

The Mancelona Middle School had a surprise visitor on Monday.

According to Michael Walton of the Traverse City Record-Eagle, around 9 a.m. a black bear lumbered onto school grounds.

The school’s principal, Chad Culver, was meeting with a teacher when he first spotted the bear.

"Literally out by the bike rack, which is about 20 feet from my window, was a black bear," Culver said

The bear prompted a 10-minute stay-in-place lockdown. Students were not allowed to leave the building. Shortly after the lockdown went into effect, the bear was spotted crossing U.S. 131 west of town.

The Buena Vista School District reopened on Monday after closing for two weeks due to a financial crisis. 

Of the 400 students that attended the school district before the closure, 77.5 percent have returned, according to Lindsay Knake at MLive:

Superintendent Deborah Hunter-Harvill said the there are 339 students back in school this week, including 151 students at Doerr Child Development Center, 97 students at Phoenix Science & Technology Center and 91 students at the high school.

"We have to keep working to receive high school students back," she said. 

The high school had about 160 students prior to the school closings, and is missing 40 to 50 students including the 25 graduating seniors, Hunter-Harvill said. There are 29 students missing at Doerr and 10 missing at Phoenix.

"Come back to us," Hunter-Harvill asked students at a community meeting on Tuesday, May 21. "Believe in us."

Knake also reports that five employees who were laid off were recalled:

Ah, the summer road trip.   Packing up the family and heading to the beach, a campground or the Upper Peninsula. 

AAA Michigan predicts 1.1 million Michiganders will travel more than 50 miles by car or truck between Thursday evening and Monday night.

That’s about the same number as the past two summers.

Nancy Cain is with AAA Michigan.   She says many Michiganders are forgoing the summer road trip this year.

“They’ll be traveling,” she says, “but perhaps not as much.”