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DETROIT (AP) - Examining the history of labor in Michigan and beyond is a goal of a three-day conference being held in Detroit.

The North American Labor History Conference kicks off Thursday at the Wayne State University Law School. The conference aims to explore a range of themes under the topic of "insurgency and resistance."

The conference also coincides with the 100th anniversary of Michigan Workers' Compensation Act and a daylong symposium discussing its past, present and future is planned for Friday.

Speakers and presenters include Lt. Gov. Brian Calley and Workers' Compensation Agency Director Kevin Elsenheimer, as well as business and academic leaders.

The event is free and open to the public.

DETROIT (AP) — Willie Horton Day is being celebrated in Michigan for the eighth consecutive year.
 
The Tigers great is being honored Thursday, as he has since former Gov. Jennifer Granholm signed House Bill 5200 into law in 2006 that permanently decrees Oct. 18 "Willie Horton Day."
 
It coincides with the seven-time All-Star's birthday.
 
Horton was a Tiger for 14 seasons, including their 1968 World Series-winning team.
 
Horton's No. 23 is retired by the Tigers, and a statue of his likeness stands at Comerica Park.
 
He's a special assistant to team president and general manager Dave Dombrowski.

Here's one of those headlines that'll probably confirm your hunch:

Weather-wise, this January through September was the most extreme the country’s ever experienced, ever since we started keeping records. 

Let's just flip back through the 2012 calendar, shall we?

First, there was the winter-that-wasn't. Meteorologist Jeff Masters is based in Ann Arbor and is a big name in the weather-blog world.

"It started with the non-winter of 2012. It was one of the warmest Januarys and Februarys on record."

He says that warm winter led into a stormy spring, with a big tornado in March.

"Which ripped through Dexter, Michigan, causing a lot of damage there. And in addition, in March we had summer in March."

A new project is going to try to predict the future of the Great Lakes. 

It’s called... wait for it... the Great Lakes Futures Project.  It’s a collaboration of 21 universities from the U.S. and Canada. 

Don Scavia is the director of the Graham Sustainability Institute at the University of Michigan. He’s one of four project leaders.  He says students will team up with a counterpart from the other country, along with a faculty mentor.  The teams will develop white papers outlining the biggest things driving change in the Great Lakes region. 

“They’ll be looking at things like climate, economics, demographics, chemical and biological pollution, invasive species. Looking back, what have the trends been in the past 50 years and what do we expect trends to look like in the next 50 years?”

Scavia says climate change is making everything more complicated.

During the presidential debate the other night I joked that Mitt Romney seems to have a problem with birds. The only memorable moment from the first debate was when he famously brought up Sesame Street’s Big Bird. Legends take on a life of their own, and most people now seem to think the candidate said he was going to “fire” Big Bird. In fact, what Romney really said was that he was, quote “Gonna stop the subsidy to PBS,” something he said he was sorry about because, as he put it, “I like Big Bird.“