Michigan Radio Newsroom

MLive's Ron Fonger is reporting that Genesee County has shut down its hazardous materials response team. 

This comes as state officials are investigating potential problems with the unit.

It will be the first time the county has been without a HAZMAT team in over 10 years.  Now other counties will be asked to provide assistance when there's a hazardous materials emergency.

The Polaris Project now offers help to human trafficking victims by text message.

Sarah Jakiel is with the non-profit group. 

She says victims are often hiding in plain sight. “I think people just don’t realize the number of industries and areas where trafficking is happening.  From domestic servants or people forced to work in restaurant settings, agriculture, small businesses, carnivals and then everything in the sex trafficking side.”

'The sequester' has generated a nervous buzz throughout the nation as we wait to see if the federal budget cuts will be a big deal. 

For some agencies in Michigan, the cuts are already here.

Let's take a look at one of the state's most popular scenic tourist destinations - the Sleeping Bear Dunes. Last year, the Dunes had a record year with 1.53 million visitors.

Tom Ulrich is the Deputy Superintendent of the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore.

Though he wasn't told to furlough any of his year round employees, Ulrich was required to cut a lot of the seasonal employees that are crucial to park maintenance over the summer.

Today's the day.

It's the day the state's new emergency law goes into effect - the day current 'emergency financial managers' become 'emergency managers.'

Last November, Michigan voters repealed the state's much maligned Public Act 4 (emergency manager law). The majority of voters felt the law put too much power in one person's hands.

Legislators reacted to the repeal by passing a modified emergency manager law (Public Act 436).

It restores a lot of the old powers granted to emergency managers under the old law, but with some differences.

Here are some similarities and differences between the old EM law, and the new one.

Former Michigan Supreme Court Chief Justice Marilyn Kelly joined the Wayne State University Law School faculty this week.

Jocelyn Benson is the interim Dean of the law school. She says students, staff, and alumni are excited for all that Kelly will bring to University.

Today, the annual Washtenaw County Outlook event will bring  economists, businesses, and government officials together to address the current and future economic prospects for the county.

Lizzy Alfs of AnnArbor.com reports many were surprised to hear an economic forecast that Washtenaw County is expected to increase its job growth.

Modern medicine is full of innovation.

It can extend life in ways once thought impossible, but those breakthroughs come at great cost and potential risk.

Dr. Fitz Blake believes the future of medicine lies in returning to the core of the doctor-patient relationship.

Dr. Blake is a Michigan physician well versed in the fast pace of the emergency room.

He’s shocked people back to life, set broken bones, and stabilized gunshot victims.  Blake is imposing.  He’s built like a linebacker, and speaks in a deep baritone voice.  
 
He says his traditional medical training taught him and other doctors like him how to identify disease, do procedures, and select the right medicines.  But he’s troubled by what current medical training doesn’t seem to emphasize as much, it’s what health policy experts refer to as “patient centered care.”

Palliative care is a medical specialty designed to relieve patient suffering by focusing on the needs of the whole person.  Many people think palliative care is like hospice care, but palliative care is not just for the dying.  

Rose Mark is 82 years old and lives in a retirement community. She moved into the retirement community about ten years ago, right after her husband died.  It's close to her oldest daughter, Gloria, and her grandchildren. 

Kettering University in Flint is developing technology that may soon change how doctors learn surgical procedures.

Mehrdad Zadeh is Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering  at Kettering.  He says it’s a process using "haptic feedback."

Patrick Hayes is with Kettering University and explains:

Haptics technology allows a user to ‘touch’ virtual objects by using forces, vibrations or movements of the user in simulations. It has a wide variety of practical uses in various industries, but students in the Research in Engineering and Collaborative Haptics (REACH) Lab have found the technology particularly useful in coming up with practical applications of haptics in the local medical community.

Professor Zadeh says the technology is actually similar to some video games and simulates the feel of working with real flesh.

Unionized state employees received notices earlier this month that layoffs may be coming as a result of funding cuts due to the federal sequester.

The notices were dated March 8, but were only made public this week.The state is required to give 30-day's notice before any layoffs. The earliest any could occur would be April 8.

Kurt Weiss, a spokesman for the Department of Technology, Management and Budget, said the state still isn't sure what will be cut.

"That's the hard part right now, we don't know exactly where the cuts are coming," Weiss said. "We're waiting for further guidance from the federal government. We expect the cut level will be somewhere around $150 million total, but whether that will result in layoffs or not, we just don't know yet."

March Madness tips off for Michigan and Michigan State on Thursday at the Palace of Auburn Hills, but for fans of the two schools, the madness has already started online. 

Earlier this week, Facebook unveiled a set of maps showing the most-liked college basketball team in every county across the United States. The map is based on more than 1 million Facebook likes.  

And while U-M and MSU were pretty evenly matched on the court this year — the teams split two meetings during the regular season — Wolverine fans are delivering a butt-kicking on Facebook. 

Only seven counties in the whole state support the Spartans over the Wolverines, according to a map comparing the two schools directly. Nationally, wide swatches of the country are painted maize, showing support for Michigan, with only a few patches of green. 

A Michigan medical marijuana facility is partnering with a member of the Grammy-winning rap group Bone Thugs-N-Harmony to cultivate and distribute a new strain of medical marijuana.

The Flint-based medical marijuana dispensary "The Green Oasis" and Stanley "Flesh-N-Bone" Howse say their new strain, "Phifty Caliber Kush," has a noticeable floral taste and is an effective pain reliever.

The Flint Journal's Gary Ridley broke the story and has covered this unique agreement between the rapper and Flint-area dispensary over the last few days.

The Flint-area dispensary's owner, Anthony Butler, calls the new pot strain "the best of the best."

On a 4-3 party-line vote, a Michigan House Appropriations subcommittee voted to punish universities the Republicans believe are trying to avoid the state's new right-to-work law.

That law goes into effect on March 28th.

Wayne State University and the University of Michigan have struck contracts with their unions ahead of that deadline.

Public universities that signed new contracts or contract extensions that did not achieve at least a 10 percent savings would face a 15 percent cut in state funding under a budget bill approved this morning.