NewsRoom

The St. Anne Luxury Lofts development in East Lansing has hit a snag.
    

WKAR's Scott Pohl reports that work has begun on a fifth story, when the city council had only approved four.
 

East Lansing Planning and Community Development Director Tim Dempsey describes the situation as a miscommunication between the city and developer Kris Elliott. When the city learned that work had begun on a fifth floor, it was made clear that the change required council's OK.
    

Michael Brown has spent decades in public service putting out fires.  Nine years ago, he restored order at the Capital Area United Way after a $900,000 embezzlement scandal.  He’s also served as interim mayor of the city he grew up in, Flint.Today, Brown is battling his biggest firestorm yet.  For the last six months, he has served as Flint’s Emergency Manager.  WKAR’s Mark Bashore has this profile of a Lansing resident in the eye of a political storm.

Take a seat in Michael Brown’s downtown Flint office and it’s impossible not to see the man who inspired his career.

A published report says Governor Rick Snyder is ready to bypass a reluctant Legislature and move ahead with a new international border crossing in Detroit.

Officials in Michigan are working to submit anti-bullying policies that are required by Wednesday in public school districts and charter schools statewide.

The future of mass transit in Detroit will be the topic of a meeting that brings U. S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood to Michigan. City, state, and federal officials are hoping to get some financial support for a light rail project down Detroit’s main thoroughfare.

Some local entrepreneurs in need of start-up funding are turning to Kickstarter.  It's a website for raising those crucial first dollars that can get a project started.

NyShell Imari is a young poet from Lansing who needed to raise money so she could publish some of her work. To do that, she turned to Kickstarter.

“I was hoping to raise $700,” Imari says. “That was to go towards the publication and distribution of the book. Online, within the 30 days, I was able to raise $825.”

The three national ratings agencies have awarded their highest scores to bonds Michigan is selling to pay off federal loans used to cover unemployment benefits during the recession when the state's unemployment fund ran dry.

General Motors is changing the way it pays monthly benefits to white-collar retirees, and cutting its U.S. pension obligation by $26 billion.

About 65 Michigan business and civic leaders are traveling to Turkey this weekend to sign a historic partnership.  Members of the East Lansing-based Prima Civitas Foundation and the Lansing Economic Area Partnership, or LEAP, will meet with automotive parts makers and exporters in Istanbul.  There, they’ll sign two “memorandums of understanding” that will facilitate trade alliances between Michigan and Turkey. 

Ray DeWinkle is leading the Lansing area team.  He’s the senior vice-president of global business development for LEAP. 

De Winkle told WKAR’s Kevin Lavery the trip stems from a prior meeting with the head of a leading auto parts association in Turkey.

Hundreds of school districts that now get the minimum amount of state aid will get $120 more per student this fall under a compromise reached by state lawmakers.