Michigan

DETROIT (AP) — A diver and maritime history buff has found two schooners that collided and sank into the cold depths of northern Lake Michigan more than 140 years ago.

Bernie Hellstrom, of Boyne City, Michigan, said he was looking for shipwrecks about 10 years ago when a depth sounder on his boat noted a large obstruction about 200 feet (60 meters) down on the lake bottom near Beaver Island.

DETROIT (AP) — A prosecutor announced murder charges Wednesday against a 34-year-old man in the slayings of four women in Detroit whose deaths authorities have characterized as the work of a serial killer.

Deangelo Martin is charged with four counts of first-degree murder and four counts of felony murder in the killings of the women whose bodies were found in abandoned houses in the city as far back as February 2018, Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy said at a news conference.

DETROIT (AP) — The four-year contract between General Motors and the United Auto Workers has expired as negotiations on a new deal continue.

Union officials told GM they would let the contract lapse just before midnight Saturday, increasing the risk of a strike as early as Sunday night. Union members working Sunday were to report as scheduled.

But there was a wrinkle. About 850 UAW-represented janitors who work for Aramark, a separate company, went on strike Sunday after working under an extended contract since March of 2018, the union said.

TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. (AP) — The Trump administration on Thursday revoked an Obama-era regulation that shielded many U.S. wetlands and streams from pollution but was opposed by developers and farmers who said it hurt economic development and infringed on property rights.

Environmental groups criticized the administration’s action, the latest in a series of moves to roll back environmental protections put into place under President Barack Obama.

DETROIT (AP) — The ideological divisions gripping the Democratic Party intensified on Wednesday as presidential candidates waged an acrimonious battle over health care, immigration and race that tested the strength of early front-runner Joe Biden’s candidacy.

The former vice president was repeatedly forced to defend his decades-old political record against pointed attacks from his younger, diverse rivals, who charged that Biden’s eight-year relationship with President Barack Obama was not reason enough to earn the Democratic nomination.

DETROIT (AP) — The signature domestic proposal by the leading progressive candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination came under withering attack from moderates in a debate that laid bare the struggle between a call for revolutionary policies and a desperate desire to defeat President Donald Trump.

DETROIT (AP) — Democrats gathering in Detroit for a pivotal presidential debate will have to decide, once again, how to respond to President Donald Trump while presenting their own vision for the country.

DETROIT (AP) — When Barack Obama was on the ballot in 2008 and 2012, there was no question that Terrance Holmes would vote for the first black president. But as he helped fix cars this week at a repair shop on Detroit’s west side, he recalled his ambivalence about the 2016 campaign.

“I just didn’t feel no reason to” vote, said Holmes, who is black and holds a second job at an auto parts factory.

DETROIT (AP) — Robin D. Stephens lived through Jim Crow and thought the worst days of racism were behind her. Then President Donald Trump told four American congresswomen of color to “go back” to where they came from.

“It was very hurtful to see the person who is the leader of the country that I live in and that I respect and love, speak that way to U.S. citizens,” said Stephens, a 61-year-old retired public defender who lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

But Stephens is tired of talking about Trump’s racist tweets. She is ready to take her pain to the polls.

DETROIT (AP) — There’s a new target in the clash over immigration: hotels.

Advocacy groups and unions are pressuring Marriott, MGM and others not to house migrants who have been arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers.

For decades, the U.S. government has occasionally detained migrants in hotels, and Acting ICE Director Matthew Albence says it might have to split up families if hotels don’t help.

It’s the latest example of a private industry caught in the political fray of an overtaxed immigration system.