ALLENDALE -- In a surprise move, Grand Valley State University trustees on Friday added benefits for unmarried couples to the health insurance they offer employees.

The benefit will apply to gay couples, as well as any other live-in partner or friend who is an unrelated adult and has lived with a faculty member or staff member for 18 months or more.

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GRAND HAVEN -- Jacob Vanderlee wants to drive his family's jet boat by himself.

At 12, the Fruitport boy thought he was just two years away from being able to take the wheel alone.

But a bill signed by Gov. Jennifer Granholm last week known as Ashleigh Iserman's Law, will raise the minimum age to operate a boat or jet ski without supervision from age 14 to 16.

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Even as they came to say good-bye to Yankee Stadium at the All-Star Game on Tuesday night, several Hall of Famers talked about Tiger Stadium. As the Detroit ballpark is being taken apart, piece by piece, they talked about memories that never can be taken away.

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TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. -- A scientific report says invasive species that reached the Great Lakes in ballast tanks of oceangoing ships may cost the regional economy about $200 million a year.

The study, released Wednesday, says 57 of the 84 invasives that became established in the lakes after the St. Lawrence Seaway opened in 1959 were transported in ballast water. Among them are zebra and quagga mussels, the Eurasian ruffe (pronounced rough) and round goby.

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There's a lot of nonsense being spread about stem cells, and you are about to hear a whole lot more. Last week, it became likely that Michigan voters will decide in November whether to get rid of our present policy banning most embryonic stem cell research.

That's because those in favor of such research, who are loosely organized as a group called CureMichigan, turned in what looks like far more signatures than needed to get on the state ballot this fall.

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