This Year’s Big Health Scare
The public fight between Michigan Medicine and Blue Cross Blue Shield is tormenting the patients and families who depend on them both.
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News
Kratom Invasion
Kratom is a natural pain remedy and pick-me-up with a wide following. But a dangerous lab-made version is hitting the health care and recovery communities hard.
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Educator and Human-Rights Champion
Kathy Kosobud, a longtime Ann Arbor resident and educator, received the David McMahon Human Rights Award from the Michigan Education Association in April. The award honors moral and ethical leadership in the fields of human and civil rights.
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Sheriff’s Battles Stretch Into Second Year
In late February, when I started researching Alyshia Dyer (Washtenaw County’s first female sheriff) and her first year-plus on the job, there was already much to unpack and discuss.
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Truce in Gaza, Conflicts in Ann Arbor
In May 2024, a week before police stormed and dismantled the Gaza solidarity encampment on the Diag, first-term Democrat U-M Regent Jordan Acker wrote on social media that he would never budge from his view that the university must not divest its endowment from companies that profit from Israel’s military campaign in Gaza. “If these protesters do not like these answers, they are free to run for office and try to get the people of Michigan to elect them,” Acker posited.
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Why the AAPS Contract “Agreement” Was Anything But
After a whopping 99.6 percent of the members of the Ann Arbor Education Association (AAEA) voted against a tentative teachers contract in April, two big questions remained: What now? And, also, why did the union make everyone vote on an agreement that was so universally loathed?
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Dorro and Goliath
U-M alum Rachael Merritt and her team hope to offer an alternative to Amazon with Dorro.
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Sirens’ Song
As the sky spasmed with lightning in the early hours of April 15, smartphones throughout Washtenaw County shrieked: TORNADO WARNING. Mournful wails could be heard outside, even above the thunder and bullet-hail of rain. Ann Arbor’s twenty-two outdoor warning sirens were sounding an emergency for the first time since the bow echo thunderstorm in July 2023.
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Roundabout Rejuvenation
After over a dozen years of crashes and complaints, the State and Ellsworth roundabout will be revamped in 2027.
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All the Lonely People
People experience loneliness when “perceptions of their social relationships don’t match what they would ideally like them to be. Not everyone who feels lonely is truly alone and not everyone who is socially isolated feels lonely,” says University of Michigan social epidemiologist Lindsay Kobayashi. The importance of third places—low-cost or free community spaces like parks, coffee shops, and libraries where people can find connection outside of home (a first place) and work (a second place)—is becoming a more popular topic in public health research.
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Comprehensive Plan: What Happens Now?
In mid-April, Ann Arbor’s planning commission held its first working session aimed at figuring out zoning and other legal language changes based on the city’s new Comprehensive Land Use Plan (CLUP). Planning staff arrived with three proposed outlines of implementation steps the commission could take, including a set of seven priorities the planners recommended.
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Downtown Dead Zone
The west side of the block is a kaleidoscope of historic storefronts housing Vinology restaurant, Crazy Wisdom bookstore, and half a dozen other businesses. Across the street, the vacant stone-and-glass facades of PNC and JP Morgan Chase loom over the sidewalk like silent ghosts.
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The Road Less Travelable
Those tire-swallowing holes are created during the weather’s freeze and thaw cycle where subfreezing temperatures are quickly followed by fifty-degree days. Moisture like snow and ice melt seeps into the pavement, freezes and expands, and then thaws to create gaps.
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Mamady Camara Petitions for Release
On April 1, 2026, Mamady Camara, an asylum seeker from Guinea living in Ypsilanti, “celebrated” his twenty-first birthday in a cell at North Lake Processing Center in Baldwin, Michigan.
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A Cinematic Journey Through Town
Ann Arbor native Trevor Zhou is no stranger to bringing his personal life into his films.
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A2SO Link Up
The local orchestra program broadens young people’s horizons—and has a broader reach than just Ann Arbor.
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Queens of the Monarchs
How two friends, and their families, are doing their part to support pollinators.
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Enter the Arena
Ann Arbor bleeds maize and blue year-round, but when college football goes mum in the spring, the Michigan Raptors hope to fill the void.
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Tax Imbalance
A new U-M study highlights inequity in metropolitan tax bases. How does Ann Arbor stack up?
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