WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal ruled Wednesday that the Trump administration must give migrants sent to an El Salvador prison a chance to challenge their removals.

U.S. District Court Chief Judge James Boasberg said that people who were sent to the prison in March under an 18th-century wartime law haven’t been able to formally contest the removals or allegations that they are members of the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. He ordered the administration to work toward giving them a way to file those challenges.

The ruling is the latest milestone in a monthslong legal saga over the fate of deportees imprisoned at El Salvador’s notorious Terrorism Confinement Center.

There’s no way around it: All-Pro center Frank Ragnow’s retirement is a significant blow to the Detroit Lions.

Ragnow, a first-round draft pick in 2018 who racked up accolades in the middle of Detroit’s vaunted offensive line, is irreplaceable. He’s among the best centers of this generation, and his early exit at 29 years old leaves a massive hole at one of the NFL’s most important positions.

But the Lions, eyeing their first Super Bowl in 2025, have no time to feel bad for themselves. Replacement plans have presumably already begun inside the mind of head coach Dan Campbell, and there are some in-house options that make sense. Graham Glasgow’s 40 career starts at center make him a logical first thought.

Another idea, however, is to have second-round rookie Tate Ratledge move inside. Ratledge, a former Georgia standout, is a natural right guard, with all 34 of his collegiate starts coming in that role. During rookie minicamp and offseason team activities (OTAs), though, he’s been getting first-team reps at center.

What will it take for Ratledge to fully make the transition and grab hold of Detroit’s vacant center spot? The Detroit News spoke to Cole Cubelic, a former starting center in the SEC who now offers analysis for ESPN and on his radio show (The Cube Show), to find out.

“First off, the operation of it is unique,” said Cubelic, who played at Auburn (1996-01) and has been covering the SEC for more than a decade, overlapping with Ratledge’s five-year run at Georgia (2020-24). “It’s different if you haven’t done it. … But with proper repetition, you can get to where it is second nature more so than you can a lot of other things, even in football or other sports. It’s never gonna be just natural, but you can simplify it with repetition.”

Cubelic, a respected voice when discussing trench play, tabbed physicality as one of Ratledge’s defining traits as an offensive lineman. He also mentioned Ratledge’s “natural strength,” which “most offensive lineman are going to have to have, but his is definitely above average.”

Ratledge’s mean streak and rugged style is beneficial — there’s a reason general manager Brad Holmes compared him to 2024 sixth-rounder Christian Mahogany, who Holmes complimentary referred to as a “dirtbag” — but that aggression is something Ratledge will have to learn to turn on and off at center, Cubelic said.

Guards often don’t have to communicate heavily when at the line of scrimmage. Centers, meanwhile, are in charge identifying the defensive front, noting where pressure may be coming from and disseminating that information in a conscience manner to the quarterback and fellow linemen.

All the while, the play clock is ticking, and fans are making it difficult to hear.

“There has to be a calming factor, specifically at that position pre-snap, because you have to distribute a lot of information. … You have to see things, you have to react to things and there needs to be an understanding of processing that quickly and then sharing that quickly,” Cubelic said. “All that can be difficult. …

“You’re worried about you a lot of the times (at guard). Well, at center, very rarely can you get away worrying about yourself. You’ve got to make sure that four other guys are on the same page; you’re going to have to make sure that you and your quarterback are on the same page. … Getting to the line of scrimmage, processing those things, seeing those things, understanding how to share that information quickly and in a way that everyone understands and can absorb it and then utilize it, that’s not easy.”

Becoming adept at center — both as a communicator and as a blocker — takes time, but that’s why the Lions have Ratledge working at the position so early in the offseason. The team knows he can play guard, so now they’re letting take his lumps at center.

At best, he could be Ragnow’s replacement. At worst, he can serve as depth behind whoever ends up at center.

“He definitely needs some time there (at center) training. It’s going to become natural for him,” offensive line coach Hank Fraley said last month. “I thought what he did in rookie minicamp was pretty good, for handling that. Our centers, like across the whole league, they do a lot. They have a lot on their plates. They’re like quarterbacks of that O-line. They set a lot of the protections, a lot of the calls, and they work one-on-one with the QB.

“In time, he’s going to get it down and become a pretty good center here.”

By Max Reinhart, The Detroit News

An Oak Park man was recently struck and killed while crossing a street in Ohio, police said.

Jamil Osman, 32, was walking in the 200 block of North Coy Road, near Ice Castle Drive in the city of Oregon, a suburb located just east of Toledo, at about 11:23 p.m. on May 31, Oregon police said in a press release.

He attempted to cross the street and was struck by a Toyota traveling south on Coy.

Osman was transported to a nearby hospital, where he died the next day, authorities said.

The driver of the vehicle, Caleb Sims, 31, of Toledo, was not impaired and was wearing his seatbelt when he struck Osman, police said. As of Tuesday, he had not been charged in the crash.

Police have not released any further information and said the incident remains under investigation.

By Craig Mauger, The Detroit News

A state lawmaker argued Tuesday against ongoing efforts to cap class sizes in Michigan elementary schools, saying classes of 30, 40 or even 50 students had worked successfully in the 1920s to produce the Greatest Generation.

The term Greatest Generation generally refers to Americans who were born from 1901 to 1927 and who lived through the Great Depression. Many of them also fought in World War II.

State Rep. Josh Schriver, R-Oxford, cited the generation — individuals who were in elementary school a century ago and 50 years before personal computers became broadly accessible — during an occasionally heated House Oversight Committee hearing about the future of education in Michigan and the state’s declining reading scores.

In a presentation at the meeting, Michael Rice, Michigan’s superintendent of public instruction, asked lawmakers to fund a plan to lower class sizes in high-poverty elementary schools.

An April investigation by The Detroit News found that, unlike most other states, Michigan has no policy aimed at capping class sizes or tying funding to smaller class sizes in elementary schools. The newspaper documented 206 elementary classes, ranging from kindergarten through fifth grade, across 49 schools over the 2023-24 and 2024-25 years that had at least 30 students in them.

Among them was a kindergarten class at Bennett Elementary, where the Detroit Public Schools Community District said 30 students were enrolled.

“(In) 1920, you know, the classroom sizes were 30, 40, 50 kids. That produced the Greatest Generation,” Schriver said.

As the Michigan Legislature continues to craft a funding plan for schools for next year, Schriver said his solution to large class sizes in traditional public schools was to establish a voucher program so parents could spend state tax dollars on homeschool programs.

“That will reduce the amount of individuals in public education,” Schriver said.

There’s no clear evidence that strategy would lead to smaller class sizes. It would likely lead to less funding flowing to Michigan school districts because the state ties funding to every student enrolled and that could impair districts’ ability to keep the staffing levels necessary to offer small classes.

Asked five times after the meeting if he supported having class sizes of 50 students in Michigan elementary schools or if he would be OK with class sizes of 50 students, Schriver didn’t answer with a yes or no but said he was opposed to a mandate capping class sizes.

“I’m drawing a correlation between 1920, when we had zero of these requests,” Schriver said. “We were spending money on zero of these things that they’re coming in here and they’re requesting. And that produced the Greatest Generation.”

‘Whatever is best for the kids’

As a reporter was interviewing Schriver on Tuesday in a hallway of the state Capitol, state Rep. Sharon MacDonell, D-Troy, walked up to him and said in 1930, only about 30% of people graduated from high school. Federal data showed that in 1920, about 16% of people over the age of 25 had completed high school.

“Forty to 50 kids in a classroom, it didn’t work,” MacDonell told Schriver. “It was a disaster.”

“Most people didn’t go to college,” Schriver replied of the 1920s.

“They didn’t go to high school either,” MacDonell fired back.

“Yeah, and it produced the Greatest Generation,” Schriver said.

Asked if he was attributing the Greatest Generation to the large class sizes, Schriver said he was connecting the generation to “many factors.” When asked whether he was OK with class sizes of 50 students in elementary schools in his Oakland County district, Schriver said there should be no mandate on the topic.

“It should be whatever is best for the kids,” Schriver said.

The lawmaker didn’t explain what that meant.

At least 31 of the 50 states have laws about class sizes, tie funding to small classes, or set goals for their schools to attempt to meet and against which to be accountable; Michigan currently doesn’t. As an example, Tennessee state law includes both average class size benchmarks for school buildings and maximum class size limits for individual classes.

In May, Michigan’s State Board of Education approved a resolution calling for limits on class sizes to be put in place by the 2030-31 school year, including a cap of 20 students per class for kindergarten through third grade.

Mitchell Robinson, a Democratic member of the State Board of Education, authored the resolution and said action on class sizes was overdue.

“Smaller class sizes are going to be a better learning situation for kids and a better teaching situation for teachers,” said Robinson of Okemos, a former music teacher.

‘Get back to the fundamentals’

After Tuesday’s hearing in the state House, Schriver told a reporter that state Rep. Brad Paquette, a Republican and former teacher from Niles, had led a class of 50 students and the reporter should ask Paquette “how awesome” it was.

Paquette said the 50-student class he was involved with was a high school class and included a team teaching strategy.

In the traditional model of teaching — one teacher in front of a single class of students — Paquette said having 50 students in an elementary school class would not be ideal.

Tuesday’s hearing was supposed to focus on the “current state of Michigan’s public education,” according to the agenda. However, it also showcased the partisan divisions that have dominated the debate around the topic.

Michigan ranked 44th among the 50 states in the average reading score of fourth graders, according to the most recent National Assessment of Educational Progress results. And during her State of the State address in February, Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said just 24% of Michigan fourth graders were able to read proficiently.

House Oversight Chairman Jay DeBoyer, R-Clay Township, said the state’s education system was “failing” students.

Pamela Pugh, a Democrat and the president of the State Board of Education, responded that policymakers were failing children and that funding increases for K-12 schools had not kept pace with inflation.

After the hearing, state Rep. Dylan Wegela, D-Garden City, and a former teacher, said the meeting amounted to “an attack on public education.” Having 50 students in an elementary school class would be unmanageable, he said.

“That sounds like chaos,” said Wegela.

State Rep. Jason Woolford, R-Howell, contended that Michigan schools needed to get back to teaching the “fundamentals” of English, math, history and what he described as “morality.”

“I’ve traveled and taught in 13 different countries, places like Africa, where there’s no educational budget, there’s no diversity program, no anti-(President Donald) Trump resolutions,” Woolford said. “Yet, they’re increasing in their reading.”

The State Board of Education approved a resolution in March against executive orders by Trump that the Democratic-controlled board said “pose direct threats to children, public education and fundamental civil rights.”

While literacy rates appear to be increasing in some countries in Africa, which is a continent, the countries’ rates appear to be lower than the current rate in the United States, according to data from international organizations.

Woolford also said, “I think we’ve got to just let our kids be kids and get back to the fundamentals that made this country great, invented the car and electricity and other things.”

Asked what Woolford was talking about when he referenced the discovery of electricity, Paquette said one of the problems is that everyone discusses education, but no one defines what the word means to them.

“I think there are a lot of people that are grasping at straws because what they want to do is they want to better a system,” Paquette said. “And that’s a noble cause.”

By Breana Noble and Owen McCarthy, The Detroit News

Consumers’ hunger for new vehicles persisted in May, but affordability concerns could cool sales in June as dealerships start running short on cars and SUVs delivered ahead of President Donald Trump’s 25% tariffs.

In May, Ford’s U.S. sales increased 16% year-over-year while Hyundai’s grew 8% and Kia’s rose 5%. Subaru and Mazda Motor Corp., however, reported declines of 10% and 19%, respectively. General Motors and Stellantis will report second-quarter sales next month.

Spring typically marks a surge in vehicle sales, as tax returns hit bank accounts and the weather warms up. But consumer sentiment has plunged to some of its lowest levels in decades amid frequently changing rules on tariffs, and concerns that new vehicle prices could climb later this year. It has led some consumers to purchase vehicles sooner than they had planned.

S&P Global Mobility forecasted May sales up 2% compared to a year ago, but predicted sales were slowing to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 15.7 million vehicles, down from 17.6 million from March to April.

“Consumer confidence is down, but the sales are not,” said Stephanie Brinley, associate director of research and analysis at S&P’s AutoIntelligence. “It doesn’t usually work that way.”

With inventories down and non-tariffed models moving off lots, the “affordability bullet has not come through yet. There’s a little bit of wait-and-see for what automakers really do,” Brinley added, noting June could start revealing the direction companies choose to take.

Some have given consumers confidence that they can wait a bit. Ford, through the July 4 weekend, is offering its customers thousands of dollars per vehicle in discounts typically reserved for its employees. In early May, however, it did increase prices by up to $2,000 forf its Mexico-built vehicles because of tariffs.

Stellantis — the parent of Chrysler, Dodge, Jeep, Ram and other brands — is offering a similar employee discount program, which it has been extended through June. Volkswagen has said it will hold to its current manufacturer’s suggested retail prices through June. GM CEO Mary Barra has said the automaker doesn’t expect major price increases.

But vehicle imports are expected to slow, which will mean less availability and price increases, said Charlie Chesbrough, a senior economist at Cox Automotive Inc.

“As more tariffed products replace existing inventory over the summer,” he said, in a May forecast, “prices are expected to be pushed higher, leading to slower sales in the coming months.”

Some dealers are already noticing wariness. “I haven’t seen people this cautious since before, or during, the early stages of COVID,” said Jim Walen, the owner of Stellantis and Hyundai showrooms in Seattle.

The ports in Seattle look “empty,” he said. Layoffs by Microsoft in the state of Washington haven’t helped business either. Stellantis’ employee discount program, however, is a boon: “Anytime you can affect the transaction price, it’s a good thing.”

Meanwhile, some dealers are planning to pull back over revenue concerns, Walen said, but he’s taking a different approach: “We’re very aggressive. We stock a lot, we’re part of the community, we advertise a lot.”

While some May sales are occurring over tariff concerns, other shoppers are dropping out of the market altogether, said Ivan Drury, director of insights at auto information website Edmunds.com. It may still be too early to determine if the circumstances will affect vehicle segments as some customers hold off rather than get a vehicle without certain features.

There are also differing views on tariffs, how they work and the impact they will have, Drury added: “Not everybody’s on the same page.”

But there are trends. More consumers bought out their leases in May than in April, rather than leasing again. That could be a sign customers are seeking to limit increases to their monthly payments, but it also means they’re stepping out of the market, Drury said.

He added that while inventory is declining there’s still too much stock — more than 2.5 million vehicles are on dealer lots — to see substantial price increases.

“The last time when we had people really get hit with price increases, where it took them back, was when we were down to 1 million units,” Drury said. “And that’s where you start to see that crossover between consumers getting a deal versus consumers just dealing and saying, ‘OK, fine, I’ll pay MSRP. I’ll pay above.’”

The share of electric vehicles in the market was forecasted to continue slipping. EV’s accounted for about 7% of sales in March and April, and S&P Global Mobility predicts it would be 6.8% in May. Ford EV sales in May were down by a quarter, driven by decreases in the F-150 Lightning pickup and Transit commercial van.

Trump has pulled federal funding for EV charging infrastructure and directed his administration to reevaluate greenhouse gas tailpipe emission regulations and incentives that could be construed as an “EV mandate.” The U.S. Senate last month also removed a waiver that enabled California and a contingent of states to enforce stricter zero-emission requirements on passenger vehicle sales. The result is an uncertain policy environment around EVs.

“They’ve been trending a little bit down the whole year,” Brinley said. “It may be some people looking for an EV in January bought, expecting the incentives to go away, but they’re not afraid of that anymore.”

Rhett Ricart, who has eight new-vehicle stores for Ford and Chevrolet to Nissan and Mitsubishi in and near Columbus, Ohio, said tariffs and policy changes are on the minds of EV buyers, but he otherwise describes sales as normal.

“A possible tariff scare … doesn’t seem to exist,” Ricart said, adding about expectations that Trump or the judicial system will offer some clarity on import taxes. “For any jitteriness, we will hopefully find out if the tariffs stick soon.”

Shortly after the Hazel Park school board formally reinstated Superintendent Amy Kruppe, President Beverly Hinton explained why she was put on administrative leave in January for violation of board policies.

At a May 27 special meeting, Hinton read a statement on “how it all started” and Kruppe’s attorney, Heidi Sharp, immediately rebuked the allegations.

“We are shocked and disappointed that Ms. Hinton would make such a public statement insinuating that the district had financial troubles which were the fault of Dr. Kruppe following the four-month long investigation which cleared Dr. Kruppe of any wrongdoing regarding the district’s finances,” Sharp said in a statement. “Ms. Hinton knows that the investigation absolved Dr. Kruppe of any of these allegations or claimed ‘lack of financial oversight’ because as she admitted, as the Board President, she has been privy to the entire investigation report.”

UHY Professional Services, a national firm with offices in Detroit, was paid $55,000 by the district last summer to conduct an audit.  Hinton said the fee rose to $130,000 due to poor financial record keeping and explained the impact it would later have.

“UHY was scheduled to begin the audit in September, but the audit was delayed five times because the business office had not prepared the required work,” said Hinton. “This resulted in missing the required audit due date of November 1. The audit officially began Oct. 21, 2024 and completed in February 2025.”

Sharp said the district’s business manager at the time, Jason Zirnis, explained to the board in both June and August 2024 that the audit would be submitted late due to Plante Moran resigning as district auditor earlier in the year and Zirnis leaving his position.

Hinton said the delay led to the district having to take out a $12 million loan to cover payroll and operating expenses because state aid could not be distributed to the district until the audit was complete. She said $8 million has been repaid, with $4 million and the remaining interest due this August.

Sharp said those numbers were incorrect.

“$8.9 million (has been) repaid as of Feb. 19,” she said. “This included $97,900 in interest. Currently $3.1 million in principal remains to be repaid. This includes $120,000 interest expense.”

She added, “This loan is a common practice in the district, with loans obtained by the district from 2015-2023 while awaiting state funds.”

Hinton said the final audit revealed Hazel Park had overspent by $6 million, claiming it dropped their fund balance from 11% to 1%. Since the fund balance was below the state mandated 5%, the district was put on a Michigan Treasury watchlist and is now required to submit monthly financial reports to the state. Hinton did not say what the parameters were to be taken off of the watchlist.

“During the February (budget) amendment after the audit the fund balance was projected to be $1.39 million as of June 2025,” said Sharp. “Thereafter at the next amendment provided to the board in April the fund balance was projected at $1.43 million.”

She added, “Revenue that should have been received by September 2024 was not and would be actualized in the 2024-2025 budget. Meaning the funds are not missing but being reported in subsequent years.”

“The cumulative financial mismanagement led to over $755,000 in additional unplanned expenses ….. largely stemming from improperly maintained financial records,” said Hinton. “And that’s why it all began, because the books were not in order and it cost us $755,000 of money for students because everything was in disarray.”

At the opening of the meeting, a board vote to immediately reinstate Kruppe was approved 4-3. Secretary Darrin Fox and Trustees April Beato, Nathon Becker and Monica Ratte voted in favor. Hinton, Treasurer Heidi Fortress, Vice President Deborah LaFramboise voted against.

The Oakland Press has requested final report on Kruppe and the audit submitted in February.

Sharp said Kruppe is looking forward to putting this chapter behind her.

Millions watched on television in horror on April 15, 2019, as plumes of fire shot up from the Notre-Dame de Paris, one of the world’s oldest and most celebrated cathedrals. At first, the devastation seemed nearly total, with much of the roof and the iconic spire lost to flames. But, today, more than five years later, visitors once more pour into its sanctuary, eager to see how the $1 billion restoration work has progressed.

I was lucky enough to visit on Easter Sunday 2025, a day filled with masses and special events. Thousands of families — tourists and locals alike — stood patiently in hours-long lines to get inside, to attend a mass or just have a chance to see the remarkable restoration.

The interior of the cathedral reopened to the public on Dec.8, although much restoration work still remains to be done. Giant cranes still hang over the building, but thousands of people a day line up to see the rebuilt interior.

Larger than a football field, the inside of the cathedral now glows with oatmeal-colored walls and cavernous vaulted ceilings, after the controversial decision to wash them with a latex solution, obscuring the old soot and candle smoke of the centuries. If you’re used to seeing gray, grimey walls in ancient buildings, you may be startled to walk in and see the light-filled interior.

The French government, which owns Notre-Dame, made the decision in 2019 to rebuild the cathedral as it was before the fire, and vowed to do it within five years — a deadline that was only exceeded by a few months. There have been some changes, including a modern bronze main altar, baptismal font and lectern. Some people would have preferred a more traditional style, but the new style is not jarring.

Fortunately for posterity, the cathedral’s three magnificent medieval rose windows, created in the 13th century, were saved from the inferno. The sanctuary is covered with stained glass, thanks to an architectural innovation of the time. The so-called flying buttresses pulled the weight of the roof outside the structure, meaning that the interior walls could be opened up for spectacular displays of leaded and stained glass. The ancient 8,000-pipe organ was also saved and restored, removing toxic dust that had settled there from the collapsed lead roof.

You could spend hours looking around at all the details, but I like to attend a service when I visit remarkable churches. That’s when they show their true selves, including the faith of the worshippers. If you can go to a high mass, also known as a Gregorian mass, you’ll see the worship at its finest.

No ancient European cathedral is complete without its holy relics, which are venerated by the faithful as sacred artifacts from various saints and the life of Jesus.

Notre-Dame offers its believers the following: The remnants of the “holy crown of thorns,” which Biblical accounts say was placed mockingly on Jesus’ head by Roman soldiers while he was being crucified.  Also, a piece of the cross used for the crucifixion, and a nail from the cross.

The relics were rescued from the 2019 fire in dramatic fashion, involving a chain of police and firefighters, and moved temporarily to the Louvre. They were recently returned to Notre- Dame with pomp and ceremony, to be displayed in a newly built reliquary. At this writing, the public can see them on the first Friday of every month.

One thing that surprised me on my visit: Even though the cathedral was absolutely jammed with people, it was relatively quiet.

Visitors couldn’t help gasping when they entered and got their first looks, but otherwise seemed more solemn and respectful than is often the case.

Hopefully, they appreciated the five years of slavishly devoted work by some 2,000 sculptors, engineers, art restorers, stonemasons, carpenters, roofers, iron workers to bring this church back to life. And it still continues today.

Timeline of Notre-Dame de Paris:

• 1163: The cathedral was built between 1163 and 1260, in French Gothic style.
• 1789: During the French Revolution, many statues and decorative elements of the cathedral were destroyed and it was at one time used as a warehouse. The 28 statues of saints were beheaded, mistaken for French kings, and some of the bells were removed and melted down.
• 1804: Napoleon Bonaparte crowned himself emperor of France with the pope in attendance in Notre-Dame, and portions of the cathedral were restored. But the property continued to decay, and there was talk of demolishing it.
• 1831: “ The Hunchback of Notre Dame” by Victor Hugo is published and becomes a massive best-seller, sparking a campaign to restore the cathedral.
• 1844: King Luis Phillippe orders that the cathedral be restored. A grander spire than the one destroyed during the French Revolution is constructed.
• 1991: For the 800th anniversary of the cathedral, a 10-year-long restoration project repaired decorative elements that had fallen off, gargoyles, turrets, and sculptures. The stone exterior was also cleaned of centuries of pollution.
• 2019: On April 15, a fire broke out in the attic and spread across the roof and spire before firefighters were alerted. They prioritized saving the two towers, because their heavy bells could have destroyed the interior if they fell. But 750 tons of debris. including toxic lead dust, fell into the sanctuary from the roof and spire.
• 2021: Two years of cleaning up from the fire and shoring up the structure meant that reconstruction could finally begin. Because the church is owned by the French government, the decision was to rebuild it as it was before.
• 2024: The new roof is completed in March. In September, eight massive tower bells returned after cleaning, with three new bells added later. In December the church’s doors were symbolically reopened and the pipe organ’s 8,000 pipes could be heard for the first time since being covered with toxic dust, as the public ws allowed inside for the first ceremonies and masses.
• 2025: Construction continues on the massive project, hoped to be completed by 2027.

• 

Things to know:

• English language website: notredamedeparis.fr/en/
• Address: Notre-Dame Cathedral of Paris, 6 Parvis Notre-Dame, Place Jean-Paul II, 75004 Paris
• The cathedral is open and free to visit, 7:50 a.m. to 7 p.m. Mondays-Fridays (until 10 p.m. on Thursdays); 8:15 a.m.-7:30 p.m. Saturdays-Sundays.
• The famous “crown of thorns” is only on display intermittently, check the website.
• Due to gruelingly long lines, it’s highly advisable to make an advance timed reservation at the above website. They can be made two days to several hours in advance. You don’t need to reserve to attend a mass; arrive 20 minutes early and find the special line. Here’s the mass schedule: notredamedeparis.fr/en/pray/services-masses/
• If you’re disabled, talk directly to the staff at the far left of the cathedral for special entry.
• Here’s the schedule of sacred music concerts (must buy tickets) billetterie-musiquesacree.mapado.com/en

A 34-year-old West Bloomfield mother is facing a criminal charge for allegedly leaving a loaded gun in her child’s backpack which was brought into a Royal Oak daycare center.

Karen Reid is charged with reckless use of a firearm — a misdemeanor — for the alleged May 14 incident.

According to the Oakland County Prosecutor’s Office, Reid handed the daycare employee the backpack when she dropped off her 3-year-old at the childcare facility.

It was supposed to have the child’s snack in it, but when the employee opened the backpack the loaded handgun was found. It’s alleged Reid put the gun in the backpack to carry it to and from her car but failed to remove it before dropping off her child.

“I’m grateful this is a story about a misdemeanor charge instead of a tragedy,” Prosecutor Karen McDonald stated in a news release. “A loaded gun needs to be secured. Failing to do so around small children is absolutely reckless. The employee who found the gun should be commended for quickly securing it and contacting police.”

The charge is punishable by up to 90 days in jail and/or a $500 fine. It can also result in suspension of hunting privileges for up to three years.

Police: Child in critical condition after shooting self in head at Troy home

How are HOV lanes working out in Oakland County? MDOT is taking a survey

Oakland County man fatally shot after fleeing from traffic stop in Shelby Twp.

Athens survives over 40 minutes after red card, wins regional shootout with Eisenhower

Details released of the fights that disrupted Birmingham Village Fair

Barry Manilow says goodbye to Detroit with special Final Concert

Will Nicole Scherzinger, sizzling in “Sunset Blvd.,” beat out Audra McDonald, who made Rose a metaphor for the tragic human condition? Could Jonathan Groff, a knockout Bobby Darin, win back-to-back kudos?  Might Sadie Sink of “John Proctor Is the Villain” be sunk by the wild-eyed Laura Donnelly of “The Hills of California” or the ever-savvy Mia Farrow of “The Roommate,” even though all three women played equally terrifying characters?

These and many other questions will be answered on Sunday at the Radio City Music Hall in New York, where host Cynthia Erivo will present the 78th annual Tony Awards (beginning at 7 p.m. June 8 and broadcast on CBS and streamed on Paramount+). The ceremony will be the climax of the 2024-25 Broadway season and the reason that several struggling musicals (“Real Women Have Curves,” “Boop! The Musical”) are hanging in there, hoping for a life-saving boost.

Tony Award voters are casting their ballots. Let’s look at who should be ascending to the dais in the traditional ebullient panic, holding back tears and staring into the camera to tell all the envious theater kids at home how you, too, can have all this if you only fight off the naysayers and follow your dreams!

Right. Down to it.

Best musical

This one will be, and rightly should be, a runaway victory for “Maybe Happy Ending,” a delightfully unnerving musical that most everyone on Broadway underestimated because it was an original love story between two retired South Korean “helperbots.” To my mind, Will Aronson and Hue Park’s quirky, charming little tuner succeeds mostly because of one small but pivotal idea: the notion that a robot’s battery life can be a proxy for human mortality. Oliver and Claire fall in love as their percentages drop. Thus, the show manages to simultaneously tap into the fear we all have of an imminent robotic takeover (oh, it’s coming) while avoiding the problem of making a dystopian musical. By making the robots as vulnerable as us, they forged a charming romantic comedy performed by Helen J. Shen (robbed of an acting nomination) and Darren Criss (who dove deep into robotland).

The competition? Nothing credible. “Buena Vista Social Club” is a very good time, musically speaking, but has a predictably formulaic book. The inventive “Death Becomes Her” works just fine as a campy frolic but it relies much on its source movie. And “Operation Mincemeat” is the most jolly of pastiches, rib-tickling fun all the way. Only “Dead Outlaw” represents truly credible competition and deserves to siphon off some votes. But at the end of the day, it’s a musical about a corpse.

Should win: “Maybe Happy Ending”

Will win: “Maybe Happy Ending”

Best play

There were two excellent, Tony-worthy new plays in this Broadway season: Jez Butterworth’s “The Hills of California,” set in the British working-class resort of Blackpool, and Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ “Purpose,” both a high-style dissection of the dysfunctional family of the civil rights icon Jesse Jackson and a moving exploration of what it’s like to be an introverted kid in a high-pressure family.

“Purpose,” which is still running and more relevant to most Tony voters, is likely to win. But Butterworth’s play forged a complex dramaturgical structure and explored deeply empathetic characters. Its central point? To explore how and why childhood trauma impacts our adulthoods.  Butterworth has been writing plays a lot longer than Jacobs-Jenkins and his experience shows; I wanted the perfectly crafted “Hills” to never end.

Writer Kimberly Belflower’s very lively “John Proctor Is the Villain” might sneak in there, but I think that audiences at this drama about high schoolers studying “The Crucible” are responding more to a brilliant production than to the play itself, which is at the end of the day a melodrama that relies on someone else’s intellectual property. No shame there, but not the equal of the competition and, with much respect, nor is the very smart and potent “English,” a show about ESL students that also leads to an inexorable conclusion matching the playwright’s point of view.

Should win: Either “The Hills of California” or “Purpose”

Will win: “Purpose”

Best musical revival

This category will hinge on how many voters embrace Jamie Lloyd’s cleverly branded deconstruction of “Sunset Blvd.” over George C. Wolfe’s more nuanced approach to “Gypsy.” In many ways, the two leading candidates represent a kind of yin and yang of musical revival.  “Sunset Blvd.” is showy and radical and replaced the gilded excess of the original production with an excess of concept, deceptively minimalist but only on the surface. Wolfe’s “Gypsy” aimed to excise the show of Patti LuPone-like drama. McDonald, who brought her classically trained voice to Rose, saw her antiheroine more as an everywoman and the production responded accordingly, as if Wolfe were trying to say that “Gypsy” was the American tragic musical that few previously understood.

I see the arguments against “Sunset Blvd.” but in the end, Lloyd’s staging was just so audaciously thrilling that it overcame them for me. As a director, he’s obsessed with film, but then this is a musical about a movie star, so if ever there was a show that could stand such a metaphoric obsession, then here it was.  And although this may seem counterintuitive, I thought “Gypsy” missed the chance to stage this title with far more Black actors, allowing it to serve as a metaphor for the condition of Black entertainers in early 20th century America. It almost went there, but not quite.

Should win: “Sunset Blvd.”

Will win: “Gypsy”

Best play revival

This was not a stellar season for play revivals. “Romeo + Juliet,” a pretentious and wildly uneven misfire, did not even remotely deserve its Tony nomination and, bracing moments notwithstanding, “Our Town” was uneven and derivative of David Cromer’s prior revival. “Eureka Day,” a piece about pretentious pre-school parents and teachers, was an effective satire but hardly surprising. That leaves David Henry Hwang’s “Yellow Face,” an autobiographical piece about Hwang himself and a “Miss Saigon” casting scandal. “Yellow Face” has knocked around the American regions for years. But this was a truly excellent piece of new direction from Leigh Silverman and for the first time, the play transcended its inside-baseball orientation and had much to say about America and race.

Should win: “Yellow Face”

Will win: “Yellow Face”

Best leading actress in a musical

Team Nicole Scherzinger or Team Audra McDonald?

Both deconstructed iconic characters (Norma Desmond and Madam Rose) using every ounce of their mutually formidable craft. With all due respect to McDonald, I’m Team Nicole because her work was the more radical of the two performances in rescuing Norma from bathetic senility and giving her back her sexuality, and because McDonald’s tragic approach to Rose inevitably de-emphasized her chutzpah and self-aware vivacity which is much of why “Gypsy” is “Gypsy.”  Still, no shame in being on the other team.

It would feel strange for either Megan Hilty or Jennifer Simard to win for “Death Becomes Her” at the expense of the other and I suspect Tony voters will feel the same way. But let’s add some props for Jasmine Amy Rogers, truly a perfect Betty Boop who managed to turn a vampish cartoon figure into a complex and vulnerable heroine.

Should win: Nicole Scherzinger

Will win: Nicole Scherzinger

Best leading actor in a musical

If you judge a performance by pizzazz, charm and growing star power, Jonathan Groff is your winner for his dazzling take on Bobby Darin in “Just in Time.”  If immersion inside a character is your choice, you are choosing between Darren Criss for “Maybe Happy Ending” and Andrew Durand in “Dead Outlaw.” I thought Durand was just astonishing as the titular outlaw, whose corpse takes on an all-American trajectory of its own. Aside from the technical demands of playing a dead dude, Durand also nailed a guy with zero access to his own feelings. In other words, what he didn’t do was probably as important as what he did. I preferred that to Jeremy Jordan in “Floyd Collins”, but I may be in a minority. And Tom Francis, who sings his way through Midtown eight times a week in “Sunset Blvd.,” will have deserved support.

Should win: Jonathan Groff, “Just in Time”

Will win: Jeremy Jordan, “Floyd Collins”

Best leading actress in a play

Mia Farrow has acted only rarely in the past decade but her empathetic performance as a vegan, pot-growing Iowan in “The Roommate” was a reminder of her astonishing ability to fuse what actors think of as externals and internals — her work felt deeply authentic but savvy observers also noted the sophistication of her comic technique and dramatic timing.

Alas for Farrow, this is an extraordinary category and by far the most competitive at this year’s Tony Awards. Take Sarah Snook, whose work in “The Picture of Dorian Gray” had not a single syllable out of place on the night I saw the show, notwithstanding the huge technical demands of a video-filled production that co-starred numerous versions of her recorded self. She’s one of the world’s great performers.

Then there was the less-famous Laura Donnelly, who played a mother and (later) her adult daughter in “The Hills of California,” all in service of the writer’s point that we all eventually have to live the way we were raised. So distinct were these two characters that some punters in my row clearly did not know they were watching the same actress they’d seen in a different role just a few minutes before. Donnelly was at once empathetic and Medea-like in her intensity. We were supposed to be scared of both of Donnelly’s characters and I swear I could not tell you which terrified me the most.

Sadie Sink also has a lot of fans and that was indeed a savvy turn in “John Proctor.” But this competition is between Snook and Donnelly and it was a hard choice for me. Donnelly haunts me the most.

Should win: Laura Donnelly, “The Hills of California”

Will win: Sarah Snook, “The Picture of Dorian Gray”

Best leading actor in play

George Clooney is on the list of nominees and I hardly need to recount his formidable talents, but he was fundamentally filmic in “Good Night, and Good Luck,” rather than truly translating his subtle version of Edward R. Murrow to a stage the size of the Winter Garden Theatre.

So, with an additional nod of admiration to the delightfully quirky Louis McCartney, who managed to survive all of the crashes and bangs of “Stranger Things: The First Shadow,” I preferred Jon Michael Hill, playing a young man born into a famous and famously dysfunctional Black political family even though he just wanted to take photographs and stay as far away as possible from his father and his actions. Hill was the most rooted actor in a stellar Steppenwolf Theatre production of “Purpose.”

But I suspect Cole Escola, the star of “Oh, Mary!,” a silly but strikingly effective satire of Mary Todd Lincoln and her bearded spouse, who will take the prize. No complaints here. Escola hardly was subtle with a guileless, all-in performance that has been packing the house. It’s a one of a kind show and that’s its greatest selling point. But Escola also offers a clever commentary on present-day America, fueled by fun, freedom and frustration.

Should win: Cole Escola, “Oh, Mary!”

Will win: Cole Escola, “Oh, Mary!”

What the Tony nominations got right — and wrong

Best direction of a musical

David Cromer’s work on “Dead Outlaw” was typically detailed and worthy and Christopher Gattelli wrangled “Death Becomes Her” with witty aplomb, but “Maybe Happy Ending” was an eye popping career-high for Michael Arden, who created the most romantic of dreamscapes and yet also insisted that the audience look precisely and only where the director wanted its eyes to be.

Should win: Michael Arden, “Maybe Happy Ending”

Will win: Michael Arden, “Maybe Happy Ending”

Best direction of a play

Speaking of career highs, Danya Taymor convinced her youthful cast in “John Proctor Is the Villain” that the stakes in this high school English class were a matter of life and death. Taymor has to compete with Kip Williams, who employed multiple screens and videographers in “The Picture of Dorian Gray” for what was more conceptual authorship than direction, and with Sam Mendes, whose mastery of the exquisite ensemble cast of “The Hills of California” was formidable. Mendes has won many kudos; most Tony voters will want to reward Taymor, a rising talent. Fair enough.

Should win: Sam Mendes, “The Hills of California”

Will win: Danya Taymor, “John Proctor Is the Villain”

Last, here are my picks for the remaining acting categories.

Best featured actress in a play

Should win: Jessica Hecht, “Eureka Day”

Will win: Jessica Hecht, “Eureka Day”

Best featured actor in a play

Should win: Glenn Davis, “Purpose”

Will win: Francis Jue, “Yellow Face”

Best featured actress in a musical

Should win: Julia Knitel, “Dead Outlaw”

Will win: Joy Woods, “Gypsy”

Best featured actor in musical

Should win: Danny Burstein, “Gypsy”

Will win: Brooks Ashmanskas, “Smash”

Chris Jones is a Tribune critic.

cjones5@chicagotribune.com

By JOCELYN GECKER, AP Education Writer

To attract the brightest minds to America, President Donald Trump proposed a novel idea while campaigning: If elected, he would grant green cards to all foreign students who graduate from U.S. colleges.

“It’s so sad when we lose people from Harvard, MIT, from the greatest schools,” Trump said during a podcast interview last June. “That is going to end on Day One.”

That promise never came to pass. Trump’s stance on welcoming foreign students has shifted dramatically. International students have found themselves at the center of an escalating campaign to kick them out or keep them from coming as his administration merges a crackdown on immigration with an effort to reshape higher education.

An avalanche of policies from the Trump administration — such as terminating students’ ability to study in the U.S., halting all new student visa interviews, moving to block foreign enrollment at Harvard — have triggered lawsuits, countersuits and confusion for international students who say they feel targeted on multiple fronts.

In interviews, students from around the world described how it feels to be an international student today in America. Their accounts highlight pervasive feelings of fear, anxiety and insecurity that have made them more cautious in their daily lives, distracted them from schoolwork and prompted many to cancel trips home because they fear not being allowed to return.

For many, the last few months have forced them to rethink their dreams of building a life in America.

A standout student from Latvia feels ‘expendable’

Markuss Saule, a freshman at Brigham Young University-Idaho, took a recent trip home to Latvia and spent the entire flight back to the U.S. in a state of panic.

For hours, he scrubbed his phone, uninstalling all social media, deleting anything that touched on politics or could be construed as anti-Trump.

“That whole 10-hour flight, where I was debating, ‘Will they let me in?’ — it definitely killed me a little bit,” said Saule, a business analytics major. “It was terrifying.”

Saule is the type of international student the U.S. has coveted. As a high schooler in Latvia, he qualified for a competitive, merit-based exchange program funded by the U.S. State Department. He spent a year of high school in Minnesota, falling in love with America and a classmate who is now his fiancee. He just ended his freshman year in college with a 4.0 GPA.

But the alarm he felt on that flight crushed what was left of his American dream.

“If you had asked me at the end of 2024 what my plans were, it was to get married, find a great job here in the U.S. and start a family,” said Saule, who hopes to work as a business data analyst. “Those plans are not applicable anymore. Ask me now, and the plan to leave this place as soon as possible.”

Saule and his fiancee plan to marry this summer, graduate a year early and move to Europe.

This spring the Trump administration abruptly revoked permission to study in the U.S. for thousands of international students before reversing itself. A federal judge has blocked further status terminations, but for many, the damage is done. Saule has a constant fear he could be next.

As a student in Minnesota just three years ago, he felt like a proud ambassador for his country.

“Now I feel a sense of inferiority. I feel that I am expendable, that I am purely an appendage that is maybe getting cut off soon,” he said. Trump’s policies carry a clear subtext. “The policies, what they tell me is simple. It is one word: Leave.”

From dreaming of working at NASA to ‘doomscrolling’ job listings in India

A concern for attracting the world’s top students was raised in the interview Trump gave last June on the podcast “All-In.” Can you promise, Trump was asked, to give companies more ability “to import the best and brightest” students?

“I do promise,” Trump answered. Green cards, he said, would be handed out with diplomas to any foreign student who gets a college or graduate degree.

Trump said he knew stories of “brilliant” graduates who wanted to stay in the U.S. to work but couldn’t. “They go back to India, they go back to China” and become multi-billionaires, employing thousands of people. “That is going to end on Day One.”

Had Trump followed through with that pledge, a 24-year-old Indian physics major named Avi would not be afraid of losing everything he has worked toward.

After six years in Arizona, where Avi attended college and is now working as an engineer, the U.S. feels like a second home. He dreams of working at NASA or in a national lab and staying in America where he has several relatives.

But now he is too afraid to fly to Chicago to see them, rattled by news of foreigners being harassed at immigration centers and airports.

“Do I risk seeing my family or risk deportation?” said Avi, who asked to be identified by his first name, fearing retribution.

Avi is one of about 240,000 people on student visas in the U.S. on Optional Practical Training — a postgraduation period where students are authorized to work in fields related to their degrees for up to three years. A key Trump nominee has said he would like to see an end to postgraduate work authorization for international students.

Avi’s visa is valid until next year but he feels “a massive amount of uncertainty.”

He wonders if he can sign a lease on a new apartment. Even his daily commute feels different.

“I drive to work every morning, 10 miles an hour under speed limit to avoid getting pulled over,” said Avi, who hopes to stay in the U.S. but is casting a wider net. “I spend a lot of time doomscrolling job listings in India and other places.”

A Ukrainian chose college in America over joining the fight at home — for now

Vladyslav Plyaka came to the U.S. from Ukraine as an exchange student in high school. As war broke out at home, he stayed to attend the University of Wisconsin.

He was planning to visit Poland to see his mother but if he leaves the U.S., he would need to reapply for a visa. He doesn’t know when that will be possible now that visa appointments are suspended, and he doesn’t feel safe leaving the country anyway.

He feels grateful for the education, but without renewing his visa, he’ll be stuck in the U.S. at least two more years while he finishes his degree. He sometimes wonders if he would be willing to risk leaving his education in the United States — something he worked for years to achieve — if something happened to his family.

“It’s hard because every day I have to think about my family, if everything is going to be all right,” he said.

It took him three tries to win a scholarship to study in the U.S. Having that cut short because of visa problems would undermine the sacrifice he made to be here. He sometimes feels guilty that he isn’t at home fighting for his country, but he knows there’s value in gaining an education in America.

“I decided to stay here just because of how good the college education is,” he said. “If it was not good, I probably would be on the front lines.”

AP Education Writer Collin Binkley contributed to this report.

The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

PONTIAC – Orchard Lake St. Mary’s got seven stellar innings out of its starter on Saturday afternoon, and a few good at-bats, too.

Junior Luke Crighton pitched a complete game shutout and was also responsible for two of his team’s runs as the Eaglets defeated Notre Dame Prep 3-0 for a D2 district title.

“He’s the definition of a complete player,” Eaglets head coach Nick Di Ponio said. We needed him to step up in that game and he did so. That’s a really, really good team that we played, and especially in that last inning, we didn’t want to get back to the top of their lineup. Those guys can swing it. We know them well, they did a great job, and it was a really good game all-around.”

Crighton and St. Mary’s (23-12) cruised through the seventh other than a leadoff single to Jack Fallon, but it was the sixth that looked like the one where the Irish might finally chase the Indiana commit.

Notre Dame Prep led off that inning with back-to-back singles by juniors Tomassino Offer and Derek Roa, then had the bases loaded with one out when Owen Fulsher walked. But Crighton induced a grounder to third for a force out at home, then a strikeout swinging to keep the shutout intact.

“About the fifth inning I said to our pitching coach that this was his game,” Di Ponio said. “He was around the zone with all his pitches and give us the best chance, and with that team, we wanted him out there as long as we could have him. He did a really good job being efficient.”

The final line for Crighton included six hits, two walks and seven strikeouts. “My fastball, I was throwing it whatever I wanted; inside-out, I like to do that a lot,” he said. “Then I was just working the curveball and slider off of that.”

There were several other frames where the Irish, who came into the final having won 21 of their last 22 had runners in scoring position — seniors Michael Wiebelhaus and Ethan Janssen each had doubles — but the clutch hits never materialized.

“Going into it, we legitimately knew we had to score three or four runs to win the game,” Irish head coach Jason Gendreau said. “That was the talk before the game.”

He continued, “There were three goals, and the first, the only one we didn’t meet, was that we had to figure out how to get to (that many) runs. The second goal was to not let (Andrew) Tribul or (Hudson) Brzustewicz beat us, and we didn’t allow that to happen. And the last goal was, could we be within three runs in the seventh if we don’t have the lead? They did that. We had some opportunities offensively, but when you’re facing a kid that’s throwing 89, 90 (mph), a Division 1 athlete, it’s going to be hard at times, and you really have to buckle down and execute in those situations. Credit Orchard Lake for cashing in on their opportunities a little bit more than we did.”

St. Mary’s broke the scoreless deadlock in the bottom of the third when Crighton’s ball hit to left field scored Preston Duff. Crighton doubled off the fence in deep center to score Anthony Elezaj in the fifth, making it 2-0, then Nate Bauman followed it up with a knock into right that fell just fair of the first-base line and scored Crighton.

Junior Henry Ewles pitched well enough to give the Irish a chance, going all six innings of the defeat. ND Prep also had it working on the mound in its district semifinal earlier in the day, an 8-1 victory over Lamphere. Fulsher threw six innings of four-hit ball — two of those hits were by Aidan Grzeskowski — then Roa came in to seal the deal.

Janssen had three hits in the win over the Rams, while Offer went 4-for-4 and scored three times.

“Fulsher did what he’s been doing all year,” Gendreau said. “He finished 8-0 on the season. Henry ends up finishing 7-4, but he also threw against the majority of the big dogs. I have a lot of respect for both of the young men. They had outstanding years. And give a lot of credit to Owen (today) for throwing almost 80 pitches, then going back and catching a great game.”

Photos from Orchard Lake St. Mary’s vs. Pontiac Notre Dame Prep in a D2 baseball district final

The 29 wins this season marked a program-best for Notre Dame Prep.

"It beat the 2018 team's record, and we just came up one short of 30," Gendreau said.

Cade Wilhelmi and Kyler Marvin both drove in a pair of runs for Country Day in the other semifinal, but the Yellowjackets' sixth inning in which they scored all their runs was sandwiched by a pair of four-run frames at the plate by the Eaglets, who beat Country Day 12-5.

Gendreau's aforementioned goal of slowing two of St. Mary's top hitters was something Country Day couldn't hold to. Tribul had a pair of doubles and drove in two runs, while Brzustewicz hit a grand slam in the seventh that effectively sealed the Eaglets' place in the final.

The championship marked just another victory over a top program by the Eaglets this season. They came in ranked sixth in D2, two spots ahead of ND Prep, and started the year 10-8, but had a pair of wins each against Rochester Adams (No. 3 in D1) and Brother Rice (ranked 10th in D1) in the month of May.

"Within our league, we know we're going to see top-level competition every single time," Di Ponio. "There was a point in early April (against De La Salle), I think an umpire looked and me and said it kind of felt like a playoff game. So our team has been accustomed to these situations all year and knew that this was going to be another one. We feel like we're prepared for anything."

The Eaglets will now prepare for Dearborn Divine Child, ranked No. 11 in D2, in a regional semifinal that will also be played at Notre Dame Prep.

Orchard Lake St. Mary’s defeated Notre Dame Prep 3-0 for a Division 2 baseball district championship Saturday, May 31, 2025 in Pontiac. The Eaglets will remain at ND Prep to play Dearborn Divine Child in the regional semifinals on June 4.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) — Michael Wacha said he had plenty left if needed.

Wacha had the fourth-longest no-hit bid of his career Saturday before yielding a one-out hit to Colt Keith in the seventh inning of the Kansas City Royals’ 1-0 victory over the Detroit Tigers. Wacha did not factor in the decision, but he had his best outing of his two seasons with the Royals.

When asked if he would have given Wacha a chance to complete the game if the no-hitter was intact, Quatraro said, “I was hoping he would do it. He had six days off between his last outing and this one. He’s got some extra rest before the next one, if everything stays the way it is. So I was hoping we’d get to go for it.”

Before Keith’s hit, Wacha allowed only one baserunner on a fourth-inning walk to Gleyber Torres. He did not allow a runner to reach second base in seven innings.

“Obviously, I knew what was going on,” Wacha said of his no-hit bid. “I was just continuing to try to keep taking it to another level and keep making my pitches, and keep executing like I had been pretty much all day. I was just try to push it to the back of my mind and keep making quality pitches.”

Quatraro said he allowed himself to enjoy the effort of both pitchers, in spite of the scoreless game.

“You can appreciate the game, right?” he said. “I mean, you’ve got two really good pitchers out there, two good teams, and that’s a fun game. Sure, I would have rather been up 7-0 and not had to worry about it, but I did appreciate what was going on.”

Vinnie Pasquantino’s eighth-inning single drove in Nick Loftin from second for the game’s only run, as Wacha and Detroit’s Tarik Skubal both spun gems.

Loftin one-hopped the wall with what he originally thought was a homer.

“I just probably one of my better balls that I’ve hit here,” said Loftin, who had two of Kansas City’s four hits. “Quite frankly, I didn’t realize how big that ballpark was.”

Wacha has never thrown a no-hitter in his professional career, but he was ready to give it a try if he still had a chance.

“Absolutely,” he said. “I would not want to leave a game like that for sure. But unfortunately, I gave up a hit. That made it a little easier for Q.”

— By DAVID SMALE, Associated Press

COMMERCE TWP. — Like the prep softball version of the Hatfields and McCoys, the rivals from the Battle of Bogie Lake Road, Lakeland and Walled Lake Northern, have ‘gotten’ each other so many times over the years, that’s hard to determine what exactly you might be getting ‘revenge’ for.

So neither coach really wanted to bring up what had happened last year, when Lakeland took out Northern, en route to a quarterfinal appearance.

The junior pitcher had a home run — her third on the day — and an RBI double, and struck out 10, as the Knights beat Lakeland, 6-3, to claim a Division 1 district title on their home field Saturday, their seventh since the 2015-16 season.

“We kind of put it in the past, and we just said ‘New game.’ We beat them in preseason and in the LVC, and we just tried to not let it affect us really, even though we beat them,” Turmell said. “But we just wanted to come out new game, 0-0.”

The Knights (30-6) — who will advance to regionals at Grand Blanc next weekend, facing Lake Orion — did beat Lakeland (25-11) twice back in mid-April, in a high-scoring doubleheader where the two teams accounted for 41 runs.

“It’s always hard to beat a team, a good team, especially a good team like Lakeland, three times,” Northern coach Kristen Woodard admitted. “But no, I didn’t really want to put that (last year’s loss) in their heads at all. I just knew we’d have to come and bring our best, because I know Lakeland would — they always do.”

In the last decade, the two programs have met in the postseason six of the nine times it was held (no season in 2020), with one team or the other winning a district title every single time. In 2017, they both won a district, and met for the regional title.

“They’re a good team. They force you to do things like that (make mistakes) sometimes. And you know, our team, we played really well. I mean, earlier in the year, they beat us up pretty good,” said Lakeland coach Mike Cleary, noting that his team never talked about those April losses again after they happened. “And to go into this game tied in the (sixth) we were in pretty good shape, I thought. But you know what? You know, we did this to them last year. They do it to us this year. It’s tough when both of us are in the same district, because we always have good teams, and it’s seems one of us has to get (knocked) out early, which is, unfortunately, this year it’s us.”

The Eagles were in good shape early, jumping out to a first-inning lead with a solo home run by Brynn Taliercio. But Turmell answered in the bottom of the inning with a solo shot of her own to tie it up at 1-1.

Turmell’s RBI double to the right-center gap in the fourth put the Knights ahead, and they’d add a second run on an error to lead 3-1.

Both teams would pitch around the other’s No. 3 hitter the rest of the way, and that benefitted the Eagles in the sixth, when an unintentional-intentional walk to Taliercio put the tying run on, and Emily Searle’s two-run double tied it at 3-3.

“We just talked about, you know, what we get behind, and we’ve come back with other teams. We were down big against Hartland in the tournament. We came back and beat them, then other teams, we were down, and we battled back,” Cleary said. “So I said, you know, if they get ahead of us, we’re not out of it. And, you know, we came back, we’re down and came back and tied it up again. So that was kind of the team. They didn’t give up.”

Woodard made a trip to the circle to calm Turmell down during the rally, calming her down, making her laugh.

“Sometimes, I do lighten the mood, but there I just wanted her to get dialed in and just, you know, give her a little extra confidence,” Woodard said. “I just wanted to make sure that she wasdoing all right, because she was getting a little wild there. …And just remind her that they have to hit her best pitch, and just to pitch with that in mind.”

“She told me that, basically, to just throw my game and they have to be scared to hit off of me. And same with hitting too. So they had to throw to me and I had to throw to them,” Turmell said.

Makenna Kresbaugh led off the bottom of the sixth inning with a solo home run to put the Knights back up, 4-3, then after they loaded the bases, tacked on two more runs on back-to-back RBI singles by Olivia Frelick and Kendall Morris to make it 6-3.

It wouldn’t be a Lakeland-Northern matchup without a little controversy, and that came at the end of that inning, when Northern’s ninth hitter to come to the plate was initially called safe, then was called out when the home plate umpire overruled the initial decision.

The was more in the top of the seventh, as the Eagles — down to their final strike — had their own runner called safe on a bang-bang play, but Turmell got the next batter to line out to close it out.

Photo gallery from the D1 softball district final between Lakeland and WL Northern

Walled Lake Northern 8, Walled Lake Central 2

The second semifinal of the morning was another close one initially for the Knights, tied at 2-2 until the bottom of the fifth, when the Knights put a pair of runs on the board, then added four more in the sixth.

Sam Gillick was 4-for-4 with two stolen bases and three runs scored, while Turmell — who struck out 14 in the circle — homered twice and drove in three runs. Makenna Kresbaugh said a pair of doubles and drove in four runs.

Lakeland 17, West Bloomfield 2 (3 innings)

The Eagles made short work of the Lakers in the first semifinal of the morning, as four batters — Piper Huff, Aubrey VanGoethem, Emilee Dostal and Zoie Gagnon — drove in multiple runs. Gagnon homered and drove in three total.

Melina Wing got the win in the circle scattering six hits and striking out four.

An 11-win team heading into Saturday, the Eisenhower Eagles had to go through 23-win Romeo and 21-win Stoney Creek to win a district championship.

They did.

With a 9-3 victory in the semifinals over the Bulldogs, Ike went on to score five runs in the first two innings of their eventual 5-1 victory over the Cougars to win their first district title in eight years, and just the second in program history.

That last district crown came during Bob Hall’s first stint with Ike. After a hiatus, he’s back with the Eagles, but hasn’t coached for most of the year after a birth defect in his heart caused a stroke.

But he was there on Saturday, and acting head coach Karlene Kilburn – also on the 2017 staff – couldn’t help but hold back tears.

“Eisenhower only has one other district title in school history, and it’s a little emotional because the last time it was coach Bob and I together,” Kilburn said. “So it’s nice that he’s able to come back and we could finish what we wanted to start.”

The Eagles struck first when Addison Viviano cracked a single to score Rease Buza, who walked, in the first inning.

Vivano was given another chance in the second, and again, she didn’t disappoint – with the bases loaded and two outs, the freshman scorched a line drive into center field that got past a diving D Bryant, clearing the bases.

She came around to score herself on a Liz Petrella double right after.

“We feel so excited,” Viviano said. “We’ve been working for this all season, practicing hard every practice. I mean, it feels great.”

Viviano is just one of several young contributors for the Eagles. Their starting pitcher, Anna Bellomo, is just a sophomore – the only run she allowed in the complete game was an unearned one, and she also struck out six Cougars with three hits allowed. She walked four. Rease Buza, who pitched in the win over Romeo, is also a sophomore.

“Both her (Bellomo) and Rease as pitchers bring a leadership that is really helpful in our defense,” Kilburn said. “And so having that pairing has been phenomenal; that when one is down, the other one is pitching well.

“And Anna is a competitor, and she likes a little bit of pressure, and putting her in that situation just makes her throw better. Today was probably the best I’ve seen her pitch all year.”

Out of all five teams in the district – including Rochester, Romeo, Rochester Adams and Stoney Creek – Eisenhower had the fewest wins and worst regular season win percentage going in.

That was then.

“I told them all that, if they put into games what we do in practice, if they just execute that, there’s not a team out there that can beat us,” Kilburn said.

Stoney Creek struggled to find their groove early after winning an 11-10 marathon over Rochester Adams in the game before. Ella Fugate allowed four baserunners while getting just two outs, and Sara Kruczek was tagged for three runs in 0.2 innings.

It wasn’t until Allie Ray finally settled in that they were able to stabilize, but strong pitching by Bellomo and solid defense behind her made it difficult for Stoney Creek to overcome the early deficit.

“The culture of this team has been for the last four years, and as you’ve seen with the first game against Adams, is we never give up,” said Stoney Creek head coach Rick Troy. “It’s a ‘never give up’ attitude. It’s a culture. It’s just how this team has been built and continues to be built. There’s no excuse for the loss, but there is a reality that we’re a very young team.”

The Cougars graduate senior Kate Stephens, a Maryland softball commit, whom Troy dubbed as the best player to ever come out of Stoney Creek.

Photos from Eisenhower’s 5-1 district title win over Stoney Creek on Saturday

“We’ve been blessed to have her leadership and her gamesmanship, her skill sets,” Troy said. “She’s the entire package, and that’s why she’s going DI.”

Stoney Creek finishes the year 21-14.

Eisenhower has earned themselves another week, with their next game set to be against Port Huron Northern, who beat Dakota in eight innings on Friday to win their district. Start time is 10 a.m. from Royal Oak High School, with the winner playing either Ford or Royal Oak.

The Eagles are a-ok with having more time to practice, having had one as recently as the night before their 10 a.m. start time against Romeo.

“This feels amazing,” Viviano said. “It’s my freshman year. I can’t wait for the next three years.”

ROCHESTER HILLS – The Utica Eisenhower Eagles claimed their first district title since 2017 with a 3-1 win over the defending Division 1 champion Rochester Adams Highlanders on Saturday afternoon.

“It feels really, really good. We’ve been working very hard all season to win the district, and it means a lot to us because this is our first time, at least for the freshmen class that came in with me,” captain Sonja Peterson said. “So we’re really looking forward to hopefully making an even deeper run in the state.”

Eisenhower dominated the first half, creating most of the best chances even as it battled into the wind. The Eagles got on the board first when Lily Pantaleo scored on a breakaway with 28:21 still to play before intermission.

Later in the half, it was Pantaleo’s turn to play the through ball. Gabby Riggio ran onto the slotted ball and used the outside of her foot to flick a ball inside the near post, doubling the Eagles’ advantage. Eisenhower had a couple of chances to stretch the lead even further, but Adams senior goalie Brooklyn Harding came up with some key saves to keep the Highlanders hanging around.

The Highlanders fought to try and shave the deficit. Adams was especially dangerous after halftime and created a handful of high quality chances, but struggled to finish any of them off. The Highlanders did hit the crossbar twice – once in the final minute of the first half and again early in the second half – and had the ball bouncing around the Eisenhower penalty area on a few different occasions, but the Eagles always seemed to win those battles and eventually cleared the ball or pressured Adams into missing the net.

When Devyn Raymond blasted a ball that went in off the post with 4:26 remaining to make it 3-0 Eagles, any drama left in the game was put to rest. Still, Adams kept in it to the end and spoiled the shoutout with 24 seconds remaining when Riley Walsh set up Sadie Rogers for a 20-yard rip that capped the scoring at 3-1 Eisenhower.

“The story of it is they finished and we didn’t,” Adams head coach Josh Hickey said.. “But I’m proud of the girls for the way they played. They gave a good effort, but that’s a good team, so you can’t make mistakes against those types of teams.”

The win is the first district title for Eisenhower in eight years as they have consistently been drawn into one of the tougher districts in the state.

It was also Eisenhower head coach Merhdad Nekoogar’s 300th career win with the Eagles.

“Honestly, I never thought about. I really didn’t. I’m just happy that I was able to stay with a very, very good school, a school that I’m so proud of. I’m proud to be part of this program, and I’m just happy that I was able to help a little,” he said.

Photo gallery of Rochester Adams vs. Utica Eisenhower in a D1 girls soccer district championship

Eisenhower now advances to the regional semifinals on Tuesday when it will face Troy Athens, who defeated rival Troy for its district title.

“I’m just so happy for them. They worked very hard,” Nekoogar said. “This is the toughest district. Now after districts, Athens another very, very good team, but we will take one at a time. We’re just happy that we accomplished this part of it."

Added Peterson, “I think it’s definitely just the team’s chemistry this year. It’s been unmatched with years before when I’ve been on the team. Everyone cares about each other so, so very much, and we just connect really well. We also have a very talented group of players all working together, and I think all of us together wanting to win and wanting to go as far as possible is what is going to keep us going and what has kept us going."

Rochester Adams finishes the year 13-5-1. The Highlanders will graduate eight seniors from this year’s team.

“We’re happy. I thought we had one of the toughest schedules in the state, bar none, and it definitely got us ready for this. But having 13 wins against that type of schedule is always big,” Hickey said. “I love the seniors. We had girls come for the first time and be able to play high school, which is cool to see. Then I had a few four-year players. Those players are always special to us. And we’re going to miss them.”

Utica Eisenhower scored twice before halftime, then added another goal unanswered after intermission to defeat Rochester Adams 3-1 for a D1 district championship Saturday, May 31, 2025 in Rochester Hills.

No. 6-ranked Walled Lake Northern beat Bogie Lake Road rival Lakeland, 6-3, in a Division 1 district final at Northern on Saturday, May 31, 2025, as the Knights won their seventh district title in the last decade.

When Yuvi Agarwal began playing keyboard for a room full of dogs at the Denver Animal Shelter on Thursday, the music was hard to distinguish between the barks and yelps of his audience.

But as the seconds turned into minutes and the 12-year-old from Houston continued to play, the canine cacophony began to calm as the dogs settled down.

“It’s very satisfying when the dogs calm down, and it is also really heartwarming,” Yuvi said, grinning.

It’s been more than two years since Yuvi started the nonprofit Wild Tunes to connect volunteer musicians and animal shelters. After establishing programs at seven shelters in Texas and one in New Jersey, Yuvi and his mom, executive director Priyanka Agarwal, are celebrating the launch of a new program starting in Denver in June.

Yuvi came up with the idea in December 2022 when he participated in a program to read books to animals, and he thought about how his golden doodle, Bozo, would lay down and listen whenever Yuvi started playing music at home.

“I realized that music would have a much stronger effect on the shelter animals than reading,” he said.

His realization was confirmed by studies that show classical music reduces stress in shelter dogs, and Yuvi thinks it also helps them rebuild bridges with humans and get adopted faster, he said.

The idea to bring Wild Tunes to Denver began when one of the group’s Houston volunteers moved to the city and wanted to continue playing music for pups. The group reached out to Denver Animal Shelter staff with an introduction from the director of the Houston Animal Shelter, and it was a clear fit.

“We thought it was such a fun and different way to engage our community and a great opportunity for people and animals,” said Lauren Rolfe, volunteer program administrator at the shelter. “It just gives you chills and brings a smile to your face.”

The first time shelter staff sent out a teaser about the new program, they heard from 65 people who wanted to get involved, Rolfe said. Volunteers will be playing music for the shelter’s dogs and cats seven days a week.

It’s not clear where Yuvi’s deep love for animals came from, Priyanka Agarwal said. The family liked animals before Yuvi was born, but it grew exponentially as their son rescued baby birds and refused to let them use pest control on uninvited animal guests.

“He’s really a change maker,” she said. “He’s always teaching people how to be kind, how to be compassionate, and it’s an overwhelming feeling to be his mom.”

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