The wet spring has been bad for farmers in Michigan. They've had to wait to get their crops in the ground, and those crops that were in the ground when the rains came didn't fair so well.

The warmer, drier weather in the past week has allowed some farmers to get into their fields and plant their crops.

Kris Turner of the Flint Journal filed a report yesterday on farmers who are putting in 20-hour days to get their crops in on time.

From the Flint Journal:

Jim Collom, an agricultural statistician at the Michigan branch of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, said farmers across the state and country are hurting this year. Michigan farmers battled intense rain that flooded fields and limited the time seed could be planted. Things have improved in the past few days..

Michigan farmers typically have 92 percent of corn planted by this time of the year but only have about 67 percent of it in the ground now, Collom said. Soybeans are worse — only about 31 percent is planted. Farmers typically have about 71 percent of that crop planted by this time of the year.

One farmer, Chad Morey, said the window for planting corn safely is closing, saying he might have to plant more soybeans this year to turn a profit.

The Morning Sun reports that the late plantings and moisture will affect how much farmers are paid:

And even what's planted in the next few days and what was planted earlier this month, will likely face yield and moisture issues in the fall.

"We can expect lower yields when we're planting that late, and it will be wet," Gross said. "It's not going to have the time to dry in the field."

Farmers get less for wet grains because of the time and expense required to dry them.

 LANSING, Mich. (AP) - The state's popular Pure Michigan tourism campaign has gotten a $3 million boost from private-sector partners to support advertising this year.

The Travel Michigan Ad Partnership Program announced Monday that the contributions from 28 communities and destinations in Michigan are double those from 2010. The Michigan Economic Development Corp. is matching those contributions.

Mackinac Island, The Henry Ford in Dearborn and Traverse City are national sponsors, each contributing $500,000 toward the Pure Michigan national campaign. Travel Michigan says the money means ads will be able to run longer on cable television networks nationwide.

Pure Michigan campaigns promote the state's beaches, golf courses and other destinations to potential tourists.

Subpoena's for Detroit International bridge hearings?

State Senate hearings are scheduled to being this week over the controversial Detroit River international crossing. It's a bridge Governor Snyder and many others want built, but there have been many charges and counter-charges over the costs and the need for a second bridge crossing into Canada.

State Senator Mike Kowall (R-White Lake Township) is the chair of the Economic Development Committee.

Kowall says he will ask the state Senate for subpoena power, if he suspects anyone is not being truthful during the hearings.

From the Detroit Free Press:

If approved, Kowall would be empowered to compel sworn testimony -- meaning someone who lied could be charged with perjury -- about the various and contradictory claims being made about the proposed bridge and the Ambassador Bridge.

Kowall counts himself as a skeptic of the need for a second bridge crossing, but promises fair hearings.

Catholic Church to review liberal Sunday Mass for "liturgical abuses"

A retired Catholic priest presided over a mass held yesterday in Cobo Center for around 1,500 to 2,000 progressive people who are seeking to reform the church (attendees want to give women and married men the ability to be ordained as priests, among other reforms).

From the Detroit News:

The Archdiocese of Detroit is seeking a review of a Sunday Mass at a progressive Catholics' group's conference to determine if there were "serious liturgical abuses," church officials said Sunday.

"Those abuses, along with several other concerns, will now be — and must be — reviewed by the Detroit archdiocese and, potentially, by the Vatican," spokesman Ned McGrath said.

The Rev. Robert Wurm, who presided over the Mass on Sunday at the American Catholic Conference at Cobo Center, had said he didn't believe the archdiocese would take action against him.

"I felt good about this," said Wurm, 78, who conducted the nearly two-hour service.

Anuzis won't run for U.S. Senate

Former state Republican Party chair Saul Anuzis is the latest potential Republican challenger to U.S. Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-Michigan) to announce they will not run for the seat in 2012. Former U.S. Representative Pete Hoekstra and former Secretary of State Terri Lynn Land both declined to run.

Anuzis announced his decision on his blog That's Saul Folks:

After talking to hundreds if not over a thousand donors, activists and friends around the state I have decided NOT to run for the U.S. Senate in 2012...

Mine was a more personal decision. Unfortunately I have to work for a living:) I do not have the financial wherewithal to take a year off from working and run an aggressive, fulltime campaign.

Anuzis said he's confident a strong Republican contender will step forward, saying he has "personally encourage [sic] Frank Beckmann, Clark Durant and John McCulloch to run."

A member of the family that owns the Ambassador Bridge in Detroit has acknowledged giving money to a group that’s working to stop the construction of a competing bridge – including plastering a neighborhood with fake eviction notices.

But Matthew Moroun says his family had nothing to do with the flyers.

The state has reversed a decision to close 23 state forest campgrounds this summer.

Department of Natural Resources spokeswoman Mary Dettloff says the DNR has found partners to run three of them, and is in talks with local governments and other groups for similar arrangements for the rest. But she says maintaining the campgrounds is an expense the state is less and less able to afford:

"We have to do regular environmental testing on the wells for the water, we have to have the pit toilets pumped out regularly. We have to have the trash hauled away, the grass mowed. There’s lots of maintenance and upkeep for these things that I think a lot of folks just don’t realize we have to do."

Funding for the state forest campgrounds has been cut by almost two-thirds over the last three years. There are 133 of the campgrounds across Michigan.

Dettloff says the typical state forest campground costs about $9,000 a year to operate.

The state provides food-assistance to low-income residents who qualify through the Bridge Card Program. The card operates sort of like a debit card instead of more traditional food stamps. They were adopted to make it easier for the state to run the program and reduce the stigma associated with using food stamps.

State Representative Tom Hooker is one of the bill’s sponsors.

“We’re aren’t trying to take food away from little kids and old people and people who are suffering. That’s not the goal of any of these bills.”

The Michigan Department of Natural Resources has lifted a ban on putting bait out for deer. From October 1st through January 1st the practice will again be allowed in most counties in the lower peninsula.

Baiting will not be allowed in Alcona, Alpena, Iosco, Montmorency, Oscoda, and Presque Isle counties - the state's six county area known as the  Bovine Tuberculosis Zone.

Officials at the Michigan DNR put the baiting ban in place in 2008 after biologists found the state's first case of Chronic Wasting Disease in a deer at a private deer breeding facility in Kent County.

Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD), a fatal brain disease similar to mad cow disease, can be spread from deer to deer through saliva and blood. The disease started out west in elk and made its way into some Midwestern deer herds. Wisconsin had to cull big herds of deer to get the disease under control.

Banning a practice such as baiting, a practice that brings many deer together in one spot as they eat or lick the bait, was thought to be the best way to prevent the spread of CWD in Michigan - apparently, it worked.

From the Michigan DNR press release:

At the time, the Department followed protocol as outlined in the state's emergency response plan for CWD and immediately banned baiting and feeding of white-tailed deer in the Lower Peninsula. The NRC then passed regulations making the ban permanent, but said it would reconsider the ban in three years, giving the DNR adequate time to perform disease testing and surveillance in the state for CWD.

In the three-year period, the DNR tested thousands of white-tailed deer for CWD, but did not detect another case.

So in a 4-3 vote by the Natural Resources Commission, the three-year old ban was lifted. It will be reconsidered in 2014.

In the Grand Rapids Press, Howard Meyerson writes that hunters have been split on the issue. Around half in favor of baiting and half against it. Meyerson writes that in 2008, many hunters were glad the ban was put in place:

They said it altered deer behavior and pulled deer off their lands and onto others where people baited. That, in turn, prompted them to resort to “defensive baiting.”

On the flip side, however, others are crowing.

“The good guys won,” said Jeff DeRegnaucourt, an avid hunter from Rockford who was glad to see the ban lifted.

But the nation’s top professional wildlife biologists probably wouldn’t see it that way. Mason is one who steadfastly urged keeping the ban in place. Steve Schmitt, the DNR’s wildlife disease expert, was another.

TOKYO (AP) - Toyota says its profit for the fiscal year through March 2012 will fall 31 percent to 280 billion yen ($3.5 billion) in an outlook that underlines a robust recovery in the latter half of the fiscal year from the damage of an earthquake and tsunami.

Toyota Motor Corp. made the announcement Friday. It had not given an earnings forecast earlier because of uncertainties in its production outlook after the disasters on March 11 wiped out key parts suppliers in northeastern Japan.

Last month, it said January-March quarterly profit crumpled more than 75 percent because of the parts shortage that is hurting production.

Every year, the U.S. Department of Agriculture releases its estimate of how much it costs to raise a child from birth to seventeen years of age.

Here's what they found for their latest Expenditures on Children by Families report:

A middle-income family with a child born in 2010 can expect to spend about $226,920 ($286,860 if projected inflation costs are factored in) for food, shelter, and other necessities to raise that child over the next 17 years.

It represents a 2% increase from 2009, and the report also notes that, naturally, the more money you make, the more you spend on your child:

• A family earning less than $57,600 per year can expect to spend a total of $163,440 (in 2010 dollars) on a child from birth through high school.
• Similarly, parents with an income between $57,600 and $99,730 can expect to spend $226,920;
• and a family earning more than $99,730 can expect to spend $377,040.

Housing accounts for 31% of the cost for raising a child for a family with a middle income.

The USDA first released this report in 1960 when a middle-income family could have expected to spend $25,230 to raise a child (or $185,856 in 2010 dollars).

Everybody whose life has been at all successful has had at least one really good teacher. But most people have had some really bad teachers too. In high school, I had an algebra teacher during the last hour of the day who gave out assignments and promptly left for the racetrack. As far as I know, he was never fired.

On the other hand, there are many good teachers. I was married to one whose students topped the state, year after year, in their performance on the AP history exam. I don’t think she ever worked less than 70 hours a week.

Our lives our busy. Who has time to read the myriad of license agreements tossed up on our computer screens by the websites we visit each day?

Well, now's the time to slow down, relax, and really take in the construction and word choice used in some of these documents.

Academy Award winner actor Richard Dreyfuss brings gravitas, a little crazy, and some Nazi to the 40-page iTunes end-user license agreement.

You can hear Dreyfuss ply his craft below (thanks to CNET).

Please read:

Your responsibility:

Damages:

Effective until:

TROY, Mich. (AP) - Friends, family and supporters of the late Dr. Jack Kevorkian have paid tribute to the polarizing assisted-suicide advocate during a public memorial service in suburban Detroit.

A large photograph of Kevorkian resting his face in his right hand stood near his American flag-draped casket during the service in a chapel at White Chapel Memorial Cemetery in Troy.

Kevorkian will be laid to rest later Friday during a private grave-site service for those closest to him.

He died in a hospital last week at age 83.

Kevorkian was an advocate of allowing health care professionals help gravely-ill people die and he claimed he assisted in about 130 deaths. He spent eight years in prison for second-degree murder after "60 Minutes" broadcast video of him helping someone die in 1998.

Representative Timothy Bledsoe (D - Grosse Pointe) proposed a statewide ban on pit bulls after hearing from a constituent in his district, according to MPRN's Rick Pluta:

He says he was approached about the measure by a woman from his district whose niece was mauled by a pit bull. 

"And this constituent persuaded me to take a careful look at this breed, which we did. We began to gather evidence and, ultimately, I became convinced that through selective breeding, these pit bulls have become a threat to public safety."

Now it appears Bledsoe's proposal will go nowhere.

The chairman of a state House committee where the bill would be introduced said he won't take any action on it.

Rep. Hugh Crawford, R-Novi is quoted in the Detroit Free Press:

"I don't think it's a dog problem, I think it's a people problem," Crawford said. "And I don't think the state needs to be in the business of being canine police."

He said he spoke to some pit bull owners in recent days who told him they can be "the greatest, loving dog they ever had."

Bledsoe said he was disappointed by the news saying he felt his proposal at least deserved a hearing.

The proposal called for phasing in the ban on the breed - first putting restrictions on breeding and selling pit bulls in the state, then requiring all pit bulls to be spayed or neutered - and an outright ban would take place after ten years.

A Centers for Disease Control report on breeds of dogs involved in fatal human attacks concluded:

Although fatal attacks on humans appear to be a breed-specific problem (pit bull-type dogs and Rottweilers), other breeds may bite and cause fatalities at higher rates. Because of difficulties inherent in determining a dog’s breed with certainty,enforcement of breed-specific ordinances raises constitutional and practical issues. Fatal attacks represent a small proportion of dog bite injuries to humans and,therefore, should not be the primary factor driving public policy concerning dangerous dogs. Many practical alternatives to breed-specific ordinances exist and hold promise for prevention of dog bites.