LANSING - As retailers entered holiday shopping mode in October more than half expected higher sales than the year prior - 45 percent of them got their wish, according to the Michigan Retail Index. The index, a joint survey from the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago and Michigan Retailers Association, found along with the 45
ANN ARBOR - WriteSteps, an Ann Arbor-based K-5 writing program focused on innovative writing improvement programs for students, announced that it has incorporated the new Common Core State Standards into its programs, in an effort to prepare students for national writing tests that will begin with the 2014-2015 school year. Forty-five states have now embraced
LANSING - Voters hold former President George W. Bush and former Governor Jennifer Granholm responsible for the state of Michigan's economy, not President Barack Obama, nor Governor Rick Snyder, according to a Gongwer News Service poll. The poll showed that 40 percent blamed Granholm, 34 percent blamed Bush, 7 percent blamed Obama and just 5
DEARBORN ? Ypsilanti-based De Novo Sciences, a company developing an alternative to traditionally painful and invasive biopsies, won the $500,000 grand prize Thursday night at the $1 million Accelerate Michigan Innovation Competition. Runner-up was Fusion Coolant Systems Inc., a company spun out of the University of Michigan that provides an advanced coolant and lubrication system
ANN ARBOR - The Michigan economy will add 63,000 total net jobs in 2011 and another 77,000 jobs over the next two years, say University of Michigan economists. "For Michigan, 2011 will go down as a year of solid job growth and one that saw the higher-wage segment of the labor market grow more rapidly
ANN ARBOR - Consumers have low expectations for the near-term U.S. economic outlook because they still believe the country is in a recession despite it officially being over for more than two years, the research professor and director of consumer surveys for Thomson Reuters said Thursday. Richard Curtin said while policymakers have tried unemployment benefit
ANN ARBOR - Although talk of a double-dip recession has subsided, the U.S. economy will still only grow moderately over the next two years, economists at the University of Michigan's Research Seminar in Quantitative Economics said Thursday. It's expected the U.S. Gross Domestic Product will increase 1.8 percent this year and economists said to expect
LANSING - Five years of Pure Michigan national advertising is just beginning to buff up the state's rust-belt image. After the state had spent $67 million for the slick campaign featuring the voice of Michigan native Tim Allen, a survey done for the state found that Michigan still ranked in the middle of the pack
LANSING - Pure Michigan. The sweeping lake vistas. The woods afire with autumnal splendor. The powdery snow covering a tranquil field. And over each image, the resonant voice of Tim Allen. And behind these ads, the state of Michigan has spent $67 million since 2006 in a bid to draw more tourists ? and their
EGHAM, U.K - Worldwide sales of mobile devices totaled 440.5 million units in the third quarter of 2011, up 5.6 percent from the same period last year, according to Gartner. Non-smartphone devices performed well, driven by demand in emerging markets for low-cost devices from white-box manufacturers, and for dual-subscriber identity module devices. Sales into the