News@noon: UM takes step back; first-place Lions
Today is Monday, Nov. 14, 2016, and don't look now, but the Detroit Lions are in in first place in the NFC North.
The Lions did so without having to play a game, as the Minnesota Vikings dropped their fourth straight game, 26-20, to Washington, while Detroit enjoyed a week off.
Perhaps Michigan should have employed the same strategy. The Wolverines suffered their first loss of the season, 14-13, at Iowa.
Michigan loses, but still controls fate
The Wolverines are no longer perfect, but little was lost in the loss.
Iowa plays in the Big Ten West Division, while Michigan plays in the East, where it retains its first-place status. Two other teams with the same 6-1 record in conference play, Ohio State and Penn State, both have losses in the division — Penn State lost 49-10 to Michigan, while the Nittany Lions beat the Buckeyes 24-21. The division is still for the taking, and it appears the Michigan-Ohio State game — The Game — on Nov. 26 will decide who wins. Michigan still controls its destiny at this point, writes beat reporter Angelique Chengelis.
Michigan slid from No. 2 to No. 4 in the latest Associated Press poll, but its standings in the only ranking that counts, the College Football Playoff rankings, won't be learned until Tuesday night. With two regular-season games to go, can Michigan get its offense to explode once again? Can its defense tighten up against the run with two spread offenses, Indiana and Ohio State, up next? That remains to be seen.
Don't drink the water — unless you boil it first
As the work week starts in Metro Detroit, residents and guests of Oakland County's most populous city, Troy, are being advised to boil water before consuming it, after a water main break on Sunday dropped water pressure. This has affected residents and businesses on Troy's west side — including at the Somerset Collection — and the situation is expected to last through Tuesday night.
Two charged in Detroit boy's death
Two state social workers were charged Monday in connection with the death of a 3-year-old Detroit boy whose death allegedly came at the hands of his mother last May.
Elaine Brown, 24, and Kelly M. Williams, 47, both Wayne County residents, have been charged in the case of Aaron Minor.
Aaron’s decomposed body was found on the afternoon of May 25 in an apartment he shared with his mother on Trumbull near Warren on Detroit’s west side. The mother, Deanna Minor, allegedly had checked herself into a local mental institution when the boy’s body was found. She has been charged and faces a competency hearing in her son’s death Nov. 30.
Rhetoric and reality
After a presidential campaign in which the Republican candidate, Donald Trump, vowed to ban Muslims from entering the United States, Detroit-area Muslims view the president-elect with wary eyes, not sure what to expect.
"How are we going to be known as the United States of America if our president isn’t uniting us?” Gina Shkoukani of Bloomfield Hills said to News reporter Mark Hicks.
“It’s a message being sent out that, literally, we don’t want you here,” said 17-year-old Khadega Mohammed of Clinton Township.
In other news
- A man ran away after being shot in the buttocks during a carjacking Sunday night in Detroit, police say — leaving behind his child and the woman he was with.
- Wayne Police Department is asking for the public's help after a homicide it declared an "isolated incident," but in which no arrests have been made.
- A 3-year-old Cadillac boy fighting debilitating medical troubles, Anakin Sturtevant, gets VIP treatment for the weekend, and to meet his heroes from his favorite TV show, "Paw Patrol," courtesy Make-A-Wish Michigan.
- A 3-year-old Ypsilanti Township boy fatally shot by accident by another young boy, according to authorities.
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