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Yahoo
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Shiels: From Detroit to Hollywood - news anchor traveled to Tehran and elsewhere
KTLA TV's award-winning morning news anchor Frank Buckley stepped off a stage for the second time in a day, this time at the noon hour in the sold-out ballroom of Loews Hollywood Hotel, after emceeing the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce luncheon featuring Mayor Karen Bass. LA's 71-year-old leader had come to be interviewed by Buckley and share news of 'Recovery, Resilience, and Resolve.' Travel, tourism and the region's upcoming world events were touch-point topics. 'We will be able to pull off next year's World Cup soccer…and we would like a 'car-free' Olympics in 2028 - shuttling people to and from the venues by using 3,300 buses. It is a national effort,' Bass said. When asked about the idea of flying taxis, she shrugged and then joked about the driverless taxis already in use: 'I am still having a hard time with Waymo.' LA's 46,000 homeless people are no joking matter. 'The world will be coming here and we do not want them to see encampments. And we need to move away from housing the homeless in hotels for a year-and-a-half,' Bass said. As for hotels, there was a discussion about implementing a $30-per-hour minimum wage for hotel and airport workers, which some have described as the 'Olympic Wage.' Bass also wants the world to know the cleanup and rebuilding after January's devastating wildfires was ahead of expectations. 'People around America thought the entire city was on fire. They did not know where the Palisades, Altadena, or Malibu were.' The fires also hampered Hollywood's film industry, as did Covid, labor strikes, and competitive tax incentives from other states such as Georgia. In response, Bass, who was once speaker of the California Assembly, is looking for government assistance from Sacramento and is creating an executive order to ease permits and hinderances to movie-shoots and television productions, which reached a low-point in 2024. 'Some people in other parts of the state ask, 'Why should we prop up Hollywood?' But these are working class jobs, not A-list actors. Tailors, caterers, construction…the industry, whether people know it or not, is in their town. Its impact is everywhere.' Buckley's successful media career, including a turn at CNN, began in 1984 when the Angelino traveled to Michigan for a summer college internship at the Detroit News. 'I did not interview Detroit's mayor then because I was a punk covering stuff, but if you look at the old archives of the Detroit News, you will see 'Frank J. Buckley – staff writer,' or something like that. I did a bunch of articles for the Detroit News,' Buckley told me stage-side. He recalled living in a University of Windsor dorm and traveling across the Ambassador Bridge each day for work. 'Detroit had its challenges at the time, but I was not scared because I had lived in Los Angeles during a very difficult, dangerous time. I was used to having my head on a swivel.' Buckley was brave to also travel to spend 10 days in Tehran, Iran on assignment for Southern California's KTLA TV. 'We have a large Persian population here and it was of interest to them. What an eye-opening trip. I remember being on the plane with women, and before landing they had to change out of their western clothing to cover up. There were people praying on the plane. But when we were on the ground, and I have found this in my reporting throughout my life, people are the same. We want our families to be safe. We want them to be prosperous,' Buckley said. 'Iranians were not supposed have satellite TV, but they all had satellite TV so they knew what was going on. I found a kid playing basketball who was an NBA fan, so I played horse with him. It was so cool!' Buckley was not the only reporter covering the mayor's speech, including me, with a Michigan connection. I met Reis Thebault, the Washington Post's west coast correspondent. He grew up in Ann Arbor, and worked in D.C, Boston, and Columbus, while his father, Reid Thebault was a civic leader in Detroit. The elder Thebault served as the innovative president and CEO of the YMCA for 20 years at a time when the Motor City was poised for transformation – a revitalization he collaborated with various Detroit mayors to be part of. Contact Michael Patrick Shiels at MShiels@ His new book: Travel Tattler – Not So Torrid Tales, may be purchased via Hear his radio talk show on WJIM AM 1240 in Lansing weekdays from 9 am – noon. This article originally appeared on Lansing State Journal: Shiels: Frank Buckley has traveled from Detroit to Hollywood
Eater
2 days ago
- Business
- Eater
7 Recent Metro Detroit Restaurant Shutters to Know
The once mighty Bobcat Bonnie's has only one location left. At one point, the chain operated seven locations. Meanwhile, a food truck known for its bulgogi cheesesteaks won't be out and about this summer. Belly It's owners have called it quits. Read about those two shutters and more below. The Shutter , a regular roundup of Detroit and metro Detroit's restaurant closures, is your resource to find out what's on its way out . The list is by no means comprehensive. Have information on another closing? Send all tips to detroit@ . ANN ARBOR — In Ann Arbor, Red Hawk Bar & Grill, which lasted over three decades, closed on May 2. An Instagram post blamed rising food costs and the scars left by the pandemic. The restaurant, 316 S. State Street, had been around for 33 years. AROUND TOWN — Fans of bulogi cheesesteaks mourned the loss of the Belly It food truck earlier this year. An Instagram post announced the shutter, with the owner admitting that summers in the truck were exhausting and that they just wanted to enjoy the season. DOWNTOWN — Coffee Down Under has closed after four years in downtown Detroit, according to a Facebook post. The shop struggled and was barely surviving with only one worker at 607 Shelby Street. BLOOMFIELD HILLS — After a quarter century around Detroit, the last Little Daddy's Family Restaurant has closed at 39500 Woodward Avenue in Bloomfield Hills, according to a Facebook post. The Greek diner's original location closed in September 2023 in Southfield, and there were outposts in Royal Oak and Taylor. CLAWSON — Zeoli's Modern Italian, which had been around for nearly seven years, closed on March 14 at 110 East 14 Mile Road. The Detroit News reports the chef wants to remain in the industry. FERNDALE — The Ferndale location of Bobcat Bonnie's closed on Monday, June 3, at 240 W. Nine Mile Road. The chain now has only one remaining location, in Lansing. A Facebook post teased that an unnamed tenant is already lined up. At one point, the chain had seven locations. Last year, the gastropub chain faced allegations of not paying its workers. LIVONIA — Bahama Breeze, one of the many restaurants in the Darden empire, has closed its Livonia location at 19600 Haggerty, according to the Detroit News . The chain has seen several shutters in recent months, including a Troy outpost. Sign up for our newsletter.
Yahoo
20-05-2025
- Yahoo
Michigan serial killer Coral Watts is subject of new crime series on Oxygen network
Among his Michigan victims were the mother of a 3-year-old girl and a former Detroit News food writer. But it's suspected that serial killer Coral Eugene Watts slayed far more women than those tied to his court cases and confessions. Watts, who died in 2007 while serving two life sentences in Michigan, is the first subject of a new true crime series called 'Unknown Serial Killers of America.' It premiered May 18 on the TV network Oxygen. The series explores 'murderers who remain unknown to the general public, although they were as deadly as Dahmer and Bundy,' according to the Oxygen True Crime website. Watts was the focus of the first episode but before that he was the subject of much Free Press reporting amid the prosecution of his crimes. Here's what to know: Watts has been called one of the nation's most prolific serial killers. He operated in the 1970s and 1980s, confessed to killing people in Texas and Michigan, and was almost released on parole down south before Michigan stepped in with murder cases. Courts identified the serial killer who confessed to killing roughly a dozen women in Michigan and Texas as Coral Watts, but the Oxygen show identifies him as Carl 'Coral' Watts. The serial killer was born in Texas and named Carl, but 'changed his first name to Coral to reflect how Carl was pronounced in the Southern drawl of his mother's family,' the Free Press reported in 2004. Though born in Texas, Watts' parents divorced, and his mom moved him to Inkster, the Free Press reported in 2004. In his youth, he spent some time with a family member in West Virginia and stayed in Detroit's Indian Village, the Free Press reported. He attended Western Michigan University for a period. A former police chief once said his department's heavy surveillance of Watts after three deaths in Ann Arbor may have driven Watts to leave the state. Watts wound up back in Texas and later confessed to numerous murders there. Watts specifically confessed to 12 killings in Texas and one in Michigan but was convicted of two deaths in Michigan that he never copped to. When Watts died, it was reported that investigators thought he may have killed as many as 80 people. A Michigan investigator who tracked him and is included in the Oxygen show, Paul Bunten, once described an interview with Watts and three others in Texas in the early 1980s. Bunten said to Watts: "I don't have enough fingers and toes to count how many people you killed." Watts, according to Bunten, said: "There are not enough fingers and toes in this room." That's according to a Free Press report. Bunten, a former Ann Arbor investigator who became the police chief in Saline, later told the Free Press: "The number of women he actually killed is probably staggering.' Watts assaulted some women who survived, including several believed to have been in Windsor. Others were killed in his attacks. Suspected: Watts was interviewed but never convicted in three 1980 stabbing deaths in Ann Arbor. The suspect sought in the case was deemed the "Sunday Morning Slasher" given the time the three women were found. There was the Pioneer High School senior, Shirley Small, 17; the popular student hotspot Brown Jug Restaurant night manager Glenda Richmond, who was in her 20s; and University of Michigan graduate student and former airline stewardess Rebecca Greer Huff, 30, according to reports from The Ann Arbor News. A Court of Appeals order noted that Watts told an investigator they didn't need to keep looking for the killer in the Ann Arbor cases. As determined by conviction: Gloria Steele, 19, was a young mother and Western Michigan University sophomore when Watts stabbed her to death in 1974. Helen Dutcher was a 36-year-old woman living in Ferndale when Watts stabbed her to death in December 1979 in an alley near 8 Mile and Woodward Avenue. As determined by confession: Jeanne Clyne, 44, was a former Detroit News food writer and wife. Clyne was walking home from an appointment when Watts stabbed her to death on Halloween 1979 in Grosse Pointe Farms. Watts also confessed to strangling, hanging and drowning women in Texas. The women identified by the Free Press as his victims were: Linda Tilley, 22, a University of Texas senior; Elizabeth Montgomery, 25, who was walking her dog; Susan Wolf, 21, who was stabbed two hours after Montgomery; Phyllis Tamm, 27, who had been jogging; Margaret Fossi, 25, a student at Rice University; Elena Semander, 20, a University of Houston student; Emily LaQua, 14, who had recently arrived in Texas to be with her father; Edith (Anna) Ledet, 34, a newlywed celebrating her graduation from medical school; Yolanda Garcia, 22, the mother of a 6-month-old; Carrie Jefferson, 32, a post office worker; Suzanne Searles, 25, a graphic artist and aspiring children's book illustrator, and Michelle Maday, 23, who was leaving her own birthday party. Within hours of his attack on Maday, Watts tried to kill a pair of roommates in Texas. He tried to drown one and as he did, the other escaped over a second-story balcony with her hands bound and screamed for help, the Free Press reported in 2004. Police arrived and arrested Watts. He got a plea deal. In exchange for his murder confessions, he pleaded guilty to burglary with intent to commit murder and got immunity in those murders he admitted to, the Free Press reported. He was sentenced to 60 years in prison in 1982 but between an appellate decision and good behavior, he was set for parole in 2006, according to Free Press reports. In 2004, amid news coverage and pleas by officials, a witness to Helen Dutcher's murder in Ferndale reached back out to police. He provided key testimony at trial. Watts was convicted in Dutcher's death and, despite his pleas of innocence in the case, was sentenced to life in prison in late 2004. He was also charged in Gloria Steele's death. Watts died in 2007 from prostate cancer in the prison ward of a Jackson-area hospital, the Free Press reported at the time. He was 53. He had just been sentenced the week before in the death of 19-year-old Gloria Steele in Kalamazoo, the New York Times reported. While doing newspaper deliveries in his teens in Detroit, Watts beat a woman because he 'felt like it,' the Free Press reported. She was able to fend him off, and he was committed for several months to receive psychiatric treatment. A Texas official told a reporter that Watts viewed women as 'evil.' There was some debate over whether a bout of meningitis could have impacted Watts. He also described abuse at home and the killing of an uncle by an aunt, according to reporting by the Free Press. However, a psychologist once said Watts knew the difference between right and wrong but had no regard for it, the Free Press reported. One Michigan investigator who had sought Watts, Paul Bunten, once asked Watts why he killed, according to a Free Press article at the time of Watts' death. "He said he would take that to his grave, and he did," Bunten said. The show airs at 7 p.m. Sundays on Oxygen. Though the Watts episode ran May 18, it appeared to be listed for a re-run on the evening of May 19 and appeared viewable through services like YouTube TV. This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Coral Watts subject of 'Unknown Serial Killers of America' on Oxygen
Yahoo
09-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Trump expected to sign memo supporting effort to prevent spread of invasive carp in the Great Lakes
An aerial view of the Brandon Road lock and dam near Joliet, Illinois. Photo courtesy of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Movement on a project to block invasive carp from the Great Lakes could be on the horizon, according to the Detroit News, which says President Donald Trump is expected to sign a memo Friday afternoon directing his administration to 'expeditiously implement' measures to prevent their migration and expansion into the region. The memo offers its express support for the $1.15 billion Brandon Road Lock and Dam project, 'provided that the State of Illinois does not stand in the way of its construction.' Last July, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer announced the state would cosponsor the project alongside the United States Army Corps. of Engineers and the state of Illinois. The project targets a critical pinch point near Joliet, Ill., and would implement a series of complex deterrents against invasive carp and other nuisance species. Whitmer pledged $64 million in support of the project, matching $50 million from Illinois and unlocking $274 million in federal funding for the effort. While Michigan announced its first construction contract for the effort back in December, Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker, a vocal Trump critic, has refused to move forward on the effort without a commitment from the president to supply the funds appropriated to the project, including $226 million allotted through President Joe Biden's Bipartisan infrastructure law. During a meeting with Whitmer and Michigan House Speaker Matt Hall in April, Trump pledged to protect Lake Michigan, and by extension all of the Great Lakes, from the invasive fish. However, Pritzker remained unswayed, despite pressure from members of Michigan's Republican Congressional delegation. Members of the Republican-led Michigan House of Representatives advanced a bipartisan resolution on Wednesday calling on Pritzker to move forward with the project to prevent the carp from spreading into the Great Lakes. The Michigan Department of Natural Resources warns that if invasive carp move into the Great Lakes, they could outcompete native species and greatly harm the ecology and economy of the entire Great Lakes region including rivers and inland lakes, and its $20 billion fishing and boating industries. The fish can grow up to 60 pounds and eat 40% of their body weight each day. A single female can produce one million eggs, with only 10 females and 10 males needed to establish a population in the Great Lakes. SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX
Axios
09-05-2025
- Politics
- Axios
Pope Leo XIV has roots in west Michigan
Pope Leo XIV's Midwestern roots extend to west Michigan, where he attended a seminary high school near Holland. The big picture: Leo, born Robert Francis Prevost, is the first American pope and now heads a church with some 1.4 billion members worldwide. Zoom in: Prevost, 69, was born in Chicago and grew up in a suburb just south of the city. He had an interest in the priesthood at an early age, enrolling in St. Augustine Seminary High School in Allegan County, the New York Times reported. Flashback: Kalamazoo Bishop Edward Lohse met Prevost in 2023 at a conference, where they discussed his ties to Michigan, Lohse told the Detroit News. What they're saying:"Not only do we know him now as our pope, but he also knows us because he was a priest here in western Michigan," Lohse told the News. Wes Rehwoldt, who was the pope's classmate at St. Augustine and later Villanova University, said he cried when he heard of Prevost's selection on TV. "We really didn't think there was a big chance that that was going to happen, until the announcement came and they said 'Robert Francis' — and I couldn't hear anything else," Rehwoldt, 69, told the Times. Zoom out: Leo's power will transcend the faith community as he assumes a role with vast diplomatic and social influence. The new pope is generally seen to be continuing the more progressive stances that Pope Francis voiced — a more open, inclusive church focused on giving voice to the voiceless. A verified account by his name has retweeted and shared critical posts about the Trump administration, and he's spoken out against the environment's deterioration. The new pope also said he does not believe in " clericalizing women" in the Catholic Church and opposes abortion.
