BELDING — Call it a “Yooper miner’s power bar,” or a Hot Pocket without the heart attack, or even a meaty candy bar. Just don’t call it a “pace • tee” or mistake it for a pastry. Ken Thorbjornsen’s name for his new pasty shop in Belding helps those not familiar with the traditional Upper [...]

The Fellowship Baptist Falcons girls basketball team won its schools second state title with a 49-45 victory over Rochester Hills Christian school on March 3. After losing in the state semifinals the past two years, the Falcons won its first Michigan Association of Christian Schools Division 1 state title since 2006.

An audience of about 40 gathered Tuesday evening at Lakeview High School to hear law enforcement officials and drug-free coalition members from Gratiot and Montcalm counties talk about the dangers of current drug trends. Teens and adults are turning to synthetic drugs when regular marijuana isn’t accessible and to avoid the legal ramifications. These drugs are marketed as everyday products — incense, potpourri, plant food and bath salts.

Read The Daily News Funeral Notices for Saturday, March 19, 2012

Mary Louise Helwig has been a friendly face of humor and encouragement for more than 40 years in her hometown of Carson City. Helwig, 85, has been volunteering “every 56 days” for the American Red Cross blood drives at St. Mary’s Catholic Church and the Carson City Regional Correctional Facility.

Read The Daily News Funeral Notices for Saturday, March 17, 2012

A new tenant will be joining the family at the Crystal Community Center after the Crystal Township Board agreed to let Dr. Willis Gaffney rent a room in the facility on a six-month trial.

We’re having a weight loss challenge at work, which brings me to the subject of lunch. Kind of roundabout, I know. But when you’re trying to clean up your eating, the question becomes “to bring or to buy?” I know a lot of folks who go out for lunch every single day, a routine that has its definite ups and downs. Ups include the fact that you don’t have to think about what to pack at oh-dark-hundred, when your coffee barely has settled in your veins. You also don’t have to dig deep to get creative. Do a different restaurant each day and variety is guaranteed.

When a Greenville woman let someone cut in front of her in line at a drive-through restaurant, she didn’t know what she was starting. Rhiannon Jensen let a man in a truck pull in front of her at Wendy’s in Greenville during her lunch break Thursday. When it was Jensen’s turn to pay at the window, Wendy’s crew member Michael Redlich informed her the man had paid for her $7 lunch and wished her a “Happy Thursday.”

A judge denied a mother’s pleas to keep her daughter out of prison, saying the mother was partly to blame for her daughter’s life of crime.
Catherine Grace, 38, of Swartz Creek, was charged with identity theft, larceny in a building and possession of marijuana. She pleaded guilty to larceny in a building and was sentenced Thursday to one to four years in prison with credit for 67 days already served in the Montcalm County Jail.