The New Citizens Press

By Jill Schlesinger

Tribune Media Services

 

How much does your 401(k) plan cost you? For many retirement plan participants, the answer has been elusive, until now. The U.S. Labor Department has finally said enough is enough and will impose rules beginning on July 1 that will require 401(k) administrators, like mutual funds and insurance companies, to disclose the fees they are charging to run retirement plans. This is good news for the three-decades-old 401(k) plan, which now accounts for $4.3 trillion of retirement savings.

 

Photo credit: WSU Sports Information

 

By Harry M. Anderson, Jr.

 

After spending several years on the hardwood during their prep basketball years at Lansing Everett High School and their collegiate years at Wayne State University, Kristen and Nicole Rogers are still involved in the game they loved and grew up on. Kristen, who spent three seasons as an assistant coach at Wayne State University  from 2008-2011, is now a full-time assistant at Northern Michigan University in Marquette under current Head Coach Troy Mattson, and Nicole is now in her third season as a part-time assistant at Madonna University in Livonia just outside Detroit. Both girls grew up on the game.

 

Photo credit: NMU Sports Information

 

The love of the game started with the older sister Kristen who played the game most of her life. She played in the Lansing-area Junior Pro League in her pre-junior high years.

 

Kristen played at Everett High School from 1998-2001 playing at the guard position. With help from Head Coach Johnny Jones, Kristen helped the Lady Vikings win three straight Capital Area Athletic Conference Basketball titles in 1999. 2000 and 200l. She also helped them win back-to-back MHSAA Class A State Titles in 2000 and 2001. 

By Andy Schor

 

Few Michigan residents are strangers to the fallout that comes with state and federal budget cuts. With many lawmakers reluctant to embrace sustainable solutions to our budget problems, vital services that our area families and businesses rely on continue to be slashed (and in some cases eliminated completely) at every level of government.  

 

One of the most alarming possibilities currently being discussed in Washington is the closure of the United States Postal Service Processing and Distribution Center on Collins Road in Lansing and subsequent transfer of that facility’s services to Grand Rapids. This is being justified by a feasibility study conducted by the U.S. Postal Service which is being called into question by a number of regional leaders. 

Making bones speak:  Students analyze a Nubian skeleton from the Middle Ages. More than 400 ancient skeletons from Africa are on loan to MSU from the British Museum. Photo by G.L. Kohuth

 

E. LANSING, MI — In a narrow, modest laboratory in Michigan State University’s Giltner Hall, students pore over African skeletons from the Middle Ages in an effort to make the bones speak.

 

Little is known about these Nubians, meaning the information collected by graduate and undergraduate students in MSU’s Forensic Anthropology and Bioarchaeology Program will help shed light on this unexplored culture.

 

From what has already been gathered, life in ancient Nubia could be brutal. Residents of Mis Island – a remote area along the Fourth Cataract of the Nile River in present day Sudan – were plagued by meager diets, high infant mortality and diseases such as scurvy and tuberculosis.