Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette has filed a civil lawsuit against two separate water engineering companies for professional negligence in dealing with the dangerously high levels of lead found in Flint’s municipal drinking water supply over the past two years.

The state will sue water management firm Veolia North America, and Houston-based engineering firm Lockwood, Andrews and Newman (LAN), seeking hundreds of millions of dollars in reparations for “fraudulent and dangerous recommendations [that] made a bad situation worse.”

Schuette claims that Veolia knowingly filed a false report in February 2015 concerning the safety of Flint’s drinking water, which was then being sourced from the Flint River after switching out from Detroit’s municipal system via Lake Huron in a state effort to reduce costs in April 2014.

LAN had been hired by the state to treat new drinking water sources from 2013 to 2015, during which time they continuously reported that all water met federal safety requirements. They also failed to recognize the lead contamination, according to the lawsuit filing.

The lead itself, which can be toxic to humans and is said to be responsible for 600,000 new cases of childhood development intellectual disabilities every year, is thought to have made its way into Flint’s water supply through of an outdated, corrosive water pipe system.

Still, many of the city’s inhabitants seek justice for the state’s failure to provide more immediate responsive action. Criminal charges have also been filed against two state Department of Environmental Quality officials, and many have called for the resignation of Governor Rick Snyder for his gross mishandling of the crisis.

“Many things went tragically wrong in Flint, and both criminal conduct and civil conduct caused harm to the families of Flint and to the taxpayers of Michigan,” Schuette said. “In Flint, Veolia and LAN were hired to do a job and failed miserably, basically botched it. They didn’t stop the water in Flint from being poisoned. They made it worse.”

Both Veolia and LAN have said they plan to deny all accusations.

Governor Rick Snyder officially signed off on a bailout plan for Detroit’s struggling public schools that will allot $617 million for a complete restructuring of the district.

“This marks a new day for Detroit families, with DPS free from debt and strong accountability measures for all schools in the city that promises a brighter future for all of Detroit’s children,” Snyder said in a statement.

The governor’s signature comes two weeks after the bill narrowly passed through the highly partisan and Republican-controlled State House and Senate, with a 55-54 vote and a 19-18 vote, respectively. Democrats argue that the spending is not nearly enough to address the 100 schools and 46,000 students in the Detroit public district, which has been under state management for the past seven years.

The new plan will split the district into two units. The existing district will be maintained for the next 8.5 years in order to retire its debt, while the new district can begin with a clean financial slate.

“If you do this, you are systematically spelling the end of the Detroit Public Schools system,” said state Senator Bert Johnson of Highland Park, a Democrat who opposed the bailout.

Schools have been notably suffering from rapidly declining enrollments and teacher protests. “Parents are already concerned,” Johnson said. “I think it’s going to drive enrollment further into the ground.”

The deep divide between state Democrats and Republicans over the bill is in stark contrast to the cooperation between parties two years ago that assisted the Detroit city government with $195 million to put an end to its bankruptcy. There were an average 3,422 bankruptcy filings across the country every day in February 2015, which is precisely what the State hopes to avoid by bailing out the Detroit public school system with its current plan.

“This legislation gives Michigan’s comeback city a fresh start in education,” Snyder said. “Now the residents of Detroit need to engage with their schools and help find good leaders who can provide the best possible chance of success for families in the city.”

The past really does matter. A new study revealed that women who have more than two sexual partners before marriage increase their chances of getting a divorce.

According to Headlines and Global News, the studies, conducted through the 1980s and 1990s, found that women who married as virgins or after sex with just one partner were less likely to get a divorce. The same can be said for women with up to nine partners.

On the contrary, women with two partners or ten and up showed a trend of divorce.

Taking into consideration that women are the first to file for divorce in almost 80% of cases, the results seem to match up.

The study was conducted by Nicholas Wolfinger, a professor at the University of Utah Department of Family and Consumer Studies and an adjunct professor in the university’s Department of Sociology. He compiled data between 2002 and 2013 from three waves of information from the National Survey of Family Growth, a survey on marriage and sexual behavior.

The results of his findings showed that compared to just 50 years ago, women now are more likely to have sex before marriage. Furthermore, women with even two sexual partners had the highest divorce rates between the 1980s and 1990s.

“Today’s young adults do have lengthier sexual biographies than do people born prior to 1950,” Wolfinger said. “Still, the extent of hooking up has been exaggerated by a prurient and overheated media, and sometimes by young people themselves.”

In 2014, 7,497 Wayne County residents applied for marriage licenses. That same year 29,708 Michigan residents filed for divorce. Of those who filed, 3,781 were residents of Wayne County.

“Perhaps it is not unexpected that having many partners increases the odds of divorce. The greater surprise is that this only holds true in recent years. Previously, women with two partners prior to marriage had the highest divorce rates,” Wolfinger said.

After taking a major hit during the Great Recession, Detroit has finally begun to bounce back in a big way recently. Or, at least, half of Detroit has.

In downtown Detroit, strong auto sales and a growing economy have led to new startups, office buildings, luxury stores, and other encouraging signs of urban revitalization. Yet this May in The New York Times, an unflattering profile of Motor City highlighted the Detroit residents trapped on the wrong side of the new “digital divide.”

That’s because Detroit has the lowest rate of Internet access among every major American city, with 40% of residents lacking reliable Internet access. Once upon a time, job seekers could look in the newspaper or even go to an office to drop off a resume in person. Now, without an Internet connection, applying for jobs is a nightmare.

Plus, because so many jobs now require computer experience, those without digital skills are being left behind, too. Even non-technology jobs that don’t require computer coding or technical skills still demand proficiency with technology. Experts say that four out of five small businesses will soon use cloud computing, and technology is simply non-optional for most modern workers. That leaves many Detroit residents out of luck.

“Once I leave, I worry that I’m missing an email, an opportunity,” one job seeker told The New York Times.

“I was in pain visiting Detroit, seeing how so many pockets aren’t part of the opportunity of broadband and are falling behind,” Mignon L. Clyburn, an FCC commissioner, said after visiting Detroit.

And this summer, Google represents exactly how steep that digital divide has become. The technology company recently opened a self-driving car technology development center in the area, where the company hopes to “lay down roots.”

While the center could bring hundreds of jobs, the company would likely do more good for the city by improving access to broadband technology or offering computer training.

So while highly skilled technology workers may be brushing up their resumes for the new Google car division in Detroit, workers on the wrong side of the digital divide are falling further behind.

Neglecting vehicles costs the United States economy over two billion dollars annually. And now Google is trying to prevent that by bringing lower maintenance, self-driving cars back to the birthplace of the auto industry: Detroit.

John Krafcik, CEO of Google’s Self-Driving Car Project, announced on the social media site Google+ that they will open a technology center in the Detroit suburb Novi. This 53,000-square-foot development center will serve as a hub for Google to work with other automotive industry professionals.

The goal is to further develop, improve, and refine self-driving technology. Google has been developing this technology for more than six years, and Krafcik believes it is now time to lay down roots.

On the subject of the Greater Detroit area, USA Today reports, Krafcik’s said, “Many of our current partners are based here, so having a local facility will help us collaborate more https://www.thecourtyardclinic.co.uk/buy-cialis-tadalafil-online-uk/ easily and access Michigan’s top talent in vehicle development and engineering.”

Krafcik did not mention specifics about the center’s location, investment amount, or number of projected employees. He did mention that Google has had engineers working in southeast Michigan for some time, citing offices in Ann Arbor and Birmingham.

Google’s first project is to work on self-driving Chrysler Pacifica hybrid minivans. The company announced in early May their first official automotive partnership with Fiat Chrysler Automobiles NV with the goal of producing 100 self-driving Pacificas with Google’s new technology.

This partnership with Chrysler is not exclusive, and Google has mentioned that they are in talks with other automotive dealers in order to speed up the development of self-driving vehicles.

Google tests their autonomous vehicles in Washington, California, Arizona, and Texas. This technology center will be Michigan’s first for development and production of self-driving vehicles.