Police said a 44-year-old Illinois man drowned while swimming in Lake Michigan, where strong offshore currents were making conditions dangerous. The Berrien County Sheriff's Department said the accident happened Sunday afternoon off Hagar Township Beach. Deputy Roy Davis told The Herald-Palladium of St. Joseph that the victim is from the Chicago suburb of Wheeling. Davis didn't release his name. Davis said the man was 75-100 feet from shore while his wife and 4-year-old son sat on the sand.

The Muskegon Police Department is investigating the discharge of a firearm by one of its officers late Sunday night at an incident in the area of Fifth Street and Southern Avenue. Responding officers were originally sent to the area on a call of shots fired and found three people. The first officer advised one man to raise his hands, and the person pulled a handgun from the waist of his pants and raised it toward the officer, reported Muskegon Police Capt. Andrew Olson. The officer - a six-year veteran - fired a single shot at the man, missing him.

Authorities said a Muskegon man who fatally shot his wife before killing himself was a state corrections officer. Muskegon police said they found the bodies of 36-year-old Jesus Flores and his 35-year-old wife Jennifer in their home on Sunday. WWMT-TV reported Jesus Flores worked at the Brooks Correctional Facility in Muskegon. The station said Jennifer Flores' brother saw her husband pull out a gun and shoot her. The couple were recently married.

Exchange Street will reopen to traffic today after undergoing a Safe Routes to School makeover. The village thoroughfare now sports traffic calming devices called "bumpouts' at the intersections with Prospect and Williams streets.

The last time a pitcher won the Most Valuable Player award in the American League, Justin Verlander was 9 years old. The season was 1992, when the Oakland A's closer Dennis Eckersly and his Old West gunfighter-style mustache took home the award. And the last starting pitcher to win MVP? Verlander was only 3 when a fresh-faced Roger Clemens won in 1986 with Boston.

Six vehicles were involved in a crash on the M-104 bridge approaching the drawbridge late Saturday morning. Sgt. Curt Theune of the Spring Lake/Ferrysburg Police Department said traffic was stopped on the westbound M-104 bridge, approaching U.S. 31, shortly after 10:30 a.m. Several cars and a garbage truck collided.

Local historian and author Dr. Wallace Ewing will present his book, "From Home to Trench: the Civil War Letters of Mack and Nan Ewing, 1856-1865,' at Loutit District Library on Thursday, Sept. 8. The free program in the library's Program Room A will begin at 7 p.m. This historical treasure features 92 letters from the Civil War era with explanatory text, compiled and edited by the correspondents' great-grandson. Ewing said that the letters "offer vivid and detailed descriptions of life in the trench and at home.'