Apartment City

A building at Woodcreek Apartments in Ypsilanti Township remains abandoned as the management and insurance company settle a dispute over the insurance settlement. Tom Perkins | For AnnArbor.com An eight-unit, burned-out apartment building in the Woodcreek Apartments off East Forest Avenue continues sitting vacant after a Molotov cocktail attack damaged it in a July 10 arson. A building left vacant with no timetable for demolition or repair is rare in Ypsilanti Township , where officials are tenacious in their efforts to quickly address blight . But this time, the township is caught in the middle of a settlement dispute between an insurance adjuster, Woodcreek management and the building's insurer. Also at stake is $120,000 in insurance money. The insurance adjuster, Craig Trombley of American Adjusters, was hired by Woodreek's owner, Ken Sharrock . Trombley is paid a percentage of the $120,000. The two accuse an Ypsilanti Township building official of putting residen...

RIO DE JANEIRO ― Seven years ago, Vila Autódromo was little more than a tranquil fishing village on the edge of Jacarepagua Lagoon, next to the racetrack for which it was named. Like the hundreds of other favelas that dot Rio de Janeiro ’s landscape, it had long been neglected by the city government , and it lacked many basic public services that are standard in the fast- growing wealthier neighborhoods just across the water. But to the more than 600 families that lived there, it was home. “This was a paradise,” said Luiz Cláudio Silva, who lived in Autódromo for more than 20 years. “I thought that I would live here for the rest of my life.” By the time the Rio Olympics are over, just 20 of the families who lived in Autódromo in 2009, the year the International Olympic Committee chose the city to host the games, will remain. The community, which sits less than a mile away from Rio’s Olympic Park, was crushed so that the city could build new access roads to connect Olympic venues . ...

I n the late afternoon of March 14 in the Toronto suburb of Woodbridge , a masked gunman jumped out of the passenger side of a black Jeep Cherokee , darted across a snow- dusted parking lot and unleashed a flurry of bullets into a black BMW. Thirty seconds later, he was back in the car, leaving Saverio Serrano – the son of a notorious Canadian Mafia figure and cocaine importer – wounded, and Mr. Serrano's 28-year-old girlfriend dead. Two weeks later, in the west end of Toronto, an SUV rolled into the driveway of a bungalow at the end of a suburban cul-de-sac around 2:30 a.m. As 53-year-old Antonio Sergi , a beefy, cigar-chomping showman known in Mafia circles as "Tony Large" or "T Large," got out of the car and lumbered toward the front door, he was shot in the head and killed, execution style. Convicted drug trafficker Diego Serrano , 69 is pictured in a police surveillance photo from Project OPHOENIX." class="article-media-photo__content_...

NEW YORK, NY — It's one of the oldest rivalries in American migration: New York vs. Los Angeles. For the better part of a century, residents of the nation's two largest metro areas have been defending their chosen kingdom and dismissing the other on an endless loop of judginess between kitty-corner coasts. Ew, the traffic! But the sunshine! But the subway! But the garbage! But the skyline! But the coastline! But the bustle! But the chill! In this tireless war of words, a clear winner has yet to emerge. But it's harder to argue against the numbers. Thousands of working professionals have relocated to Los Angeles County from New York City in the past year and a half, according to a series of monthly "workforce reports" released this spring and summer by the job- networking site LinkedIn (and spotted by LA Weekly). And it's not exactly a two-way street. Since early 2016, according to LinkedIn, around seven or eight out of every 10, 000 site users in LA report...