LANSING, MI--  The following is a release from the Michigan Association of Counties in reaction to Friday's decision by the state Supreme Court:

"The refusal by the Michigan Supreme Court to accept the appeal of a property tax case by the Big Box retailer Menard’s is recognition of the problems created by the “Dark Stores” theory of property valuation, the Michigan Association of Counties (MAC) said today in reaction to the court’s order.

On most days from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., Mary Grimes can be found pacing along a crowded street in Orlando, Fla., with clipboards in both hands.

"Can I have five minutes of your time?" the 58-year-old says to a parade of passers-by. Those who are in a rush, she quickly wishes well; the others, Grimes directs to a blue and yellow form, reciting her spiel and soliciting a signature from each.

A congressional candidate in Florida drew a little ridicule this week.

Bettina Rodriguez Aguilera, one of the Republicans in the crowded field in Florida's 27th Congressional District, said in 2009 that she was taken aboard a spaceship when she was 7 years old.

She does not mean at Disney World.

"I went in," she says in a 2009 Spanish language interview that appeared on YouTube this week. "There were some round seats that were there, and some quartz rocks that controlled the ship, not like airplanes.

The wildfires in Northern California cut across a wide swath of the state — including dozens of school districts, hundreds of schools and hundreds of thousands of students. At one point, classes were canceled for 260,000 students in 600 schools.

And while schools are slowly coming back on line, there remain many that may not resume classes for days or even weeks.

Across the parking lot from a YMCA in Des Moines, about a dozen men sit on black plastic chairs in the basement of a former Catholic high school.

This is a court-ordered class for domestic abusers, part of a new statewide curriculum for batterer intervention in Iowa. According to police reports, one man here kicked his wife several times in the stomach. Another threw a lamp at his girlfriend's head.

It's considered one of the world's most grueling races: a nine-month, 45,000-nautical-mile marathon around the globe, with 11 stops including Cape Town, Melbourne, Hong Kong and Newport.

Less than a week before chief strategist Steve Bannon was axed from the White House President Trump said, "We'll see what happens with Mr. Bannon."

The day before announcing he wouldn't re-certify the Iran nuclear deal Trump told Sean Hannity on Fox News, "We will see what happens, pretty soon."

At the end of every summer, scientist Li Zhongqin takes his seasonal hike near the top of a glacier in the Tianshan mountains in China's far northwestern region of Xinjiang.

Li scrambles over a frozen ridge and heads toward a lone pole wedged in the ice. Clouds emerge from a peak above and quickly blow past. He stops to catch his breath. He is at 14,000 feet. The snow is thick. The air is thin.