Michigan

Authorities say a South Carolina man has been charged in a Michigan woman's 1988 slaying after investigators used forensic genetic genealogy to narrow the pool of suspects to a single family. St. Joseph County Prosecuting Attorney David Martin says 53-year-old Robert Odell Waters was arrested Sunday afternoon in Beaufort, South Carolina, in the killing of 19-year-old Cathy Sue Swartz. Swartz was beaten, stabbed and strangled in December 1988 in her apartment in Three Rivers, about 20 miles south of Kalamazoo near the Michigan-Indiana border. Police say her 9-month-old daughter was in the next room when her mother was killed.

The state of Michigan is accusing a former paper mill owner of sending contaminated waste to a composting site for decades in the Thumb region. The lawsuit seeks payments from Domtar Industries for identifying the contamination, near Port Huron, and to restore areas affected by PFAS. The lawsuit, filed Friday, accuses Domtar of knowing that the waste was contaminated, despite telling regulators that it was inert. There's been no comment from Domtar. The state says it learned about the contamination in 2019. PFAS compounds are called "forever chemicals" because they don't break down in the environment or the human body and can accumulate over time.Domtar, based in Fort Mill, South Carolina, said it doesn't comment on lawsuits.