WMUK News

A Kalamazoo-area Michigan National Guard unit is returning home after ten months in Afghanistan. More than 90 soldiers in the 1433rd Engineer Company are based in Augusta. They and members of two other units from Iron Mountain and Kingsford were in Afghanistan for what Guard officials call “route clearance missions”.

One of the unit’s soldiers died and four others were injured when a roadside bomb exploded last August.

A welcome home ceremony for the Augusta unit will be held Thursday, March 28th, at 4 p.m. in Western Michigan University’s Read Fieldhouse.

For more than a decade, Western Michigan University’s East Campus has been a virtual ghost town. However, the University announced last December that it would turn its original home into a new alumni center. To do that, the university plans to tear down two historic buildings and part of a third, and that isn’t sitting well with some in the community.

The company that makes Rubbermaid kitchen utensils and Sharpie marker pens is coming to Kalamazoo. Newell-Rubbermaid says its new design and test center at Western Michigan University’s Business Technology Research Park will employ 100 people.