In 2003 after Pfizer acquired Pharmacia, it shut down a large lab in Kalamazoo, Michigan.

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Charles, Charles with us from Kalamazoo in Michigan.

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The skinny kid from Kalamazoo, Michigan has gone on to accumulate the most hits in interleague history (345), the most hits by a shortstop, the most hits in the old Yankee Stadium (1, 274) and the only player to eclipse 3, 000 hits while wearing a Yankee uniform.

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Writers Lisa Song, Elizabeth McGowan and David Hasemyer were recognized for a project that began with an investigation into a million-gallon spill of Canadian tar sands oil into the Kalamazoo River in Michigan in 2010.

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Last year I was in Michigan at Kalamazoo and had just a wonderful time.

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Michigan's Kalamazoo River is polluted by polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), highly toxic chemicals banned in the 1970s.

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That effort was vindicated Monday, when InsideClimate News a 5-year-old nonprofit news site dedicated to covering the environment was awarded the 2013 Pulitzer Prize for national reporting for its series on a 2010 pipeline oil spill in Michigan's Kalamazoo River.

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That thought that crossed my mind as I prepared my keynote address for Catalyst 2013, sponsored by the economic development group, Southwest Michigan First held last month in Kalamazoo.

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Instead, it turned to an outfit in Michigan--Kalexsyn, which stands for "Kalamazoo Experts in Synthesis" (these guys are scientists, not poets).

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Enbridge and the Environmental Protection Agency estimated the pipeline discharged more than 840, 000 gallons of oil into Talmadge Creek, which feeds into the Kalamazoo River, which in turn flows from near the city of Battle Creek into Lake Michigan.

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