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Most of the time, homeowners consider work done on the garage to be an asset to the main house (with about 71% of homeowners who recently replaced garage doors believing it improved the value of their property). Not many people see an upgraded garage as a replacement for a home, however.

But that’s exactly the trend in Portland, OR, where a growing number of garages are being upgraded into legal “accessory dwelling units.” Homeowners can rent these out or use them as semi-independent living spaces for senior parents or grown children, but some are choosing to live in their own garages and rent out their main houses, instead.

“Portland residential properties have nice-sized lots,” Holly Huntley told Oregon Live, the online version of The Oregonian, April 28. Huntley owns Environs, a company that specializes in both designing and building small but complete homes. “A new ADU [accessory dwelling unit] uses only a small portion of the lot and a garage conversion doesn’t need any more ground room,” she said, explaining the appeal.

According to Kareen Perkins, the city’s building permitting services manager, applications for such conversions have more than tripled since 2009.

That’s not necessarily because conversions are inexpensive. In fact, the cost per square foot in a garage conversion project can range from $100 to $300, which is more than one would expect to pay if building a detached house.

But Portlanders seem to like the idea regardless. Later this month, there will even be a tour offered of 25 ADUs so interested parties can learn more about the process and get a better idea of how these tiny houses turn out.

The second annual “Build Small, Live Large” tour will take place May 29 through 31, and will also include workshops, presentations, and a party featuring local beer and s’mores. Tickets start at $35, and discounts are being offered until May 23.

Matthew Kohr, a lieutenant with the Raleigh Police Department’s special operations division, had stopped into a Starbucks on Peace Street back in January 2012 to pick up a cup of free coffee. But what he came away with left him unable to return to the department for several months afterward.

Kohr has alleged in a lawsuit that he was served a coffee in a faulty cup that folded in on itself, which led to several third degree burns and blisters on his skin.

The spill also set off Kohr’s Crohn’s disease in a way it hadn’t acted up before. He alleges that the burns caused him to need surgery to remove a portion of his intestine.

Thanks to changes in health care reform, inflammatory diseases like Crohn’s aren’t necessarily considered pre-existing conditions for insurance purposes. As a result, health insurance rates aren’t determined like those for auto policies, which may charge drivers more if they are under 25 or over 70.

But Kohr doesn’t just have medical bills to contend with. He says that the event took two years out of his life as he struggled to get back to work.

“I had a lot of anxiety, a lot of unsteadiness and nervousness,” Kohr said. He told the jury that he wasn’t comfortable with being in the police car, which affected his role as a supervisor.

“You know, as a supervisor, in my experience as a police supervisor, you have to lead people and be confident,” he said. “And I didn’t feel those same feelings I had in the past.”

Kohr and his wife Melanie are seeking $750,000 in compensation from the coffee chain, but he says that the loss of time at work is worth much more than that.

Because his lawsuit is a civil one, he is only allowed to seek damages of up to $750,000. But he told the jury that the months of recovery and trauma are worth far more to him than that.

“We said, ‘Well, what’s our life worth? What’s a year and a half or two years of your life worth?'” Kohr said during his testimony on May 6. “I thought it was worth $10 million.”

Attorneys for Starbucks, meanwhile, claim that the onus is on Kohr, especially considering that getting free coffee while on the job was routine for the officer.

“How does someone who knows their coffee is hot, who has had 50 cups of free coffee in the last two months, how does that person spill their coffee?” defense attorney Tricia Derr asked the court on May 5.

At any given moment, as many as 85% of all vehicles will need some kind of repair or maintenance.

But good luck getting the car repairs you need if you’re openly gay and live in Grandville, MI.

According to CNN, Brian Klawiter, owner of Dieseltec, recently made a statement on his company’s Facebook page encouraging gun owners to bring their cars to his shop — even offering a discount for those who do.

He also declared that openly gay customers are not welcome at his business, and that he has no problem turning them away at the door, citing his religious freedom.

“I am a Christian. My company will be run in a way that reflects that. Dishonesty, thievery, immoral behavior, etc. will not be welcomed,” he wrote. “I would not hesitate to refuse service to an openly gay person or persons. Homosexuality is wrong, period.”

His post emphasized that conservative American voices are being drowned out, hence his reasoning behind making the post — explaining that “free speech isn’t just for liberals.”

Since taking to Facebook to write a mini-manifesto of his views, Klawiter told a CNN affiliate he has had to contact local police to remove protesters from his property. He’s also received hundreds of calls from across the country, as well as multiple death threats.

While acknowledging that his words could be interpreted as offensive, Klawiter explained he doesn’t regret making the post.

Currently, discrimination based on sexual orientation is not prohibited in the state of Michigan — and while some municipalities have passed laws banning discrimination of LGBT people, Grandville isn’t one of them.

According to WOOD TV, Grandville Mayor Steve Maas has said he’d be open to pursuing nondiscrimination laws that would protect LGBT people, but that the citizens of his town would need to ask for such legislation first. Yvonne Siferd, director of victim services for LGBT advocacy group Equality Michigan, made a statement urging Maas to pursue legislation protecting the LGBT community.

Shortly after Klawiter’s post, GoFundMe page was created to raise money in support of Dieseltec; it was removed from the crowd-funding site shortly after.

In one of the medical industry’s biggest breakthroughs this century, three baby boys have been saved from a life-threatening breathing disorder by an unlikely combination of dedicated doctors, medical researchers, and a 3-D printer.

According to reports from LiveScience and IndustryWeek, researchers developed implants made of porous biomaterial, which can change shape and grow as the patients grow, making it possible for surgeons to use these implants on children with life-threatening medical conditions.

Not only do these implants change over a period of years, but they are custom-designed for each patient within a matter of days and are subsequently printed out on a 3-D printer, making them incredibly affordable.

The three boys, who all suffer from a severe case of a breathing disease called tracheobronchomalacia, were the first three patients to receive pediatric biomaterial implants for a severe respiratory illness. All three boys underwent surgery — successfully — at the University of Michigan’s C.S. Mott Children’s Hospital.

Tracheobronchomalacia is condition that affects about one in every 2,000 children globally and — before the creation of the implant — was considered incurable. It is a respiratory condition which causes the windpipe to collapse; even with the help of ventilators and heavy sedatives to keep them from moving, children with this disease typically have life expectancies of a few days to a few weeks after birth.

In the rare cases where children were kept alive beyond this point with ventilators and sedatives, their lungs began strengthening by age two or three; another major benefit of the 3-D printed implants, according to LiveScience, is that they will dissolve over time as the children’s breathing passages get stronger.

3-D printing has been used in the medical industry for a variety of other medical needs, such as hearing aids and dental implants, and these creations have been very successful.

Dental implants, for example, already have a 98% success rate according to the data collected from multiple studies, but many patients are hesitant to seek out implants because they tend to be very expensive. By using a 3-D printer to create the implants, cosmetic dentists can lower the cost and the wait time for each patient exponentially. Dentists can create custom implants within a few days, and they can also print out duplicates of the same implants with very little manual labor.

The same notion applies to the three respiratory implants which have just been created, although with the added benefit of biomaterial, doctors were able to implant the devices without worrying about straining the children’s air passages.

The latest reports state that all three boys are at home with their families — something which doctors never predicted would happen — and are breathing normally without any sedatives, paralytics, or ventilators.

The U.S. Census Bureau reports that there are some 13.7 million parents who have custody of 21.8 million children under the age of 21 while the other parent lives elsewhere. According to the latest available data, only about one out of every six custodial parents were fathers. The majority of these are either divorced or separated (56.2%), while 24.5% are currently married or widowed, and 20.3% have never been married.

Lyle Jeffs, however, is an even rarer case. Not only is he a custodial father, he also falls into two of the three possible statistical demographics. He is simultaneously divorced, and married — not re-married. Lyle Jeffs is a polygamist.

Jeffs’s brother Warren is the president of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, and has been in prison since 2006 for sexually molesting two members of the congregation. His former followers say Lyle runs the church in his stead.

The FLDS, under the leadership of the Jeffs brothers, have taught that non-believers and people who break off from the church are unrighteous persona non grata. Parents who leave the church often have to go through laborious court battles against spouses just to even be able to visit their children.

All this considered, many were shocked when Jeffs recently agreed to allow his estranged wife to have some custody over their 17-year-old son and 14-year-old daughter. Judge Michael Leavitt approved the agreement on April 29, which gives parents joint custody of the children, but specifies that they live with their mother. Every other weekend, and for a stretch of the summer, they’ll visit Jeffs. Additionally, Jeffs must provide $1,000 a month in child support, be responsible for the children’s health care and education, provide his son with a vehicle that will be used to drive him and his sister between their parents’ homes, and pay his wife two-thirds of her housing costs, not to exceed $2,000 a month.

When he signed his agreement, he wrote below his signature “RESPONDENT SIGNS UNDER PROTEST OF MOTHER BEING CUSTODIAL PARENT.”

Ron Rohbock, one of the Jeffses’ former followers, has six juvenile daughters, whom he hasn’t seen in years. He worries for them, and hopes that the new agreement could be the first of many, potential reunions, telling the Salt Lake Tribune, “This is a great beginning, but it’s just a beginning.”

The Securities and Exchange Commission has censured and penalized StateTrust Investments, Inc. for a whopping $90,000. The actions come as the result of a settlement over charges that the firm broke the Municipal Securities Rulemaking Board’s rules when it sold Puerto Rico bonds for a sum less than the issuer’s specified minimum denomination.

Surprisingly, this is just one of a score of actions taken by the SEC in recent years, which has culminated in an unprecedented amount of cases.

Last March, StateTrust Investments, Inc. executed a transaction that was less than $100,000 with a customer. Though the firm canceled it, the SEC said that the StateTrust Investments, Inc.’s conduct was still in violation of the MSRB’s rule on fair dealing, and its rule on confirmation, clearance, and settlement practices, which prohibits sales under the officially stated minimum denomination (except in some, certain, limited circumstances).

In addition to the $90,000 penalty, the SEC also ordered StateTrust to cease and desist from violations in the futures, and to undergo a review of the firm’s policies and procedures meant to prevent future violations.

“The limited exceptions provided under MSRB Rule G-15(f) for customer transactions in municipal securities below the minimum denomination of an issue did not apply to this transaction,” stated the SEC. “StateTrust also failed to disclose to this customer, before or at the time of the trade, that the bonds were issued with a $100,000 minimum denomination, and to explain how this could affect the liquidity of the customer’s position.”

This case is but one of a number of recent SEC enforcement actions, which have nearly doubled in less than 10 years. In 2005, there were only 94 broker-deal enforcement actions, similar to StateTrust Investment Inc.’s case. Total, the SEC brought 630 cases. In 2014, there were a whopping 166 broker-dealer enforcement actions. That same year, the SEC’s enforcement division brought a staggering 755 cases, collecting a record $4.1 billion

Out of all of these cases, the $90,000 penalty put on StateTrust is one of the largest the SEC has levied in connection with the Puerto Rico bond sale.