By AP

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama says he's eager to sign legislation passed by the Senate that would allow the FDA to step in and regulate tobacco.

The president, who has struggled to quit smoking himself, says the bill "will make history by giving the scientists and medical experts at the FDA the power to take sensible steps."

The House, which passed a similar measure back in April, plans to vote on the Senate's version Friday.

By AP

WASHINGTON – A crucial war-funding bill is back on track in Congress after a flare-up over controversial detainee abuse photos.

House-Senate negotiators sealed agreement on the measure Thursday night when President Barack Obama personally guaranteed the photos would never be released.

The promise came after White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel rushed to the Capitol to resolve an impasse between Senate Democratic moderates and House liberals over the photos issue.

By AP

NEW YORK – For TV viewers across America, D-Day has arrived. That's "D" as in "digital."

Starting in the morning and going into the night, TV stations across the U.S. are cutting their analog signals on Friday to go entirely digital.

It ends a six-decade era for analog broadcasting and could strand more than 1 million unprepared homes without TV service.

By Gretchen Millich, WKAR News

EAST LANSING, MI – A group of parishioners at St. John Student Parish in East Lansing is trying to stop the merger of St. John's with St. Thomas Aquinas.

This week, the group filed a petition with the Lansing Catholic Diocese, asking Bishop Earl Boyea to reconsider the merger.

By AP

GRAND RAPIDS, MI – The Southern Poverty Law Center says the suspect in the fatal shooting of a security guard at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum recently transferred the domain name of
his racist Web site to a man in southwestern Michigan.

Records show James von Brunn created www.holywesternempire.org
in October 2000.

The hate-crime watchdog group says Steve Reimink acquired the
domain name around the first of this month. The group designated it as a hate Web site in 2003.

By Laura Weber, Michigan Public Radio Network

LANSING, MI – Republican state senators unveiled an education reform plan Thursday that would allow teachers and parents to decide if their local public school is failing. If both agree the school is failing, a charter school would take its place.

By Rick Pluta, Michigan Public Radio Network

LANSING, MI – State lawmakers are trying to come up with a plan to avoid laying off 104 Michigan State Police troopers next month. The layoffs were approved last month by House and Senate budget committees in response to a fiscal crisis.

House and Senate leaders are scrambling to find alternate funding sources for some other way to avert the layoffs.

By Scott Pohl, WKAR News

EAST LANSING, MI – EAST LANSING, MI (WKAR) - Friday is the day when TV stations across the country complete the conversion from analog to digital broadcasting.

WKAR-TV went fully digital earlier this year, but a change is still in store for viewers.

WKAR Chief Engineer Gary Blievernicht says WKAR's frequency will change from channel 55 to channel 40. WKAR-TV will be off the air for about an hour starting at 9:00 a.m. during the change.

By Scott Pohl, WKAR News

EAST LANSING, MI – Cuts to the Ingham County Sheriff's Department road patrol budget will be discussed at a public hearing tonight in Lansing.

With a projected deficit of $5,500,000 next year, the Ingham County Board of Commissioners is considering reductions of patrols in 13 rural townships.

By AP

WASHINGTON – A Democratic senator says that Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor sees a 2008 ruling affirming Americans' right to own guns for self-defense as settled law.

Colorado Sen. Mark Udall says Sotomayor told him at a meeting Thursday that she will work from the high court's decision in the District of Columbia v. Heller in future cases involving gun rights.

The 5-4 ruling struck down the District of Columbia's handgun ban and imperiled similar prohibitions in other cities.