Thomas Simonetti | The Flint Journal Young adults, including Rafael Mojica (center) 23, of Flint, and Maleek Deverell (right) 12 of Davison, participate in a forum at Red Ink Studios about interim police chief David Dicks' crackdown on sagging pants Wednesday night in Flint.

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FLINT, Michigan -- A wide-ranging discussion about interim police Chief David Dicks' crackdown on sagging pants was missing two things Wednesday night.

KALAMAZOO -- Students at public universities across the state will be digging deeper to pay for classes this fall.

Eleven of the state's 15 public universities have set tuition for the 2008-09 school year, and those costs have gone up 6.8 percent on average.

A survey of price tags so far reveals that a first-time, full-time freshman can expect to pay at least $6,500 in tuition at a public university in Michigan and more likely about $8,000 for the school year.

Jennifer Harnish | GazetteRandy and Julie Draper, of Galesburg, wait for members of their motorcycle group to arrive before taking a drive from Kalamazoo to Delton Tuesday. The group, made up of couples and families, go for a ride every Tuesday and Saturday.

DELTON

They go roaring down the road twice a week, a caravan of Honda Gold Wing motorcycles riding as one -- connected by CB radios, a love of riding and the fun of freedom and friendship.

The Wings of Eagles, the local chapter of the national Honda Gold Wing Touring Association, are made up of grandparents, families and just regular folks. They don't quite fit the motorcycle-gang stereotype.

"The national motto is 'Destination Friendship,' says Diane Diller, 66, co-director of the Wings of Eagles, along with husband, Keith, 54, a Michigan Department of Transportation employee.

File Photo"The Dark Knight," the latest Batman film, set a record for highest first-weekend haul after opening with a gross of more than $158.4 million, beating out last year's "Spider-Man 3." The movie has its sights on a new target, highest second-weekend gross.

GRAND RAPIDS -- When a movie performs steadily at the box office, it's said to have legs. This one has wings.

"The Dark Knight," the latest Batman film, set a record for highest first-weekend haul after opening with a gross of more than $158.4 million, beating out last year's "Spider-Man 3."

The movie has its sights on a new target, highest second-weekend gross.

Tracking numbers released earlier this week -- sometimes accurate, often not -- predict about $70 million for the coming weekend, which would put "The Dark Knight" near the record of $72.2 million set by "Shrek 2" in 2004.

Even the biggest movies usually see a large drop in their second weekends, especially in the summer, when the schedule is full of potential blockbusters. "The Dark Knight" will next go up against another buzzed-about film with a built-in audience, "The X-Files: I Want to Believe," opening Friday.

The winner? "Dark Knight," hands down, said Steve VanWagoner, vice president of marketing for Loeks Theatres.

AP File PhotoSen. Barack Obama holds a slight lead in Michigan polls over Sen. John McCain.

LANSING, Mich. (AP) -- Republican John McCain has narrowed the gap between himself and Democrat Barack Obama in Michigan, according to a poll released Thursday.

Forty-six percent of those polled say they'd back Obama if the election were held now, while 42 percent would support McCain. A month ago, Obama held a slight 48-percent-to-42-percent lead over McCain in a Quinnipiac poll.

The more recent statewide poll of 1,684 likely voters was conducted July 14 through Tuesday by Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Conn. It was commissioned by the Wall Street Journal and the Washington Post. It coincides with similar polls for Colorado, Minnesota and Wisconsin, all considered electoral battleground states.

Student tuition at Baker College of Muskegon this fall will rise a modest 2.7 percent -- from $185 to $190 per credit hour.

A projected record student enrollment in September and conservative spending are helping the college's finances, said Baker College President Rick Amidon.

The college's board of regents also elected to freeze student fees and housing costs for the 2008-09 school year. Students pay $850 to $955 per semester for housing, depending on whether they live in campus dormitories or off-campus townhouse apartments.

Chronicle photo by Krista SchinaglTommy Foster and his treasured 1964: "The car, for me, is representative of family."

As a boy, Tommy Foster loved everything about his grandma's big, old Pagoda Green 1964 Ford Galaxie 500.

He loved the way the car, big as a boat, almost "floated" down the highway. The way his cousins and he could crowd into the backseat, singing nursery rhymes at the top of their lungs, and still have room left over for the dog. The way the wind blew through the wing vents, cranked wide open against the hot summer breeze.

But Foster especially loved the way the sun hit the chrome trim around the windows, so bright, it almost blinded him.

Lord, how that boy loved his grandma's car.

"You had to squint when the sun hit the windshield wipers," he remembers, "there was so much chrome on the Galaxie."

Mark Bugnaski | Gazette File PhotoA Kalamazoo County Sheriff's car arrives at the intake garage of the Kalamazoo County Jail. Next to the garage is the jail's recreation yard which has been seldom used in the past because of overcrowding and understaffing. Recently, the jail has begun housing minor offenders in tents in the recreation yard.

KALAMAZOO -- Kalamazoo County Sheriff Michael Anderson said Wednesday that he expects county voters will be asked to decide another jail millage by the fall of 2009.

"In 2009, I think something's going to happen," Anderson told Oshtemo Township residents at a public meeting Wednesday night.

Twice in the last six years, voters have rejected proposals to either expand the 327-bed county jail or rebuild it.

Dan Stewart / Jackson Citizen PatriotJohn Kuhl covers food with plastic wrap Wednesday at Kuhl's Bell Tower Market, 117 W. Louis Glick Highway.

Downtown Jackson seemed like New York City to John Kuhl in 1943 when he became a 14-year-old dishwasher at Homade Food Market.

"We moved in from the farm and everything was awe-inspiring to me," recalled Kuhl. "With all the bright lights, it was really big-time."

Allegiance Health plans to build a four-story parking garage, complete with a helipad on top, next to Foote Hospital.

The $10 million project would contain about 300 new parking spaces and would be next to the emergency room where the current helipad and ER parking spaces are now.

Mark Bugnaski | Gazette File PhotoState Sen. Jack Hoogendyk, R-Texas Township, is running against longtime Democratic incumbent Carl Levin for a U.S. Senate seat.

LANSING -- As he drives across Michigan in a 1997 Dodge minivan, Jack Hoogendyk has time to ponder the long, difficult road ahead in his U.S. Senate campaign against longtime incumbent Carl Levin.

The Republican state lawmaker from Texas Township where having a Dutch surname is a plus, is hardly a household name in the rest of the state. Eighty-seven percent of Michigan voters said in a recent poll that they didn't recognize his name. Only one in 10 didn't know Levin, a Democrat with a 54 percent favorable rating.

DETROIT -- More than 2,000 U.S. hourly workers are expected to take buyout offers from auto supplier American Axle and Manufacturing Holdings Inc., a United Auto Workers official said Wednesday.

The official said between 2,000 and 2,200 workers -- or well over half of American Axle's 3,650 U.S. hourly workers -- will likely take the offers. The official requested anonymity because the company is expected to make an official announcement on the buyouts when it releases its second-quarter earnings Friday.

AP PhotoSara Loughran, a 24-year-old graduate student at the University of Pittsburgh, talks on her cell phone while waiting for a bus on campus in Pittsburgh, Wednesday, July 23, 2008.

The warning from Dr. Ronald B. Herberman, director of the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, is contrary to numerous studies that don't find a link between cancer and cell phone use, and a public lack of worry by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

GRAND RAPIDS -- As an employee of the local courier business her husband started 15 years ago, Bessie Miller relies on transportation, but she feels crippled by high gas prices.

At Jd's Courier Service, a delivery vehicle's tank sometimes is filled two or three times a day. Fifteen years ago, Miller and her husband spent 30 percent of their income on fuel. Now, it's more like 50 percent.

"It's a tough business, but you have to try to keep your head above water for sure if you're driving anywhere these days," she said.

She is one of many who are raising the question: If crude oil prices are dropping, why aren't gas prices falling, too?

Oil prices fell nearly $4 per barrel Wednesday, continuing a downward slide and tumbling below $125 a barrel for the first time since early June. Crude for September delivery dropped $3.98 to settle at $124.44 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The August contract expired Tuesday at $127.95.

Press Photo/Lance WynnKent County Prosecutor William Forsyth, center, hugs Joanne Eggleston, a 1980 victim of a stabbing attack by Lamont Marshall, outside the courtroom after Marshall received a life sentence Wednesday afternoon. At the right is Carl Novak, Laurel Ellis' boyfriend at the time, who found Ellis' body in her apartment in May 1975. More photos from the sentencing.

GRAND RAPIDS -- By the time of Catherine Fingleton's 1980 killing, investigators were desperate to solve a string of slayings that dated a decade.

A particularly vicious killer targeted attractive young women in the Heritage Hill area.

Early on, the killings were thought to be isolated tragedies, but as killings continued, police noted similarities. Concern rose.

Residents demanded answers from police and government leaders. A 1977 headline in The Press asked: "Is there a killer loose in the city, waiting for unsuspecting and unprotected young women?"

Press File PhotoThe body of Catherine Fingleton was found by the Int. 96 expressway overpass in July 1980.

"That was quite a frightening time -- a lot of neighborhoods became very concerned, especially in the Heritage Hill district," retired Grand Rapids police Capt. Victor Gillis recalled.

"At the time, so many in the Historic District were single females, going to college, or working in the city. I know that caused a lot of angst in that population."

Investigators had frustrations of their own: In the pre-DNA age, police could not tie the suspect, Lamont Marshall, whose own mother went to prison for killing her husband, to the killings.

"We were fearful -- every one of us was fearful -- if we weren't able to get a charge of murder or something, he was just going to continue doing what he was doing," Kent County Prosecutor William Forsyth said.

Press Photo/Noel Webley IIMaking friends: Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty chats with guest Frank Harrell at the Kent County Republican Party's Annual Lincoln Day on Wedensday evening at Northern Jet Management at Gerald R. Ford International Airport.

GRAND RAPIDS -- Even on this night of nights for the Kent County GOP, the political unease lay just beneath the surface.

To be sure, Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty fed his well-heeled crowd plenty of applause lines as he laid out a conservative prescription for what ails America.

But even Republican stalwarts such as Alan Bolter conceded at Wednesday's Kent County GOP Lincoln Day Dinner it could be a bumpy road ahead for presumptive presidential nominee John McCain.

Press Photo/Adam BirdLowell firefighters spray foam to put out a fire from a plane that crashed during takeoff at the Lowell City Airport on Wednesday evening.

VERGENNES TOWNSHIP -- Hurtling down a 2,300-foot runway in a plane that wasn't lifting off properly, Christopher Harper faced a situation that kills most pilots.

Harper, 33, either could continue taking off and risk hitting 60-foot trees at the end of a Lowell City Airport launching strip. Or he could cut the engine, engage the brakes and hope for the best.

The Lowell Township man chose the latter and climbed out of his Piper Cherokee 235 -- without injury -- as it caught fire. A passenger, 34-year-old Joshua Enrico, suffered a cut on the bridge of his nose but otherwise was unharmed, authorities said.

"What he had on his hands was a deadly scenario," said Jim Sowle, the airport manager. "He couldn't get that lift and had to set it back down.

"He did the best thing he could, made every right move that a very experienced, very good pilot would."

FLINT TOWNSHIP, Michigan -- Notice to fans of the Star Wars series: The toys from the upcoming film, "Star Wars: The Clone Wars" have landed.

Crowds will line up at the witching hour on Friday at the Toys R Us store, 3250 S. Linden Road, Flint Township. The virtual store, at www.Toysrus.com/StarWars, also opens at 12:01 a.m. Saturday.