Serving proudly since 1873 as the beautiful Nebraska Panhandle's first newspaper
Serving proudly since 1873 as the beautiful Nebraska Panhandle's first newspaper
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WASHINGTON (AP) — The American job market isn’t just growing. It’s accelerating. Employers added 236,000 jobs in February and drove down the unemployment rate to 7.7 percent, its lowest level in more than four years. The gains signal that companies are confident enough in the economy to intensify hiring even in the face of tax increases and government spending cuts. Last month capped a fourth-month hiring spree in which employers have added an average of 205,000 jobs a month. The hiring has been fueled by steady improvement in housing, auto...
LINCOLN – Guns, drugs and flying lanterns were among legislative bills debated during the Nebraska Legislature’s Judiciary Committee hearings, Thursday, Feb. 28. LB390, sponsored by Sen. Mark Christensen of Imperial would remove the Nebraska governor’s powers to take guns and ammunition under the Emergency Management Act. “It’s the times of emergency that you need (guns) the most to protect your own self,” he said. He said he got the idea for the bill from the National Rifle Association that reacted to gun seizures during the aftermath o...
WEEPING WATER, Neb. (AP) — The family of a woman seriously injured in an eastern Nebraska school gym accident has issued a statement. The husband of Lori Williams issued the statement Friday through The Nebraska Medical Center, saying Williams has undergone several operations since being taken to the Omaha hospital on Sunday. Tim Williams also expressed gratitude for the “thoughts, prayers and kind gestures from family members and friends during such a trying time for our family.” The statement does not give Lori Williams’ age or residen...
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — After coming in $400 million over budget following last year’s busy fire season, the Forest Service is altering its approach and may let more fires burn instead of attacking every one. The move, quietly made in a letter late last month by Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell, brings the agency more in line with the National Parks Service and back to what it had done until last year. It also answers critics who said the agency wasted money and endangered firefighters by bat...
DENVER (AP) — The judge in the deadly Colorado theater shootings has denied a request by defense lawyers to declare a state law on the insanity plea unconstitutional. In a ruling released Friday, state District Judge William Sylvester granted one defense request, for a written explanation of the consequences of pleading not guilty by reason of insanity. The ruling appears to clear the way for suspect James Holmes to enter a plea as scheduled on Tuesday. His lawyers had said they could not responsibly advise Holmes how to plead because of q...
NEW YORK (AP) — A senior al-Qaida leader and son-in-law of Osama bin Laden, captured in Jordan in the past week, pleaded not guilty Friday in federal court in New York to plotting against Americans in his role as the terror network’s top spokesman. Sulaiman Abu Ghaith was brought into the largest courtroom at the federal courthouse shortly after 10 a.m. and entered the plea through a lawyer to one count of conspiracy to kill Americans in a case that marks a legal victory for President Barack Obama’s administration. Black cuffs bound his hands...
UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The U.N. Security Council voted unanimously Thursday for tough new sanctions to punish North Korea for its latest nuclear test, a move that sparked a furious Pyongyang to threaten a nuclear strike against the United States. The vote by the U.N.’s most powerful body on a resolution drafted by North Korea’s closest ally, China, and the United States sends a powerful message that the international community condemns the ballistic missile and nuclear tests — and repeated violation of Security Council resolutions. Immedia...
ROME (AP) — These are crazy days in Rome, where limbo reigns in parliament and papacy. Italy is usually a pretty anarchic place, with people bucking rules on everything from crossing the street to paying taxes. But the anarchy’s going a bit far: Who’s running the country? Who’s running the church? For now, at least, nobody really knows. We Romans are living truly surreal times when a bearded comedian is now one of the nation’s most powerful leaders, and aging cardinals from around the world are mobbed by paparazzi as if they were Hollywood...
CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — President Hugo Chavez died of a massive heart attack after great suffering and inaudibly mouthed his desire to live, the head of Venezuela’s presidential guard said late Wednesday. “He couldn’t speak but he said it with his lips ... ‘I don’t want to die. Please don’t let me die,’ because he loved his country, he sacrificed himself for his country,” Gen. Jose Ornella told The Associated Press. The general said he spent the last two years with Chavez, including his final...
LACEY, Wash. (AP) — Kim Ridgway and her wife, Kimberly Bliss, can well envision the shop they plan to open — where they’ll put the accessories, the baked goods and the shelves stacked with their valuable product: jars of high-quality marijuana. Like many so-called “potrepreneurs” throughout Washington and Colorado, they’re scrambling to get ready for the new world of regulated, taxed marijuana sales to adults over 21 — even though the states haven’t even figured out how they are going to grant licenses. Farmers and orchardists are studying ho...
WASHINGTON (AP) — Republicans controlling the House are moving to take the roughest edges off across-the-board spending cuts that are just starting to take effect. Even as the military would bear a $43 billion cut over just seven months, the new GOP measure released Monday would give the Pentagon much-needed funding for readiness. It would also ease the pain felt by critical agencies like the FBI and the Border Patrol. The effort is part of a huge spending measure released Monday that would fund day-to-day federal operations through S...
UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The world moved closer Tuesday to tightening sanctions on North Korea for its latest nuclear test after U.N. diplomats said the United States and China had reached agreement on a new draft resolution to punish the country. In response, Pyongyang threatened to cancel the 1953 cease-fire that ended the Korean War. The U.N. Security Council held closed consultations on North Korea and non-proliferation Tuesday morning as tensions on the Korean Peninsula soared again over the February test. The U.N. diplomats, speaking on c...
LINCOLN – Making sure employees under age 21 won’t serve alcohol to other minors was the purpose of a bill in the General Affairs Committee Monday, March 4. Another alcohol-related bill would increase beer taxes. Under the LB444, introduced by Sen. Bob Krist of Omaha, employees who sell alcohol would have to complete a training course to do so. Underage workers could sell in a licensed retail establishment as long as another authorized person who is at least 21 was on the premise, essentially supervising the sale. Krist said the leg...
LINCOLN (AP) — A 10-year-old Nebraska boy cared for his father for more than a week after the man slipped and hit his head in their home, and it wasn’t until the boy’s school called authorities that his father was taken to the hospital where he died, authorities said Monday. The boy, Peter Asumani, told a police investigator he couldn’t communicate with his father but that he fed and gave him liquids. The investigator went to the family’s home Friday after the boy’s principal called police to report he hadn’t been in school for four days, Li...
LINCOLN (AP) — A Nebraska lawmaker said alcohol problems in Whiteclay inspired him to propose a bill Monday that would increase a beer excise tax by 5 cents per gallon. The increase would generate about $2.3 million over each of the next two years, Sen. Al Davis of Hyannis told the Legislature’s General Affairs Committee. The panel took no action on the bill. The money would be split evenly between the State Patrol Cash Fund and county law enforcement agencies. Davis said the money would allow law enforcement agencies to hire workers to com...
OMAHA (AP) — A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit that accused Union Pacific and BNSF Railways of price fixing. Oxbow Carbon & Minerals LLC said in its lawsuit that the two biggest railroads in the western U.S. worked to avoid direct competition with each other to keep rates high, and that Union Pacific has refused to ship coal from its Oxbow’s Elk Creek Mine in western Colorado to avoid competing with BNSF. The lawsuit brought by Oxbow and six of its companies also said the railroads’ fuel surcharges aren’t based on actual costs and sim...
HASTINGS (AP) — Walking into the Diorama Hall at Hastings Museum, it won’t be the mounted animals or the tail of the prehistoric dinosaur that catches the eye this month. Instead it will be the 36,000 brightly colored paper cranes hanging from the museum’s light well. The cranes were installed Tuesday and are on display through May 5 in association with Brain Injury Awareness Month, held every March. “Our goal was to get 36,000 because that would be one for each person in Nebraska living with a disability from a brain injury,” said Jacquie C...
WASHINGTON (AP) — A combative President Barack Obama blamed Republican lawmakers Friday for failing to stop automatic spending cuts from beginning to kick in late in the day, arguing he can’t perform a “Jedi mind meld” to get Republicans to agree on a deal. But he and GOP leaders displayed no appetite for letting the fight shut the government down later this month. Meeting on the day that $85 billion in federal spending cuts were to begin to take effect, the nation’s top government officials made no progress on how to avoid what they all agree...
SEFFNER, Fla. (AP) — A huge sinkhole opened up under a man’s bedroom and swallowed him as he screamed for help. He was missing Friday and feared dead. Officials lowered equipment into the sinkhole but didn’t see any sign of life. Jeremy Bush, who was at the home near Tampa, said it took him only seconds to get to his brother’s room about 11 p.m. Thursday. He jumped into the hole and dirt was quickly up to his neck. “The floor was still giving in and the dirt was still going down, but I didn’t care. I wanted to save my brother,” he said. “But...
WASHINGTON (AP) — Across-the-board spending cuts all but certain, Republicans and Democrats in the Senate are staging a politically charged showdown designed to avoid public blame for any resulting inconvenience or disruption in government services. The two parties drafted alternative measures to replace the cuts, but officials conceded in advance the rival measures were doomed. At the White House, President Barack Obama invited congressional leaders to discuss the issue with him on Friday — deadline day for averting the cuts, which would sla...
DENVER (AP) — Pot smokers in Colorado were the biggest winners in the vote that legalized the drug. Now state regulators are working out the details of exactly how to tax it, so the benefits are shared statewide in the form of increased revenue. A state panel meets Thursday to draft final recommendations based on the voter-approved marijuana legalization question that asked for excise taxes up to 15 percent to fund school construction. Colorado lawmakers could set a lower tax, or they could add sales taxes beyond the current statewide 2.9 p...
NEW YORK (AP) — A defense lawyer resumed his attack Thursday on the government’s claims that a city police officer conspired with Internet friends to kidnap, kill and eat women, asking an FBI agent why some communications were proof of a crime while others were deemed fantasies. The lawyer, Robert Baum, directed FBI Agent Corey Walsh to obvious falsehoods in communications that the government has used as evidence that Officer Gilberto Valle was serious about attacking women he knew, inc...
WASHINGTON (AP) — An ax is scheduled to hit the federal budget Friday: Unless the White House and Congress reach a budget deal by then, automatic cuts will carve $85 billion out of the budget through Sept. 30 and $1.2 trillion over the next decade. The cuts in defense spending, unemployment benefits and other programs could slow an already struggling economy. And they would leave unaddressed the biggest long-term threats to the government’s finances — rising bills for Medicare and Social Security. Economists say there’s a better way. Shrinki...
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama will meet Friday with the top leaders in the House and Senate, several hours past the deadline for averting automatic budget cuts, to discuss how to proceed on divisive tax-and-spend issues. Because the meeting is set to take place well after Friday’s deadline for the so-called sequester to kick in, it appears both sides are operating under an assumption that a deal to avert the cuts ahead of the deadline is now out of the question. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said the session will foc...
WASHINGTON (AP) — The U.S.-led military coalition in Afghanistan incorrectly reported a decline in Taliban attacks last year, and officials said Tuesday that there was actually no change in the number of attacks on international troops from 2011 to 2012. The corrected numbers — from the original reports of a 7 percent decline to one of no change — could undercut the narrative promoted by the international coalition and the Obama administration of an insurgency in steep decline. A coalition spokesman, Jamie Graybeal, attributed the misco...
