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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MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Gov. Scott Walker says he will propose increasing funding for mental health services across Wisconsin by $30 million. Walker told the annual meeting of the Wisconsin Counties Association on Wednesday that he’s been looking into the state’s mental health needs, but the effort took on added urgency following mass shootings in the state and across the country. Walker will propose the funding in his two-year state budget to be introduced on Feb. 20. He says the money will go into expanding services statewide that curre...
WASHINGTON (AP) — Student athletes need access to health care professionals, better-trained coaches and up-to-date equipment, a coalition of groups recommended Wednesday in a call to action aimed at protecting the nearly 8 million students participating in high school sports each year. The Youth Sports Safety Alliance of more than 100 groups released the proposed rules, which call for health providers such as athletic trainers or doctors available for every school, warnings about performance-enhancing substances for athletes and the creation of...
MIDLAND CITY, Ala. — As FBI and police negotiators sought for days to coax an Alabama man into freeing a kindergartner held hostage in an underground bunker, the captor was planning for violence, authorities say. He rigged the bunker with explosives, tried to reinforce it against any raid, and when SWAT agents stormed the shelter Monday to rescue the boy, Jimmy Lee Dykes engaged in a firefight that left the captor dead, the FBI and officials said. After the nearly weeklong hostage ordeal, relati...
SOFIA, Bulgaria (AP) — Hezbollah is behind an attack on a bus filled with Israeli tourists in Bulgaria last year, investigators said Tuesday, describing a sophisticated bombing carried out by a terrorist cell that included Canadian and Australian citizens. In the first major announcement in the investigation into the July 18 bombing that killed five Israelis and their Bulgarian driver, Interior Minister Tsvetan Tsvetanov said one of the suspects entered the country with a Canadian passport, and another with one from Australia. “We have wel...
ATHENS, Greece (AP) — For the second time in less than two weeks, the Greek government invoked rarely used emergency laws to order strikers back to work Tuesday — in a move designed to end a seamen’s walkout that has left islands without ferry services and supplies for six days. The decision by conservative Prime Minister Antonis Samaras to declare ferry crews under civil mobilization came after their unions voted to extend the strike until early Friday. Seamen who refuse to comply risk arrest and jail time of up to five years — althoug...
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — The Baltimore Ravens carried off the Lombardi Trophy. Their beaten opponent has a better chance of doing it next season. San Francisco running back Frank Gore insisted the 49ers were the more talented team even after losing 34-31 to the Ravens in Sunday’s Super Bowl. The scoreboard said otherwise, but when the conference champions meet at the Meadowlands next February — yes, outdoors in the dead of winter for the NFL crown — the Niners easily could represent the NFC. Again....
GERING (AP) — A 33-year-old western Nebraska man has been given 30 to 48 months in prison for sexually assaulting a child. Scottsbluff radio station KNEB says Keith Van Winkle, of Minatare, had made a deal with prosecutors and pleaded no contest to reduced charges in Scotts Bluff County District Court. Van Winkle was given credit for 254 days already served. He was arrested after a 7-year-old girl told school officials in May about being molested three years earlier....
WASHINGTON (AP) – Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham said Tuesday Chuck Hagel “seems clueless” on U.S. policy toward Iran and he urged the Obama administration to reconsider its defense secretary nominee. In a statement, the South Carolina lawmaker stopped short of saying he would filibuster the choice if the president pushes forward as expected. No Democrat has come out in opposition to Hagel, two Republican senators back him and several others, including Sen. John McCain, say they wouldn’t support a filibuster. “Chuck Hagel is a good man, but...
LINCOLN – Gov. Dave Heineman said Monday he’s looking for a lieutenant governor who will make a commitment to not run for governor in 2014. He is considering a number of people and will make a decision in the next few weeks, he said. Most of this week, he’ll be focused on tax reform. Lt. Gov. Rick Sheehy resigned Saturday after phone records obtained by the Omaha World-Herald, and subsequently other media, revealed thousands of calls were made to women other than his wife on his state cell phone. Heineman said he talked to Sheehy when the c...
WASHINGTON – When President Barack Obama declared that his defense secretary nominee, Chuck Hagel, would be the first former enlisted man to lead the Pentagon, he seemed to overlook four previous defense chiefs who served part of their military years as enlisted men. William J. Perry, who served as defense secretary from 1994-97, was in the Army’s enlisted ranks from 1946-47 and served in Japan as a member of the American occupation force, according to a biography on the website of Stanford University, where he is affiliated with the Freeman Sp...
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell wants to share the blame. “Safety,” he said at his annual Super Bowl news conference, “is all of our responsibilities.” Not surprisingly, given that thousands of former players are suing the league about its handling of concussions, the topics of player health and improved safety dominated Goodell’s 45-minute session Friday. And he often sounded like someone seeking to point out that players or others are at fault for some of the sport’s problems — and need to help fix them. “I’ll stand up....
BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — The tenacious wolverine, a snow-loving carnivore sometimes called the “mountain devil,” could soon join the list of species threatened by climate change — a dubious distinction putting it in the ranks of the polar bear and several other animals the government says will lose crucial habitat as temperatures rise. Federal wildlife officials Friday proposed Endangered Species Act protections for the wolverine in the Lower 48 states. That’s a step twice denied under the Bush administration, then delayed in 2010 when the Obama...
WASHINGTON (AP) — Goodbye candy bars and sugary cookies. Hello baked chips and diet sodas. The government for the first time is proposing broad new standards to make sure all foods sold in schools are more healthful, a change that would ban the sale of almost all candy, high-calorie sports drinks and greasy foods on campus. Under new rules the Department of Agriculture proposed Friday, school vending machines would start selling water, lower-calorie sports drinks, diet sodas and baked chips instead. Lunchrooms that now sell fatty “a la car...
LINCOLN (AP) — Disabled veterans who live in Nebraska would receive a preference when competing for state contracts under a bill presented Friday to a legislative committee. Sen. Charlie Janssen of Fremont, a veteran himself, pitched the proposal to the Government, Military and Veterans Affairs Committee. The bill would give a competitive edge to resident, disabled veterans who are vying for state contracts against other resident and nonresident bidders. The federal government has enacted similar preferences. “Our nation’s veterans have uniqu...
EUGENE, Ore. (AP) — Oregon has promoted former Nebraska quarterback Scott Frost to offensive coordinator under new coach Mark Helfrich. The move announced Thursday had been expected since Helfrich, the team’s former offensive coordinator, was made the Ducks’ head coach on Jan. 20. Frost will also serve as quarterbacks coach in his new role. The 38-year-old has been Oregon’s wide receivers coach for the past four seasons under coach Chip Kelly, who left the Ducks earlier this month to become...
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — John and Jim Harbaugh have received plenty of attention as opposing head coaches in the Super Bowl. At their joint news conference Friday, someone asked the brothers if they could work together if either should be forced out of their current post. John Harbaugh, coach of the Baltimore Ravens, said, “There’s no question about it.” He said the brothers discussed the possibility in the past, but “it never really worked out, timing-wise.” He said he would work for Jim, or hire Jim. Jim Harbaugh says he would also enjoy worki...
CHADRON (AP) — Chadron State will play West Texas A&M next September as part of the Lone Star Football Festival at Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Texas. The Festival features games involving all Lone Star Conference members and a number of non-conference teams. The games are played in the $1.2 billion stadium that Jerry Jones built for his Dallas Cowboys and is televised across Texas. Chadron State coach Jay Long said Thursday his players are excited about the opportunity and that it’s exciting to tell prospective recruits the Eagles will pla...
WASHINGTON — Republican senators hammered former GOP Sen. Chuck Hagel at his confirmation hearing Thursday on issues ranging from Israel and Iran to his support for a group that advocates the elimination of nuclear weapons. But with most Democrats in his corner, an unflustered Hagel seems headed for approval as defense secretary. Hagel, a former two-term senator from Nebraska, described his views as mainstream and closely aligned with those of President Barack Obama, the Democrat who nominated him. But several GOP members of the Armed S...
LAGOS, Nigeria (AP) — Landing in Nigeria’s largest city, one of the first thing visitors see as they peer out of their airplane’s windows is the moss-covered metal carcasses of what used to fly in Africa’s most populous nation. Workers at Murtala Muhammed International Airport in Lagos call it “the graveyard,” an overgrown field filled with about a dozen cargo and passenger airplanes long since abandoned and left to rot by insolvent airlines. At least 65 abandoned airplanes, ranging from small commuter jets to one massive Boeing 747, sit at air...
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — San Francisco 49ers cornerback Chris Culliver apologized Thursday for anti-gay comments he made to a comedian during Super Bowl media day, saying “that’s not what I feel in my heart.” “I’m sorry if I offended anyone. They were very ugly comments,” Culliver said during an hour-long media session. “Hopefully I learn and grow from this experience and this situation.” He said he would welcome a gay teammate to the 49ers, a reversal of his remarks to Artie Lange two days earlier...
LINCOLN (AP) — Nebraska football season ticket prices will remain the same on a per-game basis in 2013. The athletic department announced today that public season ticket holders will pay $56 a game for eight home games, or $448 total. University faculty and staff will pay $53 a game, or $424 total. Students will pay $23 a game, or $184 total. Single-game prices will be $60 each for non-conference games against Wyoming, Southern Miss and South Dakota State. The non-conference matchup with UCLA and Big Ten home contests against Illinois, N...
LOS ANGELES (AP) – Patty Andrews never served in the military, but she and her singing sisters certainly supported the troops. During World War II, they hawked war bonds, entertained soldiers overseas and boosted morale on the home-front with tunes like “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy of Company B” and “I Can Dream, Can’t I?” Andrews, the last surviving member of the singing Andrews Sisters trio, died Wednesday at 94 of natural causes at her home in the Los Angeles suburb of Northridge, said family...
LONDON (AP) — A Pakistani girl whose defiance of the Taliban turned her into an international icon is headed toward a full recovery once she undergoes a final surgery to reconstruct her skull, doctors said Wednesday. Dr. Dave Rosser of Birmingham’s Queen Elizabeth Hospital said that 15-year-old Malala Yousufzai needs the operation to replace the bone shattered when a Taliban gunman, angered at her objection to the group’s restrictions on girls’ education, sent a bullet through her skull. Rosser said that Malala had made a “remarkable recovery....
JOHANNESBURG (AP) — French-led forces have wrested control of three key cities in northern Mali from al-Qaida-linked militants, but the fighters have escaped with their weapons into a desert region the size of Texas and are poised to mount counterattacks. New military strategies will be needed to rout the jihadists from their desert hideouts. When the French leave their former colony, armed extremists are still likely to remain. No one has yet publicly announced a campaign to hunt them down in the Sahara and in Mali’s villages, where they are...
SANTA MARIA, Brazil (AP) — The owner of a nightclub in southern Brazil where more than 230 people died in a fire last weekend deflected blame to “the whole country,” as well as to architects and inspectors charged with making sure the building was safe, his lawyer said Wednesday. Attorney Jader Marques said his client, Elissandro Spohr, “regretted having ever been born” because of his grief over the fire, but still blamed Sunday’s tragedy on “a succession of errors made by the whole country.” Police investigating the blaze have said it likely...
