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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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — A 150-foot asteroid hurtled toward Earth’s backyard, destined Friday to make the closest known flyby for a rock of its size. In a chilling coincidence, a meteor exploded above Russia’s Ural Mountains just hours before the asteroid was due to zoom past the planet. Scientists the world over, along with NASA, insisted the meteor had nothing to do with the incoming asteroid since they appeared to traveling in opposite directions. The asteroid is much more immense object that was expected to miss Earth by 17,150 miles, av...
MITCHELL — A big second-quarter run by Sioux County proved to be the turning point in Thursday night’s Mitchell D2-12 Subdistrict title game, ending in a 49-41 victory against Leyton High School’s girls basketball team. Leyton (10-12) trailed 8-6 at the end of the first quarter, then scored the first two baskets of the second period to take a brief 10-8 lead. Sioux County (16-6) then ran off the next 11 points en route to a 22-16 halftime advantage. In a battle of Warriors mascots, Rol Rushman’s team would make a late run after falling behind...
SALEM, Ore. (AP) — The family of a student expelled from a Salem high school for having a pocketknife has filed notice that it will sue the district. The Salem Statesman Journal reports the family of Robert Mann challenges the district’s right to expel a student for having a pocketknife when it’s legal to carry one outside the school. Mann was expelled from Sprague High School for the rest of the school year, but he can attend an alternative program. His mother waived the right to a closed hearing, so the expulsion hearing was conducted in pu...
NEW YORK (AP) — Billionaire Warren Buffett, the most closely watched investor in America, is putting his money in ketchup, agreeing Thursday to buy H.J. Heinz Co. for $23.3 billion in the richest deal ever in the food industry. For his money, the Oracle of Omaha gets one of the nation’s oldest and most familiar brands, one that’s in refrigerators and kitchen cupboards all over the U.S. The deal is intended to help Heinz accelerate its expansion from a dominant American name into a presence on grocery shelves worldwide. The Pitts...
MOSCOW – A meteor streaked across the sky and exploded over Russia’s Ural Mountains with the power of an atomic bomb Friday, its sonic blasts shattering countless windows and injuring nearly 1,000 people. The spectacle deeply frightened many Russians, with some elderly women declaring that the world was coming to an end. Many of the injured were cut by flying glass as they flocked to windows to see what the reason was for such an intense flash of light. The meteor – estimated to be about 10 to...
WASHINGTON (AP) — The fight in Congress over confirming Leon Panetta’s successor as defense secretary is getting on his nerves. After two formal Pentagon farewell ceremonies and weeks of preparing Chuck Hagel to take over, Panetta let fly Thursday with a few choice words for the partisan struggle on Capitol Hill over a Hagel confirmation vote. Panetta, who will retire to his home in California to resume running a public policy institute with his wife, Sylvia, told a Pentagon award ceremony for former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Cli...
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate’s top Democrat attacked Republican senators Thursday for blocking Chuck Hagel’s nomination to be President Barack Obama’s next secretary of defense, saying it was “shocking” and “tragic” that the GOP would attempt such a move at a time when the U.S. military is engaged in so many places around the world. Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said Republicans are filibustering Hagel’s confirmation and that such a move is unprecedented. “Not a single nominee for secretary of defense ever in the history of our coun...
PRETORIA, South Africa (AP) — Paralympic superstar Oscar Pistorius was charged Thursday with the murder of his girlfriend who was shot inside his home in South Africa, a stunning development in the life of a national hero known as the Blade Runner for his high-tech artificial legs. Reeva Steenkamp, a model who spoke out on Twitter against rape and abuse of women, was shot four times in the predawn hours in the house, in a gated community in the capital, Pretoria, police said. Hours later a...
WASHINGTON (AP) – President Barack Obama says raising the minimum wage to $9 an hour and tying future increases to inflation will boost the incomes of millions living in poverty and spur job growth by pouring more money into the economy. But business groups are not so sure. They complain that increasing the federal rate from $7.25 an hour would discourage employers from hiring new workers, hurting the very people Obama aims to help. Obama pointed out in his State of the Union address Tuesday that 19 states and the District of Columbia a...
Mr. Speaker, Mr. Vice President, Members of Congress, fellow citizens: Fifty-one years ago, John F. Kennedy declared to this chamber that “the Constitution makes us not rivals for power but partners for progress. ... It is my task,” he said, “to report the state of the Union - to improve it is the task of us all.” Tonight, thanks to the grit and determination of the American people, there is much progress to report. After a decade of grinding war, our brave men and women in uniform are coming... Full story
WASHINGTON (AP) — Fighting the problem of fake drugs will require putting medications through a chain of custody like U.S. courts require for evidence in a trial, the Institute of Medicine reported Wednesday. The call for a national drug tracking system comes a week after the Food and Drug Administration warned doctors, for the third time in about a year, that it discovered a counterfeit batch of the cancer drug Avastin that lacked the real tumor-killing ingredient. Fake and substandard drugs have become an increasing concern as U.S. p...
WASHINGTON — Republicans charged Wednesday that President Barack Obama delivered a State of the Union address studded with tired liberal notions and campaign-style hostility and said the speech did little to ease partisan tensions over issues like gigantic budget deficits. “An opportunity to bring together the country instead became another retread of lip service and liberalism,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said on the chamber floor, arguing that Obama offered little more than “gimmicks and tax hikes.” “Last night’s spe...
LINCOLN — Nebraska Gov. Dave Heineman tapped former state Sen. Lavon Heidemann of Elk Creek Wednesday as his new lieutenant governor. Heidemann, a University of Nebraska regent, took the oath of office during a public ceremony at the Capitol. The 54-year-old Republican served as chairman of the Legislature's Appropriations Committee during his eight years in the Legislature. He left because of term limits. Heidemann replaces former Lt. Gov. Rick Sheehy. Sheehy resigned earlier this month following news that he had made thousands of calls to w...
WASHINGTON (AP) — Seeking to focus on nation-building at home, President Barack Obama will use his State of the Union address to call for more spending on infrastructure and manufacturing, while also announcing the withdrawal of 34,000 U.S. troops from Afghanistan within a year. The highly-anticipated announcement on the next phase of the troop withdrawal will cut the size of the U.S. troop presence in Afghanistan in half by next February. The drawdown puts the U.S. on pace to formally finish the protracted war by the end of 2014. A senior admi...
NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — The original Emancipation Proclamation, a document that changed the lives of countless African-Americans during the Civil War, is on display in Nashville as the fragile historical document makes its only stop in the Southeast on a 150th anniversary tour. The exhibit opened Tuesday — fittingly on the anniversary of President Abraham Lincoln’s birthday — at the Tennessee State Museum and runs through Monday. It’s a rare visit outside the nation’s capital for the original document Lincoln signed in 1863 declaring “forever f...
HARTFORD, Conn. (AP) — Some snow-weary Northeasterners struggled to get back to their weekly routines Tuesday as roads remained slick from the weekend storm and many schools were closed again, and some communities were asking for volunteers to help shovel out the elderly and disabled. Many local roads in Connecticut remained partially blocked by snow, especially in the cities. Snow piles have reduced driving lanes, made parking spaces scarce and decreased drivers’ sight lines. Schools in Con...
LINCOLN (AP) — The Nebraska attorney general says the majority of complaints his office received in 2012 dealt with mortgages, banking-related issues and scams. Attorney General Jon Bruning announced Monday the top five complaints his consumer protection division received in 2012. The office works to mediate complaints between Nebraskans and businesses. The division logged more than 3,500 complaints and recovered more than $1.1 million for Nebraskans. Mortgage complaints topped the list. Also landing on the top five consumer complaints list w...
HASTINGS (AP) — Children at Hastings Public Schools have the option to eat breakfast every day of the school week at school. The problem, according to district director of finance Jeff Schneider, is the logistics if every student chose to take advantage of the program. “We’d have to start serving breakfast at 6:30 in the morning to get everyone served,” he told the Hastings Tribune. Both Hastings and Adams Central public schools offer a breakfast program to all students, both those who pay ful...
WASHINGTON (AP) — A bitterly divided Senate panel on Tuesday voted to approve President Barack Obama's nomination of Chuck Hagel to be the nation's defense secretary at a time of turmoil for the military with looming budget cuts, a fresh sign of North Korea's nuclear ambitions and drawdown of U.S. forces in Afghanistan. The Armed Services Committee voted 14-11 to send the nomination to the full Senate, with all the panel's Democrats backing the president's choice to succeed Defense Secretary Leon Panetta. The committee's Republicans were u...
CLEVELAND (AP) — Denying he ran an Amish cult, the 67-year-old ringleader of hair- and beard-cutting attacks on fellow members of his faith in Ohio was sentenced Friday to 15 years in prison, while family members convicted of carrying out his orders got one to seven years. The judge said the defendants had violated the constitutional rights protecting religious practice that had also benefited them as Amish. Authorities had prosecuted the attacks as a hate crime. Before his sentencing, Samuel Mullet Sr. told the judge he had been accused of r...
WASHINGTON (AP) — You can call it a snowstorm of historic proportions. You can call it the return of New England’s blizzard of 1978. You can call it simply dangerous. And you can even call it Nemo. But don’t call it hype. The new director of the National Weather Service says some may be getting carried away in describing the winter storm bearing down on the Northeast. But he says the science is simple and chilling. Louis Uccellini is an expert on snowstorms. He says meteorologists are telling people that this is a dangerous storm because it is....
CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) — Even though Kobe Bryant and the Lakers were able to escape with a 100-93 win Friday night over the Charlotte Bobcats, the Los Angeles star was left feeling “irritated” after the game. Irritated at his team’s shot selection. Irritated at his team’s selfishness. And especially irritated that the Lakers needed to overcome a 20-point deficit to beat the NBA’s worst team. “We have to play the right way,” Bryant said. “When we have shots available, we take them. If we don’t, move the ball on. It can’t be about individual touc...
AUBURN HILLS, Mich. (AP) — Gregg Popovich was explaining before the game how his San Antonio Spurs had managed to win 11 in a row despite injuries to Tim Duncan and Manu Ginobili. It was an impressive run, but it wasn’t going to last forever. “We’ll probably lay an egg here sometime,” the veteran coach cautioned. “Everybody does after a while. You never know what night that will be.” It turned out to be Friday for the Spurs, whose streak came to an end with a 119-109 loss to the Detroit Pistons. San Antonio fell behind by 21 points in the...
CHARLOTTE, N.C. (AP) — Rusty Wallace touched on his early days trying to make it as a professional race car driver, the lessons he learned from NASCAR’s pioneers and his relentless push to drive for Roger Penske in an energetic acceptance into the Hall of Fame. Then Wallace, winner of 55 races and the 1989 championship, called Friday night’s induction “the biggest day of my driving career.” Wallace was the headliner of the fourth Hall of Fame class, which included innovative mechanic and crew chief Leonard Wood, former series champions Buck Bak...
OMAHA (AP) — It’s the time of year when dozens of college basketball teams start setting their sights on the postseason, with a precious few hoping for a trip to the NCAA tournament. Then there are teams like Nebraska-Omaha and Northern Kentucky, just playing out the string as they make the often painful move from Division II to Division I. There’s no postseason for them during the NCAA-mandated four years of transition. It’s time spent in an abyss, with everyone involved looking forward...
