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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MCCOOK — McCook Community College has done its part in preserving a piece of history. The logo of McCook Community College on the gym floor at True Hall, the college’s original gymnasium, has a place of honor in the lobby at the new, state-of-the-art, $10 million MCC Event Center. Darin Morgan, director of physical resources at MCC, said he and his staff spent about 45 days dismantling the gym floor piece by piece to preserve the logo. “It was very tedious, it didn’t want to come up very easy,” he told the McCook Daily Gazette. The floor was...
MOORESVILLE, N.C. (AP) — AJ Allmendinger has a new part-time job with a familiar team. On Friday, Roger Penske hired the former open-wheel racer to drive two IndyCar races this season including the Indianapolis 500 on May 26. Allmendinger also will compete April 7 in Birmingham, Ala. It’s a big move for Allmendinger’s career. NASCAR suspended the driver in July after he failed a random drug test and was released by Penske when a backup “B’’ sample also tested positive for a banned substance. After completing the “Road to Recovery” pro...
LAS VEGAS (AP) — A furious Denny Hamlin said he won’t pay the $25,000 fine leveled on him by NASCAR on Thursday after his criticism of the Gen-6 race car. The fine also left many of his fellow drivers wondering what they can say about their new cars without incurring NASCAR’s wrath. Hamlin couldn’t understand why he was at the center of NASCAR’s latest tempest over its drivers’ media comments. He compared the new race car unfavorably to last year’s car, along with lamenting the overall quali...
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...
IDITAROD, Alaska (AP) — Four-time champion Lance Mackey is the first musher to reach the halfway mark in the 1,000-mile Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. Mackey last won in 2010. He pulled into the ghost town of Iditarod at 8:36 p.m. Wednesday and was awarded $3,000 in gold. Sonny Lindner was second into the checkpoint, and another four-time champion, Jeff King, was third. None of the race leaders has satisfied a mandatory 24-hour break except for four-time champion Martin Buser who was in the l...
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...
JOHANNESBURG (AP) — The former lead detective in South Africa’s investigation of the murder case against Olympic athlete Oscar Pistorius has resigned from the police force, police said Thursday. The decision by detective Hilton Botha to quit followed criticism for his bungling of the investigation into Pistorius’ shooting of his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp on Feb. 14, as well as the revelation that he faced attempted murder charges for a 2011 case in which he fired at a vehicle. The police force as a whole came under scrutiny for the initi...
(AP) – Indiana was the NCAA’s last undefeated men’s team in 1976. North Carolina had Michael Jordan and James Worthy while winning the national championship in 1982, a decade before Duke won the tournament on the back of Christian Laettner’s buzzer-beating basket. So which is the best team in NCAA tournament history? Or is it one of Kentucky’s squads — the 34-win team in 1996, or the freshman-filled one that won a record 38 games last season? All are among are some of the top vote-getters so far as part of the NCAA’s celebration of the 75th a...
DENVER (AP) — Von Miller is pulling a Joe Namath and it’s only March. Denver’s star pass-rusher is already guaranteeing a Super Bowl title for the Broncos next season. Miller said he’s dedicating the season to his 6-year-old cousin who recently emerged from a coma after a car accident in West Texas that also injured his mother and 8-year-old brother. On Monday, Miller tweeted: “You can post this where ever.. Denver broncos will win the Super Bowl” in the 2013 season. He added hash tags “4UJEREMIAH” and “IGUARANTEEIT58.” The linebacker later to...
RUEIL-MALMAISON, France (AP) — Burning the very fruit of their labor, workers from Goodyear clashed with police outside the tire-maker’s French headquarters Thursday in a last-ditch attempt to save their jobs. Goodyear has been trying to restructure or close its plant in northern France for five years in the face of a shrinking European car market. The workers say Goodyear wants to shift the work to China, where tires can be made more cheaply and which is closer to booming markets. Goodyear says the type of tires made at the French plant is...
LONDON (AP) — The Bank of England has opted against injecting more money into the ailing British economy, which has one foot in recession but stubbornly-high inflation. The central bank said Thursday its main policymaking body, the Monetary Policy Committee, decided to maintain its asset purchase program at 375 billion pounds ($563 billion). A number of economists thought another 25 billion pounds infusion was possible. Last month, Governor Mervyn King and two others of the 9-member panel had pushed for such an increase. Minutes of the t...
KEARNEY (AP) — The Great Platte River Road Archway has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection so its finances can be reorganized. Wednesday’s filing in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Omaha said the tourist attraction owes more than $20 million to bondholders and other debtors. The filing will let the archway remain open and pay 10 staff members while the financial problems are addressed. “We had a conversation with the bond managers about two months ago and told them we were at the end of the line,” said Joel Johnson, who leads the archway founda...
OMAHA (AP) — Nebraska’s unemployment rate remained unchanged in January, matching the 3.8 percent unemployment seen in December, the state Labor Department reported Thursday. The rate was less than half a percentage point lower than the 4.1 percent in January 2012 and was less than half the national rate of 7.9 percent in January, the department said. In December, Nebraska’s unemployment rate was the second-lowest in the country, trailing only North Dakota. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics had not released its compilation of states’ January...
LINCOLN (AP) — It’s the end of an era for the house that cigarettes built. The Devaney Sports Center will host its last college basketball game Wednesday night when Nebraska plays Minnesota, ending a 37-year run as the home of the Cornhuskers. After a $20 million facelift, it will reopen in the fall as the women’s volleyball venue. The basketball teams, which moved into a new practice facility in 2011, will play games in the Pinnacle Bank Arena just west of campus. “We’re going to have stat...
CHICAGO (AP) — Want to know your chances of dying in the next 10 years? Here are some bad signs: getting winded walking several blocks, smoking, and having trouble pushing a chair across the room. That’s according to a “mortality index” developed by San Francisco researchers for people older than 50. The test scores may satisfy people’s morbid curiosity, but the researchers say their 12-item index is mostly for use by doctors. It can help them decide whether costly health screenings or medical procedures are worth the risk for patients...
OMAHA (AP) — An Omaha man who was kicked out of the University of Nebraska’s law school just months before he was set to graduate is suing the school and others, saying he was discriminated against because of his Arabic heritage and Muslim beliefs. Mohammad Al-Turk filed the lawsuit on Tuesday in Nebraska’s federal court, naming the University of Nebraska College of Law, several law school officials, the University of Nebraska and the university’s Board of Regents as defendants. The lawsuit says Al-Turk’s troubles began in his third year of law...
NEW YORK — What record? There were no signs of a celebration on Wall Street after the Dow Jones industrial average closed at an all-time high Tuesday. Like on any other day, traders rushed out the doors of the New York Stock Exchange after the closing bell and down the stairs of subway stations. Nearby office workers did the same. Maybe the memories of the financial meltdown are too fresh, or outlook for the economy is too uncertain. But the only indication that something historic had transpired was the six television news cameras that faced th...
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 (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...
