Serving proudly since 1873 as the beautiful Nebraska Panhandle's first newspaper
Serving proudly since 1873 as the beautiful Nebraska Panhandle's first newspaper
Sorted by date Results 291 - 315 of 487
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...
LINCOLN (AP) – A bill inspired by Omaha billionaire Warren Buffett that would increase state income tax rates on the rich and bring in more than $42 million in its first year was brought before lawmakers Friday. Sen. Danielle Conrad of Lincoln asked lawmakers to consider creating a new state income tax bracket for the less than 1 percent of tax filers making more than $400,000. The Nebraska and Lincoln Chambers of Commerce opposed the bill, while the Nebraska State Education Association supported it. Her bill comes up for discussion after G...
BOSTON (AP) — Snow was falling around the Northeast on Friday, ushering in what’s predicted to be a massive, possibly historic blizzard, and sending residents scurrying to stock up on food and gas up their cars ahead of the storm poised to dump up to 3 feet of snow from New York City to Boston and beyond. Even before the first snowflake had fallen, Boston, Providence, R.I., Hartford, Conn., and other towns and cities in New England and upstate New York towns canceled school Friday, and airlines scratched more than 3,700 flights through Sat...
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — An electrical device that had been installed expressly to prevent a power outage caused the Super Bowl blackout, the stadium’s power company said Friday as it took the blame for the outage that brought the game to a halt for more than a half-hour. Officials of Entergy New Orleans, a subsidiary of New Orleans-based Entergy Corp., said the device, called a relay, had been installed in switching gear to protect the Superdome from a cable failure between the company’s incoming power line and lines that run into the stadi...
LINCOLN (AP) — Nebraska has signed a contract to play four football games against former Big Eight and Big 12 rival Colorado beginning in five years. Nebraska said Thursday that the teams will meet in Lincoln on Sept. 8, 2018, before a return matchup in Boulder on Sept. 7, 2019. Colorado will host the Cornhuskers on Sept. 9, 2023, and return to Lincoln on Sept. 7, 2024. The games will be the first in the series since both schools left the Big 12 two years ago, Nebraska going to the Big Ten and Colorado to the Pac-12. The football teams last p...
LINCOLN (AP) — Tyronn Lue will be inducted into the Nebraska Basketball Hall of Fame and retired athletic director Tom Osborne and former all-conference player Dave Hoppen will be honored at the Feb. 16 game against Michigan State. Lue spent three seasons at Nebraska and still ranks among the career leaders in 10 categories. Lue played for seven NBA teams in 11 years, winning two titles with the Los Angeles Lakers. He’s now an assistant coach with the Boston Celtics. Osborne will receive the Bud Cuca Special Merit Award, which is given to som...
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — The NCAA said Thursday a judge should throw out the federal antitrust lawsuit the governor filed against it over Penn State’s $60 million fine and other penalties resulting from the Jerry Sandusky child molestation scandal. College sports’ governing body said in a filing that it disagrees with just about every allegation in the complaint against it initiated by Gov. Tom Corbett last month. The NCAA said the penalties imposed under a July consent decree with the university are unrelated to regulation of economic activ...
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. (AP) — At this rate, no one will want to be No. 1. Indiana became the fifth straight top-ranked men’s college basketball team to lose, falling to unranked Illinois 74-72 on a buzzer-beater by Tyler Griffey on Thursday night. The senior forward took an inbounds pass with 0.9 seconds to play and made a wide-open layup. And, just like that, the Hoosiers — who moved into the top spot by beating then-No. 1 Michigan just a few days ago — went down. Indiana coach Tom Crean, whose team has been No. 1 for a total of seven weeks this se...
LINCOLN (AP) — State forecasters expect modest economic and employment growth in Nebraska this year and a drop in farm incomes from their all-time highs, according to a report released Friday. The Nebraska Business Forecast Council said in its latest long-range report that many sectors of the state economy were primed for solid progress in 2014, predicting accelerated job and income growth for Nebraska workers. “Weather conditions and uncertainty about the national fiscal situation will limit economic growth in Nebraska during much of this yea...
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) – A man who held a 5-year-old boy hostage in an underground bunker for nearly a week before dying in a shootout with the FBI received “multiple gunshot wounds” to his body, a county coroner said Thursday. Dale County Coroner Woodrow Hilboldt said he was allowed into the bunker in the southeastern Alabama community of Midland City on Wednesday evening. He pronounced 65-year-old Jimmy Lee Dykes dead at 8:58 p.m. “He had multiple gunshot wounds,” Hilboldt told The Associated Press. The coroner declined to say how many times D...
TEHRAN, Iran (AP) – American proposals for direct talks with Iran are pointless while Washington is “holding a gun” to the country through sanctions, Iran’s supreme leader said Thursday, quashing a possible breakthrough in contacts with the West over the nuclear standoff. The message from Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the final say in all major decisions in Iran, was reiterated by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad during a news conference in Cairo later in the day. Their dismissal of one-on-one dialogue raises the stakes when wider n...
PAWTUCKET, R.I. (AP) — Scottie dog has a new nemesis in Monopoly after fans voted in an online contest to add a cat token to the property trading game, replacing the iron, toy maker Hasbro Inc. announced Wednesday. The results were announced after the shoe, wheelbarrow and iron were neck and neck for elimination in the final hours of voting that sparked passionate efforts by fans to save their favorite tokens, and by businesses eager to capitalize on publicity surrounding pieces that r...
WASHINGTON (AP) – The financially struggling U.S. Postal Service said Wednesday it will stop delivering mail on Saturdays but continue to disburse packages six days a week, an apparent end-run around an unaccommodating Congress. The service expects the Saturday mail cutback to begin the week of Aug. 5 and to save about $2 billion annually, said Postmaster General and CEO Patrick R. Donahoe. “Our financial condition is urgent,” Donahoe told a press conference. The move accentuates one of the agency’s strong points – package delivery has incre...
NEW YORK (AP) — Milwaukee Brewers slugger Ryan Braun said the person who ran the Florida clinic being investigated by Major League Baseball was used only as a consultant on his drug suspension appeal last year. “I have nothing to hide,” Braun said in a statement released by his representatives on Tuesday night. Earlier in the day, Yahoo Sports reported the 2011 NL MVP’s name showed up three times in records of the Biogenesis of America LLC clinic. Yahoo said no specific performance-enhancing drugs were listed next to his name. The Miami N...
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — New Orleans’ mayor defended his city days after a power outage plunged the Super Bowl into 34 minutes of darkness, while authorities still baffled by the cause announced they were bringing in a consultant to help investigate. The outage that embarrassed New Orleans as it sought to showcase its rebound from the devastation of Hurricane Katrina happened despite hundreds of thousands of dollars of improvements to decaying utility lines, documents show. Mayor Mitch Landrieu sou...
CARBONDALE, Ill. (AP) — Jalen Pendleton hit a short jumper with 2 seconds left, helping Southern Illinois snap a six-game losing streak with a 64-62 victory Tuesday night over reeling Wichita State. Pendleton scored the final six points for the Salukis (9-13, 2-10 Missouri Valley). His free throws with 1:45 left tied the game at 60, and after Wichita State’s Carl Hall tipped in a Cleanthony Early miss with 1:07 left, Pendleton tied it again on a layup with 48 seconds to play before hitting the game-winner. T.J. Lindsay led SIU with 14 poi...
