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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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...
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...
BEVERLY, Mass. (AP) — Fred Butler was married for 65 years, raised five children, served in the Army during World War II and worked for years for the local water department, but the fact he never earned a high school diploma always bothered him. Not anymore. The 106-year-old was awarded his honorary diploma Monday during an emotional ceremony attended by school officials, state lawmakers and Beverly Mayor Bill Scanlon. “I thank everybody who is responsible for this,” he said, wearing a mortar board hat and tassel and holding the prized document...
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...
Bonnie Franklin, ‘One Day At a Time’ star, dies NEW YORK (AP) – Bonnie Franklin, the pert, redheaded actress whom millions came to identify with for her role as divorced mom Ann Romano on the long-running sitcom “One Day at a Time,” has died. She died Friday at her home in Los Angeles due to complications from pancreatic cancer, family members said. She was 69. Her family had announced she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer in September. Franklin was a veteran stage and television performer...
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) — Jacob Lew is scheduled to be sworn in Thursday as Treasury secretary and will have to hit the ground running. He is taking over the job just a day before huge automatic government spending cuts are set to take effect. He’s likely to be involved with any negotiations to reverse the cuts, and also in budget talks next month to continue funding the government. The Senate confirmed Lew late Wednesday, affirming President Barack Obama’s choice of a budget expert at a time when Congress and the White House are at odds over spend...
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) – Dale Robertson, an Oklahoma native who became a star of television and movie Westerns during the genre’s heyday, died Tuesday. He was 89. Robertson’s niece, Nancy Robertson, said her uncle died at Scripps Memorial Hospital in La Jolla, Calif., following a brief illness. Dale Robertson had bit parts in films including “The Boy with the Green Hair” and the Joan Crawford vehicle “Flamingo Road” before landing more high-profile roles such as Jesse James in “Fighting Man of the P...
WASHINGTON — Government agencies are already taking steps to comply with automatic spending cuts scheduled to take effect Friday. Defense Department One of the Navy’s premiere warships, the aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman, sits pier-side in Norfolk, Va., its tour of duty delayed. The carrier and its 5,000-person crew were to leave for the Persian Gulf on Feb. 8, along with the guided-missile cruiser USS Gettysburg. Department of Homeland Security Hundreds of illegal immigrants have been freed from jail across the country. Immigration and...
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) — Wal-Mart is putting special labels on some store-brand products to help shoppers quickly spot healthier items. Millions of schoolchildren are helping themselves to vegetables from salad bars in their lunchrooms, while kids’ meals at Olive Garden and Red Lobster restaurants automatically come with a side of fruit or vegetables and a glass of low-fat milk. The changes put in place by the food industry are in response to the campaign against childhood obesity that Michelle Obama began waging three years ago. More changes are in...
WASHINGTON — Chuck Hagel was sworn in Wednesday as defense secretary — President Barack Obama’s third in just over four years — and said that one of his highest priorities will be ensuring fair treatment of troops, veterans and their families. He called the automatic budget cuts due to take effect on Friday — to include $46 billion in Pentagon reductions — “a reality” that “we need to deal with.” In 15 minutes of remarks to Pentagon employees shortly after becoming the nation’s 24th secre...
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...
NEWPORT NEWS, Va. (AP) — President Barack Obama is arguing that looming government-wide spending cuts could idle military resources like naval aircraft carriers, while Republicans are criticizing the president for taking his arguments outside Washington instead of staying to work out a plan before Friday’s deadline. The president planned to appear Tuesday at Virginia’s largest industrial employer, Newport News Shipbuilding, which would be affected by cuts to naval spending. Obama warned Monday that if the so-called sequester goes into effec...
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama and his officials are doing their best to drum up public concern over the shock wave of spending cuts that could strike the government in just days. So it’s a good time to be alert for sky-is-falling hype. Over the last week or so, administration officials have come forward with a grim compendium of jobs to be lost, services to be denied or delayed, military defenses to be let down and important operations to be disrupted. Obama’s new chief of staff, Denis McDonough, spoke of a “devastating list of horr...
