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 302 - 326 of 487
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...
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....
