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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PHOENIX (AP) — A lawyer for Jodi Arias began his closing argument Friday by imploring jurors to take an impartial view of the case and his client — even if they don’t like her. Arias smiled broadly when defense lawyer Kirk Nurmi told the jury: “It’s not about whether or not you like Jodi Arias. Nine days out of 10, I don’t like Jodi Arias. ... But that doesn’t matter.” Arias said she killed Travis Alexander in self-defense, but prosecutors say it was an act of first-degree murder that cou...
ENGLEWOOD, Colo. (AP) — Von Miller has a couple of new pass-rushing partners. What he really needs with Elvis Dumervil bolting to Baltimore is a new nickname. Upon joining the Denver Broncos in 2011, Miller proclaimed that Dumervil was “Batman,” and that made him “Robin.” But with Miller piling up 30 sacks over the last two seasons to Dumervil’s 201⁄2, “Doom & Gloom” became a more fitting moniker. Dumervil signed with the Ravens as a free agent in March after a fax fiasco in Denver during a contract renegotiation, so Miller finds himself lea...
BOSTON — A mortuary familiar with Muslim services will handle funeral arrangements for Boston Marathon bombing suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev, who died in a gunbattle with police after an intense manhunt, a funeral director said Friday. Peter Stefan, owner of Graham Putnam and Mahoney Funeral Parlors in Worcester, confirmed his facility will handle Tsarnaev’s arrangements, but he could not say whether he has possession of the body. Stefan said everybody deserves a dignified burial service no matter the circumstances of their death and he is pre...
NEW YORK (AP) — A study finds that American adults rank steroid use among adolescents as less of a problem than alcohol, bullying, marijuana and sexually transmitted diseases. The study was co-commissioned by baseball’s Hall of Fame and released Thursday. Those polled ranked cocaine and eating disorders as bigger problems. While 97 percent of the respondents believe steroids cause negative health effects, just 19 percent think steroid use is a big problem among high school students. Hall President Jeff Idelson says the study shows that steroids...
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — It’s unanimous: Damian Lillard is the NBA’s Rookie of the Year. No, it never was in question. Lillard, the sixth overall pick in last June’s draft out of Weber State, led all rookies with a 19-point scoring average. He also averaged 6.1 assists and 3.1 rebounds, playing in all 82 games this season. He broke Stephen Curry’s rookie record for 3-pointers in a season, finishing with 185, and became just the third NBA rookie with at least 1,500 points and 500 assists, following Oscar Robertson and Alan Iverson. And he swept...
(AP) – The 7-year-old cancer patient who became an Internet sensation for his touchdown run in Nebraska’s spring football game has yet another fan — President Barack Obama. Jack Hoffman, his family and former Cornhuskers running back Rex Burkhead visited Obama for 15 minutes in the Oval Office on Monday. Obama presented Jack with a new football and told him he was proud of him. “I thought it was awesome,” Jack said. Burkhead, who was drafted by the Cincinnati Bengals on Saturday, befriende...
OMAHA (AP) — Billionaire Warren Buffett is optimistic about America’s economic future because the nation has begun to unleash the potential of women. Buffett’s views on the role of women appeared online Thursday in an editorial he wrote for Fortune magazine (http://cnnmon.ie/ZBFiri ). He says that most of America’s prosperity was created using only about 50 percent of its talent — the men. So he’s confident the country will prosper as more women excel in the workforce. “For most of our history, women — whatever their abilities — have been releg...
NEW YORK (AP) – Violence, gore and gunplay were staples on prime-time television even in the most sensitive period directly following the Newtown school shooting. A study of 392 prime-time scripted programs on broadcast networks shown during the month following Vice President Joe Biden’s January meeting with entertainment industry executives on the topic revealed that 193 had some incident of violence, according to the Parents Television Council. Some are cartoonish – quite literally, with...
ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — Since Florida’s mortgage crisis began about six years ago, banks have agreed to pay millions of dollars to settle allegations that they wrongfully foreclosed on thousands of homeowners. Prosecutors have charged loan servicers with filing fraudulent documents on behalf of banks. But the law firms and lawyers that homeowners and judges contend took part in those same practices? Some critics are accusing Attorney General Pam Bondi and the Florida Bar of not going after them hard enough. More than two years after wrongdoing by...
ALBION, Neb. (AP) — A woman believed to have been Nebraska’s oldest resident has died at the age of 112. Alice Packard with Levander Funeral Home in Albion said Thursday that Mabel Steiner Ragan died Tuesday at Wolf Memorial Good Samaritan Center in Albion. “She was a grand lady,” her nephew, Russ Nore, told The Grand Island Independent. Ragan worked into her 80s at the city library, then volunteered. She often would sit on the library floor and read to children. “She did it because she liked it, not because it was a part of her job,” Nor...
NORTH PLATTE (AP) – North Platte has just experienced its driest 365-day period in recorded history, according to National Weather Service records. The service said 7.23 inches of rain fell between April 28, 2012, and Saturday. The office recorded 1.22 inches on April 27 last year and less than an inch on any rainy day since. Weather service meteorologist Bill Taylor told The North Platte Telegraph that North Platte hasn’t been this dry since the Dust Bowl years. “The last time that happened was from June 10, 1931, to June 9, 1932, when they...
AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — The National Rifle Association has spent much of the past year under siege, ardently defending gun rights following mass shootings in Colorado and Connecticut and fighting back against mounting pressure for stricter laws in Washington and state capitols across the country. Now, after winning a major victory over President Barack Obama with the defeat of a gun control bill in the U.S. Senate, the powerful gun-rights lobby will gather in Houston this weekend for its annual convention. Organizers anticipate a rollicking, T...
ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — Hospitals and clinics are replacing paper files with sophisticated electronic health records. And although some systems can’t share information with each other, which could be a serious problem in an emergency, smartphones are starting to bridge that electronic gap. That capability is already available to Medicare patients and veterans. The Medicare Blue Button and a similar Veterans Affairs medical program allow patients to download three years of their medical history into a simple text file on their smartphones or per...
BOSTON — Three men who attended college with the Boston Marathon bombing suspect removed his backpack from his dorm room at the University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth three days after the attack, according to charges filed Wednesday. Azamat Tazhayakov and Dias Kadyrbayev are charged with conspiring to obstruct justice. A third man, Robel Phillipos, is charged with making false statements to federal investigators. The affidavit says Tazhayakov and Kadyrbayev agreed to get rid of the backpack after concluding from news reports that Dzhokhar T...
OMAHA — A monthly economic survey index for nine Midwest and Plains states dipped for the second consecutive month in April, but the survey’s organizer said the index indicates slow growth for the region in the coming three to six months. The Mid-America Business Conditions index dropped to 56.8 in April, compared with 58.2 in March, according to a report released Wednesday. Businesses leaders were slightly more optimistic about the regional economy in the next six months, with the April business confidence index rising to 59.9 from 58.2 in...
GERING (AP) — A 39-year-old Scottsbluff man has been given five to eight years in prison for stabbing the husband of his former wife in a dispute over a vehicle. Herman Torres was sentenced Monday in Scotts Bluff County District Court. Court records say he stabbed 35-year-old Jason Lewison, of Scottsbluff, in January. Police say Torres had gone to see Lewison because Lewison and his wife, who is Torres’ former wife, had decided not to sell Torres a vehicle. Lewison was demanding that Torres return the vehicle. The two men’s argument turne...
WASHINGTON — After a storm of complaints, the Obama administration on Tuesday unveiled simplified forms to apply for insurance under the president’s new health care law. You won’t have to lay bare your medical history but you will have to detail your finances. An earlier version of the forms had provoked widespread griping that they were as bad as tax forms and might overwhelm uninsured people, causing them to give up in frustration. The biggest change: a five-page short form that single people can fill out. That form includes a cover page...
OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — All-Star point guard Russell Westbrook will have surgery to repair cartilage in his right knee and be out indefinitely, dealing a harsh blow to the Oklahoma City Thunder’s championship chances. General manager Sam Presti said Friday that the Thunder had not yet scheduled Westbrook’s surgery and would not have an accurate timeline for his return until after the procedure was done. No one would rule out Westbrook’s possible return if Oklahoma City keeps advancing in the playoffs, and All-Star teammate Kevin Durant only sa...
NEW YORK (AP) — Short on glam, slim on glitter and no sign of Manti Te’o, the NFL draft was still a solid B-plus. As in Big, as in Brawn, as in Bulk, as in Beefy. We’re talking a scale-busting 600 pounds at the outset Thursday night with offensive tackles Eric Fisher of Central Michigan and Luke Joeckel of Texas A&M. The first seven picks were all linemen: four on offense, three on defense. “That’s a lot of love for the big boys up front, which we usually don’t get,” Fisher said. None of the teams making the first 32 selections went for Te’o, n...
Left unattended, no accessory looks as menacing these days as a backpack. At the airport. On the subway. At a sports event. And, as a result of the two backpack-encased bombs that exploded near the finish line at the Boston Marathon, sports teams and leagues around the world are rethinking what kind of bags, satchels, purses and, yes, black nylon backpacks should be allowed inside stadiums and arenas. The packs will even be the focal point of a conference this summer of stadium-security personne...
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama vowed Friday to join Planned Parenthood in fighting against what he said are efforts by states to turn women’s health back to the 1950s, before the Supreme Court legalized abortion nationwide, and singled out the GOP-governed states of North Dakota and Mississippi for criticism. “When politicians try to turn Planned Parenthood into a punching bag, they’re not just talking about you,” Obama said, becoming the first sitting president to address the abortion-rights group in person. “They’re talking about...
BOSTON (AP) — Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhohkar Tsarnaev was moved from a hospital to a federal prison medical center, while FBI agents searched for evidence Friday in a landfill near the college he was attending. U.S. officials, meanwhile, said that the bombing suspects’ mother had been added to a federal terrorism database about 18 months before the deadly attack — a disclosure that deepens the mystery around the Tsarnaev family and marked the first time American authorities acknowledged that Zubeidat Tsarnaeva had come under inves...
Death toll in Bangladesh collapse passes 300 SAVAR, Bangladesh (AP) — With time running out to save workers still trapped in a collapsed garment factory building, rescuers dug through mangled metal and concrete Friday and found more survivors — but also more corpses that pushed the death toll past 300. Wailing, angry relatives fought with police who held them back from the wrecked, eight-story Rana Plaza building, as search-and-rescue operations went on more than two days after the structure crumbled. Amid the cries for help and the smell of...
Excerpts from recent editorials in newspapers in the United States and abroad: April 24 Boston Herald on politics: President Barack Obama and his team don’t have to worry about commercial flight delays. Maybe that helped secure the decision to begin furloughing air traffic controllers this week, leading to delays at the nation’s airports and the Democrats’ finger of blame pointed at tax-averse Republicans. The administration claims that, because of the sequester-related budget cuts, it has no choice but to furlough all 47,000 Federal Aviation A...
SAVAR, Bangladesh — With time running out to save workers still trapped in a collapsed garment factory building, rescuers dug through mangled metal and concrete Friday and found more survivors — but also more corpses that pushed the death toll past 300. Wailing, angry relatives fought with police who held them back from the wrecked, eight-story Rana Plaza building, as search-and-rescue operations went on more than two days after the structure crumbled. Amid the cries for help and the smell of decaying bodies, the rescue of 18-year-old Mus...
