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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WASHINGTON – When it comes to the nation’s budget challenges, congressional leaders are fond of saying dismissively they don’t want to kick the can down the road. But now, a deadline hard ahead, even derided half-measures are uncertain as President Barack Obama and lawmakers struggle to avert across-the-board tax increases and spending cuts that comprise an economy-threatening fiscal cliff. Congressional officials said Wednesday they knew of no significant strides toward a compromise over a lon...
WASHINGTON – U.S. holiday sales so far this year have been the weakest since 2008, when the nation was in a deep recession. That puts pressure on stores that now hope for a post-Christmas burst of spending. This year’s holiday season was marred by bad weather and uncertainty about the economy in the face of possible tax hikes and spending cuts early next year. Some analysts say the massacre of schoolchildren in Newtown, Conn., earlier this month may also have chipped away at shoppers’ enthu...
BEREA, Ohio – Preparing to play Peyton Manning was challenging enough for the Cleveland Browns even before losing three more starters. Coach Pat Shurmur said Friday that wide receiver Mohamed Massaquoi, tight end Jordan Cameron and defensive back Tashaun Gipson will not travel to Denver to play the Broncos (11-3). With playoff hopes dashed and a losing season assured, the Browns (5-9) will try to halt Denver’s nine-game winning streak. Going in with a depleted defense isn’t the best way. “It’s definitely not what you hope for, but it seems lik... Full story
NEW YORK – The next round of NHL cuts could be the deepest yet. With no deal in sight and no negotiations planned, the NHL chopped another two weeks off the schedule and moved closer to canceling the entire hockey season. No drop-dead date has been announced, but it is clear the sides are running out of time to reach a deal. The NHL said Thursday that all games through Jan. 14 have been canceled. More than 50 percent of the schedule has been lost, and the rest is now in danger, too. “I don’t want to characterize what today’s cancell...
WASHINGTON (AP) – President Barack Obama issued a stern summons to congressional leaders Friday to approve legislation before year’s end to prevent tax increases on millions of middle class Americans and prevent an expiration of long-term unemployment benefits for the jobless. One day after House anti-tax rebels torpedoed Republican legislation because it would raise rates on million-dollar-earners, Obama said he still wants a bill that requires the well-to-do to pay more. “Everybody’s got to give a little bit in a sensible way” to prevent t...
WASHINGTON (AP) – President Barack Obama on Friday will nominate Sen. John Kerry as his next secretary of state, a senior administration official said, making the first move in an overhaul of his national security team heading into a second term. If confirmed, Kerry would take the helm at the State Department from outgoing Secretary Hillary Rodham Clinton, who has long stated her intention to leave early next year. Kerry, a longtime Massachusetts senator, is expected to be easily approved for the Cabinet post by his Capitol Hill colleagues. Tha...
CHICAGO (AP) – Travelers facing canceled flights and closed roads were hoping to finally head to their holiday destinations Friday as a widespread snowstorm that dumped more than a foot of snow in parts of the Midwest moved across the Great Lakes toward Canada. The storm, part of a system that began in the Rockies earlier in the week, led airlines to cancel more than 1,000 flights Thursday and caused whiteout conditions that left roads dangerous to drive on. It was blamed for deaths in at least five states, with parts of Iowa, Wisconsin and M...
WASHINGTON (AP) – House Speaker John Boehner signaled on Friday he’s still open to negotiations with President Barack Obama on avoiding across-the-board tax increases set to hit taxpayers Jan. 1, but sounded pessimistic about reaching a grand deal with the president. “How we get there, God only knows,” Boehner told a Capitol Hill news conference just hours after his rank-and-file handed him a stunning tactical defeat. The Republican leader spoke the morning after he was forced by his members to abandon legislation that would have raised taxes o...
LINCOLN – Nebraska is still smarting from that 39-point loss to Wisconsin in the Big Ten championship game, and few people outside the state believe the No. 23 Cornhuskers are capable of beating sixth-ranked Georgia in the Capital One Bowl. The challenge for Bo Pelini and his coaches between now and Jan. 1 is to make sure the players have moved on emotionally. “If we have a hangover,” offensive coordinator Tim Beck said, “it’s going to get ugly.” The Huskers (10-3) have begun preparing i...
When Gabby Douglas allowed herself to dream of being the Olympic champion, she imagined having a nice little dinner with family and friends to celebrate. Maybe she’d make an appearance here and there. “I didn’t think it was going to be crazy,” Douglas said, laughing. “I love it. But I realized my perspective was going to have to change.” Just a bit. The teenager has become a worldwide star since winning the Olympic all-around title in London, the first African-American gymnast to claim gymnastics’ biggest prize. And now she has earned anothe...
NEWTOWN, Conn. (AP) – The chiming of bells reverberated throughout Newtown on Friday, commemorating one week since the crackle of gunfire in a schoolhouse killed 20 children and six adults in a massacre that has shaken the community – and the nation – to its core. Gov. Dannel P. Malloy gathered with other officials in rain and wind on the steps of the Edmond Town Hall as the bell rang 26 times in memory of each life lost at Sandy Hook Elementary School. The gunman also killed his mother befor...
WASHINGTON – The nation’s largest gun-rights lobby called Friday for armed police officers to be posted in every American school to stop the next killer “waiting in the wings.” The National Rifle Association broke its silence on last week’s shooting rampage at a Connecticut elementary school that left 26 children and staff dead. “The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,” the group’s top lobbyist, Wayne LaPierre, said at a Washington news conference. LaPierre said “the next Adam Lanza,” the man responsible for...
LINCOLN (AP) — Gov. Dave Heineman is asking Nebraskans to observe a moment of silence to honor the victims of the Connecticut school shooting. The national moment of silence is set for Friday at 9:30 a.m. Connecticut Gov. Daniel Malloy is also asking schools, churches and other facilities with bells to ring them 26 times to acknowledge each life lost. The shooting last week at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., killed 20 students and six staff members....
LINCOLN (AP) – Sheriffs in Nebraska’s three largest counties are reporting record requests for firearm certificates in the wake of last week’s school shooting in Connecticut. Officials in Douglas, Sarpy and Lancaster counties said Wednesday that they’ve each recorded single-day highs this week in certificate applications. The certificates are good for three years, and can be used to buy more than one gun. Douglas County Sheriff Chief Deputy Martin Bilek said his office processed an all-time high of 115 applications on Tuesday, and denied...
WASHINGTON (AP) – America’s population is now increasing a bit faster thanks to an improving economy, but not enough to lift growth above its lowest level since the Great Depression. New 2012 estimates released Thursday by the Census Bureau offer the latest snapshot of the U.S. population, whose growth has slowed dramatically since the recent recession. “After decades of wars, a depression, immigration surges, baby booms, boomlets and busts, we are entering a new era of modest growth,” said William H. Frey, a demographer at Brookings Institu...
DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) – The first widespread snowstorm of the season began a slow crawl across the Midwest on Thursday, creating treacherous driving conditions that, in Iowa, led to a 25-vehicle pileup that killed one person. Drivers were blinded by blowing snow and didn’t see vehicles that had slowed or stopped on Interstate 80 about 60 miles north of Des Moines, state police said. A chain reaction of crashes involving semitrailers and passenger cars closed down a section of the highway. Drivers throughout the Midwest were harried by hea...
WASHINGTON (AP) – With steroids easy to buy, testing weak and punishments inconsistent, college football players are packing on significant weight – 30 pounds or more in a single year, sometimes – without drawing much attention from their schools or the NCAA in a sport that earns tens of billions of dollars for teams. Rules vary so widely that, on any given game day, a team with a strict no-steroid policy can face a team whose players have repeatedly tested positive. An investigation by The A...
(AP) – Now that he’s away from the pool, Michael Phelps can reflect – really reflect – on what he accomplished. Pretty amazing stuff. “It’s kind of nuts to think about everything I’ve gone through,” Phelps said. “I’ve finally had time to myself, to sit back and say, ‘... that really happened?’ It’s kind of shocking at times.” Not that his career needed a capper, but Phelps added one more honor to his staggering list of accomplishments Thursday – The Associated Press male athlete of the year. Phelps edged out LeBron James to win the award...
WASHINGTON (AP) – The U.S. economy grew at an annual rate of 3.1 percent over the summer as consumers spent more and state and local governments added to growth for the first time in three years. But the economy is likely slowing in the current quarter. The Commerce Department’s third and final estimate Thursday of growth for the July-September quarter was revised up from its previous estimate of a 2.7 percent annual growth rate. Growth in the third quarter was more than twice the 1.3 percent growth rate in the April-June quarter. But dis...
LINCOLN (AP) — School and office closures in Lincoln are keeping many residents at home as crews work to clear the streets. Business was slower than usual Thursday at a U-Stop Convenience Shop in north Lincoln, with only a trickle of customers stopping in for coffee and gas. Cashier Diane Klopp says the store has seen some of its regular customers, but the streets are quieter than usual. Rick Minnick, a server at the Mill Coffee and Tea in downtown Lincoln, rode his bike to work Thursday morning so he didn’t have to dig his truck out of the...
DES MOINES, Iowa — The Big Ten spent much of the year as a national punch line. It might get worse during bowl season. The Big Ten could only fill seven of its eight predetermined bowl slots — and each of those bowl-bound teams is currently an underdog. From the five-loss Wisconsin team that still wound up in the Rose Bowl to the 6-6 Purdue squad that fired its coach, the beleaguered Big Ten isn’t expected to do much of anything in the postseason. The league went just 1-6 in bowl games in 2008. According to odds makers, things could go even wor...
SOUTH BEND, Ind. — After two seasons as Notre Dame coach, Brian Kelly decided he wasn’t spending enough time doing the best part of his job: coaching players. Kelly changed that in 2012, and he shuffled his staff. Then, with Kelly more in tune to his team and the assistants in sync with the head coach, Notre Dame went from unranked to top-ranked. For leading the Fighting Irish to the BCS championship for the first time, Kelly was voted Associated Press college football coach of the year. “When you’re talking about the coach of the year, t...
NEW YORK — A nine-game winning streak has Peyton Manning and the Denver Broncos on top of the AP Pro32 NFL power rankings for the first time. The latest win came on the road, 34-17 at Baltimore, and was impressive enough to lift the Broncos to No. 1 by three points over the San Francisco 49ers. AFC West champion Denver (11-3) and playoff-bound San Francisco each received six first-place votes Tuesday in balloting by The Associated Press’ panel of 12 media members who regularly cover the league. The Broncos outpointed the 49ers for first, 375...
OMAHA (AP) – One of his proudest moments in the U.S. Senate, Ben Nelson (D-Neb.) said as he prepares to leave the chamber after two terms, came in 2005 when he helped form the so-called Gang of 14, a bipartisan group of 14 senators who brokered a deal to avoid a filibuster showdown over judicial nominees. That bipartisan effort seems a lifetime away as the Senate wallows in deep partisan rancor. While the 71-year-old Nelson insists his reasons for bowing out of a run for a third term were personal, he joins a number of retiring moderates who h...
CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) — State public schools Superintendent Cindy Hill said her agency has done its job and is fully behind education reform efforts, but members of a legislative committee weren’t convinced as they recommended stripping the Wyoming Department of Education of a host of education accountability duties on Wednesday. The Select Committee on Education Accountability recommended legislation that transfers a number of the agency’s education accountability duties to the state Board of Education. It also added provisions that the schools...
