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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BAGHDAD (AP) — Iraq says it will stop more aircraft moving through its airspace and vehicles traveling overland to search for weapons being sent to the Syrian civil war, a senior Iraqi official said Friday. Government spokesman Ali al-Moussawi said Iraq would conduct more random searches to check for weapons heading for the forces of Syrian President Bashar Assad or rebels seeking to topple his regime. In a telephone call to The Associated Press, al-Moussawi said Iraq refuses to be a “conduit for weapons for either side of the conflict.” “The g...
ATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Francis has won over many hearts and minds with his simple style and focus on serving the world’s poorest, but he has devastated traditionalist Catholics who adored his predecessor, Benedict XVI, for restoring much of the traditional pomp to the papacy. Francis’ decision to disregard church law and wash the feet of two girls — a Serbian Muslim and an Italian Catholic — during a Holy Thursday ritual has become something of the final straw, evidence that Francis has little or no interest in one of the key prioritie...
SEOUL, South Korea — Across North Korea, soldiers are gearing up for battle and shrouding their jeeps and vans with camouflage netting. Newly painted signboards and posters call for “death to the U.S. imperialists” and urge the people to fight with “arms, not words.” But even as North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is issuing midnight battle cries to his generals to ready their rockets, he and his million-man army know full well that a successful missile strike on U.S. targets would be suicide for the outnumbered, out-powered North Korean regime. D...
TULSA, Okla. (AP) — The crisp, stucco exterior of an Oklahoma dental clinic concealed what health inspectors say they found inside: rusty instruments used on patients with infectious diseases and a pattern of unsanitary practices that put thousands of people at risk for hepatitis and the virus that causes AIDS. State and local health officials planned to mail notices urging 7,000 patients of Dr. W. Scott Harrington to seek medical screenings for hepatitis B, hepatitis C and HIV. Inspectors allege workers at his two clinics used dirty e...
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — Transit police in Philadelphia are calling a local man a hero for jumping onto subway tracks to help a man who fell off a platform. Christopher Knafelc, 32, was waiting for a train in north Philadelphia on Thursday afternoon when he saw a man walk off the platform and fall on the tracks. He jumped down to help the man, knowing that a train would be arriving in a few minutes. “I had a plan if a train came I was going to roll him underneath,” Knafelc told WPVI-TV, “or if I couldn’t, I was going to ask someone to jump down...
NEW YORK (AP) — Government health officials launched the second round of a graphic ad campaign Thursday that is designed to get smokers off tobacco, saying they believe the last effort convinced tens of thousands to quit. The ads feature sad, real-life stories: There is Terrie, a North Carolina woman who lost her voice box. Bill, a diabetic smoker from Michigan who lost his leg. And Aden, a 7-year-old boy from New York, who has asthma attacks from secondhand smoke. “Most smokers want to quit. These ads encourage them to try,” said Dr. Tom F...
WASHINGTON (AP) — It would seem a lobbyist’s dream: rounding up votes for a proposal backed by more than 8 in 10 people in polls. Yet gun control supporters are struggling to win over moderate Democrats in their drive to push expanded background checks for firearms purchasers through the Senate next month. Backed by a $12 million TV advertising campaign financed by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, gun control groups scheduled rallies around the country Thursday aimed at pressuring senators to back the effort. President Barack Obama was mee...
NEW HAVEN, Conn. (AP) — An arsenal of weapons including guns, more than a thousand rounds of ammunition, a bayonet and several swords was found in the home of the gunman who carried out the Newtown school shooting, according to search warrants released Thursday. Adam Lanza killed 26 people inside Sandy Hook Elementary School and took his own life within five minutes of shooting his way into the building, State’s Attorney Stephen J. Sedensky III said in a statement accompanying the release of...
NEW YORK (AP) — However the Supreme Court rules after its landmark hearings on same-sex marriage, the issue seems certain to divide Americans and states for many years to come. In oral arguments Tuesday and Wednesday on two cases involving gay couples’ rights, the justices left open multiple options for rulings that are expected in June. But they signaled there was no prospect of imposing a 50-state solution at this stage. With nine states now allowing same-sex marriages and other states banning them via statutes or constitutional amendments, t...
LINCOLN (AP) — A long-shot attempt to repeal state-funded prenatal care services for illegal immigrants drew criticism Thursday from a variety of Nebraska groups. Advocates for children, immigrants and medical clinics convened at the Capitol to oppose a bill by Sen. Charlie Janssen of Fremont. Several people said Janssen, a Republican candidate for governor, was exploiting the issue for political gain. Janssen presented the repeal measure to the Legislature’s Health and Human Services Committee. Lawmakers restored coverage last year for the...
What we do at Scotts Bluff National Monument in Scotts Bluff County Sometimes people wonder, what does the National Park Service do at Scotts Bluff National Monument? Would things be different if there were no park employees working? Here is a brief look at what employees do at Scotts Bluff National Monument that affects western Nebraska. Protect public life and safety through law enforcement and other emergency services. National Park Service Rangers are fully authorized law enforcement officers. Through mutual aid agreements, Rangers not...
VATICAN CITY (AP) — One of the Vatican’s main Twitter accounts and the website of its communications office were running stories about Batman on Thursday with the headline “Holy Switcheroo!” — raising concerns they might have been hacked. But two Vatican officials said the site hadn’t been hacked, and that the reason for the unusual posting was an “internal system failure” due to a non-native English speaker posting the story on the website. The story was from the Catholic News Service. It has as its headline: “Holy Switcheroo! Batma...
MOSCOW (AP) — Russian prosecutors have launched wide-ranging checks of hundreds of nongovernmental organizations, as part of what activists say is President Vladimir Putin’s efforts to stifle dissent and shield the nation from perceived Western influence. The inspections and searches have targeted up to 2,000 organizations since last month, said Pavel Chikov, a member of the presidential human rights council. The action followed Putin’s speech in February before senior officers of the FSB, the main KGB successor agency, in which he urged them...
PARIS (AP) — New results from looking at the split-second after the Big Bang indicate the universe is 80 million years older than previously thought and provide ancient evidence supporting core concepts about the cosmos — how it began, what it’s made of and where it’s going. The findings released Thursday bolster a key theory called inflation, which says the universe burst from subatomic size to its now-observable expanse in a fraction of a second. The new observations from the European Space Agency’s $900 million Planck space probe appear to r...
PITTSBURGH (AP) — In an unlikely partnership between longtime adversaries, some of the nation’s biggest energy companies and environmental groups have agreed on a voluntary set of standards for gas and oil fracking in the Northeast that appear to go further than existing state and federal pollution regulations. The program announced Wednesday will work a lot like Underwriters Laboratories, which puts its UL seal of approval on electrical appliances that meet its standards. In this case, drilling and pipeline companies will be encouraged to sub...
NICOSIA, Cyprus (AP) — Cyprus’ banks will remain closed Thursday and Friday as officials try to find a new plan to stave off bankruptcy. Aliki Stylianou, the central bank’s spokeswoman, confirmed the additional two-day closure on Wednesday. The cash-strapped lenders have been closed since Saturday to avoid a bank run. The Parliament this week rejected a plan to take a portion of bank deposits. That has left Cypriot officials looking for alternative ways to scrounge up some 5.8 billion euros ($7.51 billion) that the country’s euro area partner...
JERUSALEM (AP) — Renewing U.S. support for the difficult “work of generations,” President Barack Obama assured Israel on Wednesday that his administration would pursue an elusive Mideast peace that would allow residents of the Jewish state to live in peace and free from the threat of terror. “In this work, the state of Israel will have no greater friend than the United States,” the president declared after meeting with Israeli President Shimon Peres during his first visit to Israel as president. Peres, in turn, said he welcomed Obama’s c...
LINCOLN (AP) — A bill to expand Nebraska Medicaid coverage has advanced for debate in the Legislature, and supporters presented their case Tuesday in anticipation that Gov. Dave Heineman will veto the measure. The committee vote sets up a likely confrontation between lawmakers and Heineman, a Republican who remains firmly opposed to the bill. Sen. Kathy Campbell, who led the introduction of the bill, said she’s “very confident” that the measure’s backers have at least 25 votes to push it through the Legislature. But Campbell said supporters wil...
LINCOLN (AP) — Officials from Lincoln and Lancaster County could allow the health director to access millions of dollars set aside for health emergencies under an ordinance being considered by the city’s leaders. The Community Health Endowment Fund was created with money from the city’s sale of Lincoln General Hospital 15 years ago to Bryan Memorial Hospital. The $37 million from that sale has since grown to more than $60 million, the Lincoln Journal Star reported Monday. City leaders at the time of the sale specified that only interest from th...
NEW YORK — She’s a leading candidate to be New York’s next mayor. She’s already one of its top Irish-American officials. Christine Quinn is also a lesbian and proud of it. And that’s why the City Council speaker won’t be marching in Saturday’s St. Patrick’s Day Parade, an event so entrenched in New York tradition that it’s older than the United States. Quinn’s rising political prominence is bringing a decades-long dispute between parade organizers and gay activists back into sharp relief. And it’s raising the prospect of an unprecedented stan...
HERKIMER, N.Y. (AP) — Police SWAT teams navigated through a cluttered, abandoned bar to find the suspect in four fatal shootings holed up in a small room, and the man was killed a shootout with officers after a nearly 19-hour standoff that paralyzed an upstate New York village, authorities said Thursday. Why Kurt Myers went on the shooting rampage Wednesday remained a mystery. State police Superintendent Joseph D’Amico said state police and FBI tactical teams entered the first-floor of a building in Herkimer around 8 a.m. to end the sta...
GENEVA (AP) — The search is all but over for a subatomic particle that is a crucial building block of the universe. Physicists announced Thursday they believe they have discovered the subatomic particle predicted nearly a half-century ago, which will go a long way toward explaining what gives electrons and all matter in the universe size and shape. The elusive particle, called a Higgs boson, was predicted in 1964 to help fill in our understanding of the creation of the universe, which many t...
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Obama administration contradicted itself Thursday, acknowledging to Congress that it had, in fact, released more than 2,000 illegal immigrants from immigration jails due to budget constraints during three weeks in February. Four deemed especially dangerous have been placed back in jail. The administration had claimed only a “few hundred immigrants” were released for budgetary reasons, challenging as inaccurate an Associated Press report that 2,000 immigrants had been released and that 3,000 more would be released this...
OMAHA (AP) — An Omaha man who hit and killed a 26-year-old mother after a night of drinking last June has been sentenced to 15 to 20 years in prison. A judge sentenced 35-year-old Joseph Brosnihan Tuesday after he tearfully apologized to the family of Ashley Rodriguez, who had two sons. Brosnihan told Rodriguez’ family that he wishes he could take their pain away. Brosnihan pleaded no contest in December to vehicular homicide while driving drunk and failing to stop and render aid. Prosecutors say Brosnihan struck Rodriguez around 2 a.m. on Jun...
CENTENNIAL, Colo. (AP) — The judge in the deadly Colorado movie theater shooting case entered a not guilty plea on behalf of James Holmes on Tuesday after the former graduate student’s defense team said he was not ready to enter one. If Holmes is convicted, he could be executed or spend the rest of his life in prison. Judge William Sylvester said Holmes, 25, can change his plea to not guilty by reason of insanity later, if he chooses. Such a change could be the only way Holmes could avoid life in prison or execution. Prosecutors, for their par...
