LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — University of Nebraska officials say they will work with students who have been affected by recent severe weather.

Several areas of the state have sustained significant damage in tornadoes and thunderstorms this year.

Financial aid officials at all four University of Nebraska campuses will waive some required documents if they can’t be found and they may be able recalculate a family’s income to reflect storm losses.

Nebraska students who qualify for federal Pell grants might qualify for free tuition in the Collegebound Nebraska program if they experienced significant storm losses.

Interim NU President James Linder says financial aid officers will work to minimize how much the severe weather affects students’ ability to attend college.

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — Lawyers for the Omaha Public Power District say employee severance deals worth upward of $700,000 are not public records.

The district’s attorneys argued in court on Wednesday that even if the deals with seven former employees were public records, they couldn’t be disclosed because they contain personal information beyond salary data.

The records dispute began with a public records request submitted to the publicly owned utility last fall by Mark Salerno, president of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 1483. He sought details on the payouts. The district declined to say who was paid and why, so Salerno appealed to the courts.

The judge didn’t make a ruling Wednesday.

ELK CREEK, Neb. (AP) — A Canadian firm hoping to build a mine to collect a valuable and rare heat-resistant element from beneath southeast Nebraska says the first samples collected this year are encouraging.

NioCorp Developments said Thursday the initial analysis of 230 samples reinforces the company’s positive view of the niobium deposit near Elk Creek.

The drilling that Vancouver, Canada, based NioCorp is doing this summer is designed to gather more data on the niobium deposit, so the company can determine whether raising more than $300 million for a mine is feasible.

The U.S. currently imports nearly all the niobium that’s used in this country to harden steel and make it more heat-resistant for industrial uses.

NioCorp previously estimated that more than 100 million tons of niobium rests several hundred feet below the ground.

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — Authorities have released the name of a motorcyclist who plunged to his death from an overpass in Lincoln.

The accident occurred about 5 p.m. Tuesday when something caused the motorcyclist to hit a concrete barrier on Rosa Parks Way and fall from his bike to a parking lot below.

He was identified as 19-year-old Mark Wenzl, of Seward.

Investigators had thought another vehicle may have been involved but have ruled that out as a possible cause of the crash.

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — A former doctor accused of killing four people with ties to an Omaha medical school will have a preliminary hearing Thursday on a separate charge of attempted burglary.

Prosecutors say forensic evidence links Anthony Garcia to an attempted break-in in May 2013 at the home of a Creighton University Medical School professor.

Garcia, of Terre Haute, Indiana, is also charged with first-degree murder for the 2008 deaths of the 11-year-old son of Creighton University pathologist William Hunter and the family’s housekeeper, as well as the May 2013 deaths of Creighton pathologist Roger Brumback and his wife.

Authorities say Garcia was motivated by revenge for being fired from Creighton’s pathology department in 2001. He has pleaded not guilty.

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — A 57-year-old Lincoln man has gone to court to keep from being sent back to prison because state officials had miscalculated his sentence.

Bruce Caton filed his action on Tuesday, asking a judge to reduce his sentence to 10 years.

He was released in October, having served 10 years of his sentence of 10 to 20 years. But he wasn’t put on parole, because officials thought he’d served his full sentence. Now officials say he should have served five more years before discharge.

Caton is among dozens of prisoners mistakenly released early. Prison officials didn’t correctly calculate sentences for at least 101 inmates.

State officials are discussing legal steps needed to retrieve the inmates.