WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump has chosen 10th Circuit Appeals court Justice Neil Gorsuch to fill the vacant seat on the U.S. Supreme Court. Trump made his announcement in a prime-time address from the White House.
Gorsuch must be confirmed by the Senate. The court has had just eight members since the death of Justice Antonin Scalia nearly a year ago. GOP leaders blocked President Barack Obama from filling the vacancy by denying a hearing to his nominee.
LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — Thirty-five people have applied to replace former Nebraska state Sen. Bill Kintner, who resigned after retweeting a comment that implied three women’s march protesters were too unattractive to sexually assault.
The governor’s office released the names Monday. Gov. Pete Ricketts will appoint Kintner’s successor.
The applicant who is chosen will represent Legislative District 2, a region that includes Cass County and portions of Sarpy and Otoe counties in southeast Nebraska. The new senator will serve until January 2019 and could run for election in the 2018.
Kintner’s resignation went into effect on Monday. Ricketts has said he intends to move quickly to ensure voters in the district have a voice in the Legislature.
SIDNEY, Neb. (AP) — Authorities say a Sidney man killed himself after killing his wife in their western Nebraska home.
On Monday Cheyenne County Attorney Paul Schaub identified the man as 39-year-old Jeffery Jensen and his wife, 36-year-old Rachelle Jensen. Schaub says a preliminary autopsy report shows both were killed by gunshots the afternoon of Jan. 9.
Authorities found the bodies inside the Sidney home Friday. Rachelle Jensen’s employer had called authorities to report that she hadn’t shown up for work for several days.
COLUMBUS, Neb. (AP) — The Nebraska Public Power District intends to let people watch the monthly board meetings live through their computers, smartphones or other electronic devices.
The board says the first meeting to go live on the internet is scheduled for Feb. 9. There will be an extensive presentation on the district’s transmission line project from the Gerald Gentleman Station near Sutherland to a new substation east of Thedford.
The board meetings are scheduled for the second Thursday of each month. The meeting schedule, agenda and starting time can found at www.nppd.com/Board on the Monday before each monthly meeting. A link to view the meeting will appear shortly before the start of the meeting.
The district serves an estimated 600,000 Nebraskans with retail or wholesale electric power.
BEATRICE, Neb. (AP) — A Beatrice couple have been accused of injuring a 3-year-old girl.
34-year-old Jason Sanchez and 33-year-old Laura Blakely were arrested Monday. Online court records don’t list the names of attorneys who could comment for them.
Police began investigating after the girl was hospitalized for two days around Christmas. The girl has since recovered, and she and her older brother have been placed in foster care.
Police Lt. Mike Oliver says Blakely is the children’s mother.
O’NEILL, Neb. (AP) — Scores of pipeline opponents in Nebraska are gathering to renew their fight against construction of the Keystone XL pipeline.
Almost 150 people met for two hours Monday at a community center just south of the proposed pipeline route. The meeting consisted of plans to stop, delay or reroute the pipeline.
The Keystone XL — which is proposed to run through Alberta, Montana, South Dakota and Nebraska — has become a symbol of how the U.S. should tackle climate change concerns. Former President Barack Obama previously rejected the pipeline in 2015, but President Donald Trump signed an executive order earlier this month to bring it back.
Jane Kleeb, leader of activist group Bold Alliance, says this time it’ll be farmers, ranchers and Native Americans fighting in the courts, and not politicians.
LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — The Lincoln City Council has voted to bar corrugated cardboard from the city landfill.
The compromise approved Monday night won’t require people to pay for curbside recycling from trash haulers. Councilwoman Jayne Raybould says people can take their cardboard to any of the city’s 29 recycling sites.
Mayor Chris Beutler had wanted to ban cardboard and all paper products from the landfill, but he couldn’t rally enough council votes for his stricter measure.
The compromise plan will require trash haulers to offer curbside recycling and to report their recycling totals each year. There no penalties for individuals or businesses that don’t abide by the new restriction. But garbage haulers could be fined $100 every time they take recyclable cardboard to the landfill.
The measure takes effect in April 2018.
LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — A proposal to balance the state budget for the next five months is drawing criticism from some Nebraska lawmakers who say it will do more long-term harm than good.
Senators on Tuesday took issue with parts of the proposal that would cut funding for the University of Nebraska, while others raised concerns about provisions that would take back some of the unspent money to help balance the books.
Several Lincoln-based senators argued that the $13.3 million cut to the university could hurt the state’s efforts to recruit and retain young people. The original proposal called for a $17.6 million cut.
The package under debate will help balance the current budget until July 1. Senators still have to address the upcoming two-year budget cycle, which is likely to be contentious.
LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — Companies that gain access to students’ personal information in schools would be barred from using it for targeted ads under a bill pending before Nebraska lawmakers.
Sen. Adam Morfeld of Lincoln presented the measure to a legislative committee on Tuesday as a way to protect students’ online privacy in schools.
Morfeld says students may be tech-savvy, but they’re still vulnerable to targeted advertising. A similar bill was introduced last year but died in committee because no senator designated it as a priority.
A lobbyist for Microsoft says 32 states have passed similar laws.
Mississippi’s attorney general filed a lawsuit earlier in January against Google, alleging that the company is violating his state’s consumer protections law by selling ads using data from services it provides to schools.
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Apple has snapped out of the first sales slump in the iPhone’s decade-long history, but the upturn doesn’t mean that the company has broken out of its innovation funk.
If anything, the numbers Apple released Tuesday served as the latest reminder of the company’s growing dependence on the iPhone while failing so far to come up with another breakthrough product since co-founder Steve Jobs died in 2011.
Meanwhile, Apple’s rivals have been rolling out new products in other promising fields such as augmented reality, virtual reality and artificial intelligence. Apple has been trailing in these areas.
To make matters worse, Apple’s iPhone sales had fallen in three consecutive quarters before it rose 5 percent in the last three months of 2016 to 78.3 million units.
