OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — The Nebraska State Patrol and other agencies have successfully coordinated a delivery of potentially lifesaving medicine from Omaha to a children’s hospital in Colorado.

The Children’s Hospital Colorado in Aurora requested a rare medication from the University of Nebraska Medical Center late Tuesday evening, according to Nebraska Medicine spokeswoman Taylor Wilson. The medicine treats amoeba-related infections.

The weather was too rough to fly the medicine from eastern Nebraska, so Nebraska Medicine contacted the State Patrol to help relay the medicine 540 miles (869 kilometers) to the hospital.

“All they tell us is there’s a child that really needs this and it’s a critical moment,” Patrol Lieutenant Matt Sutter said. Troopers weren’t given any further information about the child’s condition, he said.

The request was the longest distance patrol officers have transported medical necessities under an urgent time frame, according to Sutter.

Nebraska troopers needed to drive the drug closer to the state’s western border with Colorado, where they would pass off the medicine to the Colorado State Patrol.

The effort included seven troopers, who would hand the package off to the next patrol car in the relay. Sutter tracked the medicine across the state while monitoring weather and air-transport options.

Weather conditions in western Nebraska improved so troopers passed the medication to an airplane pilot in North Platte, who flew the drug to a Colorado airport near the hospital. The medicine arrived at the hospital early Wednesday morning. The transportation totaled less than 6 hours from when the first trooper started the relay.

“We try to look at it from the perspective of what would we want the state patrol to do for us if we were that family in that situation?” Sutter said. “When you put things in that perspective and you use that empathy as your measuring stick it’s amazing how all the resources come together and ultimately do the right thing.”

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — The Nebraska Legislature’s staunchest opponent of the death penalty is furious that the state attorney general is asking that the state’s first execution in decades occur on the senator’s birthday.

Attorney General Doug Peterson last week asked the Nebraska Supreme Court to speed up its decision on issuing a death warrant for Carey Dean Moore, who was sentenced to death for the 1979 killings of two Omaha cabbies. The attorney general suggested July 10 or another date in mid-July, because one of the state’s four lethal injection drugs will expire at the end of August.

Chambers told the Omaha World-Herald that he “was really outraged” by Peterson’s request, saying he’s disrespecting the court by drawing them into the political maelstrom over the death penalty.

Peterson’s spokeswoman, Suzanne Gage, says neither Peterson nor his staffers were aware that July 10 is Chambers’ birthday and weren’t sending any message to Chambers.

 

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — The surging business conditions in nine Midwest and Plains states will be tested by trade conflicts and other factors that could slow growth, an economist said in a survey report issued Friday.

The Mid-America Business Conditions Index recorded its highest mark in 14 years last month, hitting 67.3 in May, compared with 64.5 in April, according to the report. The March figure was 62.1.

This is the 18th straight month the index has remained above growth neutral 50.0, pointing to strong growth for the region over the next three to six months.

“The Goldilocks economy — not too hot, not too cold — will be tested in the months ahead as trade skirmishes and potential wars slow growth and contribute to higher prices for inputs such as steel and aluminum,” said Creighton University economist Ernie Goss, who oversees the survey. “These higher prices will slow growth and push the Federal Reserve to be more aggressive in raising interest rates in the weeks and months ahead.”

The survey results are compiled into a collection of indexes ranging from zero to 100. Survey organizers say any score above 50 suggests growth in that factor. A score below that suggests decline. The survey covers Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma and South Dakota.

The wholesale inflation index hit 88.9 in May, the highest figure since April 2011, and up from 85.7 in April.

“Both our regional wholesale inflation index and the U.S. inflation gauge are elevated. I expect this elevated inflation to begin to show up at the consumer level,” said Goss, who added that he consequently expects the Federal Reserve to raise short-term interest rates by a quarter of a percentage point later this month.

Economic optimism, as reflected by May’s business confidence index, decreased to 66.3 from April’s 70.2.

Healthy profit growth, still low interest rates, and lower tax rates, kept business confidence into a range indicating robust confidence, Goss said. However, he said, the May survey was conducted before the announcement of higher U.S. tariffs on steel and aluminum.

TECUMSEH, Neb. (AP) — A three-judge panel has sentenced to death a Nebraska prisoner who killed his cellmate.

District Judge Vicky Johnson of Wilber, the presiding judge, announced the panel’s decision Friday in the murder case against 40-year-old Patrick Schroeder.

Schroeder has freely admitted strangling 22-year-old Terry Berry in April 2017 in their cell at Tecumseh State Prison in southeast Nebraska. Schroeder told investigators that he killed Berry for being too talkative and said he had warned Berry several times that he needed to “shut up.”

Schroeder offered no rebuttal to prosecutors’ assertions that he should be sentenced to death. He’s said he believes in the death penalty.

At the time of Berry’s killing, Schroeder was already serving a life sentence for killing a 75-year-old Pawnee City farmer in 2006.

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — The agency monitoring Nebraska children in foster care says there’s a disproportionate number of minority youth in out-of-home care.

The Nebraska Foster Care Review Office found on March 31 that African-American, Native-American, biracial and Latino children were overrepresented in the population of youth in foster care and other forms of out-of-home care.

Nearly 15 percent of wards of the state are African-American, though black children represent only 6 percent of the overall population of Nebraska children, according to a special study in the office’s quarterly report. Nearly 6 percent of children in out-of-home care or trial home visit are Native-American, but Native-

American children comprise about 2 percent of the state’s children. About 20 percent of wards of the state are Latino, compared to their 17 percent makeup in the general population of children.

The study also found lopsided percentages for black children when considering youth who have been in out-of-home placements for two or more years.

Minority children are more likely to be separated from siblings while in foster care, the report said. Siblings can provide a source of stability and improve resiliency in these unstable conditions, according to the study.

The report also identified a greater overrepresentation of black youth in the juvenile justice system. About 25 percent of residents at the Geneva Youth Rehabilitation and Treatment Center are young black women, and 28 percent of those in the Youth Rehabilitation and Treatment Center at Kearney are young black men.

The report didn’t identify why disproportionate placements are occurring but said state providers must evaluate where and how the disparity is happening.