OFFUTT AIR FORCE BASE, Neb. (AP) — A new $1.3 billion military facility that will serve as the U.S.’s military command headquarters during national emergencies will soon open at Offutt Air Force Base near Omaha.

The first of more than 3,500 employees will begin moving into U.S. Strategic Command’s new Command and Control Facility in the spring, The Omaha World-Herald reported.

The 916,000-square-foot (85,000-square-meter) facility will replace StratCom’s current headquarters in the Gen. Curtis E. LeMay Building, which was constructed in 1957.

“The construction of the (Command and Control Facility) is historic,” said Vice Adm. David Kriete, StratCom’s deputy commander. “It marks the transition from the old to the new.”

The facility is “a national asset” designed to serve as the nation’s military command headquarters, even during a national emergency such as a nuclear war, Kriete said.

“We firmly believe a nuclear war should never be fought,” Kriete said. “But we want the good guys to know, and the bad guys to know; we’re really good at it.”

The project is in its second phase, which focuses on installing technology in the facility, Kriete said. The headquarters will have oversight of the nation’s space forces, missile defense, electronic warfare and nuclear arsenal.

Work on the project began in October 2012. The project has seen many setbacks, including flooding problems, persistent mold, a fire and a tornado.

“There’s been some minor glitches,” Kriete said. “Nothing that has substantially set us back.”

StratCom plans to move all staff into the new headquarters by the end of the year, he said.

“I’m very optimistic,” Kriete said. “We’re not going to move the command over until (the building) is mission-ready.”

WALNUT, Iowa (AP) – Authorities say a 9-year-old Nebraska boy has died in a crash off icy Interstate 80 in western Iowa.

The accident was reported about 10:30 p.m. Sunday near the town of Walnut. The Iowa State Patrol says the vehicle was headed when it slid off the slickened roadway and rolled onto its passenger side in a ditch.

The boy was pronounced dead at the scene. The patrol identified him as Joshua Tavares, who lived in Grand Island, Nebraska.

The driver was identified as 40-year-old Jesus Cantero-Perez, also of Grand Island. He and at least four of his passengers were taken to a hospital.

Update 1/28/19

North Platte Police have identified the victim of Friday’s hit-and-run as 65-year-old David Kohlmeier, of North Platte.

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Update:

North Platte Police have identified the suspect in this morning’s hit-and-run fatality.

According to police, at around 6:43 AM, a westbound vehicle traveling in the middle lane of the 400 block of Rodeo Road struck the victim as they were walking northbound across Rodeo Road and the driver fled the scene in the vehicle.

A witness in a vehicle behind the suspect vehicle stopped to render aid and called 911. Another passerby also stopped to help.  The victim was taken to the emergency room via ambulance at Great Plains Health, where they were pronounced dead.

Officers gathered evidence that led them to a North Platte resident, 34-year-old Ryan Baade, and the suspect vehicle. Baade is suspected of driving while impaired and driving on a suspended driver’s license.

Baade was arrested for driving under the influence, driving under suspension, and leaving the scene of an injury accident. Further charges are pending.

The victim’s name is being withheld pending the notification of family members.

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Police say a suspect is in custody after a person was fatally struck by a vehicle on Friday morning.

At around 6:43 AM, a witness made a 911 call to the North Platte 911 center reference a subject who had been hit by a car at the intersection of Rodeo Road and Willow and the driver had left the scene.

The victim was taken to the emergency room via ambulance at Great Plains Health. They were pronounced deceased. Officers were able to quickly locate the suspect driver and vehicle.

There is no further danger to the public. Names will not be released at this time. The investigation is still ongoing, and we will release updates as they become available.

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — Scam artists who use local phone numbers to trick consumers into answering their calls could soon have a tougher time operating in Nebraska, if one state senator has his way.

The new proposal in the Legislature would add Nebraska to the growing number of states trying to clamp down on “neighborhood spoofing,” the practice of making distant calls appear as local numbers on caller IDs.

“Nebraskans are tired of receiving these calls,” said Sen. Steve Halloran, of Hastings. “It’s not respectful of people’s privacy. They don’t expect to be misled when they see a call coming in.”

Halloran introduced a bill last week that would ban callers from sending bogus caller ID information to phones “with the intent to defraud, cause harm, or wrongfully obtain anything of value.” Violators would go before the Nebraska Public Service Commission, which could impose a fine as large as $2,000 for each offense.

It appears to be a popular idea: Nearly one-third of the Legislature has signed on as a co-sponsor.

Halloran acknowledged the measure could raise costs for the telecommunications industry, which might get passed down to consumers, but said he still believe it’s a worthwhile idea. He said he deals with such calls constantly on his cellphone from numbers that appear to be from constituents.

A Nebraska Public Service Commission spokeswoman said agency officials have not yet reviewed the bill.

Industry officials said they fervently agree that phone spoofing is a growing problem they hope to address, but they aren’t sure a Nebraska state law would be effective.

“There’s nothing more infuriating than when you pick up a phone call expecting it to be somebody, and it’s somebody else,” said Eric Carstenson, president of the Nebraska Telecommunications Association. “But it’s a federal and international problem. It’s not a problem we think we can fix with Nebraska statutes.”

Carstenson noted that Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai has identified phone spoofing as his top consumer protection priority. Unwanted calls are by far the most common complaints the FCC receives, with more than 200,000 reported each year, according to the agency.

Nebraska state officials don’t track the number of complaints they receive, but phone spoofing has become far more common in recent years as technology advances, said Meghan Stoppel, chief of the Nebraska attorney general’s consumer protection division.

Stoppel said spoofing is commonly used in scams where callers pretend to be law enforcement officers or a tax auditor from the Internal Revenue Service. Both schemes are designed to pressure people into sending money quickly, and Stoppel said a variety of Nebraskans — from college students to the elderly — have fallen for them.

“It’s definitely a growing concern for us,” she said. “People can no longer trust the digits that are being displayed on their caller ID.”

At the same time, Stoppel said it’s important for governments not to block spoofing that serves a legitimate purpose. For example, she said companies frequently use spoofing so that calls appear to come from their main lines instead of an employee’s specific extension.

South Carolina passed an anti-spoofing law in 2018, and Kansas lawmakers will consider legislation this year. Florida and Mississippi have passed laws, but they were struck down amid industry lawsuits arguing that they regulated commerce outside the state’s borders, in violation of the U.S. Constitution’s commerce clause.

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — The University of Nebraska State Museum of Natural History is opening a new exhibit next month that will show how Nebraska got to be “an amazing state,” the museum director said.

The fourth-floor museum space at Morrill Hall on the main Lincoln campus will hold the new permanent telling the story of Nebraska’s natural past, from the species that roamed the plains to how humans interact with the land today.

Benefactors and more than 50 experts helped create the $11.4 million “Cherish Nebraska” exhibit, charting Nebraska’s “landscape through time,” museum director Susan Weller told the Lincoln Journal Star .

The exhibit will open Feb. 16 and is designed to provide Nebraskans one all-embracing message about their home, she said: “It is an amazing state.”

“It really is a place where east meets west and the south comes to meet the northern plains,” Weller said. “The richness of life is supported by the richness of the geology here.”

The exhibit will feature seven galleries that show the state from it prehistoric past to the present. One will illustrate the tallgrass prairie, with a centerpiece showing the above- and below-ground structure of the wild plants.

Visitors will come face-to-face with ancient mammals, and children will be able walk through a model cottonwood trunk and explore a rattlesnake den mock-up while listening to some native sounds of the state: the “bobwhite” of a quail and the chirp of crickets.

Understanding the history and importance of the state’s ecosystems will inspire more people to protect it into the future, Weller said.

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — The Nebraska Education Department is seeking sponsors to operate its Summer Food Service Program.

The program provides meals and snacks to children at schools, churches, playgrounds and parks during summer and other school breaks. It was created to ensure children in low-income areas can get meals when they don’t have access to school lunches or breakfasts.

Eligible sponsors include public or private nonprofit schools, residential camps and local or state government sites. Program sponsors may apply for up to $15,000 a year for non-recurring expenses. The deadline to apply for a grant is March 1.

Grant applications may be downloaded from the Nebraska Department of Education Nutrition Services’ web page at https://www.education.ne.gov/NS/SFSP/news.html .

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — The Nebraska Cattlemen will soon be moving into a new building on a Lincoln street that the group would like to be renamed.

The Lincoln City Council is expected to vote Monday on changing the name of two Lincoln streets in order to give the trade association a special address: 4611 Cattle Drive.

But city planning director David Cary told the Lincoln Journal Star that changing street names “doesn’t happen all that often, and actually we would like to keep it that way.”

As it stands, the building is being built on Discovery Drive, a short street in Nebraska Technology Park. There already is a Cattle Drive in the northeast of the city. Only four houses abut that street, and none has an address on Cattle Drive. Documents signed by the homeowners and presented to the City Council during a public hearing show none of the owners cares if the name is changed to Mustang Drive.

City planners are recommending that the council deny the changes, Cary said, because of the potential that it will encourage future more cumbersome and expensive requests.

But if the city were to allow name changes, this request would appear to have the right conditions, he said. It affects a small number of properties and the name is not a specific business name.

The group plans to move to the new building in late February. The new space provides double the room at its rented office about a 10-minute walk from the Capitol. The new building is about a 10-minute drive from there.