NORTH PLATTE, Neb. (AP) — Nebraska authorities say no people were injured, but several head of cattle were killed when the animals got out of an enclosure and wandered onto a nearby highway.

Five cows and one calf were killed Thursday night after wandering onto U.S. Highway 83 near Wellfleet and being hit by a semitrailer.

The semi was totaled, but its driver was not injured.

Lincoln County Sheriff’s Sgt. Wayne Connell says one lane of the highway was temporarily shut down as the semi and animals were moved off the road.

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — The federal Agriculture Department has launched a new website focused on its rural development programs in Nebraska.

The USDA says the new website should be easier to navigate for people looking for loan and grand applications or more details about other programs.

Contact information for all the rural development staff is listed on the website.

The new site is also designed to work well on mobile phones and tablets.

The address of the site is www.rd.usda.gov/ne .

COLUMBUS, Neb. (AP) — Nebraska’s largest public power utility is urging residents to be prepared for possible power outages due to spring storms.

The Nebraska Public Power District’s warning comes in observance of Severe Weather Awareness Week.

Joel Dagerman with NPPD says people should avoid downed power lines and always regard them as live to prevent electrocution. Motorists should not drive over downed power lines, and if a power line falls on a vehicle, the occupants should stay in the car until power crews arrive on the scene to remove it.

Also, if the power goes out, residents should turn off or disconnect any appliances, equipment or electronics to keep them from being damaged by any surges when the power comes back on.

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — A new report shows that Nebraska’s preliminary unemployment rate of 2.7 percent last month was the lowest in the country.

The Nebraska Labor Department said in the report released Friday that the February rate is seven-tenths of a point under the February 2014 rate of 3.4 percent.

The new Nebraska figure remains well below the preliminary national unemployment rate of 5.5 percent in February. U.S. Labor Department figures say Nebraska was trailed by North Dakota at 2.9 percent and South Dakota and Utah at 3.4 percent.

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — The Nebraska Supreme Court has ruled against a man who sold a building without disclosing to the buyers that he was taking all of its interior doors with him.

The high court on Friday upheld a Custer County District Court ruling that found Andrew Solomon was wrong to take the building’s 12 interior doors. It ordered his business entity, Drew LLC, to pay Thomas and Heather Griffith $3,420, plus costs, to cover replacement doors.

Solomon appealed, arguing in part that the doors were trade fixtures of the dental practice run by his wife.

But the high court said the doors could not be considered equipment used to carry on a trade. It also said the buyers had a reasonable belief that the doors were part of the purchase agreement.

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — The Nebraska Supreme Court has affirmed a lower court’s decision to keep a man serving a life sentence behind bars.

James Branch had filed a motion for post-conviction relief seeking to be released from prison. Prosecutors say he and two other men beat James Clark, tied wire around Clark’s neck and dumped him into the trunk of his car at his auto business after robbing him.

Branch has maintained that while he used a credit card stolen from Clark, he knew nothing about the robbery and assault.

In 2013, the state Supreme Court ordered a Douglas County District Court to grant Branch a hearing on his motion, in which he said his lawyer was ineffective.

The lower court did and then denied Branch’s motion, which the Supreme Court upheld Friday.

DENVER (AP) — Legal weed in Colorado isn’t hurting its neighboring states. That’s according to a Supreme Court filing Friday that marks the first time Colorado has defended legal marijuana in writing.

Colorado sent the argument to the nation’s highest court as a defense against a lawsuit from Oklahoma and Nebraska, which have asked the court to stop pot regulation.

Colorado says in response that their gripe is with the federal government for not enforcing the Controlled Substances Act. Colorado says that Congress banned marijuana but did not compel states to enforce the ban.

Colorado’s neighbors claim that the 2012 pot legalization vote has sent the drug flooding across Colorado’s borders.

The U.S. Supreme Court has not said whether it will hear the challenge.

 

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — A judge has dismissed a class-action lawsuit by Nebraska farmers who say the Department of Natural Resources deprived them of irrigation water to which they were entitled.

But District Court Judge James E. Doyle IV ruled this week that the farmers can amend their lawsuit with new arguments challenging the decision to divert the water to comply with the Republican River Compact.

Doyle ruled that the department’s duties to comply with the compact govern how water must be distributed.

More than 150 irrigators who receive water through the Frenchman Cambridge Irrigation District say their crops suffered because they were denied access to water that went to Kansas under the compact. The compact allocates 49 percent of the river’s water to Nebraska, 40 percent to Kansas and 11 percent to Colorado.

KEARNEY, Neb. (AP) — Two Cessna 172 airplanes are continuing the annual tradition of flying over the Central Platte River as part of the Platte River Whooping Crane Monitoring Project.

Two pilots and two observers will fly over 90 miles of the river Friday as part of the project, which was started in 2001. The project aims to collect data about how whooping cranes use the river and adjacent areas during their spring and fall migrations.

Ground observers protect the birds, which are on the federal Endangered Species List, from being disturbed and also collect data on features of the locations, length of stay and crane behaviors.

The Platte River Recovery Implementation Program is the main user of the data.

DENVER (AP) — Colorado is defending its pot law for the first time Friday in a filing due to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Friday is the deadline for Colorado to respond to a legal challenge from Oklahoma and Nebraska.

The lawsuit challenges Colorado’s legalization of recreational marijuana and is one of four lawsuits that aim to dismantle the young industry.

Colorado’s neighbors claim that the 2012 pot legalization vote has sent the drug flooding across Colorado’s borders.

Three other lawsuits have been filed since Nebraska and Oklahoma sued.

One was filed by a hotel owner in Colorado who argues legal weed is hurting his business. Another is from a southern Colorado landowner who says legal weed is hurting property values. The fourth lawsuit comes from county sheriffs in Colorado, Nebraska and Kansas.