The Nebraska State Patrol in conjunction with the Hall County Sheriff’s Office contacted 70 motorists during a special enforcement focused on reducing the risk of alcohol related crashes.

During the special enforcement held Friday, May 17, two people were arrested for Driving While Intoxicated (DWI), one citation was issued for open container. The special enforcement included a DUI check point and high visibility patrol in Hall County.

The special enforcement was paid for thanks in part to a $2,375 grant from the Nebraska Office of Highway Safety (NOHS).

Nebraska lawmakers have given final approval to the seven budget bills that make the state’s two-year budget.

Lawmakers passed the measures on Monday through their third and final vote. They now head to Gov. Dave Heineman.

The package contains increases for early childhood education and a two-year tuition freeze at the University of Nebraska and the Nebraska State Colleges. It also includes $230 million in continued funding for a state property tax credit program.

Senators also voted to transfer an additional $53 million into the state’s cash reserve.

Sen. Heath Mello, chairman of the Appropriations Committee, says the money will be available in case of an economic downturn or tax reforms that rise from a state tax-climate study.

The Nuckolls County sheriff’s office says a 31-year-old woman had died in a one-vehicle crash near Superior in south-central Nebraska.

Renae L. Wheeland, of Nelson, died in the crash Saturday along Nebraska Highway 14, about a mile north of Superior.

The sheriff’s office says Wheeland was northbound in a sport utility vehicle when she swerved to avoid hitting a car that apparently pulled out in front of her. She avoided the car but entered a ditch, hit an embankment and rolled several times. She was thrown from her SUV.

The car had been at a stop sign before pulling onto the highway. It was occupied by two teenage girls.

The sheriff’s office is investigating the crash.

A Nebraska man convicted for the third time of having sex with young girls has been sentenced to at least 20 years in prison.

Jake Laner, who is 26, has been sentenced in Madison County District Court on a charge of first-degree sexual assault.

His prison sentence is 25 to 50 years but a mandatory minimum means he must serve 20 years before he’s eligible for release.

Laner has two previous sex crime convictions in Cuming County from 2004 and was a registered sex offender last year when he became involved with a 15-year-old girl who became pregnant.

In court Friday he blamed the victim’s mother for condoning the relationship.

If he’s released from prison he’ll be under parole supervision for life.

(AP) —The National Weather Service says the tornado that hit Moore, Okla., had wind speeds up to 200 mph.

The weather service’s preliminary classification of Monday afternoon’s tornado was an EF-4 on the enhanced Fujita scale.

Authorities say emergency crews are working to rescue people trapped in Moore, which is southwest of Oklahoma City.  Rescuers are frantically searching the remains of an elementary school that took a direct hit.

Oklahoma City Police Capt. Dexter Nelson said emergency crews are trying to reach the affected areas. There were no immediate reports of injuries.

The suburb of Moore was hit hard by a tornado in 1999. The storm had the highest winds ever recorded near the earth’s surface.

(AP) — Authorities in Omaha have launched a task force to investigate any connection between last week’s killings of a Creighton University professor and his wife and the 2008 slayings of an 11-year boy and his family housekeeper.

Omaha Police Chief Todd Schmaderer said Monday that the public should report any suspicious activity as authorities investigate the deaths of Dr. Roger Brumback and his wife, Mary, as well as the unsolved 2008 stabbings of Thomas Hunter and 57-year-old Shirlee Sherman.

The Brumbacks were found slain May 14 in their Omaha home. Schmaderer has refused to say how they were killed.

Roger Brumback was a pathology professor and colleague of Thomas Hunter’s parents, who both work at Creighton. Schmaderer will only say authorities are “exploring very hard” the possibility the killings are related.

(AP) — Two FBI special agents on the agency’s elite Hostage Rescue Team have been killed in a training accident in Virginia.

The FBI’s national press office said in a statement Sunday that the accident happened off the coast of Virginia Beach on Friday. No other details were given and the cause is under investigation.

The special agents were identified as 41-year-old Christopher Lorek and 40-year-old Stephen Shaw,

FBI Director Robert Mueller said in the statement that “we mourn the loss of two brave and courageous men” and “our hearts are with their wives, children and other loved ones who feel their loss most deeply.”

The Hostage Rescue Team is part of the Critical Incident Response Group based at Quantico in northern Virginia.

An Omaha police officer is recovering after being bitten and punched by a 19-year-old woman who didn’t want to follow instructions.

Officer James Shade says police were called to a west Omaha apartment building around 2 a.m. Saturday because a man wanted a woman removed from his apartment.

Officers escorted the woman out and told her to leave, but that’s when she attacked Officer Michael Decker.

The woman was arrested on suspicion of assaulting an officer and possessing drug paraphernalia.

(AP) — Eligible landowners are being urged to enroll cropland affected by the 2011 Missouri River flood into two federal land conservation programs to take advantage of flood habitat recovery funds.

The Missouri River Post Flood Habitat Recovery Program provides eligible landowners incentives for enrolling cropland into the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Conservation Reserve Program and Continuous Conservation Reserve Program.

All lands eligible for CRP and CCRP located on the 500-year Missouri River Floodplain are eligible for the flood recovery program. There will be a one-time incentive payment of $100 per acre for each CRP acre enrolled with Farm Services Agency.

The next general signup is May 20-June 14. Landowners interested should contact Scott Luedtke at the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission at 402-471-5561 or scott.luedtke(at)nebraska.gov.

(AP) — The beef-processing company that makes the product that critics call “pink slime” continues to struggle more than a year after the initial stories on the lean bits of beef that Beef Products Inc. produced.

The Dakota Dunes, S.D., based company lost 80 percent of its business after the uproar over what BPI calls lean finely textured beef.

The meat BPI separated from trimmings and treated with ammonia to kill bacteria was widely used in hamburger, but consumers objected to it after media reports depicted it as unsavory.

The private company closed three of its four plants, scrapped expansion plans in South Sioux City and eliminated more than 700 jobs. Those won’t return soon.