A firefighter and a house occupant have been treated for injuries after a fire that gutted the house in northeast Nebraska.

The fire was reported around noon Wednesday in South Sioux City. Fire officials say embers in a grill used the night before rekindled and started a fire on a deck. The flames spread to the home.

Fire officials say a man who’d been in the house basement when the fire erupted was taken to a hospital for treatment. He’d been cut when he broke a window while trying to escape.

A firefighter was treated for heat exhaustion.

Authorities say that just five days after 37-year-old Daniel Cano left prison after serving time for drunken driving, he was caught driving drunk again.

Daniel Cano was sentenced on Wednesday to seven to 12 more years in prison.

Cano was arrested Jan. 16, after his car narrowly missed a police cruiser while Cano was driving in central Omaha. Authorities say his blood tested out at nearly four times the legal limit.

Cano had left prison on Jan. 11, having completed a sentence for his seventh drunken-driving conviction. It was his third prison stint for drunken driving.

(AP) — A central Pennsylvania woman will spend 60 days to two years in jail for hog-tying her 5-year-old grandson to a chair so she could go to a methadone clinic.

The Altoona Mirror reports 49-year-old Evelyn Himes, of Duncansville, was sentenced Wednesday after pleading no contest to endangering the welfare of a child and simple assault.

Police charged Himes after the boy’s preschool called county social workers after noticing a mark on his wrist. The boy told investigators he’d been tied down and investigators later determined Himes bound him with scarves. Himes claimed the boy was badly behaved and reminded the judge the court had given her custody of the boy.

Blair County Judge Jolene Kopriva told Himes that the boy has been well-behaved since he was placed in foster care and called Himes “misguided.”

(AP) — Some Omaha community groups are urging OPPD to phase out coal power and invest in more renewable energy production through wind and solar power.

The Sierra Club, Malcolm X Foundation and other groups presented a petition with more than 900 signatures on it to the Omaha Public Power District on Thursday.

The groups are especially concerned about OPPD’s north Omaha coal plant and its effect on the health of people who live nearby.

Retired nurse Cynthia Tiedeman says she worries that the pollutants emitted by the coal plant can irritate neighbors’ throats and lungs.

OPPD says it relies on the north Omaha coal plant to help it meet the power demands of more than 300,000 customers in southeast Nebraska.

A proposal to increase mental health services for children throughout Nebraska has won first-round approval from lawmakers.

Lawmakers advanced a bill Thursday that would create a pilot program to offer behavioral health services to children, using computer technology to connect them remotely with professionals.

The measure would establish three pilot clinics, with at least one in an urban area and one in a rural setting.

Sen. Amanda McGill says the bill is an extension of the promise she made to reform youth mental health services in the wake of Nebraska’s safe haven law. The law prompted parents to abandon older children at hospitals and emergency rooms, so they could gain access behavioral health services.

Lawmakers voted 35-0 to advance the bill.

 A leader of a North Texas county where six people died in a tornado has described a storm-damaged neighborhood as “total devastation.”

Hood County Commissioner Steve Berry before dawn today surveyed the damage in Granbury, about 40 miles southwest of Fort Worth.

Berry, who was a firefighter for more than 20 years, says the Ranch Brazos neighborhood has about 100 mobile homes and wood structures. He says a lot of the mobile homes were “wadded up” and rolled during last night’s twister.

Berry says all of the homes have significant damage and as many as half were destroyed. He says a lot of homes were built by volunteers with Habitat for Humanity.

Berry says houses can be rebuilt over time but the loss of a life is devastating to families.

The National Weather Service said the preliminary storm estimate for Wednesday night’s tornado in Granbury was an EF-4, based on the Fujita tornado damage scale. That means the storm carried wind speeds of 166 mph to 200 mph.

An eastern Nebraska family has lost its court challenge to a state requirement that public schools set aside time for the Pledge of Allegiance.

A  judge ruled earlier this week that the Stanosheck family, of Springfield, didn’t sufficiently state what injury the parents and their three children suffered because of the state rule.

The rule that went into effect Sept. 15 mandates that schoolchildren in kindergarten through 12th grade recite the pledge daily in the presence of a flag. But students who don’t wish to may stand or sit quietly instead.

In December attorney Kevin Stanosheck filed a petition for declaratory judgment on behalf of his wife and their children.

His petition says the Nebraska Education Department had acted beyond its authority.

(AP) — Lincoln’s parks and medians are awash in dandelions.

And Parks and Recreation Director Lynn Johnston says the drought is to blame for the yellow sea covering once-green expanses.

He says that in many spots, park grass is dead or sparse. That lets weeds thrive.

Park staffers didn’t apply weed killer in the fall because it requires moisture to work properly. And little herbicide is applied in spring because it can drift to neighboring lawns and gardens.

The department plans to spread grass seed on nonirrigated parkland in late summer and apply weed killer in early fall.

(AP) — An attorney has requested that a sheriff in southeast Nebraska be protected from questioning that could be used as evidence in an upcoming trial.

Attorney Vincent Valentino says Gage County Sheriff Millard “Gus” Gustafson’s knowledge of the case involving Elliot Hawkins is limited.

Hawkins is suing four employees of the department after he was cleared of wrongdoing in an alleged rape case. Hawkins called the investigation reckless.

Hawkins’ attorney, Joy Shiffermiller, says her client is entitled to know what Gustafson said to the defendants. Gustafson is not named in the lawsuit.

Jennifer Valenta told authorities in 2012 that she fabricated her story of rape and inflicted injuries on herself. She has been sentenced to at least two years in prison.

(AP)-A 29-year-old east-central Nebraska man has been ruled mentally incompetent to stand trial on allegations that he molested his 8-year-old niece.

Platte County District Judge Robert Steinke’s ruling followed a court-ordered psychiatric evaluation. The state evaluation said the St. Edward man was developmentally disabled and was unlikely to become competent for trial within the foreseeable future.

Prosecutor Demi Herman says the county will begin a civil commitment proceeding to hold the defendant indefinitely.

The Associated Press isn’t using the defendant’s name in order to protect the identity of the girl.

The man had been charged with first-degree sexual assault of a child. He was accused of assaulting the girl several times from October 2011 to February 2012, when she was 8 years old.