A team of smokejumpers parachuting into a fire in the mountains of Southern Oregon landed in an illegal marijuana garden being prepared for growing season.

The six smokejumpers from a base in Redmond found the site Monday evening, when there was a rash of lightning strikes.

Jackson County sheriff’s spokeswoman Andrea Carlson says the smokejumpers notified authorities, who hiked into the remote site in the Rogue River-Siskiyou (SIS’-kee-yoo) National Forest. They seized two guns and more than 1,000 little pot plants.

Carlson says the site near the community of Applegate was being cultivated by growers for Mexican drug gangs, and it’s been used before.

She says the smokejumpers saw some people but weren’t sure whether they were pot growers, so no one was arrested.

The smokejumpers extinguished the fire after it burned less than an acre.

The Nebraska Supreme Court will hear arguments in the appeal of an Omaha man given life in prison for the gang-related shooting death of a 20-year-old man.

Trevelle Taylor was 17 when prosecutors say he shot Justin Ganines to death in 2009. He was sentenced after turning 18 in 2010 to life in prison. While the words “life without parole” do not appear in his sentence, the sentencing judge set no discharge date for Taylor “until the Pardons Board of the State of Nebraska commutes the sentence or offers a specific term of years.”

The now 21-year-old Taylor’s attorney says that amounts to a life sentence without parole and cited a U.S. Supreme Court ruling last year declaring mandatory life-without-parole sentences for juvenile killers unconstitutional.

The Union Pacific Railroad is updating information from a morning collision between two trains in central Iowa.

An eastbound coal train and westbound train carrying cargo containers collided Thursday morning derailing 13 coal cars and 22 cars of the intermodal cargo train —which carries ocean-going containers on flatbed cars. That’s more train cars than originally reported.

Union Pacific spokesman Mark Davis says there are no injuries.

The crash shut down a section of the company’s mainline track near Grand Junction about 60 miles northwest of Des Moines.

The cause of the 6:20 a.m. collision is not immediately clear.

Davis says the derailment has halted traffic on main tracks between Chicago and the company’s Iowa and Nebraska destinations. Trains are being detoured. Cleanup is expected to be finished late Friday.

(AP) — An inmate is suing Nebraska’s corrections agency over the confiscation of pencil drawings that depict nudity and sex acts.

Christopher Payne filed a lawsuit last month in Lancaster County District Court against the state Department of Correctional Services. He claims officials at Tecumseh State Correctional Institution violated his constitutional rights by taking 11 pencil drawings from his cell between October and January.

34-year-old Payne says he thought his drawings were a legitimate form of artistic expression.

The corrections agency’s policy on hobbies bans artwork depicting nudity, sex acts, violence, bondage, sadomasochism, bestiality and acts of degradation.

The newspaper reports that corrections officials did not respond to a request for comment on the policy.

(AP) — The International Space Station has a radiator leak in its power system. The outpost’s commander calls the situation serious, but not life-threatening.

The six-member crew on Thursday noticed white flakes of ammonia leaking out of the station. Ammonia runs through multiple radiator loops to cool the station’s power system. NASA said the leak is increasing from one previously leaking loop that can be bypassed if needed. NASA spokesman Bob Jacobs said engineers are working on rerouting electronics just in case the loop shuts down. The Earth-orbiting station has backup systems.

Space station Commander Chris Hadfield of Canada tweeted that the problem, while serious, was stabilized. Officials will know more Friday.

The space station always has enough emergency escape ships for the crew, but there are no plans to use them.

An Iowa man who illegally made and sold fireworks and explosive devices has been sentenced to 46 months in prison.

U.S. District Judge John Jarvey approved the sentence Wednesday for 31-year-old Rodney Crosby of Pisgah, in western Iowa.

The sentence had been recommended under a plea agreement in which Crosby admitted guilt to being a felon in possession of firearms and explosive devices.

Investigators were called to Crosby’s home in 2011 during a domestic disturbance, and they found a cache of guns, ammunition, home-made explosive devices and commercial fireworks. Crosby told agents that he made good money manufacturing and selling fireworks, including some so powerful they could take down wooden utility poles.

Crosby had earlier been convicted of felonies for theft and insurance fraud in Nebraska, where he grew up.

 

(AP) — A 28-year-old York man has been given three years of probation for using a stolen gas credit card.

At his sentencing earlier this week, Joseph Stoll also was ordered to pay restitution of nearly $900 to United Farmers Cooperative.

Court records say Stoll had pleaded no contest to unauthorized use of a financial transaction device. Prosecutors dropped a conspiracy charge in exchange for Stoll’s plea.

Prosecutors say the card was stolen from United Farmers Cooperative in May or before and used by Stoll and others.

Authorities say a plastic surgeon in Miami attacked his girlfriend for several hours over a Facebook posting, forcing her head into a toilet and stuffing a rag in the woman’s mouth at one point.

Police say 41-year-old Orlando Llorente was charged Wednesday with kidnapping and attempted murder.

According to police, Llorente grabbed the 36-year-old woman by the hair on April 21, took her into the bathroom and stuck her head in the toilet. Authorities say he also forced her into the bathtub, stuffed a rag in her mouth and poured water over her face.

Police didn’t say what was in the Facebook posting.

Llorente’s attorney, Marcos Beaton, told several Miami TV stations that his client surrendered voluntarily to police and wants to clear his name. He says the allegations against Llorente are false.

(AP)-Sheriff’s officials in rural Northern California say the man suspected of killing his wife and two young daughters at their home shot them to death.

The Shasta County sheriff’s disclosed how the three victims were killed at a news conference Wednesday afternoon.

The suspect, 45-year-old Shane Franklin Miller, remains on the loose.

Lt. Dave Kent says authorities found Miller’s wife, 34-year-old Sandy, and his daughters, 8-year-old Shelby and 4-year-old Shasta, suffering from fatal gunshot wounds when they arrived at the home in Shingletown on Tuesday night.

Shane Miller wasn’t there.

Investigators have released a photo of Miller and said he may be driving a gold-colored 2010 Dodge Mega Cab pickup with a camper shell. He’s considered armed and extremely dangerous.

The defense attorney for a man arrested in what the FBI has called a thwarted terror plot in western Minnesota says authorities have given the public misinformation about his client.

A detention hearing was postponed Wednesday for 24-year-old Buford Rogers of Montevideo, who appeared in U.S. District Court in St. Paul. Assistant Federal Defender Andrew Mohring requested additional time to investigate the accusations against his client.

Rogers is charged with one count of illegally possessing a firearm. He was arrested Friday after authorities found a cache of explosives and weapons in his parent’s mobile home in Montevideo.

The FBI says the attack was still being planned. They have not released details of their investigation.

Rogers has a prior felony burglary conviction and isn’t allowed to have a gun.