The hunt for a man suspected of shooting a police officer in northwest Iowa has spread to Omaha.

Officers surrounded a block about a mile west of downtown Omaha on Thursday night, but Jamal Dean wasn’t found during the 90-minute search.

He’s suspected of shooting Sioux City Police Officer Kevin McCormick. Authorities believe Dean has ties to the Omaha area.

Police say McCormick pulled over a car on Monday afternoon in Sioux City. McCormick was still in his cruiser when a man stepped out of the car and opened fire with a rifle. McCormick was hit in the head by a bullet fragment. He’s been released from a hospital.

A $15,000 reward has been offered for information leading to the capture of Dean.

Billionaire Warren Buffett is known for being reluctant to invest in technology companies, but he now has a Twitter account.

Buffett unveiled his new @WarrenBuffett online handle on Thursday during a speech.

Buffett has always resisted investing in technology companies because he says he can’t predict the future of those businesses the same way he can in insurance or manufacturing businesses.

Buffett says even though he may not understand Twitter well, he knows it can’t be all bad because one of the company’s co-founders is from Nebraska.

Buffett’s first tweet said simply “Warren is in the house.”

Buffett doesn’t have a computer in his office at work, but he does use one at home for research, writing and playing bridge online.

Marijuana magazines are under scrutiny in Colorado, where lawmakers might require stores to put them behind the counter.

The unusual provision to treat pot magazines like pornography faced a hurdle in the Senate Thursday. It was added to a marijuana regulation measure last week when the House debated it.

High Times magazine says the provision would make Colorado the only state to treat pot magazines like porn. A lawyer for the magazine says it would consider suing if the provision is signed into law.

The Senate committee considering the magazine provision is also debating whether to retain another contentious measure added by the House to the regulation bill. That is whether to revive a blood-level driving limit rejected four times by the Senate.

Two men have pleaded not guilty to various charges stemming from the slaying of a Lincoln man last year.

Adrian Casares and Miguel Castillo entered their pleas during their arraignments on Wednesday.

Neither has been charged with the homicide in the killing of 25-year-old Tyler Schoenrock. He was shot three times.

Casares is charged with terroristic threats and a weapons count. Police say he threatened Schoenrock during a confrontation late Dec. 29 at a Lincoln apartment.

Castillo is charged with being an accessory to murder. He’s told investigators that Casares shot Schoenrock when the three of them rode into the countryside on the north side of Lincoln, where Schoenrock’s body was found on Dec. 30.

Their trial dates haven’t been set.

(AP) — Autism scientists are seeking more brain samples for research.

They announced Thursday a new network collecting brain specimens around the country. They say the more they get, the better the chances of finding better ways to treat the developmental disorder.

So far the network has four sites: Mount Sinai medical school in New York, the University of California in Davis, the University of Texas Southwestern in Dallas, and McLean Hospital near Boston.

A freezer malfunction damaged many of that Harvard-affiliated hospital’s specimens. Neuroscientist Robert Ring of the advocacy group Autism Speaks says the network was planned before that.

Ring says the network has more than 6,000 people signed up to be donors after death. Brains from people with autism and without are needed.

(AP)- The teenage daughter of a woman who secretly left her family 11 years ago says she’s angry and doesn’t want to have a relationship with her.

Morgan Heist said Thursday that she’s still trying to sort out why Brenda Heist would have decided to abandon her and her brother in Pennsylvania in 2002 and hitchhike with strangers to Florida.

Morgan Heist is now a 19-year-old freshman at a community college outside Philadelphia. She says she thinks about how she’s spent the last decade mourning a woman who was alive.

Morgan says that knowing what she knows now, she wishes she never cried over her mom’s fate.

Brenda Heist’s mother says she’s been released from police custody and is staying with a brother in northern Florida.

Lawmakers have passed a new sentencing range of 40 years to life for murders that were committed by a juvenile.

The bill won final approval on Thursday, 38-1.

The measure was introduced by Sen. Brad Ashford of Omaha in the wake of a U.S. Supreme Court ruling that declared mandatory life-without-parole sentences for juveniles unconstitutional.

The proposal represented a compromise between lawmakers who supported 30-year minimum sentence, and others who pushed for at least 60 years.

It also allows judges to consider mitigating factors in a case, including a juvenile’s maturity and efforts toward rehabilitation.

The bill now goes to Gov. Dave Heineman.

(AP) — Maryland has become the first state south of the Mason-Dixon line to abolish the death penalty in more than 50 years.

Democratic Gov. Martin O’Malley signed the measure at a crowded ceremony on Thursday. Attending was one-time Maryland death row inmate Kirk Bloodsworth. He is the first person in the U.S. freed because of DNA evidence after being convicted in a death penalty case.

West Virginia did away with capital punishment in 1965.

The bill will not apply to the five men the state has on death row, but the governor can commute their sentences to life without parole. O’Malley has said he will consider them on a case-by-case basis.

The state’s last execution was in 2005.

Supporters of the death penalty could still try to petition the bill to the ballot.

Nebraska law officers are already discussing security arrangements for construction of an oil pipeline, even though the pipeline hasn’t been given a final federal blessing.

The Nebraska State Patrol invited county sheriffs and prosecutors along the pipeline’s path through Nebraska to a meeting in Grand Island last week.

Nance County Sheriff Dave Moore says the law officers are anticipating Nebraska protests that would echo those occurring during construction of the pipeline leg between Cushing, Okla., and refineries on the Gulf Coast in Texas.

Pipeline opponent Jane Kleeb says there likely would be acts of civil disobedience in Nebraska but no violence.

The proposed Keystone XL pipeline would deliver 830,000 barrels of U.S. and Canadian crude oil per day to the refineries.

A 23-year-old Beatrice man has been given a year behind bars for leaving the scene of an accident in Beatrice last year.

Andrew Drent was sentenced in Gage County District Court on Wednesday. He’d pleaded no contest to attempted failure to stop and render aid after making a deal with prosecutors, who lowered the charge.

Investigators say Drent’s car ran into a bicyclist on July 21, 2012. Drent continued driving and then left his vehicle in a parking lot. He was arrested after he was contacted at his home.

Defense and prosecution lawyers had jointly recommended two years of probation for Drent, but Judge Paul Korslund told Drent he was giving him the year’s sentence as “a wake-up call.”