Five of the highest-ranking officials at the University of Nebraska will appear together a lunch event in Omaha.

The group will appear at a Rotary lunch at the Field Club at noon. The University of Nebraska’s President J.B. Milliken will be joined by the chancellors of all four university campuses.

Each of the five men will talk briefly about the university before the group takes questions.

The chancellors include the University of Nebraska Medical Center’s Harold Maurer, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s Harvey Perlman, the University of Nebraska at Omaha’s John Christensen and the University of Nebraska at Kearney’s Doug Kristensen.

The North American Aerospace Defense Command says North Korea appears to have launched “an object” into Earth orbit, but neither the missile used nor debris from the launch are a threat to North America.

NORAD officials said U.S. missile warning systems detected and tracked the launch at 7:49 p.m. EST Tuesday. The missile was tracked in a southerly direction.

NORAD said initial indications were that the first stage of the rocket fell into the Yellow Sea and that the second stage fell into the Philippine Sea.

Quoting a NORAD news release: “Initial indications are that the missile deployed an object that appeared to achieve orbit. At no time was the missile or the resultant debris a threat to North America.”

NORAD is based at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado.

 

Japan’s Foreign Ministry says it has registered a “strong protest” with North Korea over its rocket launch.

It said Wednesday that Tokyo also immediately requested consultations on the launch within the U.N. Security Council.

 

China is expressing its unhappiness that Pyongyang tested a long-range rocket despite deep concerns over the launch among its neighbors.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei told reporters Wednesday: “We express regret at (North Korea’s) launch in spite of the extensive concerns of the international community.”

Hong says China “believes U.N. Security Council reaction should be prudent and moderate and conducive to maintaining stability and avoiding escalation of the situation.”

Hong said dialogue and negotiations are the way forward. He says he hopes relevant countries will keep calm and maintain peace on the Korean Peninsula.

An Omaha mother says her 18-year-old daughter was sleeping at her grandmother’s house when she was fatally shot.

Police say Tre’Veona Smith was shot around 3:45 a.m. Sunday. One of the bullets that came through a window hit Smith in an arm and lodged in her heart. She died later at a hospital.

Tre’Veona Smith was a senior at Omaha’s Northwest High School. Her mother says the young woman wanted to be a lawyer.

Delgracious Smith says she wouldn’t wish her pain on her “worst enemy” and that police need to find her daughter’s killer.

No arrests have been reported.

A former University of Nebraska-Lincoln student is facing federal criminal charges because prosecutors say he hacked into a database of more than 650,000 student, alumni and employee records last spring.

The Lincoln Journal Star reports that 22-year-old Daniel Stratman made his initial court appearance last week.

Prosecutors say Stratman, who was studying computer science and math, accessed a protected computer without permission. The database that was broken into held records from the University of Nebraska’s campuses and the Nebraska State College System.

Officials have said they don’t believe any of the sensitive information in the database was downloaded.

Stratman’s attorney, Bob Creager, declined to comment. Stratman faces up to 10 years in prison and a $250,000 fine if he is convicted.

Officials say aviation fuel was pumped into cars after it was mistakenly delivered to three New Jersey gas stations.

Authorities closed a station in Lawrence, and two in Hamilton after the error was discovered.

Mercer County spokeswoman Julie Willmot tells The Times of Trenton the stations will remain closed until all underground storage tanks, lines and filters are emptied and cleaned.

State officials are investigating how the mistake happened.

Several cars stalled on Friday when a gas station in Keyport and one in Manasquan unknowingly pumped jet fuel into their tanks.

Republicans are again demanding that President Barack Obama name specific cuts in government spending that he would support as part of any compromise aimed at avoiding the “fiscal cliff.”

Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell says Obama seems to think that if he only talks about taxes, Americans will “forget that government spending is completely out of control.” McConnell says there are plenty of programs worth cutting, saying taxpayers “just spent $325,000 on a robotic squirrel named RoboSquirrel.”

The White House responds that it made an offer with “very specific” cuts — including more than $300 billion in proposed Medicare savings, and another $250 billion in non-health benefit programs.

House Speaker John Boehner (BAY’-nur) says Republicans have offered a plan that’s “consistent with the president’s call for a balanced approach.” And he says he’s waiting for the White House to do the same.

Meanwhile, the White House is coming under renewed pressure from within his own party, as liberal Democratic senators warn him against cutting the Medicaid health care program. They say cuts in the program that covers nearly 60 million low-income and disabled people shouldn’t be accepted as a trade-off with Republicans in exchange for higher income tax rates on the highest earners.

A top-secret mini-space shuttle has blasted off from Cape Canaveral.

The Air Force launched the unmanned spacecraft Tuesday aboard an Atlas V rocket.

It’s the second flight for this original X-37B spaceplane. It circled the planet for seven months in 2010. A second X-37B spacecraft spent more than a year in orbit.

These mystery machines are about one-quarter the size of NASA’s old space shuttles and they can land automatically on a runway.

The military isn’t saying much if anything about this new secret mission. But one scientific observer, Harvard University’s Jonathan McDowell of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, speculates the spaceplane is carrying sensors designed for spying and likely is serving as a testbed.

The two previous secret flights were in roughly 200-plus-mile-high orbits.

Another Florida man is suing the former Elmo puppeteer who resigned amid sex abuse allegations, claiming the voice actor befriended him in Miami and promised to be a father figure before flying him to New York to have sex with him.

The alleged victim is now the fourth to accuse Kevin Clash, who resigned from “Sesame Street” last month after 28 years. The three legal actions filed so far have been civil cases.

But Monday’s lawsuit could involve criminal charges because the victim claims Clash transported him across state lines for the purpose of engaging in sexual activity.

Attorney Jeff Herman said he encouraged his client to report the incident to authorities but it’s unclear if the victim had done so.

An email to Clash’s publicist was not immediately returned.

A traffic stop on Interstate 80 in Lancaster County led a Nebraska State Patrol trooper to seize 124 lbs of marijuana from an external fuel tank in the bed of a pickup.

Just after 2:00 p.m., Monday, December 10, a trooper stopped an eastbound 1999 Dodge pickup on I-80 near the Lincoln Airport exit  for failure to signal, failure to maintain lane and no front license plate. The trooper was given consent to search the vehicle. The search led to the seizure of 124.2 lbs of marijuana. The marijuana, contained in 63 packages, was located in a compartment beneath an external fuel tank in the bed of the pickup.

The driver and lone occupant of the vehicle, John W. Henman, 68, Boise, Idaho, was lodged in the Lancaster County Corrections on a charge of possession of marijuana with intent to deliver.

Former President George H.W. Bush continues to recover at a Houston hospital where he’s in the third week of treatment for a bronchitis-related cough.

Methodist Hospital spokesman George Kovacik said Monday that the 88-year-old Bush remains in stable condition. Kovacik says Bush continues to make progress but no discharge date has been set. Further details were not released.

The 41st president has been hospitalized since Nov. 23.

He and former first lady Barbara Bush divide their time between homes in Houston and Kennebunkport, Maine.