The Nebraska Supreme Court has again been asked to determine whether a trial court unfairly ordered a Nebraska man to register as a sex offender.

In January, the state’s high court ruled that the due process rights of 32-year-old Chad Norman, of Wilcox, had been violated.

Norman was accused of fondling a boy and initially charged with child sexual assault, but pleaded no contest to simple assault.

Trial judges can order someone convicted of non-sex-based offenses to register as a sex offender if evidence shows the person committed a sex offense. But the state’s high court said the lower court relied only on prosecutors’ assertion that Norman had committed a sex offense.

The lower court was ordered to reconsider, and it again ordered Norman to register as a sex offender.

Nebraska sent the Omaha school district $6.3 million too much last year because the district mistakenly submitted a special education expense twice.

The Omaha World-Herald reports Omaha school board discussed the funding problem Monday night.

The state Education Department audited the district’s budget in August and discovered the district had submitted a special expense twice. State finance administrator Russ Inbody says this appears to be an error.

Inbody says he doesn’t know of any other school district in the state that made the same mistake.

Now that the error has been discovered, the state will deduct $6.3 million from this year’s payments to the district. This year the Omaha district has a general fund budget of about $484 million.

A judge has sentenced a Lincoln man to four to six years in prison for attacking another man with a machete.

The Lincoln Journal Star reported Tuesday that Juan Cruz will serve time for the Jan. 1 attack that sent his victim to the hospital with several injuries, including to his head.

Cruz pleaded guilty in October to second-degree assault. Police say Cruz broke into the victim’s apartment and attacked him with a two-foot machete. The victim used a hammer to fight back.

The newspaper reports the victim told authorities the attack was over a woman.

New York City police are questioning a suspect in the death of a subway rider who was shoved onto the tracks.

New York Police Department spokesman Paul Browne says investigators recovered security video showing a man fitting the description of the assailant working with street vendors near Rockefeller Center.

Police went there Tuesday and took him into custody.

Ki-Suck Han of Queens died shortly after being hit by a train Monday at the Times Square subway station.

Police say he tried to climb a few feet to safety, but got trapped between the train and the platform’s edge.

Subway pushes are unusual. Among the more high-profile cases was the January 1999 death of Kendra Webdale. A former mental patient admitted he shoved her to her death.

Omaha police say a trail of tossed stolen items helped lead them to four men suspected in at least two robberies.

KETV-TV in Omaha reports authorities took the men into custody early Tuesday morning following a car chase that involved several officers.

A police helicopter tracked the men after a robbery report included a description of a silver minivan. Police say the men in the van started throwing items out of the vehicle that included clothing and pellet guns.

Police say the men may be connected to another robbery just before midnight Monday.

A baby Jesus figure taken from a Pennsylvania church’s Nativity scene last year was found cradled in the arms of a nearby statue, just hours before the replacement statue was swiped.

The vintage figurine was taken last year from outside Chambersburg’s Central Presbyterian Church. It was found Sunday in the arms of a bronze Civil War soldier statue across the town square.

A local business had replaced the Jesus statue when the Nativity scene was set up a couple weeks ago. The Chambersburg Public Opinion reports that replacement statue was swiped sometime after services on Sunday.

Congregant Buffy Super calls the statue’s return a “Christmas miracle.” Another says the church will have to considering securing the statue to deter theft.

Twin spacecraft have captured the clearest sounds yet from Earth’s radiation belts — and they mimic the chirping of birds.

NASA’s Van Allen Probes have been exploring the hostile radiation belts surrounding Earth for just three months. But already, they’ve collected detailed measurements of high-energy particles and radio waves.

Scientists say these waves can provide an energy boost to radiation belt particles, somewhat like ocean waves can propel a surfer on Earth. What’s more, these so-called chorus waves operate in the same frequency as human hearing so they can be heard.

A University of Iowa physicist played a recording of these high-pitched radio waves at a conference Tuesday in San Francisco. Craig Kletzing says it sounds like the chirping of “alien birds” and crickets.

After more than eight years roaming Mars, the NASA rover Opportunity is still making discoveries.

Scientists said Tuesday the six-wheel, solar-powered vehicle has uncovered hints of clay minerals in outcrops along the western rim of a huge crater in the Martian southern hemisphere.

Clay minerals are important because they hold clues about the Martian climate. Studying them should help scientists determine whether surface conditions in the past could have been favorable for life. Until now, their presence has been spotted by orbiting spacecraft.

Results were released at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco.

Opportunity will stay at its current spot for several more months before heading south to an area believed to have a motherlode of clay minerals.

Opportunity landed in 2004 and outlasted its original, three-month mission.

Investigators are trying to determine what caused the crash that killed an eastern Nebraska couple on their way to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary.

The Lincoln Journal Star reports that Harold and Connie Wheeler of Tamora died Saturday afternoon after their car crossed the centerline and collided with a pickup truck.

Police Capt. Danny Reitan says investigators are looking into whether 76-year-old Harold Wheeler had a medical problem before the crash. Connie Wheeler was 71.

Both Wheelers died at the scene. The truck’s driver suffered only minor injuries.

The Wheelers were on their way to their son’s home in Lincoln where friends and family had gathered to celebrate their anniversary.

Friend Emily Greguras says the Wheelers were a nice couple who loved their dogs and cared about senior issues.

A new editor has been named to lead a social and natural sciences journal published by the University of Nebraska’s Center for Great Plains Studies.

Gary Willson will take over leadership of the journal Great Plains Research on Jan. 1. He will be replacing Robert Diffendal Jr., who led the journal for nine years.

Willson has been an ecologist and research coordinator with the National Park Service’s Great Plains Cooperative Ecosystem Studies Unit. He also has served as an adjunct associate professor in the University of Nebraska-Lincoln School of National Resources.

Willson has written more than two dozen articles on prairie species and landscapes.