Platte County hopes to buy a machine to test road signs to make sure they can be seen.

The Columbus Telegram says supervisors took a step on Tuesday to buy a device called a retroreflectometer, which measures signs visibility.

A Florida company offered one for about $9,300. The cost would be shared by Platte, Colfax and Stanton counties. Each county plans to apply for a $2,500 grant to help offset the cost.

Platte County Administrative Assistant Jane Cromwell says the machine will help bring the county’s signs into compliance with new federal regulations and enhance road safety by identify signs that have lost their luminosity because of age or the weather.

Petitions seeking to repeal Omaha’s new legal protections for gay and transgender residents are now being circulated.

The Omaha World-Herald reports that organizers must gather about 11,400 valid signatures over the next month to put the measure before voters.

A local tea party organizer and clergy and Christian groups are supporting the effort.

The Omaha City Council narrowly approved the ordinance in March that bans employers, job-training programs, labor groups and other organizations from discriminating based on a person’s sexual orientation. The measure included exemptions for religious organizations.

The Lincoln City Council adopted a similar ordinance in May, but opponents mounted a successful petition drive that requires the council to either let the ordinance die or submit it for voter approval. The public vote has not yet been scheduled.

Mexican drug cartels are quietly filling the void in the nation’s drug market created by the long effort to crack down on American-made methamphetamine, flooding U.S. cities with cheap, potent meth from factorylike “superlabs.”

Although Mexican meth is not new to the U.S. drug trade, it now accounts for as much as 80 percent of the meth sold here, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration. And it is as much as 90 percent pure.

The cartels are expanding into the U.S. meth market just as they did with heroin: developing an inexpensive, highly addictive form of the drug and sending it through the same pipeline already used to funnel marijuana and cocaine, authorities said.

Seizures of meth along the Southwest border have more than quadrupled over the last several years.

A 60-year-old Minatare man has been given 30 to 40 years in prison after making a plea deal in a child sex assault and porn case.

David Nielsen was sentenced on Wednesday.

Nielsen originally was charged with sexual assault of a child and four counts of possessing child pornography. He pleaded no contest to attempted sexual assault of a child after prosecutors dropped the porn charges.

Scottsbluff County court records say someone who borrowed Nielsen’s phone to send a text found nude photos of a teenage girl on the phone. The records say Nielsen later told an investigator that he’d taken pictures of the girl and that he’d had sex with her since she was 13 or 14. She’s 16 now.

Authorities say a motorcyclist has been killed in an accident along U.S. Highway 75 north of Omaha.

Authorities say the accident occurred about 6 a.m. Thursday in the Nashville area on the south end of Washington County.

Authorities say the motorcycle was northbound when the driver apparently lost control after hitting an animal. The motorcycle swerved into a guardrail. The man was pronounced at the scene.

His name has not been released.

Authorities say two workers have been burned in an accident at a food plant in Norfolk.

Norfolk Fire Capt. Lyle Lutt says firetrucks were sent to the Henningsen Foods plant around 1:20 p.m. Wednesday.

The propane tank fire that prompted the 911 call had already been extinguished. But as workers checked the propane system, propane spewed out of a pressure relieve valve and was ignited by a pilot light on a nearby machine.

Lutt says that new fire soon ignited gas coming from a pressure relief fitting on another machine.

Lutt says two plant workers suffered second-degree burns on their faces, heads and arms. They were treated by firefighter medics but not hospitalized.

Democrat Joe Biden and Republican Paul Ryan pull up a couple of chairs for a vice presidential debate that has mushroomed in importance since Mitt Romney’s strong showing in the first presidential faceoff.

This time, it’s the Obama team looking to put the brakes on the other guy’s momentum.

The veep showdown Thursday night at Centre College in Danville, Ky., matches up two skilled politicians with strong policy credentials and very different styles.

It’s 69-year-old Biden’s folksy appeal and solid vice presidential portfolio vs. 42-year-old Ryan’s intensity and extensive knowledge of the federal budget and economy from 14 years in Congress.

Like the second installment in a miniseries, it will help to shape the campaign narrative until Romney and Obama themselves meet up again Tuesday.

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta has chosen former Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel to lead an advisory committee for 50th anniversary events commemorating the Vietnam War.

The Vietnam War Commemoration Advisory Committee will provide advice, vision and oversight for events in communities across the nation. The committee also will advise organizers of an educational program to preserve the legacy of Vietnam veterans.

President Barack Obama announced the commemoration effort at a ceremony at a Memorial Day ceremony at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial wall in Washington.

Hagel is a twice-wounded Army combat veteran of the war who represented Nebraska in the U.S. Senate from 1997 to 2009.

U.S. military advisers were first attached to South Vietnamese units in 1962.

A Nebraska City man has been given a two-year sentence for selling identity documents.

A news release from the office of U.S. Attorney Deborah Gilg (gihlj) says Gerardo Rangel Rojas, aka Ivan Lara Rojas, was sentenced last week by U.S. District Judge John Gerrard. Rangel Rojas must serve three years of supervised release after he leaves custody.

Gilg’s office says Rangel Rojas was one of 53 people indicted in Puerto Rico. They were accused of obtaining sets of Puerto Rican-issued birth certificates and corresponding U.S. Social Security cards, then selling the documents to people in the Nebraska City area.

Lincoln police are looking for a man who phoned in his demands to a pharmacy.

Police spokeswoman Katie Flood says the man called a 24-hour pharmacy around 3:45 a.m. Wednesday. He told the employee who answered the phone to put opium-based narcotics in a plastic bag and leave the bag outside, on the north side of the building.

The man didn’t make any threats about what would happen if the pharmacy worker didn’t comply.

The worker didn’t fill the order and instead called police.

A man seen nearby was tracked to a residential area, but he was not found.

No arrest has been reported.