GRAND ISLAND, Neb. (AP) — The Grand Island city attorney says the City Council didn’t violate the state’s public meetings law when the council split up to privately interview candidates for the Ward 1 seat on the council.

Before Tuesday’s open council meeting, the council divided itself into groups of four and five to talk to the three candidates. A public meeting would have been required if a quorum of six members were present.

City attorney Bob Sivick says the closed meetings didn’t violate Nebraska’s Open Meeting Act, which requires public bodies to meet in public except for specific exceptions. The groups met just feet apart in the administration suite on the first floor of City Hall, interviewing the same three people separately for 30 minutes each.

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — Omaha’s fire chief says his department ambulances will send trauma patients only to Nebraska Medical Center and not to Creighton University Medical Center, which is not a certified Level 1 trauma center.

Fire Chief Bernie Kanger said Tuesday that the decision doesn’t suggest that the Creighton hospital “has been lacking.”

The department had been sending trauma patients to both hospitals, depending on the day of the week. But state authorities have rejected CHI Health’s application for Level I status for Creighton’s trauma center.

The state’s chief medical officer told Creighton hospital officials in a letter last week that a review team found in October that the trauma center failed to meet four out of more than 160 standards. Creighton officials say they’re working with the state to resolve the situation.

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — An Omaha man has been sentenced to at least a year in prison after pleading guilty to soliciting sex from an investigator posing online as a 15-year-old girl.

A Lancaster County district judge sentenced 38-year-old David Kucinsky to one to three years in prison. He pleaded guilty to a felony charge of enticing by electronic communication device.

According to court documents, Kucinsky posted an online ad seeking regular contact with a young girl. An investigator with the Nebraska Attorney General’s Office pretended to be a teenage girl and answered the ad.

The two exchanged emails for a month, and authorities say Kucinsky asked for nude photos.

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — The shooting death of a 16-year-old Omaha student last year has inspired the creation of a smartphone app to help students safely walk home from school.

The Smart Walk, or SMALK, app uses crime, weather and traffic updates to give kids the safest walking route home. It can also help organize groups to walk together, call police and let parents know when kids safely arrive at school and home.

The app was inspired by Johntavious Swift, who was shot and killed in September minutes after he got off of his school bus.

The app, developed by middle school students at King Science and Technology Magnet Center, was recently named Nebraska’s best in the Verizon Innovative App Challenge and will compete Friday for a regional Top 24 spot and $5,000.

WEST ALLIS, Wis. (AP) — For women who have survived breast cancer, breast or nipple reconstruction can be a first step toward looking like their old selves.

Now, a Colorado organization called P.ink is helping some of those women, and others who don’t choose reconstruction, in their emotional healing — through tattoos to help conceal their scars.

Its first annual P.ink Day was in 2013, when it connected tattoo artists with 10 women in Brooklyn, New York. In 2014, the event expanded and helped 38 women in 12 cities in the U.S. and Canada.

P.ink’s charitable arm also raises money to pay experienced tattoo artists for working with survivors during other parts of the year.

P.ink also created a smartphone app where women can look at designs and try one on via photo.

IOWA CITY, Iowa (AP) — A video shows officers failed to guard an Iowa drunken driving suspect who escaped from a State Patrol car while handcuffed and was struck by a van and killed.

Matthew Lentzkow’s death has brought attention to how Iowa State Patrol vehicles lack cages to transport suspects to jail.

Lentzkow’s father, Gary Lentzkow, says the trooper who made the Nov. 1 stop and two sheriff’s deputies who arrived as backup should not have allowed his son to unbuckle himself and get out of the patrol car.

Jasper County Sheriff John Halferty says officers in hindsight should have put the 36-year-old Newton man in the cage of a sheriff deputy’s car and had someone watch him.

He says the officers believed they were doing everything right at the time.

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — Authorities say they have broken up a branch of a Mexican drug cartel dealing methamphetamine in the Omaha area.

Police announced Tuesday the arrests of 20 people associated with the Sinaloa drug cartel in Mexico following an 18-month investigation.

The Omaha Police Department and the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency deployed investigators who received tips that a woman in charge of a sizeable methamphetamine ring was operating near Omaha. The investigation led officials to the source of the supply in California and the discovery of Nebraska and Iowa customers, who bought the methamphetamine and resold it in smaller amounts.

Authorities say they gathered about 12.5 pounds of methamphetamine and more than $35,000.

Most are charged with conspiracy to distribute methamphetamine, an offense that could mean 20 years to life in prison.

COLUMBUS, Neb. (AP) — Street department workers have a new weapon to battle winter weather in Columbus, and it’s made by a local company.

The salt brine production system is built by Duo Lift Manufacturing, of Columbus. Officials say it provides a brine that melts snow and ice faster than rock salt alone and uses up to 40 percent less rock salt that the city’s old application process.

Jim Hellbusch, who runs Duo Lift with his wife and two sons, says roads can be pretreated before a storm, and then another coat can be applied after the snow stops. Hellbusch says the process melts the snow from the top and bottom, turning it to slush that can be easily plowed away before it becomes a hardened snowpack.