(AP) — Nebraska lawmakers have advanced a bill that would require insurance companies to offer coverage for autism therapy.

The measure won first-round approval on Wednesday after several failed attempts to attach it to other bills in the final days of this year’s session. The sponsor, Sen. Colby Coash of Lincoln, said earlier this week that he wasn’t going to drop the issue even though the bill’s prospects looked bleak.

The proposal would allow for up to 25 hours per week of covered therapy, until the insured person turns 21 years old.

It also would also end a 2015 sunset date for a law that allows coverage for oral cancer drugs, and require coverage to pay for a special formula that treats a rare children’s digestive disorder.

(AP) — A 20-year-old man has pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in the rape and beating death of a 93-year-old Omaha woman in a deal that spared him the death penalty.

Sergio Martinez-Perez entered the plea Wednesday in Douglas County District Court and was immediately sentenced to life in prison.

Police say Perez broke into the south Omaha house Louise Sollowin had occupied for more than 70 years in July and raped and beat her. She died three days after the attack from her injuries. Prosecutors say Perez told investigators he attacked Sollowin because he was drunk and “angry with women.”

He was initially charged with first-degree murder, first-degree sexual assault, first-degree assault and burglary. Prosecutors had planned to seek the death penalty until his plea Wednesday.

(AP) — Fremont police will begin issuing occupancy licenses on Thursday as part of the city’s ordinance aimed at combating illegal immigration.

Fremont is one of only a handful of cities trying to restrict illegal immigration and, like those other cities, has found itself mired in court fights because of the regulations. City leaders put the ordinance on hold after the 2010 vote while courts reviewed it. A portion requiring employers to use the federal E-Verify system already has been implemented.

In February nearly 60 percent of voters decided to keep the housing portion of the ordinance.

Police Chief Jeff Elliott said that each rental property occupant 18 or older must obtain an occupancy license. The ordinance doesn’t affect people living in rentals before Thursday.

 

(AP) — An expected effect of drought has caught parts of the West off guard.

Mini-storms of tumbleweed have invaded the drought-stricken prairie of southern Colorado, blocking rural roads and irrigation canals, and briefly barricading homes and an elementary school.

The invasion of the tumbleweed, an iconic symbol of both the West’s rugged terrain and the rugged cowboys who helped settle it, has conjured images of the Dust Bowl of 80 years ago, when severe drought unleashed them onto the landscape.

County governments have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to get rid of the weeds that have clogged the roads. Counties must also deal with miles of irrigation ditches that are choked by the invasive weed.

Parts of New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas are also affected.

(AP) — Federal regulators say they will propose requiring at least two crew members on trains transporting crude oil, as well as regulations aimed preventing parked train cars from coming loose and causing an accident.

The Federal Railroad Administration proposals are a response to several accidents involving oil trains from the Bakken region of North Dakota. Last July, an unattended parked train came loose, sped downhill into the town of Lac-Megantic in Quebec, Canada. More than 60 tank cars caught fire and several exploded, killing 47 people and destroying much of the town.

The train was manned by only one railroad employee, who wasn’t present at the time the cars came loose.

Freight rail industry officials have been divided over whether one-crew member trains should be allowed to continue.

(AP) — Lincoln police say an associate director of a national child welfare organization is accused of exposing himself to some teenage girls at a Lincoln hotel.

Officer Katie Flood says 68-year-old Steven Preister, of Washington, D.C., confronted four girls as they came out of a stairwell at the Cornhusker Marriott between 9:30 p.m. and 10 p.m. Monday and yelled at them for being too loud. He was wearing only a T-shirt and appeared to be intoxicated.

The girls were staying at the hotel while attending a leadership conference. Flood says two adult chaperons also saw what happened.

Online court records say Preister has already pleaded not guilty to misdemeanor charges of public nudity and disturbing the peace.

Preister is associate director of the National Child Welfare Resource Center for Organizational Improvement.