(AP) — A 19-year-old man has been sentenced to up to 20 years in prison for his role in a string of home burglaries in Lincoln last summer.

Lancaster County District Judge John Colborn on Friday gave Mark Fotopulos between 15 and 20 years in prison. Fotopulos has already served more than 180 days and will need to serve another seven years before he’s eligible for parole.

Fotopulos has been linked to multiple home burglaries last summer. Two other teenagers are also tied to the cases and face charges.

Police say many of the victims were home during the burglaries, which involved stolen items like jewelry, weapons and a car. Fotopulos is accused of attacking one homeowner in the face with an electronic game console.

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(AP) — Fire officials say a blaze has severely damaged an old building in downtown Plattsmouth.

The fire was reported around 11 p.m. Thursday at the Quart House Pub inside the structure. At least three businesses in the building and an apartment were affected. No injuries have been reported, but some firefighters fell on ice.

Seven departments were called in to help battle the blaze, but firefighters were hampered by the frigid weather. The National Weather Service says Plattsmouth temperatures hovered around zero or barely above, with wind chills reaching minus 14

The cause of the fire hasn’t been determined.

Plattsmouth is a city of about 6,500 residents that sits on the west bank of the Missouri River, 17 miles south of Omaha.

(AP) — Felony arrest warrants have been issued for a man and a woman in connection with the October homicide of an Omaha man.

The Omaha Police Department said Friday they’re looking for 27-year-old Amber L. Perez and 27-year-old Samuel Ochoa as they continue to investigate the death of 31-year-old Rodney Hunt.

Hunt was found in south Omaha in early October with at least one gunshot wound. He was taken to a local hospital and died days later.

23-year-old Anthony Floyd was arrested recently in the case. He is charged with first-degree murder and use of a weapon to commit a crime. Court records do not list an attorney.

Additional information has not been released.

(AP) — A Colorado teacher is facing charges after he was accused of asking students to send him topless photos of themselves.

The Fruita Police Department says 58-year-old public school teacher Randy Majors is facing 3 counts of sexual exploitation of a child and 5 counts of attempted sexual exploitation of a child.

According to an arrest affidavit, a parent told police she was going through her 16-year-old daughter’s Facebook account and found a message asking her daughter to send nude pictures of herself and to not tell anyone.

Authorities say Majors admitted he had asked a couple of girls for indecent pictures.

Majors could not be located for comment and court records did not indicate he has an attorney.

(AP) — Prosecutors won’t retry a Lincoln man who was granted a new trial on a charge of attempted sexual assault of a teenager.

Prosecutors have dropped the charges that were filed against Mohammed Nadeem after an August 2009 arrest.

The Nebraska Court of Appeals last year vacated Nadeem’s two convictions and said the jury should have been allowed to consider whether Nadeem was entrapped by police.

Nadeem was 22 when he was arrested. Police said he met a 14-year-old girl at a public library in Lincoln and gave her his phone number. Prosecutors say that and his other behavior at the library were substantial steps toward committing sexual assault.

(AP) — The Nebraska Supreme Court has rejected the appeal of a 23-year-old man given life in prison for his role in the 2011 slaying of an Omaha drug dealer.

Nicholas Ely was one of three people convicted of first-degree murder last year and sentenced to life for the July 2011 death of Kris Winters.

Ely argued in his appeal that there wasn’t enough evidence to convict him and that the trial judge gave a faulty jury instruction.

The court rejected Ely’s arguments in its ruling issued Friday. But the court said 531 days for time served wrongly had been applied to Ely’s life sentence for murder. The court ordered that the credit be applied to the sentence of five to 15 years Ely was given for use of a deadly weapon.

(AP) — A U.S. district judge in Lincoln who once wrote that it was “time to tell Congress to go to hell” has decided to end his blog.

Judge Richard Kopf says his “Hercules and the umpire” blog has exceeded his wildest expectations, so “it is time to kill it.”

Kopf says he’s written all that he wants to write in the 416 posts since the blog began in February.

In October he wrote during the partial government shutdown that he was fed up and that it was “time to tell Congress to go to hell.”

But he said in his farewell post Wednesday that no one gave him “the slightest trouble” about expressing himself on the blog and said he was “quitting voluntarily and without a nudge from anyone.”

(AP) — A 23-year-old man has been given 20 to 60 months in prison for trying to get the victim of his assault to change her story.

The office of Saunders County Attorney Scott Tingelhoff says Steven Bahm, of Memphis, was sentenced last month for witness tampering. Bahm also was given a consecutive term of a year for misdemeanor domestic assault.

Prosecutors say Bahm was arrested after a sheriff’s deputy was dispatched to check an altercation between a man and woman on Aug. 8. Prosecutors say that while Bahm was in custody, he contacted the woman and tried to talk her into changing what she told the deputy and told her what she needed to say to prosecutors and in court so his charges would be dismissed.

PLATTSMOUTH, Neb. (AP) — Seven departments have been called in to help battle a fire inside an old building in downtown Plattsmouth.

The fire was reported around 11 p.m. Thursday at the Quart House Pub inside the structure. Four businesses in the building and an apartment have been affected. No injuries have been reported.

Firefighters have been hampered by the frigid weather. The National Weather Service says Plattsmouth temperatures hovered around zero or barely above, with wind chills reaching minus 14

The fire cause hasn’t been determined.

Plattsmouth is a city of about 6,500 residents that sits on the west bank of the Missouri River, 17 miles south of Omaha.

(AP) — Heather Robbins and John Hermann were hoping their baby would arrive before the end of 2013 so they could claim him on their income tax forms.

No luck there, but his birth at 1:21 a.m. Wednesday at Methodist Women’s Hospital still filled the Omaha couple with joy. He weighed 7 pounds and 3 ounces.

In Lincoln, 2014’s first birth didn’t occur until 3:03 a.m. at St. Elizabeth Regional Medical Center. Adilyn Jean Galusha weighed 7 pounds, 7 ounces and was expected to soon go home with her parents, Frank Galusha and Skyler Novotny.

Hastings’ first child arrived at 5:58 a.m. Wednesday at Mary Lanning Hospital.