(AP) — Authorities in western Iowa found a southeast Nebraska man dead inside his overturned car this weekend.

The Shelby County Sheriff’s office found 21-year-old Tanner Merz’ 2003 Ford Taurus upside down in a ditch along a county road south of Irwin early Saturday.

Authorities say the car was sitting on its roof when first responders arrived. Paramedics worked to extract the Falls City, Neb. man from his car, but Merz died at the scene.

Investigators say Merz was driving north when he lost control of his vehicle.

According to his obituary, Merz was a student at Midland Lutheran University studying teaching an coaching.  He is survived by his parents and three brothers.

 (AP) — Declaring their business “The Husker Bar” made perfect sense to the new owners of Barry’s, but the bar owners forgot to check whether the University of Nebraska would mind.

That decision is proving costly now because the sports bar a few blocks away from campus is redoing all of its shirts, glassware and signage.

One of the bar’s co-owners Kevin Fitzpatrick says he was surprised when he received a letter asking him to drop the Husker tagline at Barry’s because there are so many businesses in Lincoln that use Husker somewhere in their names.

But Fitzpatrick learned that officials at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln don’t want the school to be associated with a bar or restaurant.

(AP) — A Nebraska woman is in an Omaha hospital with life-threatening injuries after being pulled from a burning recreational vehicle.

The RV caught fire on a street in Papillion. Tom Akins was driving in the area and says he saw the RV pull over with smoke coming from it. He pulled over to help, and saw the occupants push a dog out of the RV’s window. Akins says as he approached the RV, flames began to erupt from it, and he heard a woman screaming inside.

Akins managed to break out the windshield with a hammer, and he and other pulled the 47-year-old woman from the RV.

Theresa Harazin, of Papillion, was flown to an Omaha hospital with burns to her entire body.

Lincoln Public Schools and the Nebraska School Activities Association will pay a Falls City woman $150,000 to settle a lawsuit she filed after falling on the district’s icy sidewalks in 2010.

Barbara Froeschl’s lawsuit said she was on her way to watch the Falls City Sacred Heart High School girls compete in the state basketball tournament when she slipped on an icy sidewalk at Lincoln High that had not been properly cleared and did not have warning signs.

Froeschl says she suffered multiple pelvic fractures and incurred nearly $33,000 in medical expenses in little more than a year. She says she also lost wages and suffers permanent injury.

The school district will pay $140,000 and NSAA, $10,000.

Omaha police say a second officer has been placed on administrative leave as the department investigates a recorded incident that has led to accusations of police brutality.

Police said in a news release Saturday that the officer placed on leave is in addition to another officer placed on leave last week and two officers who have been reassigned.

Police again declined to name the officers involved.

Police Chief Todd Schmaderer ordered an internal investigation a day after a video turned up online showing an officer grabbing 28-year-old Octavius Johnson from behind, violently throwing him to the ground and punching him while he was restrained.

The March 21 arrest was secretly recorded by a neighbor. The arrest happened after officers responded to an on-going parking complaint in a north Omaha neighborhood.

(AP)-Authorities in Tennessee have found the body of a man who was thrown from an experimental aircraft while an instructor was teaching him to fly.

Bradley County Interim Fire Chief Troy Spence says search crews located the deceased student pilot at about 11:45 a.m. Saturday. He declined to release the man’s name.

Collegedale Municipal Airport employee Lowell Sterchi told the Chattanooga Times Free Press that the man was being trained by an instructor in his Zodiac 601 aircraft on Friday when the canopy came off. The instructor also was not identified.

The man’s seat belt was not fastened and he was thrown out of the plane.

Sterchi said the instructor landed the plane and was not physically hurt. He says the Federal Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board have been notified.

A Lincoln woman who ordered her 11-year-old son to steal from a local store has been sentenced to jail.

The incident occurred last October, when employees at SuperSaver in Lincoln watched a young boy fill a cart with groceries and push it out the front door, without paying.

Police say the boy filled his cart with nearly $200 worth of Hot Pockets, shredded cheese, bread, dog treats, soda and toilet paper.

What’s was even more surprising, was the fact that the boy told police his mother had directed him to do it.

According to a police report, store security confronted the boy in the parking lot on October 18.  The boy told security that his mother, Batrina Perez,  had given him a shopping list, then told him to go into the store and steal everything on the list.

The boy stated that his mother was supposed to wait for him in front of a nearby store.

When police contacted Perez the next day, she told them that the boy was lying.  However, a security camera had captured her driving off in her SUV when she saw security officer confront the boy.

She pleaded no contest to negligent child abuse, and on Friday, Lancaster County Judge Gale Pokorny, sentenced her to six months in jail.

The boy was not charged with the crime.

(AP) — Authorities in a Charlotte suburb say a man suspected of shooting two neighbors has committed suicide after a six-hour police standoff.

The Charlotte Observer is reporting that Cabarrus County sheriff’s deputies said late Friday that the suspected shooter shot himself as deputies and SWAT team members surrounded the house where he was hiding.

Late Friday afternoon, deputies responded to a report of a man shooting a gun at a house. They said the suspect shot two neighbors in what was described as a neighborhood feud. Neighbors told the newspaper that the two victims were adult males.

WBTV-TV reports that a woman and her young children were able to escape the home where the initial shootings occurred.

Sheriff Brad Riley couldn’t immediately be reached for comment by the Associated Press.

(AP) — A northeast Washington judge has found two boys, ages 10 and 11, competent to stand trial in juvenile court on a murder conspiracy charge.

Stevens County Prosecutor Tim Rasmussen says the fifth-graders had a handwritten plan listing seven steps leading up to the planned killing of a female classmate. That list was submitted as evidence at their mental capacity hearing Friday.

A county judge ruled that the boys understood the nature and consequences of their actions. They pleaded not guilty to conspiracy to commit murder, witness tampering and juvenile possession of a firearm.

The boys were arrested Feb. 7 at Fort Colville Elementary School after a fourth-grader saw one playing with a knife on a school bus and told a school employee. A backpack search also turned up a .45-caliber semi-automatic pistol and ammunition.

The boys are being held on $100,000 bond each. Both a defense psychiatrist and a state psychologist say they present a danger to the community.

Police were alerted after officials at an Omaha elementary found what appeared to be marijuana in a third-grader’s backpack, but officers determined the substance was catnip.

Omaha Public Schools spokesman David Patton says administrators at Miller Park Elementary called police Friday to report the substance found in a bag.

Officer Michael Pecha says when police arrived, they determined it was catnip, not marijuana.

The school principal says the student told authorities he found the bag on his way to school.