A judge has rescheduled the sentencing date for a Nebraska woman who pleaded no contest to faking an anti-gay hate crime.

Charlie Rogers will now face sentencing on March 14 in Lancaster County Court. A judge issued an order to delay the sentencing.

Rogers, a former University of Nebraska basketball star, was charged after she claimed she was attacked by three men who carved anti-gay slurs into her arms and stomach. Police later charged her with filing a false report, a misdemeanor.

Rogers maintains her innocence, but her attorney has said she didn’t want a court fight and more of the publicity that her case has generated.

The 34-year-old Rogers could face up to a year in jail and a $1,000 fine when sentenced.

Police say a suspect in a Topeka homicide is in custody after he engaged law enforcement officers in two gunfights in Nebraska.

Topeka police say in a news release that the 33-year-old man was arrested early Thursday after he allegedly robbed a convenience store and engaged in two gunfights in Johnson County, Neb., about 25 miles north of the Kansas-Nebraska border. One deputy was injured.

The man is a suspect in a shooting Wednesday in Topeka that left one man dead and a woman injured. The victim’s name has not been released.

Police said earlier that a woman and girl were with the suspect when he fled Topeka but it was unclear if they were with him when he was arrested.

No injuries have been reported after a small plane ran into a terminal at the Central Nebraska Regional Airport in Grand Island.

The Associated Press reports that fire crews were dispatched to the scene just before 3 p.m. Wednesday because fuel was leaking from the single-engine aircraft.

Airport Executive Director Mike Olson says the pilot had started the engine and was preparing to taxi onto a runway when he lost power to the brakes and nose wheel control. The plane rolled into the front of the Trego Dugan terminal, breaking a window and denting the plane’s nose.

Records say the plane had landed in Grand Island on its way from Chicago to the Rocky Mountain Metropolitan Airport near Broomfield, Colo.

Former Hemingford Police Chief Mark Lindburg has pleaded not guilty charges that he sexually assaulted a teenage girl.

Alliance radio station KCOW-AM reports that 52-year-old Mark Lindburg entered the pleas in Box Butte County District Court on Wednesday morning. Lindburg was arrested earlier this month. He is charged with first-degree sexual assault and child abuse.

Lindburg served as Hemingford’s police chief from November 2006 until he resigned without explanation in November 2011.

He also worked as a Box Butte County Deputy Sheriff for seven years and helped start a youth center in Hemingford in 2008.

Lindburg is in jail on $100,000 bail. His trial is set for April.

A 36-year-old Broken Bow man accused of shooting at an unoccupied Custer County sheriff’s department vehicle has been convicted.

A Custer County jury on Wednesday found Trent Esch guilty of felony criminal mischief and using a weapon to commit a felony. Prosecutors say Esch fired several bullets at the deputy’s vehicle while it was parked at the deputy’s home in Broken Bow on March 18 last year. No one was injured.

Prosecutors say Esch apparently had a personal vendetta against the deputy, who arrested Esch after he violated probation.

Esch is scheduled to be sentenced on March 21.

A May trial has been scheduled for a 48-year-old man accused of killing his 2-year-old grandson in the south-central Nebraska town of Naponee.

The Associated Press reports that Peter Draper is charged with intentional child abuse resulting in death and intentional child abuse resulting in serious injury. A court document says Draper had been seen hitting Joseph Rinehart Jr. An autopsy says the boy died April 30, 2012, of head and internal injuries.

Draper’s wife and the boy’s mother are charged with committing intentional child abuse resulting in death. Their trials haven’t been scheduled yet. All three have pleaded not guilty.

His trial will be held in Hastings, in part because the Franklin County courtroom acoustics would have been unfair to Draper because of his hearing impairment.

A bitterly divided Senate panel has voted to approve the nomination of Chuck Hagel to be the nation’s defense secretary.

The Armed Services Committee voted 14-11 to send the nomination to the full Senate. Tuesday’s vote broke along party lines with all 14 Democrats backing President Barack Obama’s choice.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is pushing for a full Senate vote by week’s end, but some Republicans are threatening to filibuster the nomination.

Hagel, a former two-term Republican senator and Vietnam combat veteran, faces strong opposition from GOP senators. They have questioned whether he is sufficiently supportive of Israel and too tolerant of Iran.

Democrats have the votes to confirm Hagel on a majority vote. He would succeed Defense Secretary Leon Panetta.

Nebraska prosecutors have raised the charge against a Texas man to first-degree murder.

Forty-seven-year-old Craig Johnson, of Lovelady, Texas, already had pleaded not guilty to a charge of second-degree murder. Prosecutors say he killed his girlfriend, 42-year-old April Smith, on Dec. 11, 2011, at the home they shared eight miles west of Sidney in the Nebraska Panhandle.

Cheyenne County Attorney Paul Schaub says new information obtained by investigators convinced him that Johnson’s was a first-degree murder case.

Authorities say Johnson became enraged at Smith because she’d let her estranged husband to fix her vehicle. People also reported to police that Smith planned to reconcile with her husband.

A trial date hasn’t been set.

Reminiscent of the Marlboro Man, the unofficial spokesman for the Heart Attack Grill in Las Vegas has died of a heart attack.

The Associated Press reports that 52-year-old John Alleman suffered a heart attack last week while waiting at a bus stop in front of the diner. He was taken off life support Monday.

The medically-themed restaurant is famous for its huge hamburgers, extra-fat milkshakes and fries cooked in lard. It uses the tagline, “taste worth dying for.”

Owner Jon Basso told the Las Vegas Sun that Alleman came to the diner every day. He became an unofficial mascot, and his caricature as “patient John” graced the front of the diners’ menus.

An autopsy has been performed on the body of a Saunders County jail inmate.

Authorities say 47-year-old Gloria O’Connor was found unresponsive in her cell about 1 a.m. Sunday. She was taken to a Lincoln hospital but could not be revived.

Sheriff Kevin Stukenholtz says O’Connor had been sick but wasn’t sick enough to go to a hospital.

Saunders County Attorney Scott Tingelhoff says a grand jury will be convened to investigate O’Connor’s death. State law requires such an investigation whenever someone dies in custody or while being arrested.

Blood and other tests on the body won’t be available for several weeks.