Republican U.S. Sen.-elect Deb Fischer says she and her husband, Bruce, plan to go apartment hunting in the Washington, D.C. area sometime next week.

Fischer was elected Tuesday to replace Democratic Sen. Ben Nelson, who opted not to seek a third term. She handily defeated Democratic rival Bob Kerrey, a former Nebraska governor and two-term U.S. Senator. Kerrey was also a 1992 Democratic presidential candidate.

Fischer, who will be sworn in as Nebraska’s newest U.S. Senator in January, said her Washington digs will not be anything fancy.

She said she’ll probably settle for a one-bedroom apartment, much like she has had in Lincoln while serving in the Nebraska Legislature for the last eight years.

A high school senior collapsed and died during a basketball game at his small school in southeast Nebraska this week.

KOLN television reports that Terron Jones died Wednesday while playing basketball in the Johnson-Brock high school gym.

Superintendent Jeff Koehler says Jones and several other students had just finished one game and were starting a second one when he collapsed.

Koehler says it’s not clear what happened. Jones had not been complaining about feeling ill beforehand and didn’t appear to have any injuries.

A coach that was in the gym performed CPR until paramedics arrived. Jones was taken to an area hospital where he died about an hour later.

Jones had a twin sister, a younger sister and three adopted siblings who all attend Johnson-Brock schools.

A landscape worker has reported seeing a mountain lion running along a road in suburban Bennington, on the northwest side of Omaha.

Omaha television station KETV reports that the man called Douglas County authorities to report that he’d seen the animal near Bennington Road.

Officials have been unable to confirm the report.

Mountain lions, which also are called cougars or pumas, have turned up as far east in Nebraska as Omaha.

It wasn’t hanging chads or voter fraud that delayed the vote count in one Massachusetts town — it was a spider.

Rehoboth Town Clerk Kathleen Conti says one of the town’s aging voting machines malfunctioned Tuesday morning.

She called a technician, who said a spider web apparently prevented the machine’s scanner from counting ballots. Conti tells The Sun Chronicle of Attleboro, all Rehoboth’s voting machines received preventive maintenance a month ago.

The vote count wasn’t completed until Wednesday afternoon.

Rehoboth voters favored Republican presidential challenger Mitt Romney and incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. Scott Brown, but went for Democratic U.S. House candidate Joseph Kennedy III.

Rehoboth, with about 12,000 residents, is about 50 miles southwest of Boston.

Conti says she has been pressing to have the machines replaced for several years.

Twitter says it mistakenly reset the passwords of some users as part of a routine security check-up.

Thursday’s mix-up triggered warnings on technology blogs and in tweets that the online messaging service had been attacked by computer hackers.

Twitter sought to clear up the confusion with a post on its website a few hours after it sent out emails alerting some users that their accounts had been compromised. Twitter says its security specialists had reset a larger number of passwords than they intended.

Despite the mistake, Twitter says only a very small percentage of its more than 140 million users had their passwords affected.

Twitter, which is based in San Francisco, regularly resets the passwords of accounts believed to have been infiltrated by hackers or suspicious websites.

Two of the six people accused of smuggling cigarettes from Vietnam and unlawfully selling them in Nebraska have been mostly cleared by a federal jury.

The jury decided Wednesday Nhu Van Phan and Tang “Janny” Nguyen weren’t actively involved. The only guilty verdict returned was that Tang Nguyen had possessed contraband cigarettes.

The Lincoln Journal Star reports the four others charged in the cigarette-importing scheme have all entered pleas and are set for sentencing. Prosecutors say the group had more than 10,000 cigarettes shipped to homes in Lincoln and Nebraska City, and then resold them without paying state and federal taxes.

Defense attorneys argued that Tang Nguyen and Nhu Van Phan didn’t know it was illegal to get cigarettes from Vietnam and didn’t intend to defraud anyone.

An eastern Nebraska woman has been accused of stealing a prescription painkiller from a nursing home.

A news release from the office of Saunders County Attorney Scott Tingelhoff says 27-year-old Nicole Chase faces up to 5½ years behind bars if convicted. Her next court appearance is scheduled for Nov. 20.

Ashland police say Ashland Care Center reported last month that the narcotics were missing and likely were stolen. The center’s top administrator, Ben Eddy, declined to comment to The Associated Press.

A phone listing for Chase couldn’t be found. Her lawyer didn’t return an Associated Press call.

A south-central Nebraska couple have been convicted of lying to banks so they could get new loans.

A news release from the office of U.S. Attorney Deborah Gilg says a jury in Omaha convicted 67-year-old Billy Nesiba and 65-year-old Carol Nesiba on Wednesday. Each of the Nesibas was indicted on five counts of making false statements and one count of conspiracy.

Prosecutors say the Nesibas did business as Bill’s Classic Auto in Grand Island and lied about how much they owed to various banks so they could get more loans. Prosecutors say the Nesibas defaulted on the loans, which cost the banks a total of about $850,000.

The Nesibas are scheduled to be sentenced on Feb. 15.

Areas hardest hit by Superstorm Sandy are dealing with new outages after a nor’easter left a blanket of snow that snapped storm-weakened trees and downed power lines.

In New Jersey, utilities reported 400,000 power outages early Thursday; 20,000 of those were new. In New York City and Westchester, more than 70,000 customers were without power after the storm knocked out an additional 55,000 customers.

There were 60,000 new outages on Long Island, where more than 200,000 customers without power.

There were pockets of new outages were reported in Connecticut.

 

 

 

 

A southeast Nebraska woman accused of lying about being raped by four men has made a plea deal with prosecutors.

The Beatrice Daily Sun says 28-year-old Jennifer Valenta, of Wilber, was convicted on Wednesday. She pleaded no contest to evidence tampering, false reporting and attempted prostitution.

Prosecutors dropped charges of prostitution, perjury and obstructing government operations in exchange for her plea in Gage County District Court.

Prosecutors say Valenta lied about being raped by four men at the Big Indian Recreation Area in southern Gage County last November.

Her sentencing is scheduled for Jan. 2.