(AP) — A Justice Department official says the federal government will enable financial institutions to transact business with the legitimate marijuana industry without fear of prosecution.

The issue has taken on greater urgency now that Colorado and Washington have become the first states to legalize recreational use of marijuana.

Currently, processing money from marijuana sales puts federally insured banks at risk of drug racketeering charges.

In an appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, Deputy Attorney General James Cole said the issue was one that the federal government needed to deal with.

The Justice Department announced Aug. 29 that it won’t try to stop Colorado and Washington state from legalizing recreational marijuana use as long as they implement strong enforcement systems. Marijuana is an illegal drug under federal law.

(AP) — Lancaster County Attorney Joe Kelly is planning to seek re-election in 2014.

The top prosecutor in Lincoln formally announced his bid on Tuesday outside the county courthouse.

Kelly was elected to his first term in 2010, after a decade as chief deputy county attorney. He has served as a prosecutor for 28 years, handling homicide, robbery and sexual assault cases and others involving abuse of vulnerable adults.

Kelly says he wants to continue prosecuting people who use computers to entice children. He also points to a new program that lets veterans stay out of the courts if their offense was non-violent and they are suffering from posttraumatic stress disorder.

The Lancaster County attorney’s office filed more than 1,400 felony and 5,500 misdemeanor criminal charges last year.

(AP) — Nebraska officials say a Japanese manufacturer plans to open its first U.S. office in the state, so it can be near the Kawasaki plant that uses its railcar parts.

Lt. Gov. Lavon Heidemann said Tuesday that Morio Denki Co. plans to open in office in Lincoln by the end of the year.

The company will send two people to set up its Lincoln office with plans to hire more staff, but state officials say it wasn’t immediately clear how many people might be hired.

Nebraska spokeswoman Jen Rae Wang says state officials who are currently on a trade mission to Japan are working to gather more details about the company’s plans.

Morio Denki makes electrical equipment that’s used in railroad, automotive, shipping and real estate applications.

 

(AP) — A judge has dismissed a rape case filed against a 21-year-old University of Nebraska-Lincoln student.

Judge Steven Burns ruled Monday that the evidence against Dustin Trauernicht would not support a guilty verdict. Defense attorney Randy Paragas had asked the judge for a ruling after prosecutors rested their case.

Trauernicht was accused of sexually assaulting a 19-year-old woman in January last year at a booze-filled party. Trauernicht said he didn’t remember what happened that night.

At issue was whether the woman was so drunk she couldn’t give legal consent for sex. She conceded during testimony that it was possible the sex was consensual.

Prosecutors objected to the case’s dismissal, saying the woman’s state of intoxication was something for the jury to decide.

(AP) — Front-end loaders had to be called in to help residents dig out from several feet of hail that fell in the Denver area.

The hail on Monday hit hardest in the suburbs of Wheat Ridge and Lakewood west of Denver. Authorities say some residents in Lakewood were trapped for a short time because of hail piles.

Persistent rainfall Monday topped a daily local precipitation record and helped push Grand Junction’s year-to-date rainfall in the normal category.

(AP) — A federal appeals court is affirming a judge’s decision that Google overstepped its bounds by enabling its vehicles to collect emails, Internet passwords and Web surfing behavior while photographing neighborhoods for the search giant’s popular “Street View” mapping feature.

The U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco said in a report Tuesday that the Google cars with cameras mounted on their roofs went far beyond listening to accessible radio communication.

A Google spokeperson says attorneys for the Internet giant are disappointed in the 9th Circuit’s decision and are considering our next steps.”

Google has apologized for the snooping, promised to stop collecting the data, and said what it did was inadvertent but not illegal.

(AP) — A cold and allergy decongestant now being sold nationwide contains a new form of pseudoephedrine that’s being billed as difficult to use to make methamphetamine. But the Drug Enforcement Administration is still refusing to allow it to be sold over the counter.

The DEA says government chemists were able to manufacture methamphetamine from the product, so like other products containing pseudoephedrine, Zephrex-D must be sold from behind the counter.

Zephrex-D has been sold in Missouri since December. Suburban St. Louis company Westport Pharmaceuticals rolled out the product to 15,000 pharmacies nationwide over the past month.

Westport says the amount of meth that can be made using Zephrex-D is so small that it’s impractical for meth-makers. The Missouri Narcotics Officers Association says it hasn’t found the product in any meth labs.

For the 14th straight year, student enrollment at the University of Nebraska Medical Center set a record high with 3,681 students enrolled for the 2013-14 school year, an increase over last year’s record of 3,655.

“We are pleased that our overall enrollment continues to grow,” said Dele Davies, M.D., vice chancellor for academic affairs and dean of graduate studies. “Our public health programs in particular continue to attract excellent new students from across Nebraska, the U.S. and around the world. Several of our allied health programs and our doctor of nursing practice programs also experienced modest growths.”

Listed below are enrollment highlights from UNMC.

Graduate Studies

Enrollment in doctoral and master’s programs in graduate studies increased by 1.8 percent, going from 462 students in 2012 to 474 in 2013. The number of students enrolled in doctoral programs increased 3 percent, going from 389 to 401.

College of Dentistry

The College of Dentistry admitted 47 new dental students as well as 24 new dental hygiene students, bringing enrollment in the college to 278, including 41 graduate and post graduate students. This year’s GPA for entering dentistry students is 3.76 and the entering dental hygiene class had a 3.55 GPA. There were 796 applicants for the 47 slots in this year’s dental class.

College of Medicine

There are 133 new medical students entering their first year of medical school, bringing the total enrollment to 510, with 34 enrolled in the M.D./Ph.D. program. The new students were selected from a total of 1,568 applicants, one of the largest number of applicants in the last 19 years.

College of Nursing

A total of 993 students are enrolled in seven undergraduate and graduate nursing programs (including Ph.D. in nursing students) in Omaha, Lincoln, Kearney, Scottsbluff and Norfolk. The college received 642 qualified applicants this year for 391 slots in its bachelor’s degree in nursing programs. The incoming bachelor’s students’ GPA is 3.64 based on the students’ first two years in undergraduate college. The college also received 221 applications for the master’s degree in nursing and post master’s certificate programs for 100 slots.

College of Pharmacy

Fifty-eight new students with a GPA of 3.55 were accepted into the College of Pharmacy’s Doctor of Pharmacy degree program. The new students bring the total enrollment in the four-year program to 221 students.

College of Public Health

Enrollment in the College of Public Health this fall is 223, which includes 50 doctoral students, 138 master’s students, and 35 certificate and non-degree program students. This represents a 14 percent increase in enrollment over last fall.  The College of Public Health had 240 qualified applicants for its programs in fall 2013, a 95 percent increase over the fall of 2012.

School of Allied Health Professions

For the 2013-14 academic year, there are 231 new students. Total enrollment in the school’s traditional programs is 410 students, and 209 students are enrolled through distance education degree programs. There were 926 applicants this year — a 3.3 percent increase over last year.

In addition to student enrollment, Munroe-Meyer Institute provided interdisciplinary training, course work, and practicum experiences to 177 students in the 2012-2013 academic year. Trainees included 11undergraduate students, 52 master’s level students, 75 doctoral level interns, 38 post-doctoral fellows, and training for a family member to develop disability advocacy and community resource expertise.

Enrollment at UNMC since 2000

Year    Enrollment

2000        2,695

2001        2,724

2002        2,819

2003        2,865

2004        2,904

2005        3,002

2006        3,067

2007        3,128

2008        3,194

2009        3,237

2010        3,493

2011        3,626

2012        3,655

2013        3,681

(AP) — The other jury is in: A second periodical used for everything from predicting the weather to helping people lose weight agrees that this winter is shaping up to be cold and snowy.

The Dublin, N.H.-based Old Farmer’s Almanac, at 222, is believed to be the oldest continuously published periodical in North America. It says a drop in solar activity and a change in ocean patterns are pointing to colder-than-average temperatures and higher-than-average snowfall totals.

Last month, the Maine-based Farmer’s Almanac, said much the same. The younger cousin has been publishing for a mere 197 years.

The Old Farmer’s Almanac predicts a cold winter for every region but the lower Great Lakes, upper Midwest and the northern states of the Northeast.

The 2013 edition officially comes out Tuesday.

(AP) — A former guard at a Nebraska prison center for work release in Lincoln has been given probation for having a sexual relationship with a woman who became his girlfriend after she was parole.

Online court records say 28-year-old Anoroy Loyuk was given 18 months of probation at his sentencing on Monday. State law bars corrections employees from having sex with inmates or parolees, even if both parties agree.

Loyuk and the woman met while Loyuk was working at the Community Corrections Center in Lincoln. Loyuk’s lawyer says the relationship didn’t begin until more than a month after the woman was paroled and under the supervision of a parole officer. Loyuk and the woman saw each other at a grocery store and exchanged greetings. Then they exchanged addresses.