BURWELL, NE (AP) - An electrical worker has died after being electrocuted on the job. The Garfield County Attorney's Office says Dean "Vegas"
Lodewyck died Tuesday while working in Burwell. Authorities say Lodewyck died from injuries he received after coming into contact with a live electrical wire at the Loup Valley Alfalfa Plant.

Hastings television station KHAS-TV reports that Lodewyck worked for Ricks Electric in Ord. Witnesses told authorities Lodewyck was troubleshooting suspected faulty circuit when he was electrocuted.

SIDNEY, NE (AP) - A former Cheyenne County prosecutor convicted in 2005 for sexually assaulting a 13-year-old girl has been released from prison.
Sixty-two-year-old Gregory Lauby served the minimum of his sentence of 5-to-10 years. Prison records say he was released on Aug. 28. He'll have to register as a sex offender. Lauby began working for the county attorney's office in April 2003. He was fired soon after charges were filed against him. He was disbarred in September 2005.

OMAHA, NE (AP) - An Omaha man has been sentenced to two years in a federal prison for selling marijuana while on the job at a
recreation center. On Monday, 28-year-old Jimmy King also was given four years of probation. He was convicted of selling marijuana within 100 feet of a youth center. Authorities say that in January, an informant and an undercover officer bought pot from King twice at the Columbus Park Recreation Center where King worked, then another time in a parking lot.

(9/01/10) LINCOLN, NE(AP) - The Nebraska Court of Appeals has thrown out a drug conviction for a Pennsylvania man stopped by troopers in
Waverly. In a ruling issued Tuesday, the court said troopers had no cause to search 32-year-old Jason Passerini's rental pickup in 2007, sothe confiscated marijuana shouldn't have been allowed at trial.

Passerini, of Norristown, Pa., was given a two-to-four-year sentence for possession of a controlled sentence with intent to
deliver. In a dissenting opinion, Judge Frankie Moore says several factors, such as Passerini's prior drug convictions and him driving a rental vehicle, when considered together would warrant a search. Passerini remains in custody, pending possible appeals by the state of Nebraska.

(9/01/10) FREMONT, NE (AP) - A Fremont man has been sentenced to four-to-eight years in prison for having a sexual relationship with a 14-year-old girl. Dodge County District Judge John Samson sentenced 20-year-old James Leland on Monday for Leland's conviction of first-degree sexual assault. Leland also will have to register as a sex offender.

State law prohibits people 19 or older from having sex with anyone under 16 years old. Dodge County Attorney Paul Vaughan said Leland was living in the victim's house when he began having the sexual relationship. Leland told the court before his sentencing that he made "a terrific mistake."

(9/01/10) FREMONT, NE (AP) - Pinnacle Bank is buying American National Bank of Fremont. Pinnacle Bank, a subsidiary of Central City-based Pinnacle Bancorp, announced the deal on Tuesday. The transaction is expected to close in December, pending approval from regulators. Terms are not being released.

American National Bank has three branches in Fremont, with 38 employees, and reported nearly $167 million in assets at the end of the second quarter.
Pinnacle Bank President Mark Hesser says American Bank staff members will be retained.

Pinnacle Bank reported $2.6 billion in assets as of June 30. It says it has more than 580 employees at 56 branches in three states, including 51 in Nebraska.

(8/31/10) Omaha, NE. (AP) - The federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has filed a lawsuit against JBS Swift & Co. over mistreatment of Somali Muslim workers at its Grand Island plant. The lawsuit filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Omaha says the Muslim workers weren't allowed to leave their posts to pray, as required under federal law. The lawsuit also says workers were harassed because of their prayer requests.

Hundreds of Muslim workers walked off the job in 2008 because they wanted time to pray. That led to mass firings. The lawsuit seeks an order requiring JBS Swift to provide prayer time and to refrain from retaliating against workers who ask to pray. It also seeks back pay for the fired workers. A message left Monday with JBS Swift wasn't immediately returned. JBS Swift has previously disputed that the firings were about religion.

(8/31/10) LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) - Nebraska's corn and soybean crops remain in pretty good shape even after the recent hot weather. The U.S. Department of Agriculture said Monday that the state's corn and soybean crops remain near or ahead of last year.

About 81 percent of Nebraska's corn is in good or excellent condition. That's ahead of last year's crop at the same time. And about 76 percent of the soybean crop is in good or excellent shape. That's near last year. About 78 percent of the state's sorghum crop is also in good or excellent condition. That's better than last year.

(8/31/10) OMAHA, Neb. (AP) - A Nebraska judge has approved a deal ending the criminal prosecution of a member of Kansas' Westboro Baptist Church that stemmed from the church's 2007 protest outside a soldier's funeral.

Douglas County Judge Joseph Caniglia entered an order Monday approving the deal Shirley Phelps-Roper and Sarpy County Attorney Lee Polikov signed last week. Phelps-Roper agreed to dismiss all her state and federal lawsuits against Sarpy County authorities in exchange for prosecutors dropping the criminal child abuse and disturbing the peace charges.

Prosecutors have said Phelps-Roper allowed her 10 year-old son to stand on an American flag and she wore a flag as a skirt that drug on the ground during a protest at the funeral of a Bellevue soldier.

(8/31/10) NEBRASKA CITY, Neb. (AP) - Nebraska City school district officials are examining busing policies after a 6-year-old boy was dropped off 15 miles away from his home. School officials say the boy wound up so far from home because he got on the wrong bus Friday when he left Northside Elementary School in Nebraska City.

The bus driver told the boy that Union was the last stop, so the boy got off. A construction worker spotted the boy walking west along a highway and crying, and the worker helped the boy call home. Superintendent Jeffery Edwards say this was a mistake that never should have happened. The district is revising its policies to make sure similar mistakes won't happen again. The boy's mom, Bethanie O'Flaherty, says she has pulled her son from the district.

(8/30/10) OMAHA, NE. (AP) - Fire crews continued on Sunday to monitor two blazes in western Nebraska and South Dakota that have scorched more than 1,200 acres.

Officials with the South Dakota Wildland Fire Suppression Division say a fire southeast of Chadron, Neb., was contained Saturday but firefighters were still working Sunday to extinguish the blaze.

Another fire west of South Dakota's Custer State Park were contained Saturday after it tore threw 65 acres.

The fires were among five in the region that started Friday. A sixth was ignited Saturday.

Fire officials initially attributed all the fires to lightning strikes, but later said investigators determined the Nebraska fire was sparked by an all-terrain vehicle and believed the Custer State Park fire also was human-caused.

(8/30/10) LINCOLN, NE. (AP) - The chairman of Nebraska's Democratic Party is urging the Nebraska State Education Association to withdraw its endorsement of Gov. Dave Heineman.

Vic Covalt said in a statement released Sunday that the Republican is "using the governor's office as a bully pulpit to threaten education for his partisan agenda."

In a recent letter to the state's top education groups, Heineman said they should support the repeal of federal health care reform or he'll assume they tacitly support a likely reduction in education funding.

Officials with the Nebraska Council of School Administrators and the Nebraska State Education Association have said they will discuss Heineman's letter this week.

Heineman faces Democrat Mike Meister in the November election.

(8/30/10) LINCOLN, NE. (AP) - The Nebraska Supreme Court is expected to decide whether to scrap state restrictions that have kept a long stretch of the Niobrara River basin off-limits to new irrigation development for more than two years.

On Thursday before the high court, state attorneys will square off against four natural resources districts. It will be a test of how the state decides if river basins can handle more irrigation without hurting existing water users.

The case is one of a few tied to Nebraska Public Power District's 2007 decision to exercise senior water rights the district says it needs to produce power at the 80-year-old Spencer Dam, which it owns. That decision was the primary factor in the state's 2008 determination that the basin was fully appropriated.

(8/30/10) OMAHA, NE. (AP) - Omaha police say the off-duty officer involved in a shooting outside a shopping mall has worked for the department for about two years.

Police say officer Bryan Miller was still hospitalized Sunday, as was the suspect he shot. She was identified as 31-year-old Shantae Veland.

Police say Miller, who was working at Westroads Mall on Saturday evening as a security guard, chased a shoplifter into the parking lot and was run down by an apparent getaway vehicle. At some point, police say, the officer fired his gun at the vehicle, hitting Veland.

The alleged shoplifter, 20-year-old Lanisha Maxwell, was being held in the Douglas County jail on suspicion of shoplifting and assault.