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One of the women killed early Saturday was Jakela Foster, 19, The World-Herald has learned. Foster had a young son, and according to her Facebook page, was a sales associate at DialAmerica, a telemarketing firm. She had studied culinary arts at Metropolitan Community College. A party at a northeast Omaha house turned into a killing scene early Saturday when, police said, eight people were shot, including two women who died. Hours earlier, two more people were shot in a house nearby, also during a party, police said. That 10 people were shot within 4½ hours in the Prospect Hill neighborhood...

One of the primary health insurance companies in Nebraska and Iowa is folding, after federal grants and loans were cut off in mid-December. The lack of emergency loan money has put CoOpportunity Health Care on the ropes, according to the Iowa Insurance Commission. Policy holders are scrambling to switch to one of the only two remaining health insurance companies in Nebraska – Coventry or Blue Cross/Blue Shield.

After failing probation, Charlie Rogers didn’t show up for her 90-day jail sentence Thursday. Rogers, 36, was sentenced to a week in jail and two years’ probation in April 2013 for faking an anti-gay hate crime that stunned Lincoln and captured the country’s attention the summer before. Rogers, a lesbian and former Nebraska basketball star, lied to police when she told them three men broke into her house on July 22, 2012, tied her up, carved anti-gay slurs into her skin and tried to light the house on fire. Lancaster County Court Judge Gale Pokorny, who has since retired, made...

Walking into a public health clinic for information about abortion isn't an easy choice to make. A group of Nebraska senators want to make sure anyone who does, has the facts they need to possibly reconsider. Senator Bill Kintner introduced a bill Monday that would require updated informed consent laws to be made public; both online and on the doors of any clinic that performs abortions. Those forms remind women that it's against the law for anyone to be pressured to have an abortion. So could this help bring down abortion rates? Kintner thinks so. "It might yes, it might....

Now that the U.S. economy is showing signs of life, President Obama is not wasting a moment to take credit for this recovery. “The steps we took nearly six years ago to rescue our economy and rebuild it on a new foundation helped make 2014 the strongest year for job growth since the 1990’s,” he said in a recent speech. For sure we can expect the president to continue this message in his upcoming State of the Union address, as he works to rebuild his credibility, thinking toward his final two years in office and his place in history. And...

For a symbolic issue, the Keystone pipeline has sure caused a lot of damage—to Canadian-American relations, to Democrats, to President Obama. And it feeds, underscores, or reflects a variety of political divisions, some of them quite bitter. I’ll get to Keystone’s victims shortly, but first the explanation of why the issue is purely symbolic. If the pipeline is built, it will carry oil from northern Alberta to refineries on the Gulf Coast. If it is not built, the crude oil will be transported either to Canada’s west coast or to New Brunswick, a maritime province in the east, where it...

President Barack Obama will veto the Keystone XL bill if Congress passes a measure green-lighting the oil pipeline, White House press secretary Josh Earnest announced on Tuesday. Newly minted Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has scheduled a vote on the Keystone XL pipeline project as the first of the new Congress. The bill has some bipartisan support, but environmentalists and progressives have heavily lobbied the White House to oppose the pipeline.... Earnest added that the White House reviewed the text of the bill to authorize the pipeline on Monday....

Video at link. (CNSNews.com) – Jack Gerard, CEO of the American Petroleum Institute, says President Barack Obama is “factually incorrect” to say that the Keystone XL Pipeline will not benefit Americans. At the press conference in Washington Tuesday, CNSNews.com asked Gerard about Obama’s remarks in November about the pipeline, which, if approved, would transport crude oil from Canada and from two U.S. states to refineries on the Gulf Coast. Jack Gerard, CEO of the American Petroleum Institute, held a press conference with reporters on Jan. 6, 2015 following his annual State of American Energy speech in Washington, D.C. (CNSNews.com/Penny...

President Obama said Tuesday he would veto any bill that tries to start construction on the Keystone XL pipeline before a federal review is finished — a process in its seventh year. You can argue whether Obama is being sincere in his desire to follow procedure, or just trying to run out the clock so he doesn't have to make a decision, but by any measure, six-plus years is a long time. Jason Russell tries to put this in perspective at the Washington Examiner by calculating what other things someone could do while Obama's reviews held up the pipeline. Among...

Democrats launched the first filibuster of the new Congress on Thursday, objecting to the GOP’s effort to try to bring the Keystone XL pipeline bill to the floor early next week. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell tried to schedule action early next week on the bill, and promised an open process, including allowing both sides to offer amendments to the bill — an attempt to break with the previous few years, when Democrats controlled the floor and kept a tight lid on amendments. But Democrats objected to Mr. McConnell’s request, forcing him to begin the procedure for breaking a filibuster.

**SNIP** Sharpton said, “This is the largest majority Republicans have had since the 1920s, and what will happen, and how we deal with our interests, when we have both the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives dominated by the Republicans — one, we need to realize and recognize, had we voted like we should have we wouldn’t be here,” he said. “But secondly, all is not lost, the president can use veto power, which he already said he is going to do about the Keystone Pipeline legislation, and executive action.” “Even though the legislature is tied down, the executive...

Democratic members of the state’s congressional delegation face a difficult balancing act. Their supporters who are advocates of renewable energy anticipate them to vote against the pipeline. President Obama has threatened to veto the present pipeline bill due to the fact it quick-circuits his administration’s assessment course of action. But Minnesota politicians who oppose the pipeline flirt with a attainable lengthy-term raise in oil train traffic on tracks that quite a few constituents say are already overloaded with railcars carrying flammable fuel. “It is a precarious position to be against oil train transport and to be against the Keystone pipeline,”...

It was 2008 when TransCanada initially filed an application with the U.S. government to construct the multibillion-dollar Keystone XL pipeline to carry up to 830,000 barrels of oil per day from Canada to Gulf Coast refineries. Illinois Senator Barack Obama had just secured the presidential nomination for the Democratic Party. Hurricane Ike made landfall, Usain Bolt set world records at the summer Olympics, and the Lehman Brothers filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. More than six years and many significant historical events later, TransCanada still does not have approval to build an environmentally safe pipeline that would create jobs and...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Republicans in Congress and a state supreme court have thrown the political hot potato known as Keystone XL straight back onto President Barack Obama's lap. So loath is Obama to making a decision about the proposed oil pipeline that deliberations have entered their sixth year — a period nearly as long as Obama's time in office. He's blamed the seemingly endless delays on bureaucratic formalities and parochial issues in Nebraska, even when skeptics claimed that the politics of the next election were giving the president cold feet. Now the election is over, the Nebraska issue is resolved,...

The House on Friday passed a bill to approve construction of the Keystone XL pipeline hours after a Nebraska court ruled in favor of the proposed route. The legislation now goes to the Senate, where it is expected to be approves. The White House has warned President Obama would veto the legislation. Passage fell largely along party lines, 266-153, with 28 Democrats joining nearly all Republicans in favor. Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) voted "present." That is short of the necessary two-thirds majority needed to override a veto. The vote marked the 10th time the House has voted to authorize the...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)An American health worker exposed to the Ebola virus while working in Sierra Leone arrived in Omaha Sunday afternoon and is now being monitored at Nebraska Medicine. Paramedics wearing full-body protective gear took the patient, who has not been identified, by ambulance from a plane that arrived at Eppley Airfield around 1:45 p.m. to the hospital, which has a specialized biocontainment unit. "I can't comment on if the patient does or doesn't have any kind of symptoms at this point, but I can say the crew inside the biocontainment unit, the crew that received the patient at the airport, is...

The NFL on Monday overturned its one-game suspension imposed on Lions defensive tackle Ndamukong Suh for stepping on Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers during Sunday’s game. Suh who has a history of cheap shots and dirty plays was seen on camera stomping on Aaron Rogers previously injured leg. The former Nebraska All-American had appealed the suspension saying that his feet were numb from cold and that he couldn’t tell the difference between Aaron Rodgers’ feet and the ground. Breitbart News reported on Tuesday that Suh’s appeal would be heard by former NFL defensive coordinator Ted Cottrell.

“I want to see what happens in the hearings,” Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said. “But certainly I’m supportive.” McCain and Sens. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) and Deb Fischer (R-Neb.) all said in interviews they have met with Lynch privately and are inclined to vote in favor of her nomination. “I would say yes, unless something comes up during the hearings,” Fischer said when asked if she was leaning toward backing Lynch.

Despite growing public support for legalizing marijuana, a lawsuit filed by Nebraska and Oklahoma shows that at least two segments of American society are prepared to fight the idea before the nation’s highest court—social conservatives and law enforcement. The lawsuit seeks to overturn Colorado’s experiment in legalized recreational pot, alleging that the two conservative states are being overrun with Colorado marijuana that is making it harder for them to enforce their own drug laws. …

LINCOLN — Christmas carols and prayers — and no protests or obvious objections — marked possibly the first-ever Nativity scene at the State Capitol on Thursday.  The small display, a cedar manger about 6 feet across and 4 feet high, was made possible by a Catholic-associated attorneys association that is seeking to place Nativity scenes in state capitols and other public places across the country. "We want to celebrate the true meaning of Christmas," said Omaha attorney Christine Delgado, who heads the Omaha branch of the Thomas More Society.  While Nebraska’s display hasn't been controversial so far, efforts to...