Nebraska Update

An online petition created by a Nebraska educator is racking up millions of signatures online. Travis Washington is calling for a 15-year sentencing minimum for law enforcement officers who shoot unarmed civilians.

His idea for the ‘Hands Up Act’ sprouted before 2018, but it was in December of that year when he officially drafted his online proposal through Change.org.

More than 2.7 million people have signed the ‘Hands Up Act’ petition so far, making it one of the most-signed petitions on the online platform.

Thursday we learned more than we had known for the last two weeks because the state Department of Health and Human Services is again releasing Covid data.
In the past 15 days, there have been more than 1,000 new Covid cases, which means about 75 people, on average, tested positive for the virus each day. That’s quite a bit more than late June. At the time, there were around 40 positive tests each day.

He was a very successful Nebraska Linebacker from the early 90s, and – like you said – UNO’s AD for another few days. Among other things, he since played in the NFL for a few years and then began a career in sports broadcasting – and even hosted a few Nebraska football TV documentaries for this network. He became UNO’s AD in 2009. In 2011, he made choices to cut UNO’s football and wrestling programs to make UNO a Division I school in other sports. Many were not happy with those decisions. Now, he’s UNL’s 14th AD, and he’s excited about it – even showing a little emotion earlier Wednesday.
Alberts 1: “I love this place…Sorry about that. I didn’t know that was going to happen. I love the University of Nebraska. And I learned so much as a young man.”

Trev Alberts, a former Husker football player, will be the new athletic director at his former school. He becomes the 14th athletic director at the university. He spoke about being unified as an athletic department and building trust with players and coaches.

Town formerly known for beer sales could see housing for people recovering from alcohol addiction

Officials at Bryan Health in Lincoln say hospitalized cases of COVID-19 have more than doubled since the start of July and they’re concerned about a new spike.
Hospitalized cases of COVID-19 earlier this month were in the higher single digits at Bryan Health. As of Tuesday, there are 20 cases, with four of the patients on ventilators. Although the uptick is nowhere near the numbers even earlier this year, Bryan’s Chief Medical Officer Dr. John Trapp said it’s something to keep an eye on.

State Departments of Transportation are supposed to produce or update a railroad document every four or five years. It’s called a state rail plan. Nebraska’s plan is the oldest in the country, and rail advocates say that has consequences.
Nebraska’s rail plan was last updated in 2003. New York last updated its rail plan in 2009 and Montana in 2010. All other states have produced a rail plan within the last 10 years. A rail plan is a document that will lay out a state’s vision for rail development and projects, while also summarizing facts and details about railroads in the state.

A new report on how much was spent on lobbying efforts last year at the Nebraska State Capitol shows a reduction because of the pandemic, but higher compensation for some lobbyists.

Omaha and Lincoln received high winds. Other parts of the state had large amounts of rain. Power outages and wind speeds broke records in Omaha. Property damage and road blockages are keeping public workers busy.

Eight days after canceling the state Covid-19 dashboard, the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services says it hopes to resume publishing some pandemic data next week. Will Bauer of Nebraska Public Media News has more. A DHHS spokesperson says the agency will hopefully publish brief snapshots and trends of Covid data sometime next week. DHHS had been doing so far more extensively on its dashboard since last spring. But that ended last week when Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts also ended the State of Emergency declaration.
The emergency declaration suspended some normal rules during the brunt of the pandemic. Publishing Covid data was one of them. DHHS said last week the data would be available via a public records request. However, all media requests for the data was denied