Stories from Wednesday, May 31, 2006

McCook Elementary students had its annual track meet May 22-23. Elementary students have competed in this track meet since it began in 1972. This is the first year for McCook Elementary. Grades K-3 competed in the rope jump, frisbee throw, long jump and many other events...

March 5, 1926 - May 29, 2006 OBERLIN? -- Eva Marie Vacura, 80, died Monday ( May 29, 2006) at Decatur Community Hospital in Oberlin. She was born March 5, 1926, in Jennings, to Vernon and Stella (Hopkins) Chance and attend grade school and high school in Jennings...

July 4, 1913 - May 29, 2006 CANON CITY, Colo. -- Vera C. Laughlin, 92, died Monday (May 29, 2006) in Canon City, Colo. She was born July 4, 1913, in Lawrence, to Clement and Elisabeth (Ostdlek) Witte. On March 8, 1943, she married Robert P. Laughlin in Denver, Colo. He preceded her in death on Jan. 31, 1973. She was a homemaker...

Coming from a country a little larger than Texas but with almost 70 million people, Rotary exchange student Ozgun Ozguven of Turkey had a few adjustments to make while staying in McCook this year. "It feels so ... empty," she tried to explain. "I am used to so much more people."...

The McCook man who told Red Willow County sheriff's officers that his car was stolen by two men he stopped to assist has been cited on a charge of false reporting. Sheriff Gene Mahon said Tuesday afternoon that Glen Johnston's accusations about one white man and one black man stealing his car after he helped jump-start theirs late Sunday evening have turned out to be false...

INDIANOLA -- Red Willow County sheriff's officers are investigating an attempted arson of a piece of construction equipment in Indianola. Sheriff Gene Mahon said that James Blume, an employee of the City of Indianola, discovered a partially-burned twisted newspaper and rag wick hanging from the diesel fueler of a skid loader owned by Sexton Concrete of Cambridge and parked on Seventh Street in Indianola Thursday, May 25...

CURTIS -- Frontier County Sheriff Dan Rupp said this morning that his officers are still investigating a one-vehicle accident at Red Willow Lake over the Memorial Day weekend. Rupp said the McCook Police Department dispatch relayed a complaint to his office at 6:47 a.m., Monday, May 29, from a Kansas man staying at the lake who reported that he loaned his car keys to a friend and then discovered his car wrecked in a ditch, with the airbags deployed, near the lake...

Talk about sticker shock. Two out of three undergraduate students are going into debt to go to college, and owe an average of more than $19,000 -- most of it to the government -- after graduation. According to the Department of Education's National Center for Education Statistics, about 65 percent of the students who graduated in the 2003-04 school year went into debt to do so...

It seems to be an all-too-common theme. Any number of books and movies have made fortunes peddling this fascinating subject, painting a variety of scenarios each depicting the end of the world. In fact, the subject is so prevalent and is presented in so many venues, that the once-familiar sandwich board man, ringing his bell and crying "the end is near, the end is near," is looking for a new job...