Non-Profit News

Rare Disease Cost A Nebraska Woman Her Leg. Now She’s Competing For A National Golf Championship.

Published by maggie@omahadai... on Wed, 07/02/2025 - 12:00am

Nebraskan Mandi Sedlak competes at the 2024 U.S. Adaptive Open in Newton, Kan. Sedlak made the cut to compete in the 2025 tournament, taking place in early July in Maryland.
(Courtesy of USGA)

In Mandi Sedlak’s world, everything seems to fit. Even in her worst moments.

It’s true of her golf game, her husband, her career and the prosthetic leg connecting these threads. The Kearney native will be relying on the list’s last item when she competes in the U.S. Adaptive Open at Woodmont Country Club in Maryland July 7-9.

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AI ‘Reanimations’: Making Facsimiles Of The Dead Raises Ethical Quandaries

Published by maggie@omahadai... on Wed, 07/02/2025 - 12:00am

Mystery writer Agatha Christie, pictured in 1957, writes about different types of villains and heroes who provide the thrills in her mysteries, novels and plays.
(DH / AP Photo)

Christopher Pelkey was shot and killed in a road range incident in 2021. On May 8, 2025, at the sentencing hearing for his killer, an AI video reconstruction of Pelkey delivered a victim impact statement. The trial judge reported being deeply moved by this performance and issued the maximum sentence for manslaughter.

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Takeaways From Interviews With Families Forever Changed By Diseases That Vaccines Can Prevent

Published by maggie@omahadai... on Wed, 07/02/2025 - 12:00am

Janith Farnham signs "water" while she and her daughter, Jacque, look at an artwork of a waterfall at the Visual Arts Center at the Washington Pavilion in Sioux Falls, S.D., on May 20, 2025.
(Shelby Lum / AP Photo)

SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) — In the time before widespread vaccination, devastating infectious diseases ran rampant in America, killing millions of children and leaving others with lifelong health problems.

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What’s At Risk For Arctic Wildlife If Trump Expands Oil Drilling In The Fragile National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska

Published by maggie@omahadai... on Wed, 07/02/2025 - 12:00am

Pump Station 1 is seen on Monday, June 2, 2025, located near Deadhorse, Alaska, on the state's prodigious North Slope, with the start of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline at bottom center.
(Jenny Kane / AP Photo)

The largest tract of public land in the United States is a wild expanse of tundra and wetlands stretching across nearly 23 million acres of northern Alaska. It’s called the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska, but despite its industrial-sounding name, the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, or NPR-A, is much more than a fuel depot.

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Ducks Return To A Long Island Farm That Lost Its Entire Flock To The Bird Flu

Published by maggie@omahadai... on Wed, 06/25/2025 - 12:00am

Ducks walk around their barn at the Crescent Duck Farm in Aquebogue, N.Y., Thursday, May 22, 2025.
(Seth Wenig / AP Photo)

AQUEBOGUE, N.Y. (AP) — Doug Corwin knew there was a problem at his family’s commercial duck farm in Long Island when he spotted scores of dead or lethargic birds during a barn inspection in January.

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From Foster Care To Snoop Dogg: ‘Huge Life-Changing Trauma’ Couldn’t Kill Omaha Singer Dreion’s Dreams

Published by maggie@omahadai... on Wed, 06/25/2025 - 12:00am

Dreion performs on season 26 of NBC’s “The Voice.” The Omaha native wowed the judges with his rendition of Earth, Wind & Fire’s “Shining Star.” Dreion is now on tour, opening for the legendary group. The band is coming to La Vista’s The Astro Amphitheater on July 16.
(Casey Durkin / NBC)

In moments alone as a kid in his bedroom, Da’Dreion Murrell envisioned himself singing before thousands of fans.

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Trump Administration To End National LGBTQ+ Suicide Hotline

Published by maggie@omahadai... on Wed, 06/25/2025 - 12:00am

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‘Just Broke’: Omaha-Area Safety Net Failing Mentally Ill Amid Rising Demand, Families Say

Published by maggie@omahadai... on Wed, 06/18/2025 - 12:00am

Jacque Palczynski, the mother of a son who struggles with a serious mental illness, poses for a photo June 6. Palczynski has tried several times to commit her son and force him to receive treatment for his schizoaffective disorder. But the safety net in Douglas County has not helped, she said, which has led her son to cycling in and out of hospitals and jail.
(Abiola Kosoko / Flatwater Free Press)

At 20 years old, he was no longer the popular high school wrestler and football player in suburban Omaha. He was lost inside paranoia and violence. A doctor gave him a name for it: schizoaffective disorder.

When he was arrested in March 2019, Jacque Palczynski begged to get her son out of the Douglas County Jail. An employee gave her a form.

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A Liberal And Conservative Enter Purgatory

Published by maggie@omahadai... on Wed, 06/18/2025 - 12:00am

Two men died, and then awoke standing on a gray plain of ash. Above them both should have been an evening sky but instead was a painting of the cosmos; someone with incredible talent had set the stars just right, and with incredible strength had pulled twin ebon moons so near to the horizon. The ash was ever-still in gentle mounds like waves there, yet there was no wind.

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Nebraska Sees Dip In National ‘Kids Count’ Ranking For Youth Well-Being

Published by maggie@omahadai... on Wed, 06/18/2025 - 12:00am

OMAHA — Nebraska dropped a notch — from No. 9 to No. 10 — in a national ranking for overall child well-being, according to the latest Kids Count data book, a 50-state examination of how youths are faring in post-pandemic America.