(AP) — A convicted sex offender released from a Nebraska prison in March has been charged with sexually assaulting a 7-year-old child last month in York County.

48-year-old Ross Shepherd, of rural Hampton, has pleaded not guilty to four counts.

Records say Shepherd was convicted in August 1997 and in October 2010 of sexually assaulting children. For the 2010 conviction, he was sentenced to five years in prison. He was released from custody this past March.

His trial is scheduled to begin on Nov. 13.

(AP) — A 37-year-old Omaha man has been sentenced to prison for raping two girls who say his cologne gave him away.

Clintus Alford on Monday was given 40 to 60 years in prison. He’d been convicted in July on two counts of sexual assault of a child.

Authorities say Alford had blindfolded the girls in the separate incidents last summer. He’d taken them to Omaha hotel rooms and told them they had to have sex with other men for money. But the girls told investigators that they were acquainted with Alford and recognized his cologne when he raped them.

(AP) — Former state Sen. Brenda Council has agreed to a temporary suspension of her law license as she awaits a disciplinary hearing.

An ethics complaint against Council was filed with the Nebraska Supreme Court’s Counsel for Discipline after she pleaded guilty earlier this year to two counts of abusing public records. She admitted to using campaign funds to gamble at casinos but didn’t report the expenditures or deposits on her campaign finance reports.

Earlier this month she pleaded guilty to a federal wire fraud charge stemming from her use of campaign cash to gamble at casinos in Kansas, Missouri and Oklahoma. As part of a plea agreement, prosecutors will recommend probation for the Omaha attorney when she’s sentenced on Dec. 5.

The state Supreme Court could disbar Council.

(AP) — Sentencing has been scheduled in November for a Fremont man accused of choking his girlfriend’s toddler son.

The Fremont Tribune reports (https://bit.ly/1gWw1Ph) that 24-year-old David Hill Jr. pleaded no contest on Monday to one felony count of negligent child abuse. Prosecutors had lowered the charge and dropped another that alleged strangulation, in exchange for Hill’s plea.

The incident occurred on April 28. Prosecutors say Hill told his girlfriend that he’d been using a bathroom when he heard a thump. Hill told her he soon found the boy on the floor, out of his crib, with blood around his mouth.

When she took the 19-month-old boy to a hospital the next day, doctors concluded the boy had been choked.

Hill is scheduled to be sentenced on Nov. 18.

(AP) — A 99-year-old Iowa woman who dropped out of a high school in 1932 has finally received her diploma.

Audrey Crabtree was surrounded by family and friends on Monday as Waterloo Community Schools presented her with an honorary diploma during an education board meeting.

Crabtree dropped out of high school as a senior in 1932 due to an injury and to care for her grandmother. She went on to run her own business for nearly three decades.

At the meeting, Crabtree received a diploma, a copy of her last report card and high school memorabilia from her time at Waterloo East High School. She also received more than 100 handmade congratulatory cards from middle school students.

(AP) — Regulators say the idle Fort Calhoun nuclear plant is making good progress toward restarting for the first time in more than two years, but some significant issues remain unresolved.

The Nuclear Regulatory Commission plans to provide an update on Fort Calhoun at a public meeting Tuesday night. The nuclear plant sits across from Iowa on the Missouri River about 20 miles north of Omaha.

Fort Calhoun initially shut down for routine maintenance, but significant flooding in 2011, a small fire and a series of safety violations forced it to remain closed.

The NRC says Fort Calhoun has resolved about 70 percent of the items that must be dealt with before the plant will be allowed to restart. And about 25 percent of the items are being reviewed.

(AP) — A federal agency is proposing nearly $133,000 in fines for a Hastings cold storage plant, alleging more than a dozen safety violations.

The U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration says in a news release that workers were exposed to anhydrous ammonia at the Nebraska Cold Storage Inc. plant.

OSHA inspected the plant in March. The agency says some of the violations involve the failure to correct deficiencies in equipment and to document responses to violations found in a 2010 safety audit. The agency says 12 of 22 violations found three years ago remain uncorrected.

The plant manager didn’t immediately return a call Tuesday from The Associated Press.

The company can contest the citations and proposed penalties before the independent Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission.