KEARNEY, Neb. (AP) — A reality show winner will share his story next month during the annual Fort Kearny Outdoor Expo near Kearney.

The expo is designed for family members of all ages and experience levels. It’s scheduled to run from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on May 11 at Fort Kearny State Recreation Area.

Those who attend can try kayaking, fishing, bow fishing, archery, slingshots and crossbows and also throw spear and tomahawks. Other activities include backyard games, air guns, Dutch oven cooking contest and a kids’ turkey gobbling contest.

The Nebraska Game and Parks Commission says the special guest will be Sam Larson, a wilderness instructor, author and speaker. He’ll be talking about how he persevered in northern Mongolia to finish first and win $500,000 from the TV survival reality show “Alone.”

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — Doctors, nurses and other health care workers connected with the Nebraska medical school in Omaha may have found that making music with their orchestra may be the best medicine for easing their stress and meeting work challenges.

The Nebraska Medical Orchestra was formed last year and rehearses for a couple of hours each week under the direction of Matthew Brooks, the director of orchestras at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. The 55-member ensemble already has given concerts, performing works by such composers as Mozart and Bach.

“They’ve come a long way with a challenging repertoire,” Brooks said of his relatively new group. “Folks in health professions are high achievers.”

Stress is high among medical professionals, said Dr. Steven Wengel, a psychiatrist at the University of Nebraska Medical Center who also is assistant vice chancellor of campus wellness for both Omaha campuses. Their work is “very, very fulfilling but also very challenging,” Wengel said.

“What can we do to refresh their souls, recharge their batteries?” he said he asked himself when he began to think about reducing their psychic load.

A colleague came to him last year with an idea. Dr. Matt Rizzo, who leads the neurological services department at the medical school, had been in a medical orchestra while he was a faculty member at the University of Iowa.

“He urged me to get an orchestra going here,” Wengel told the Omaha World-Herald , noting that a study shows that medical students exposed to the humanities have much lower burnout rates and score higher on measures of empathy and wisdom, he said.

A cancer researcher at the medical school, Dr. Sarah Holstein, a flutist, said she gets a lot out of the orchestra.

“I love playing music. It uses a different part of my brain than the part that’s constantly worrying about work-related things or patients,” Holstein said. “That goes away, and I can focus on the music and the joy of playing with others.”

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — Communities across Nebraska and Iowa will be participating in the federal Drug Enforcement Administration’s Drug Take-Back Day this weekend.

The program allows the public to drop off unused, expired or unwanted prescription drugs at scores of collection sites across the two states this Saturday.

The DEA says rates of prescription drug abuse in the U.S. are alarmingly high, as are the number of accidental poisonings and overdoses due to these drugs. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 91 Americans die each day from an opioid overdose.

Dropoff locations can be found online .

The national event was launched in 2010 and is held twice each year. Last October, more than 457 tons (414 metric tons) of prescription drugs were collected nationally.

OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — Some Omaha developers are blaming a narrow interpretation of a new state tax credit for producing fewer affordable housing options than they expected.

Tom McLeay founded Clarity Development, which is behind a recent residential project to bring lower-cost units to the city. The $30 million Aspen Grove apartment complex capped rent, reserving units for households earning less than 60% of the area’s median income. The apartments filled up quickly because there’s an unmet demand in the city for quality housing that’s also affordable, compared to the increasing market-rate apartments rising across the city, McLeay said.

He told the Omaha World-Herald that Nebraska’s 9% housing tax credit that took effect last year isn’t working as he and some developers had hoped.

According to the developers, policymakers are applying a narrow interpretation of the law, which is resulting in the focus on rental dwellings for special needs groups, such as disabled veterans, elderly residents and those with the lowest income.

Former Sen. Burke Harr originally sponsored the bill to target the working poor.

“I think it was a little too complicated,” Harr said. “No one really quite caught on to what we were trying to do.”

Harr and McLeay both said they don’t mean that they want to deny housing to special needs populations, but rather that these groups already get prioritized in a federal housing tax credit program.

The Nebraska Investment Finance Authority administers the federal low-income tax credit program along with the state’s new counterpart. The authority’s executive director, Tim Kenny, said he’ll continue to use the more narrow interpretation unless he’s directed otherwise by Republican Gov. Pete Ricketts or the Legislature.

About $5.3 million in state low-income housing tax credits can be allocated annually, according to the authority. The credits can be claimed for six years, which puts the cost around up to $32 million.

The governor’s office said a change would add more expenses.

But McLeay said the state wouldn’t have to incur extra costs and instead could redirect some state credits to apartment projects aimed at the working poor.

McLeay and Harr warn that the city’s shortage of quality and affordable rental housing could worsen.

Rising constructions have made it financially unmanageable for a for-profit developer to create such options without a financial incentive or subsidy, McLeay said.

Attorney David Levy, who chairs the Omaha Housing Authority, said he wants to see the state expand its housing tax credit for projects aimed at the working poor without taking away funding from another program.

“One of the things urban and rural senators still agree on in this state is that the lack of workforce housing is hurting our ability to grow our economy and tax base,” Levy said. “It’s a very real problem.”

COUNCIL BLUFFS, Iowa (AP) — The leaders of several Midwest states hit recently by flooding along the Missouri River said Friday they’ve received assurances from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers that the states will “have a seat at the table” when it comes to river management decisions.

“That was crystal clear when we left that table, that the states were going to have some say in how the river is managed,” said Republican Missouri Gov. Mike Parson immediately after leaving a meeting with Corps officials in the western Iowa city of Council Bluffs. Parson was joined by Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds and Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts, both Republicans, and Kansas Democratic Lt. Gov. Lynn Rogers. It was the second such meeting since last month’s flooding that devastated farms and communities and ripped apart roads and bridges, causing more than an estimated $3 billion in damage.

Ricketts said the four states are considering pushing for formation of a Missouri River management group — similar to the Mississippi River Commission — that would include representatives from the states.

“We’re going to work together and pull together as four states … to be able to change the way the river is controlled,” he said.

The Mississippi River Commission was formed 140 years ago to recommend policy regarding flood control, navigation and environmental projects on the Mississippi River. Its membership consists of three Corps officers, a member of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and three civilians, two of whom must be civil engineers. The U.S. president appoints the commission’s members.

“We along the Missouri River don’t have that,” Ricketts said. “I think it’s something we should look at.”

The state leaders also received an update Friday from the Corps on the progress of repairing the largest levee breaches along the river, most of which occurred in southwestern Iowa. Reynolds said repair contracts for three of the four largest breaches have already been awarded and that some of the repairs could be finished as early as July.

The Corps announced Friday that it awarded a $6 million contract to repair a 1,200-foot breach on the levee south of Highway 34 in Mills County, Iowa. The initial repair will provide flood protection to areas behind the levee, including work to repair Highway 34 and Interstate 29, both of which were heavily damaged by the flooding and remain closed.

The Corps expects that repair to be finished within 45 days of the work beginning.

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) – Nebraska must turn over information to Arkansas death row inmates’ attorneys about where it acquired a drug that was used in a recent lethal injection.

A federal appellate court denied a motion Tuesday that would’ve given Nebraska a reprieve from carrying out the request.

Quinn Eaton is an attorney for the Arkansas inmates. Eaton told the court that information about where Nebraska’s prison system obtained fentanyl for an execution last summer is central to a federal civil rights trial in Arkansas.

He said the documents are relevant to their argument that Arkansas’ use of the drug midazolam in executions is inhumane. They have to show there’s an available alternative to reduce the risk of severe pain.

Nebraska has repeatedly refused to disclose the information.

GRAND ISLAND, Neb. (AP) – Grand Island police have released the name of a 32-year-old homicide victim.

The department identified the man Friday as Vincent Arrellano Jr., who lived in Grand Island. The department said it couldn’t yet release any other information.

Police reported Thursday that officers sent around 9:15 p.m. Wednesday to check a disturbance call in northeast Grand Island found the man later identified as Arrellano suffering from several gunshot wounds. Police say he died around 11:45 p.m. at a local hospital.

No arrests have been reported.