SIOUX CITY, Iowa (AP) — Nurse practitioners help fill the gaps left by a shortage of doctors in many places, and that is especially true in rural areas.

UnityPoint Health-St. Luke’s hospital has gone from having no nurse practitioners seven years ago to employing 20 today in a variety of fields.

Priscilla Stokes says nurse practitioners are with babies in the neonatal intensive care unit at St. Luke’s around the clock, so they can respond quicker than the on-call doctor.

Especially in rural areas, doctors are in short supply and that is expected to get worse as more older physicians retire.

Nurse practitioners can help because 20 states, including Iowa and Nebraska, allow them to practice without a doctor’s oversight if they have a master’s degree or better.

HASTINGS, Neb. (AP) — Experts from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln try to help farmers prepare for the possibility prolonged dry weather and more severe storms without focusing on the climate change that might be causing them.

The experts offered farmers several strategies for dealing with climate extremes at last week’s Husker Harvest Days in rural Hall County.

The event highlighted ways to plan irrigation systems so they will be resilient and forage alternatives in beef systems. There was also education on the benefits of using cover crops to protect and enhance soil.

UNL Extension educator Tyler Williams says the university tries hard to keep politics out of the discussion while helping farmers cope with climate changes.

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — Nebraska is getting a $1.35 million federal grant to help expand hunters’ access to private land in the state.

State Conservationist Craig Derickson says the money will boost an existing program that helps provide access to private land for hunting, fishing and other recreation activities.

Landowners receive payments for allowing access to their lands and some liability protection.

More details about the program are available online at www.OutdoorNebraska.org .

The Nebraska grant was one of 15 the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced recently. The grants are worth $20 million.

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — Nebraska residents who are eligible to vote will be able to register and update their registrations online under a new system that Secretary of State John Gale plans to launch this week.

The secretary of state’s office will unveil the project Tuesday as part of National Voter Registration Day.

Gale has said the new system will mark one of the biggest technological advancements in voter registration in years. It also has been shown to boost voter registrations in other states that adopted the technology. Nebraska joins 23 other states that have started using an online registration system.

Sen. Adam Morfeld of Lincoln, the executive director of Nebraskans for Civic Reform, says online voter registration is a major step toward modernizing the state’s election system.

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — A new state report says Nebraska’s unemployment rate has risen again, hitting 2.8 percent in August.

The Nebraska Labor Department said in the report released Friday that the preliminary August rate is up a tenth of a point from July’s 2.7 percent. The figure is four-tenths of a point under the August 2014 rate of 3.2 percent.

The new Nebraska figure remained well below the preliminary national unemployment rate of 5.1 percent in August. U.S. Labor Department figures say Nebraska is trailed by North Dakota at 2.9 percent and Hawaii at 3.5 percent.

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — U.S. Census data show that the percentage of Nebraskans who own their own homes has dropped again, hitting the lowest figure in more than 50 years.

The 2015 American Community Survey, which has census data from 2014, shows that less than 66 percent of Nebraska residents own their homes. That’s down from 67.4 percent in 2010 and 69.3 percent in 2008.

David Drozd is research coordinator at the Center for Public Affairs Research at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, and he says the last time the rate was lower was in the 1960 U.S. Census, when 64.8 percent of the population reported homeownership.

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — The U.S. attorney’s office in Nebraska says it can’t determine whether state officials violated federal law in their efforts to obtain lethal injection drugs, so prosecutors have forwarded key documents to a watchdog agency for further review.

Prosecutors examined the documents at the request of the American Civil Liberties Union of Nebraska. Danielle Conrad, the group’s executive director, said Friday she was pleased that prosecutors took the matter seriously.

The documents obtained by the group show state officials tried to obtain lethal injection drugs after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said they can’t be imported.

U.S. Attorney Deborah Gilg says in a letter that her office sent the documents to the FDA’s Office of the Inspector General, and will decide whether to take action based on that agency’s report.

LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) — Nebraska Secretary of State John Gale says it appears “very likely” that a petition to save the death penalty has enough valid signatures to prevent its repeal until the 2016 election.

Gale’s office said Friday that county election officials have verified and certified 120,479 signatures. Petition sponsors needed at least 113,883 to keep the Legislature’s repeal from going into effect.

State law requires that 110 percent of the required number of signatures must be certified to the state. That means 125,271 are needed before Gale can formally declare that the issue has qualified for the ballot.

So far, 68 of Nebraska’s 93 counties have certified their numbers.

Death penalty opponents sued this week to try to keep the issue off the ballot.

GRAND ISLAND, Neb. (AP) — A 44-year-old Elm Creek man has been convicted of vehicular homicide and drunken driving for causing the fatal plunge of his sport utility vehicle into a Grand Island detention pond.

Hall County jury found Larry Gydesen guilty of the counts on Friday. Gydesen faces up to 20 years in prison when he’s sentenced Nov. 19.

Police say Gydesen was driving under the influence when he drove his SUV into the pond Oct. 12. The body of his passenger, 44-year-old John Zebert, was pulled from the water the next day.

PAXTON, Neb. (AP) — Authorities say a pilot escaped before his wrecked plane caught fire near Paxton in western Nebraska.

The plane went down in a soybean field around 1:40 p.m. Wednesday. Keith County Sheriff Jeff Stevens say the pilot suffered lacerations, a concussion and other injuries and was taken to a North Platte hospital. He was released Wednesday evening.

The pilot was identified as 55-year-old Gregory McClung of McClung Aerial Spraying in Big Springs.

The crash cause is being investigated.