Nebraska lawmakers who support expanding Medicaid to more low-income adults are uncertain if the Legislature will get another chance to debate the issue.

The bill’s sponsor, Sen. Kathy Campbell of Lincoln, says she plans to talk one-on-one with senators who are on the fence next week. She says she wants to see if there’s a way to find common ground.

Advocates thought the bill would get the minimum votes needed to sail to the governor’s desk, but instead, a group of conservative lawmakers stalled the issue Wednesday when they refused to vote to end debate.

Speaker Greg Adams of York says this setback could push the measure off until next year if the bill sponsors don’t gather 33 votes needed to end debate.

As tens of thousands of people gather to celebrate and smoke marijuana in Denver, police will be out in full force.

But it’s not the pot smoking they’re concerned about at the yearly event, billed as the nation’s largest April 20 celebration. Instead, police say they’re focused on crowd security in light of attacks that killed three at the finish line of the Boston Marathon.

Organizers say the event — which drew 50,000 people last year — could bring a record 80,000 this year. That’s because it’s the first celebration since Colorado and Washington voted to make pot legal for recreational use.

Even with the legalization, Colorado bans open and public marijuana use. Still, authorities generally look the other way.

(AP) — Key moments related to the search for the Boston Marathon bombing suspects, based on reports from the Middlesex County district attorney, Massachusetts State Police, and Boston police.

— At 5:10 p.m. Thursday, investigators of the bombings release photographs and video of two suspects. They ask for the public’s help in identifying the men.

— Around 10:20 p.m., shots are fired on the campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, just outside Boston.

— At 10:30 p.m., an MIT campus police officer who was responding to a disturbance is found shot multiple times in his vehicle, apparently in a confrontation with the Boston Marathon bombing suspects. He is later pronounced dead.

— Shortly afterward, two armed men reportedly carjack a Mercedes SUV in Cambridge. A man who was in the vehicle is held for about a half hour and then released unharmed at a gas station on Memorial Drive in Cambridge.

— Police soon pursue the carjacked vehicle in Watertown, just west of Cambridge.

— Some kind of explosive devices are thrown from the vehicle in an apparent attempt to stop police. The carjackers and police exchange gunfire. A transit police officer is seriously injured. One suspect, later identified as Suspect No. 1 in the marathon bombings, is critically injured and later pronounced dead.

— Authorities launch a manhunt for the other suspect.

— Around 1 a.m. Friday, gunshots and explosions are heard in Watertown, just outside Boston. Dozens of police officers and FBI agents converge on a Watertown neighborhood. A helicopter circles overhead.

— Around 4:30 a.m., Massachusetts state and Boston police hold a short outdoor news briefing. They tell people living in that section of eastern Watertown to stay in their homes. They identify the carjackers as the same men suspected in the marathon bombings. Overnight, police also release a photograph of a man believed to be Suspect No. 2, apparently taken from store video earlier in the evening at a 7-Eleven convenience store in Cambridge. He is wearing a grey hoodie-style sweatshirt.

— Around 6:35 a.m., The Associated Press reports that the bomb suspects are from a Russian region near Chechnya and lived in the United States for at least one year.

— Around 6:45 a.m., The Associated Press identifies the surviving Boston bomb suspect as Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev, 19, who has been living in Cambridge, Mass.

— Around 8:40 a.m., a U.S. law enforcement official and the uncle of the suspects confirm that the name of the slain suspect is Tamerlan Tsarnaev, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s older brother.

 

A July trial in Nebraska has been scheduled for a Kansas fugitive who’s accused of firing at officers during a vehicle chase in southeast Nebraska.

33-year-old Michael Engstrom, of Topeka, Kan., pleaded not guilty earlier this week to several felony counts in Johnson County District Court.

His wife, Jamie Engstrom, pleaded guilty to felony child abuse. Prosecutors dropped several charges connected to the Feb. 13 chase in exchange for Jamie Engstrom’s plea. Authorities say the child abuse charge was filed because Jamie Engstrom had placed a 14-year-old child in harm’s way. Officers discovered after the chase that the child was in the Engstroms’ car.

Both Engstroms have been charged with murder in the slaying of a Topeka man earlier on Feb. 13.

Two Nebraska men have been charged in separate federal indictments with child pornography counts.

The U.S. Attorney’s office for Nebraska says 56-year-old James Haugh, of Grand Island, and 26-year-old Michael Nguyen, of Lincoln, were indicted earlier this week.

Both Haugh and Nguyen each face two counts — one of receiving and distributing child pornography and one of possessing child pornography.

Federal prosecutors say Haugh received and distribute child porn on different occasions from Jan. 3, 2009, to Dec. 28, 2012. Nguyen is accused of receiving and distributing child porn from Jan. 17 to March 22.

If convicted, each faces up to 30 years in federal prison.

UPDATE 4/19 07:54am

A U.S. law enforcement official and the uncle of the suspects in the Boston Marathon bombings are confirming that the name of the second suspect is Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the older brother of Dzhokhar A. Tsarnaev, 19. Tamerlan Tsarnaev was killed in a gun battle with police in Massachusetts overnight.

Three law enforcement officials, speaking on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the ongoing investigation, confirmed the bomb suspects were brothers. One of the officials and the men’s uncle confirmed the identity of Tamerlan Tsarnaev.

The uncle, Ruslan Tsarni of Montgomery Village, Md., told The Associated Press that the men lived together near Boston and have been in the United States for about a decade. They traveled here together from the Russian region near Chechnya.

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Police are locking down some neighborhoods in Boston and its western suburbs as they search for the remaining suspect in the marathon bombings.

Authorities urged residents in Watertown, Newton, Waltham, Belmont, Cambridge, Arlington and the Allston-Brighton neighborhoods of Boston to stay indoors. All mass transit was shut down.

At least a quarter of a million people live in those suburbs. Many people in the city of Boston and surrounding areas rely on the Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority to get to work.

The announcement Friday morning comes hours after the killing of one suspect, known as the man in the black hat from marathon surveillance footage. The man in the white hat is on the loose and police are calling him a “terrorist” who came here “to kill.”

More than 1,000 people have gathered in Grand Island, Neb., to support or oppose a Canada-to-Texas oil pipeline that would snake through six states.

Anti-pipeline activists say they’re hopeful President Barack Obama will reject the project after getting Secretary of State John Kerry’s recommendation.

But some, including Nebraska rancher Bruce Boettcher, told State Department representatives at Thursday’s hearing that opponents would stop the project regardless of the government’s decision.

Opponents argue the pipeline, which would carry 800,000 barrels of oil daily, would threaten the region’s water supply if it ruptured. They note the pipeline runs above part of a huge aquifer that provides water to much of the Midwest.

Supporters say pipelines are the safest way to transport oil and that the pipeline company agreed to safeguards exceeding federal regulations.

Nebraska lawmakers voted 33-8 to pass a measure that would leave register voters with fewer days to cast in-person early ballots.

On Thursday the Legislature gave final approval to the measure that would cut early voting days from 35 to 30 days.

Sen. Scott Lautenbaugh of Omaha introduced the bill because election officials say they need more time to program specialized voting machines used by visually impaired voters.

The 2002 Help America Vote Act requires specialized electronic voting machines to be available to assist voters with disabilities in casting their ballots privately. A Lincoln woman who is blind complained that the voting machines weren’t ready when the early voting polls opened last year.

NASA’s planet-hunting telescope has discovered two planets that seem like places for some sort of life to flourish. They are just the right size and in just the right place near their star.

William Borucki (Boh-ROO’-kee), the chief scientist for NASA’s Kepler (KEH’-plur) telescope, says the distant duo are the best candidates for habitable planets that astronomers have found. Past planets seen orbiting other stars are too big, too hot or too cold.

The planets are circling the same star and are slightly wider than Earth. However, they are not too big so they are solid, not balls of gas. One planet is a bit toasty and the other is a bit nippy.

The discoveries were announced Thursday in the journal Science.

A 75-year-old woman has been sentenced to at least 22 years in prison for killing her teen grandson at their home in suburban Detroit.

Sandra Layne got a minimum sentence of 20 years for second-degree murder Thursday, along with a mandatory two-year prison sentence for using a gun to kill 17-year-old Jonathan Hoffman.

Hoffman was shot six times, including twice in the back, last year in West Bloomfield Township. Layne says she shot him out of desperation during a physical altercation, but a jury rejected her self-defense claim.

Prosecutors say there’s no evidence of Layne being injured by Hoffman. A recording of a 911 call shows Hoffman being shot again while pleading for help.

Layne told the court she was “sorry.” She’ll get credit for 11 months served in jail.