A stretch of highway north of Omaha that’s been plagued by deadly crashes for years will be widened sooner than expected.

On Wednesday, Gov. Dave Heineman announced the expansion of a stretch of Nebraska Highway 133 — also known as Blair High Road — between Blair to Omaha.

The project will widen a section from two to four lanes from just north of Omaha to the Washington County line.

A news release from the governor’s office says the project will take two construction seasons and is estimated to cost $23 million. The Nebraska Department of Roads had been expected to take until 2016 to complete, but is now set to be completed a year early. The department says the speedup was made possible through additional federal funds received this year.

State Sen. Brenda Council has apologized for misusing more than $60,000 in campaign donations at casinos and filing false reports to conceal that.

Attorney General Jon Bruning on Wednesday says Council agreed to plead guilty to misdemeanor charges of filing false campaign reports that omit the casino withdrawals and cash deposits.

In a statement, Council says she “made an error in judgment,” and that she takes “full responsibility.” She says she’s receiving professional treatment for a gambling addiction, and will not “give up or quit fighting for the issues.”

Her opponent, Ernie Chambers, a longtime opponent of casino gambling in Nebraska, says he hopes people will see that if the addiction can bring down somebody with education, intelligence and a successful political career, it can do it to anybody.

An eastern Nebraska man has been sentenced to 10 years in prison for collecting a massive cache of child pornography that included images of infants

U.S. Attorney Deborah Gilg announced that 52-year-old Robert Sheldon, of Arlington, was sentenced Tuesday in federal court for receiving child pornography.

Authorities say a search of Sheldon’s house in February turned up more than 200,000 sexually explicit images of young children on computer hard-drives. Authorities say Sheldon’s was the largest ever uncovered by the Nebraska Attorney General’s office’s Rural Cybercrime Unit.

The collection included more than 600 images involving the sexual abuse of children believed to be 1-year-old or younger and included images involving the rape and torture of prepubescent children.

Sheldon will be subjected to a lifetime term of supervision following his release.

A Columbus man diagnosed with Alzheimer’s has been given probation for his involvement in a drug case after a judge accepted his medical records confirming the diagnosis.

71-year-old Thomas Leffers, who has early onset of the disease, was sentenced to 18 months of probation for a marijuana sale in March. The judge also sentenced Leffers to 90 days in jail, but that could be waived if Leffers performs well on probation.

Leffers pleaded guilty in June to an attempted possession charge in a plea deal with the Platte County attorney’s office. In August, the judge postponed sentencing to allow Leffers to participate in a presentence report that would include a doctor’s confirmation of his medical condition.

An Omaha mother who filled a standing freezer in her garage with her own breast milk is now giving the stash away to another Omaha family in need.

Andrea Kirby began pumping milk for her 8-month-old second child as soon as she was born, fearful that she would not produce enough milk to feed the child without supplemental formula. It turns out, she produced more than she could ever use.

Kirby is donating some 44 gallons of breast milk to Jen Peters, whose 2-year-old daughter suffers from spinal muscular atrophy and needs breast milk to help her gain weight and provide the antibodies she needs to keep her healthy.

Kirby and Peters learned of one another through a mutual acquaintance.

The old Carnegie Library in North Bend in eastern Nebraska has a future.

North Bend native Jim Kruger brought the landmark building and plans to restore it.

Kruger, who’s using a restoration architect for the job, says he’s not sure what he’ll do with the library once the project is finished.

North Bend dedicated a new library in June. Residents spent about five years raising money to pay for it.

The old library was dedicated in 1913. It was appraised at $37,500 in 2010, and sold last month for $21,000.

Top administrators from the University of Nebraska Medical Center are expected to brief the university’s Board of Regents about the impact that the federal health care law would have on their facilities.

University of Nebraska College of Medicine dean Bradley Britigan and other administrators will focus on a proposed Medicaid expansion during the regents’ meeting on Friday.

A university report released in August concluded that the law would attract at least $2.9 billion in revenue from the federal government by 2020, and reduce so-called charity care at Nebraska hospitals by $650 million over a five-year period.

States that choose to expand their Medicaid programs would see 100 percent of their new costs covered by the federal government between 2014 and 2016. The amount would decrease to 90 percent by 2020.

People attending Husker Harvest Days this week will be able to get free screenings for several lung diseases.

The University of Nebraska Medical Center will offer the screenings at the farm show on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.

Lung function tests will be offered along with checks for a hereditary cause of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

Test results will be shared immediately, and anyone who needs treatment will be referred to their physicians.

A southeast Nebraska school has a new way to combat bullying with an online form to alert officials about the problem.

Meridian Public Schools in Daykin is using the form this year, and it’s accessible on the school’s website.

Principal Bobby Kelley says they needed a way for students and parents to contact them immediately. Kelley says a few forms have been submitted, but the site is not being used to its fullest potential. The principal says they’d get phone calls from parents about their child being bullied, but often it was days later.

Kelley says the goal is let people know the online form is an option.

Nebraska’s main crops remain ahead of schedule, but poor conditions are common across the state because of the hot, dry weather.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture said Monday that 12 percent of the corn crop had already been harvested. That’s well ahead of the typical 1 percent at this time of year.

But only about 31 percent of the corn crop in Nebraska rates in good or excellent condition right now. That’s well below the 79 percent average.

The USDA says more than half of the irrigated corn is in excellent or good shape — much better than the 3 percent of dryland corn in that condition.

About 77 percent of the soybeans have begun to turn color. That’s 11 days ahead of the 44 percent average.