• LINCOLN, Neb. (AP) -- A nursing home designed to serve Native Americans in the northwest Nebraska town of Whiteclay will not open for at least another year because of a funding delay, project planners said Wednesday.
• The proposed 60-bed facility near South Dakota's Pine Ridge Indian Reservation was supposed to open last month for members of the Oglala Sioux Tribe. But financial consultant Gary Ruse said the tribe wasn't able to secure the money it needed until three months ago, when it received about $13 million in loans from the Shakopee Tribe in Minnesota.
• "It is started now, and they're getting ready to pour the footings," said Ruse, a former bank president based in Gordon. "Originally, it was supposed to be done by now, but now we're expecting it'll take at least another year. But it is under way, and progress is being made daily."
• The nursing home was scheduled to open in August for elderly tribe members, some of whom are living in facilities hundreds of miles from their relatives and native reservation. Project planners broke ground on the facility in June 2011.
• Ruse said the project, when completed, will create an estimated 70 to 80 jobs and the facility will have room to expand to 80 beds. The nursing home already has drawn interest from about 200 residents scattered throughout several states.
• The home will sit on a 1,000-acre patch of tribal ground in Whiteclay, a Nebraska border town frequently criticized for its beer sales to residents who live on the reservation where alcohol is banned. The tribe couldn't build the facility in South Dakota, where most of the reservation lies, because of a moratorium on new nursing home beds.
• Nebraska Sen. LeRoy Louden of Ellsworth said the facility is opening in Ne

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