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• To the north, firefighters in Holt County have contained a fire that burned an estimated 500 to 600 acres of grassland, and destroyed a few small outbuildings. Two homes were evacuated, and the fire came within 5 feet of one house, but firefighters managed to save it.
• The fire started about three miles west of Stewart and was stopped about one-and-a-quarter miles from the town, said Holt County Emergency Manager Deb Hilker. The cause was unknown as of Thursday morning.
• Hilker said county crews on Thursday were planning to bulldoze a 1-mile-long stretch of trees where flames were still smoldering.
• "It's just too hard for them to try to contain it in those trees when the wind is blowing this hard," she said. "You can't really get up to the hot spots at the top of the trees until you knock them to the ground."
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• SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) -- Former U.S. Sen. George McGovern is surrounded by his family members as he nears the end of his life.
• Family spokesman Steve Hildebrand tells The Associated Press that 90-year-old McGovern is peaceful and resting. He has been in hospice care since Monday. His family said he was no longer responsive Wednesday.
• Hildebrand says his condition hasn't changed and that McGovern is "at the end stages of his life."
• McGovern was the Democratic presidential candidate who lost to President Richard Nixon in 1972 in a historic landslide. He was a member of the U.S. House from 1957 to 1961 and a U.S. senator from 1963 to 1981. In recent years, he turned his focus to world hunger.
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• NORTH SIOUX CITY, S.D. (AP) -- A South Dakota judge has given two men more time to respond to a $1 billion defamation lawsuit over a meat product that critics dubbed "pink slime."
• Judge Steven Jensen granted a 30-day extension for Carl Custer and Gerald Zirnstein to respond to the lawsuit brought by Beef Products Inc.
• Custer, a former federal food scientist, and Zirnstein, the USDA microbiologist who named the product "pink slime," must now respond to the suit by Nov. 19.
• BPI sued the two men as well as ABC News for $1.2 billion in damages for

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