Friday,  Dec. 27, 2013 • Vol. 16--No. 164 • 12 of 24

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alone in the Democratic primary.
• Former South Dakota Gov. Mike Rounds, who announced his candidacy for the seat in late 2012, has since been joined by four other Republicans: state Sen. Larry Rhoden of Union Center, state Rep. Stace Nelson of Fulton, Sioux Falls physician Annette Bosworth and Yankton attorney Jason Ravnsborg.
• Former U.S. Sen. Larry Pressler, 71, has announced he also is running, this time as an independent.
• Johnson, the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, suffered a brain hemorrhage in 2006. But he later returned to the Senate, and won re-election in 2008.
• ___
• USA Today founder dies
• USA Today founder and South Dakota native Al Neuharth died in April at the age of 89.
• Neuharth changed the look of American newspapers by filling USA Today with breezy, easy-to-comprehend articles, attention-grabbing graphics and stories that often didn't require readers to jump to a different page. Sections were denoted by different colors.
• Neuharth had journalism in his blood from an early start. At age 11, the Eureka native took his first job as a newspaper carrier. In his teens he worked in the composing room of the weekly Alpena Journal.
• After earning a bronze star in World War II and graduating with a journalism degree from the University of South Dakota, Neuharth worked for The Associated Press for two years before launching a South Dakota sports weekly tabloid, SoDak Sports.
• The venture failed, but Neuharth went on to build Gannett Co. into the nation's largest newspaper company.
• During a May memorial service at the University of South Dakota in Vermillion, friends and colleagues remembered him not as a driven media giant but as a loyal South Dakotan who never forgot his roots.
• ___
• Cellphone ban
• The South Dakota Legislature in March passed a law that prohibits beginning drivers from using cellphones or other electronic devices while behind the wheel.
• The new law doesn't allow law enforcement officers to stop new drivers for the offense, but drivers could get such a ticket while stopped for another traffic violation.
• The measure was suggested by a task force established to reduce teen traffic crashes.
• Discussion of the bill slipped into an acrimonious debate in the House when an

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