(AP) — Residents of 1,000 homes in Colorado Springs are being ordered to evacuate because of a wildfire that’s already destroyed at least 360 houses.

Thursday’s evacuation order is the first within the city limits. About 38,000 people were previously told to leave because of the fire that started in a populated, wooded area east of the city.

Colorado’s second-largest city of about 430,000 people is also asking residents of 2,000 more homes to be ready to evacuate because the fire has reached a designated trigger point.

The blaze in the Black Forest area is now the most destructive in Colorado history.

(AP) — A former lead recycling company may have left behind higher-than-normal lead levels in residential yards in a Lincoln neighborhood.

Recent state testing showed lead in the soil under the parking lot next to the Nebraska Champions Club at Memorial Stadium and in the yards of some homes in the North Bottoms neighborhood to the northwest.

Dirt from nine of the 20 homes had lead content above 400 parts per million, the level the federal government says could be dangerous for small children.

The old Northwestern Metal Co. once stood near the stadium, at Ninth and T streets.

Nebraska’s Department of Environmental Quality says more tests will be necessary to determine the scope and seriousness of any contamination.

(AP) — A city councilman in the eastern Nebraska city of Ashland has been accused of stealing water from the city.

Councilman Chad Yochum was cited Tuesday for misdemeanor theft.

Investigators say the 39-year-old Yochum is suspected of disconnecting his home’s meter so he didn’t have to pay for the water. City officials say other residents are suspected of doing the same, but so far only Yochum has been cited.

City Attorney Mark Fahleson says he didn’t know how much water was involved in Yochum’s case.

A public phone listing for Yochum couldn’t be found. Online court records don’t list the name of his attorney.

(AP) — Prosecutors say a Houston woman was at a bar with her boyfriend when another man offered her a drink, causing an argument that escalated into her fatally beating her boyfriend with a stiletto high-heel shoe.

Forty-four-year-old Ana Trujillo is charged with murder in the death of 59-year-old Alf Stefan Andersson. She was being held Wednesday in the Harris County Jail on $100,000 bond. Her attorney says Trujillo acted in self-defense.

The Harris County District Attorney’s office says the couple had wine and tequila before the argument erupted.

District attorney spokeswoman Sara Marie Kinney says Trujillo told police the fight escalated when they returned to her apartment and Andersson grabbed her. Trujillo told police she hit him with her shoe.

Kinney says Andersson was dead when police arrived.

(AP) — An Ohio boy has admitted he fatally shot his mother when he was 10 after what a relative described as an argument over chores.

The boy, now 13, entered the equivalent of a guilty plea in juvenile court. A second charge and two weapons specifications were dismissed.

In January 2011, the boy told a 911 dispatcher he shot his mother at home, near the rural town of Big Prairie.

He’ll be sentenced later and could be held in a youth facility until he’s 21. A defense attorney says he’ll ask that the boy go to a residential treatment facility with access to counseling.

A prosecutor told The Repository in Canton the plea deal avoids a trial that benefits no one.

The Associated Press generally doesn’t identify juveniles accused of crimes.

(AP) — A judge has ruled that opponents of the Keystone XL pipeline in Nebraska can proceed with their legal challenge to a state law that paved the way for a new project route.

Lancaster County District Court Judge Stephanie Stacy on Tuesday rejected a motion by Nebraska state officials to dismiss the lawsuit.

The lawsuit filed by three Nebraska landowners asserts that Gov. Dave Heineman’s decision to approve a new pipeline route was rooted in an unconstitutional state law. The law was passed during a special legislative session in 2011 as a way to reroute the pipeline away from Nebraska’s environmentally sensitive Sandhills.

Stacy did not rule on the merits of the case, but said opponents should be allowed to present their evidence and arguments.

(AP) — The Grand Island City Council wants a resident’s profane, anti-government signs removed from his properties.

The council voted unanimously Tuesday to support the city administration’s efforts to have Larry Tourangeau’s signs taken down.

The signs criticize government officials because they refused to indict a former employee of Tourangeau. He erected the signs in 2011, and so far he’s resisted city efforts to eliminate them.

City officials say their efforts are focused on the signs’ violations of building ordinances, not on the harsh criticism they carry.

The signs have been vandalized with red and black spray paint and have been deemed public nuisances.

 

(AP) — A federal judge has signed an order to drop Peru State College, the state of Nebraska and other local officials from a lawsuit in which a mother blamed them in the disappearance of her daughter.

LaTanya Thomas filed the lawsuit last year accusing the college and officials of neglecting to protect her daughter, 19-year-old student Tyler “Ty” Thomas, from fellow student Joshua Keadle, who is in prison for sexual assault in a separate case.

Tyler Thomas has not been seen since Dec. 2, 2010. Investigators believe Keadle was the last person to see her alive.

LaTanya Thomas agreed to the dismissal of the school and other defendants. The lawsuit now proceeds against Keadle, the Nebraska State Colleges Board of Trustees and ten unknown people listed only as John Does.

(AP) — A Native American tribe that has long battled the devastating effects of alcoholism is planning to ask its tribal members whether it should legalize alcohol on its South Dakota reservation.

The Oglala Sioux tribal council voted 9-7 Tuesday to bring the question of legalizing alcohol on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation to a public vote.

Alcoholism is rampant on the reservation because people sneak in beer and liquor from nearby border towns such as Whiteclay, Neb. The question of legalizing alcohol for revenue for the tribe has caused deep division among tribal members.

Alcohol was legalized on the reservation for two months in 1970. It was restored two months later. An attempt to allow it in 2004 died after an outcry.

A date for the vote has not been set.

(AP) — U.S. health officials say doctors should consider giving a daily AIDS drug to another high risk group to prevent infection — people who shoot heroin, methamphetamine or other injection drugs.

A similar recommendation is already in place for gay men and heterosexual couples.

The new advice was triggered by a study done in Thailand. Drug users who took the daily pill were about 50 percent less likely to become infected with HIV than those given a dummy pill.

Drug users represent about 1 in 13 new infections in the U.S. but they account for the majority of cases in Eastern Europe and central Asia.

The research was done by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Thai government. The findings were released Wednesday by the journal Lancet.