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Senate's passage of the farm bill, which includes a high level of reform while maintaining programs important to South Dakota such as crop insurance.
• The Senate on Thursday completed a five-year, half-trillion-dollar farm bill that cuts farm subsidies and land conservation spending by about $2 billion a year but largely protects sugar growers. The vote was 65 to 34.
• The measure now goes to the Republican-led House, where conservatives are certain to resist its costs.
• The current agricultural program ends in September.
• Thune says senators have spent three days processing 73 amendments on the floor. He says it's nice to get the bill to the finish line and have it still in reasonably good shape.
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SD court upholds end of father's parental rights
CHET BROKAW,Associated Press
• PIERRE, S.D. (AP) -- The South Dakota Supreme Court on Thursday upheld a lower court's decision to end a man's parental rights to his daughter in a ruling that defines the extent of efforts the state must make to prevent the breakup of an American Indian family.
• The state Department of Social Services made an active effort, as required under the federal Indian Child Welfare Act, to help the child's father receive training so the girl could be placed in his California home, the high court said in a unanimous ruling.
• "Those efforts were unsuccessful in any progress toward that goal," the Supreme Court said in a ruling that identified the girl and her parents only by their initials.
• The girl and her mother were members of the Fort Peck Sioux Tribe of Montana living in South Dakota when the 1-year-old child was removed from her mother's home and placed in foster care in June 2009 because the mother was intoxicated. (Continued on page 19)
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