Thursday,  August 2, 2012 • Vol. 13--No. 019 • 18 of 38 •  Other Editions

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• Thursday's expansion of federal relief was welcomed in rain-starved states like Illinois, where the USDA's addition of 66 counties leaves just four of the state's 102 counties -- Cook, DuPage, Kane and Will, all in the Chicago area -- without the natural disaster classification.
• The Illinois State Water Survey said the state has averaged just 12.6 inches from January to June 2012, the sixth-driest first half of a year on record. Compounding matters is that Illinois has seen above-normal temperatures each month, with the statewide average of 52.8 degrees over the first six months logged as the warmest on record.
• "While harvest has yet to begin, we already see that the drought has caused considerable crop damage," Illinois Gov. Pat Quinn said. In his state, 71 percent of the

corn crop and 56 percent of soybean acreage is considered poor or very poor.
• In South Dakota, where roughly three-fifths of the state is in severe or extreme drought, Vilsack earlier had allowed emergency haying and grazing on about 500,000 conservation acres, but not on the roughly 445,000 acres designated as wetlands.
• Vilsack's decision to open up some wetland acres in a number of states will give farmers and ranchers a chance to get good quality forage for livestock, federal lawmakers said.
• "The USDA cannot make it rain, but it can apply flexibility to the conservation practices," Sen. Tim Johnson, a South Dakota Democrat, said Wednesday. The USDA designated 39 of his state's counties disaster areas.
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S. Dakota hospital denies surgical scars say KKK
KRISTI EATON,Associated Press

• SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) -- A lawyer for a Rapid City-area hospital being sued by a blind man who says the letters KKK were carved into his stomach during surgery said the accusations were contrived by other people and that every scar "is explained by the medical procedures that he underwent to save his life," according to court documents filed Wednesday.
• Vern Traversie, a 69-year-old Lakota man living on the Cheyenne River Reservation in South Dakota, filed a federal lawsuit last month against Rapid City Regional Hospital, its board of directors, several physicians and others. He claims he was left with scars on his abdomen in the shape of the three letters following heart surgery last year.

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