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(83.6 million bushels).
• The crop outlook for drought-weary Texas is so poor that the state is forecast to harvest just 54 million bushels of wheat, compared to the 96 million bushels produced amid last year's drought. In 2010, Texas was the nation's second-largest producer behind Kansas.
• Kansas, which mostly raises hard red winter wheat, is forecast to harvest 299.7 million bushels, down 22 percent from last year's 382.2 million bushels. It's also below the forecast of 313 million bushels estimated by participants in the Kansas wheat quality tour earlier this month.
• Far western Kansas is considered a disaster area, and farmers told tour participants earlier this month that crop insurance agents have already begun writing off acres there. Wheat tour participants examined 570 fields, finding that in south-central Kansas, which got late winter snowstorms and heavy spring rains, the wheat looks good and production there is expected to offset some losses elsewhere in the state.
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• PIERRE, S.D. (AP) -- Gov. Dennis Daugaard announced Friday that he has appointed Robert Gusinsky as a circuit judge in South Dakota's Seventh Judicial Circuit.
• Gusinsky, of Rapid City, will fill the vacancy left by the resignation of Judge Mary Thorstenson. The Seventh Circuit includes Custer, Fall River, Pennington and Shannon counties.
• Gusinsky has been with the U.S. Attorney's Office in 2007. He is currently an Assistant United States Attorney. Before that, he was in private practice in Rapid City. He is a 1996 graduate of the USD School of Law.
• Gusinsky was born in Latvia, which was a part of the Soviet Union at the time. He became a U.S. citizen in 1986.
• "As an immigrant from a communist country that did not offer its citizens meaningful legal protections, I am especially sensitive to the importance of the rule of law," Gusinksy said.
• Daugaard said Gusinsky is a well-regarded attorney with civil and criminal experience.
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