• SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) -- A man who admitted killing an elderly Sioux Falls woman in her bed wants to keep statements he made following his arrest kept from a jury that will decide whether he lives or dies.
• Forty-three-year-old James McVay has pleaded guilty but mentally ill to murder in the July 2011 stabbing death of 75-year-old Maybelle Schein. A jury will decide whether he gets life in prison or the death sentence.
• His attorneys say statements McVay made after his arrest in Madison, Wis., should be thrown out because McVay was in a drug-induced psychosis. Prosecutors say there's no proof McVay's statements were involuntary.
• McVay told investigators and a television reporter that he killed Schein and stole her car as part of a plot to assassinate President Barack Obama on a golf course.
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• PIERRE, S.D. (AP) -- South Dakota Attorney General Marty Jackley has been selected to be chairman of the Conference of Western Attorneys General.
• The conference addresses legal topics and areas of common interest to western states. Those topics include water, fish and wildlife, public land, minerals, the environment and Indian law.
• Idaho Attorney General Lawrence Wasden was selected as the conference's vice chair.
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• PIERRE, S.D. (AP) -- Four universities in North Dakota and South Dakota have been awarded a $6 million grant to establish a research consortium that will study the use of a plant material to replace petrochemicals.
• The National Science Foundation Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research has awarded funding for North Dakota State University, the University of North Dakota, South Dakota State University and the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology.
• The money will be used to establish the Dakota Bioprocessing Consortium.
• The consortium's primary goal will be research that will produce viable, renew

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