Friday,  Aug. 16, 2013 • Vol. 15--No. 32 • 23 of 33

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odds of winning it are 1 in about 649,000.
• Powerball is played in 43 states, the District of Columbia and the U.S. Virgin Islands. The jackpot is at $60 million for the next drawing, on Saturday.

SD couple accused of horse neglect on trial

• RAPID CITY, S.D. (AP) -- A Rapid City couple is on trial for allegedly neglecting dozens of horses last winter.
• Donald and Terri Harwood were charged with numerous counts of inhumane treatment of an animal after the Pennington County Sheriff's Office in January seized 69 horses owned by the couple or left in their care. The charge is a misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in jail and a $2,000 fine.
• Prosecutor Megan Poppen says the horses at times were left without hay or water, and some were thin and weak. Defense attorney Connor Duffy says the Harwoods were taking action to care for the horses, and that skyrocketing hay prices and illness among the horses played a big role in the case.

Group says SD has poorest human trafficking laws

• SIOUX FALLS, S.D. (AP) -- South Dakota's human trafficking laws are the weakest in the nation, an advocacy group says in a new state-by-state ranking of how forced prostitution and slave labor cases are handled.
• South Dakota lacks safe harbor laws for underage victims, doesn't require law officers to undergo training in human trafficking, doesn't seize assets obtained through trafficking, hasn't lowered its burden of proof for sex crimes involving juveniles, and doesn't allow sex trafficking victims to easily purge prostitution convictions from their record, according to the Washington, D.C.-based Polaris Project.
• South Dakota also lost points for lacking a human trafficking task force, though one was created this summer. Polaris Project spokesman Brandon Bouchard said the state wasn't credited for the task force because it was created by law enforcement, not written into law by legislators.
• U.S. Attorney Brendan Johnson, whose office is part of the task force, cautioned against reading too deeply into the rankings. State and federal law enforcement work together closely in South Dakota, he said, and any state-level trafficking cases are prosecuted under federal law, where the penalties are more severe.
• "I've told them that I want to handle as many human trafficking cases as they can find," Johnson said.

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