Program elimination, enrollment losses, accelerated brain drain - those are the realities of cuts being pondered by lawmakers trying to balance the state budget, higher education officials say.

A plan to boost state aid to South Dakota school districts after the economy rebounds appeared dead Wednesday after House and Senate members failed to agree on a plan.

The Legislature's leaders reached agreement Thursday to cut back and eventually shut down South Dakota's program that has provided millions of dollars in construction-tax refunds for large business projects and agricultural processing plants.

The South Dakota Legislature's plans to cut state spending next year were thrown into question Thursday when lawmakers learned the state might get an extra $36 million in federal aid.

WASHINGTON -- For the past couple of years, Aerostar International in Sioux Falls has contracted with the Defense Department to develop its HiSentinel unmanned aircraft for high-altitude surveillance of combat regions.

Poet, the world's largest producer of ethanol, says it can do the world one better and embarked Thursday on an ambitious initiative called Ingreenuity that first seeks to reduce its water consumption by 22 percent.

The Army Corps of Engineers said there's room in the Missouri River reservoirs to hold more water if downstream river levels are high from flooding this spring.

Attorney General Marty Jackley has joined the U.S. Federal Trade Commission and 34 states in announcing an agreement reached with LifeLock Inc., a company based in Tempe, Ariz. that offers theft protection.

Legislators negotiated a compromise Thursday that would make the South Dakota Opportunity scholarship available to any student in the state who scores at least 28 on the ACT college-readiness exam.s

Both political parties are taking tea party activists seriously and are wary of offending them – if they are not already actively wooing them for state races this fall. Just look at the governor’s election in Ohio. Republican gubernatorial candidate John Kasich openly touts his tea party credentials in his bid to defeat incumbent Democrat Ted Strickland. “I think I was in the tea party before there was a tea party,” Kasich famously told a Columbus crowd earlier this year. “This is a real movement with a real message about people’s frustrations by broken promises that leaders on both sides of the aisle would be foolish to ignore,” he went on to write in a blog posting.