The nation in brief

QUOTE OF THE DAY

“Zimmerman thought it was his right to rid his neighborhood of anyone who did not belong.”

Prosecutor John Guy in the opening day of the trial for George Zimmerman, the neighborhood-watch volunteer accused of murdering 17-yearold Trayvon Martin Article, this page

Reid: Senate won’t extend farm policy

WASHINGTON - Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid on Monday said his chamber won’t pass an extension of farm policy this year and pressured the House to figure out how to pass a farm bill.

The House rejected its version of a five-year, half-trillion-dollar farm bill last week, with 62 Republicans - including Rep. Tom Cotton of Arkansas - voting it down after Speaker John Boehner urged support. The Senate passed its farm bill earlier this month.

Reid urged Boehner to take up the Senate farm bill before the current policy expires Sept. 30.

Both bills would expand farm subsidies while saving money overall and making cuts to the almost $80 billion a-year food stamp program, which has doubled in cost in the last five years. The Senate bill would cut $400 million a year from food stamps while the House bill would cut $2 billion annually.

1 dead in blast at Indiana grain silo

UNION MILLS, Ind. - An explosion Monday inside a grain elevator killed a worker at a sprawling northwestern Indiana farm co-op, authorities said.

The cause of the blast at the Union Mills Co-op remained unknown Monday evening. The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firms and Explosives and the Indiana Occupational Safety and Health Administration were among the agencies sending investigators to the scene.

It wasn’t clear where the victim, James Swank, 67, of Union Mills, was at the time of the blast, Maj. John Boyd of the LaPorte County sheriff’s office said.

Swank died of multiple blunt-force trauma, LaPorte County Coroner John Sullivan said. The accident might have been a grain-dust explosion, he said.

N.Y. review backs sex-abuse verdict

MINEOLA, N.Y. - There is no reason to overturn the conviction of a man in a 1980s sex-abuse scandal, prosecutors announced Monday after a three-year review that was prompted in part by a 2003 Oscar-nominated documentary that questioned the prosecution.

There was strong reason to investigate and prosecute both Jesse Friedman and his father when the scandal emerged in 1987, Kathleen Rick, district attorney for New York’s Nassau County, said in a 168-page report Monday. The new inquiry also concluded that the father and son had abused young boys taking computer classes in the basement of their Great Neck home.

Both pleaded guilty in 1988 to abusing 13 children.