Each year since its relocation, Wakarusa has been graced by over a hundred world-class artists that continue to stir the musical interests of folks from all 50 states and beyond.

Wakarusa remembers its star-studded past over the last ten years with special performances by some of the nation’s largest acts including Pretty Lights, Wilco, Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, The Flaming Lips, The Avett Brothers, Bassnectar, Primus, and so many more. Featuring five stages and over 12 hours of music each day, Wakarusa encapsulates a wide variety of music, art, nature, camping and outdoor activities of all types.

Brand new additions include the official Wakarusa Disc Golf Tournament and canoe, kayak, raft, and tube rentals from BYRD’S Adventure Center. Along with scheduled Mulberry River float trips. Other featured activities include daily morning yoga at the Satellite Stage, taking in the scenery from a-top the Ferris wheel, the famed Friday night Costume Contest and Parade, interactive art installations, hiking the Ozark National Forest, and a special presentation on Unified Field Theory with Jamie Janover.

Also don’t miss this year’s roaming performance troupes, where the art comes to you! With just over a month to go before the 10th annual Wakarusa, preparations are already underway at beautiful Mulberry Mountain for this summer’s most anticipated music and camping festival. Main venue and West Woods camping are sold out, but plenty of spots still await you at Riverside, so make sure to finalize your plans soon. Still need a ticket? Treat yourself to the exclusive Wakarusa luxury program by considering a hotel package or VIP event pass.

Wakarusa VIP tickets are almost sold out! VIP at Wakarusa is an all-inclusive package, complete with shaded VIP camping, up front viewing, meals, cold beers, hot showers, friendly staff and more. Upgrades are also still available! Contact Pipeline Ticketing at (785)749-3434, 10am-6pm central, to upgrade your GA tickets to VIP today! For all ticketing information visit the official website at: www.wakarusa.com.

Organizers of the Saturday event placed $10 cubic zirconia stones in the bottom of 399 of the 400 champagne glasses. The prized diamond, donated by Continental Wholesale Diamonds, was placed in the last.

The problem? Eighty-year-old Miriam Tucker accidentally swallowed it.

Tucker told local news media that she didn’t want to put her finger in the champagne, so she drank a bit. While laughing with women at the table, she realized she swallowed it.

Embarrassed, she had to tell jewelers who were frantically searching for the winner.

Already scheduled for a colonoscopy on Monday, she had a doctor recover the jewel.

The U.S. Marshals Service said Friday that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev left Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center overnight and was taken to the Federal Medical Center Devens, about 40 miles west of Boston.

The facility, on the decommissioned Fort Devens U.S. Army base, treats federal prisoners and detainees who require specialized long-term medical or mental health care.

The 19-year-old Tsarnaev is recovering from a gunshot wound to the throat and other injuries suffered during his attempted getaway.

The Massachusetts college student was charged with setting off the shrapnel-packed pressure-cooker bombs that killed three people and wounded more than 260 at the marathon finish line April 15.

Gen. Mike Hostage, commander of Air Combat Command at Joint Base Langley-Eustis in Virginia, issued the warning Tuesday as the Pentagon braces for more effects of the automatic spending cuts triggered by the lack of a budget agreement in Washington.

Hostage said that only the units preparing to deploy to major operations, such as the war in Afghanistan, will remain mission-ready. Other units would stand down on a rotating basis, he added.

The Air Force didn’t immediately release a list of the specific units and bases that would be affected, but it said it would cover some fighters like F-16 Fighting Falcons and F-22 Raptors, and some airborne warning and control aircraft in the U.S., Europe and the Pacific.

The Air Force says, on average, aircrews “lose currency” to fly combat commissions within 90 to 120 days of not flying. It generally takes 60 to 90 days to train the crews to mission-ready status.

Returning grounded units to be ready for missions will require additional funds beyond Air Combat Command’s normal budget, according to Air Force officials. The “stand down” will remain in effect for the remainder of fiscal year 2013 barring any changes to funding.

“Even a six-month stand down of units will have significant long-term, multi-year impacts on our operational readiness,” Air Combat Command spokesman Maj. Brandon Lingle wrote in an email to The Associated Press.

“We have been unaware of how a predator behaves,” Sue Paterno said at a program celebrating Child Abuse Awareness Month in Pennsylvania. “In many cases, we unknowingly helped him ‘groom’ his victims while we thought we were helping a child achieve self-esteem and find a better life.”

Mrs. Paterno said she was horrified when she learned the truth about Sandusky after his arrest in November 2011.

Her husband, a College Football Hall of Fame coach who led the Penn State’s Nittany Lions for 46 years, died in January 2012 at 85.

“The last 17 months have been filled with disbelief, horror, the pain of loss, sleepless nights, praying for the victims and for peace of mind for those who unwittingly were too naive to recognize the signs of abuse,” she said.

Jay Paterno, one of the couple’s five children, also spoke at the breakfast gathering sponsored by the Pennsylvania Family Support Alliance.

The group’s executive director, Angela Liddle, acknowledged that some members questioned the choice of the Paternos as speakers, but she defended the decision and described the family as “good folks.”

An internal probe led by former FBI director Louis Freeh and completed in July accused Joe Paterno and three former Penn State administrators of covering up an abuse allegation about Sandusky more than a decade ago in an attempt to shield the university from bad publicity. Paterno was fired by the university trustees days after Sandusky was charged.

The Paterno family has vehemently denied that Joe Paterno had any knowledge about Sandusky’s crimes against children.

Sandusky, 69, is serving a 30- to 60-year prison sentence after being convicted last year of 45 counts of child sexual abuse involving 10 boys over a period of years. He maintains his innocence and is pursuing appeals.

The Second Mile, the charity where prosecutors say Sandusky met most if not all of his victims, is still functioning but received a judge’s permission in March to sell its State College headquarters for $650,000.

A February report commissioned by the family portrayed Paterno as the victim of a “rush to injustice” spawned by the university-financed internal probe. Dick Thornburgh, the former U.S. attorney general and former Pennsylvania governor, was among the people assembled to review Freeh’s findings.

Freeh has said he stands by his report. It concluded that Paterno and the university’s former president Graham Spanier, former athletic director Tim Curley and retired vice president for business and finance Gary Schultz concealed critical information and “failed to protect against a sexual predator harming children for over a decade.”

On Tuesday, the supervising judge of the grand jury whose findings resulted in charges against Spanier, Curley and Schultz rejected their pre-trial motions, allowing their criminal cases to move forward.

Col. Denise Lind ruled for the prosecution during a court-martial pretrial hearing for Pfc. Bradley Manning at Fort Meade, near Baltimore.

Prosecutors say the witness, presumably a Navy SEAL, collected digital evidence showing that the al-Qaida leader requested and received from an associate some of the documents Manning has acknowledged sending to WikiLeaks.

Defense attorneys had argued that proof of receipt wasn’t relevant to whether Manning aided the enemy, the most serious charge he faces, punishable by life imprisonment.

The judge disagreed.

“The government must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the intelligence is given to and received by the enemy,” Lind said.

The ruling means prosecutors can call the witness during the “merits,” or main, phase of the trial. They otherwise could have used his testimony only for sentencing purposes.

The witness has been publicly identified only as “John Doe” and as a Defense Department “operator,” a designation given to SEALs. Prosecutors say he participated with SEAL Team Six in their May 2011 assault on the compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, in which the terrorist leader was killed. His testimony would help establish a chain of custody for the evidence from its recovery to its analysis by a computer expert.

Judge Lind is weighing options for protecting the witness’ identity. They could include moving the trial to a secure location to hear his testimony, or having him wear a disguise.

Lind also must decide what limits to place on any defense cross-examination of John Doe, as well as three other unidentified “special witnesses,” to protect national security.

Earlier Wednesday, Lind denied a government motion seeking to lower the bar for convicting Manning of violating the federal Espionage Act. He is charged with eight counts of that offense. Lind ruled, contrary to the motion, that prosecutors must prove Manning had reason to believe that the information he leaked could hurt the United States or help a foreign nation.

Lind later released a written copy of the ruling to reporters. It was the first time since she got the case in February 2012 that she has made a written ruling publicly available. The lack of contemporaneous public access to rulings and motions is being challenged in the military appeals courts by the Center for Constitutional Rights, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange and several left-leaning pundits and publications, with support from 30 news organizations, including The Associated Press.

In February, the military began releasing Lind’s older rulings following numerous Freedom of Information Act requests. Copies of the order released Tuesday were distributed by a military attorney who said Lind released it partly because neither the prosecution nor the defense objected.

The hearing was expected to end Wednesday.

Manning pleaded guilty in February to lesser versions of some of the 22 charges he faces. Prosecutors have said they still intend to prove him guilty of the all the original charges.

His trial is scheduled to start June 3 at Fort Meade. It could last for 12 weeks.

The 25-year-old native of Crescent, Okla., is accused of sending hundreds of thousands of Iraq and Afghanistan battlefield reports, State Department diplomatic cables, other classified records and two battlefield video clips to WikiLeaks in 2009 and 2010 while working as an intelligence analyst in Baghdad.

In a statement he read aloud in court Feb. 28, Manning said he sent the material to the anti-secrecy website to expose the American military’s “bloodlust” and disregard for human life in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Pope Francis was elected today.

Nick Todaro, n...@ennisdailynews.com

The Catholic world saw the election of a new leader today with the ascension of Pope Francis, formerly the Cardinal from Argentina Jorge Bergoglio.

St. John Nepomucene Catholic Church pastor Fr. John Dick, attending to parishioners in the community this afternoon, weighed in through a prepared statement.

“Exciting news,” Dick said. “The Catholic church and all peoples have been given a blessing in the cardinal from Argentina, Pope Francis.”

Bergoglio is the first ever from the Americas and the first from outside Europe in more than a millennium.

After announcing “Habemus Papum” — “We have a pope!” — a cardinal standing on the balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica today revealed the identity of the new pontiff, using his Latin name. Bergoglio had reportedly finished second in the 2005 conclave that produced Benedict XVI — who last month became the first pope to resign in 600 years.

The 76-year-old archbishop of Buenos Aires has spent nearly his entire career at home in Argentina, overseeing churches and shoe-leather priests.

There was still liquid petroleum gas in the 19-mile pipeline and authorities were waiting for it to burn out, Coast Guard Petty Officer Alex Washington said.

Coast Guard Ensign Tanner Stiehl said the collision happened Tuesday at about 6 p.m. CDT on Bayou Perot, in a marshy area near where Lafourche and Jefferson parishes meet, about 30 miles south of New Orleans.

The tugboat and barge were engulfed in flames and heavy smoke billowed from the scene.

“All crew members were able to exit the tug; the captain reportedly suffered second to third-degree degree burns,” the Coast Guard said in a news release early Wednesday.

Stiehl said the barge was carrying oil and “there have been reports of oil in the water.” Washington said authorities were waiting until daylight to get an idea of how much oil had leaked from the barge.

The barge was holding 92,000 gallons of crude oil, the Coast Guard said. The tug boat had 1,000 gallons of diesel fuel.

WWL-TV reported that the tug’s captain was transferred to the burn center at Baton Rouge General Hospital.

Stiehl said the pipeline, which was in shallow water, is owned by San Ramon, Calif.-based Chevron. He said the company has isolated the pipeline from other mains, “so only whatever was in the pipeline will be able to burn.”

Jefferson Parish Councilman Chris Roberts, who represents the area, told WWL-TV the fire was in very shallow water, as little as a foot deep, and authorities would not approach the site until the fire had burned itself out.

Stiehl identified the 47-foot tug boat as the Shanon E. Settoon. Settoon Towing of Pierre Part, La., lists the tug boat among its vessels on its website.

The Coast Guard said ES&H has been hired to handle the oil spill response.

It was not immediately known who owns the 154-foot oil barge.

The area is thinly populated and no evacuations have been ordered.

“We are aggressively responding with our state and local partners to mitigate the fire and prevent any potential impacts from oil that entered the water,” Coast Guard Cmdr. Russ Bowen said in a news release.

The area is along the northern reaches of Barataria Bay, which was heavily affected by oil from the BP spill in 2010. It is mostly small communities where people often make their living from the sea, either working in the oil and gas industry or as fishermen.

The 92,000 gallons the Coast Guard says was being carried by the barge is a fraction of the millions of gallons that spewed into the Gulf of Mexico during the 2010 spill.

The region where the fire was burning is criss-crossed by pipelines and wellheads are a common sight in the shallow waters of the bayou and bay shoreline.

Bayou Perot was the scene of an explosion and fire on a specialized oil rig in December 2010 in which three men were injured. The explosion happened while the men were welding and there was no pollution, the Coast Guard reported.