15 G.O.P. Senators Ask Obama to Withdraw Hagel Nomination

WASHINGTON — A group of 15 Republican senators is calling on President Obama to withdraw the nomination of Chuck Hagel to be defense secretary, the latest move in a contentious battle to block the confirmation of their former colleague.

But even as Republican senators tried to throw up another obstacle, Senate Democrats were pushing ahead with plans to hold a vote on Mr. Hagel’s nomination by Tuesday.

While Mr. Hagel seems likely to be confirmed, Republicans signaled in a letter to Mr. Obama on Thursday that they would not let the issue die quietly.

Saying that Mr. Hagel’s confirmation would be “unprecedented” because of near-unanimous opposition from Republicans, the senators urged Mr. Obama to pick another candidate.

“Over the last half-century, no secretary of defense has been confirmed and taken office with more than three senators voting against him,” they wrote. “The occupant of this critical office should be someone whose candidacy is neither controversial or divisive.”

Signing the letter were John Cornyn of Texas, the No. 2 Senate Republican; Lindsey Graham and Tim Scott of South Carolina; Roger Wicker of Mississippi; David Vitter of Louisiana; Ted Cruz of Texas; Mike Lee of Utah; Patrick J. Toomey of Pennsylvania; Marco Rubio of Florida; Dan Coats of Indiana; Ron Johnson of Wisconsin; James E. Risch of Idaho; John Barrasso of Wyoming; and Tom Coburn of Oklahoma.

Members of the group cited a litany of objections, including Mr. Hagel’s unimpressive showing at his confirmation hearing, which drew criticism from members of both parties, and what they said was his “dangerous” posture toward dealing with Iran.

The level of derision directed at Mr. Hagel from Republicans has been striking not just because defense secretaries are usually confirmed on a simple up-or-down vote, but also because Mr. Hagel, a Republican, served with many of them in the Senate until 2008.

“Senator Hagel’s performance at his confirmation hearing was deeply concerning, leading to serious doubts about his basic competence to meet the substantial demands of the office,” they said.

Senate Republicans narrowly blocked a vote on Mr. Hagel’s confirmation last week, forcing Democrats to put the matter off until senators return from recess next week.

Republicans have been using the filibuster to prevent final consideration of his nomination by refusing to end debate on it, a procedural step that requires 60 senators to vote in the affirmative.

But some Republicans, including two of Mr. Hagel’s most outspoken critics, Mr. Graham and Senator John McCain of Arizona, have since said that they will drop their objections and allow a final vote.

Because Mr. Hagel has the support of Senate Democrats, who control 55 seats, he is likely to clear a final vote.

Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama on Thursday became the third Republican to state publicly that he would vote to confirm Mr. Hagel, joining Senators Thad Cochran of Mississippi and Mike Johanns of Nebraska.

If Senate Democrats move ahead with a vote as planned, and no further obstacles surface, Mr. Hagel could be confirmed as early as Tuesday. If Democrats get the votes they need to end debate, Republicans could still delay the vote until Wednesday.

Read More..

Ben Foster replaces Shia LaBeouf on Broadway

NEW YORK (AP) — Shia LaBeouf is out. Ben Foster is in.

A day after LaBeouf stepped away from the play that would have marked his Broadway debut, he was replaced by Foster.

Foster, whose film roles include "3:10 to Yuma" and "The Messenger" and who was on TV in "The Laramie Project" and "Six Feet Under," had auditioned for the revival of Lyle Kessler's play "Orphans" but had lost the role to the star of the "Transformers" franchise.

After LaBeouf left the production on Wednesday due to creative differences, Foster was picked. After the change was announced, LaBeouf tweeted: "Ben Foster is a beast. He will kill it," in all capital letters. Foster will be making his Broadway debut.

The play, which premiered in 1983, tells the story of two orphaned brothers living in a decrepit Philadelphia row house who decide to kidnap a wealthy man. LaBeouf was to play one brother and and Tom Sturridge the other; Baldwin will be the target.

The switch in actors hasn't delayed the show. Producers said "Orphans" will still open March 19 at the Schoenfeld Theatre.

LaBeouf apparently stepped away from the play without burning too many bridges — at least according to the messages he's posted on Twitter. The actor published email messages between him, Baldwin and director Daniel Sullivan that indicated a somewhat amicable, if anguished, split.

"Sorry for my part of a dis-agreeable situation," he wrote to Baldwin in an email posted on LaBeouf's Twitter feed. LaBeouf also posted his audition video.

Baldwin apparently wrote to the younger actor: "I don't have an unkind word to say about you. You have my word."

As for Sullivan, the director apparently wrote to LaBeouf after the decision was made that the actor leave the show: "This one will haunt me. You tried to warn me. You said you were a different breed. I didn't get it."

A press representative for the show said the messages were legitimate.

LaBeouf seemed still somewhat shaken by the whole experience Thursday, writing on Twitter a series of slogans with opaque meanings.

"The theater belongs not to the great but to the brash. acting is not for gentlemen, or bureaucratic-academics. what they do is antiart," he wrote in one tweet.

He also posted an image of a commiserative email apparently from Rick Sordelet, a veteran fight director, who said, "It was obvious you were going to turn in a fantastic performance." In the same message, Sordelet wrote: "It must have been difficult for others in the room to be schooled by someone who's raw talent and enthusiasm out matched theirs." It was likely a note not intended for the rest of the company to see.

LaBeouf, whose other films include "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" and "Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps," was also recently seen in John Hillcoat's crime drama "Lawless."

___

Online: http://www.orphansonbroadway.com

___

Follow Mark Kennedy on Twitter at http://twitter.com/KennedyTwits

Read More..

Living With Cancer: Arrivals and Departures

After being nursed and handed over, the baby’s wails rise to a tremolo, but I am determined to give my exhausted daughter and son-in-law a respite on this wintry evening. Commiserating with the little guy’s discomfort — gas, indigestion, colic, ontological insecurity — I swaddle, burp, bink, then cradle him in my arms. I begin walking around the house, swinging and swaying while cooing in soothing cadences: “Yes, darling boy, another one bites the dust, another one bites the dust.”

I kid you not! How could such grim phrases spring from my lips into the newborn’s ears? Where did they come from?

I blame his mother and her best friend. They sang along as this song was played repeatedly at the skating rink to which I took them every other Saturday in their tweens. Why would an infatuated grandma croon a mordant lullaby, even if the adorable one happily can’t understand a single word? He’s still whimpering, twisting away from me, and understandably so.

Previously that day, I had called a woman in my cancer support group. I believe that she is dying. I do not know her very well. She has attended only two or three of our get-togethers where she described herself as a widow and a Christian.

On the phone, I did not want to violate the sanctity of her end time, but I did want her to know that she need not be alone, that I and other members of our group can “be there” for her. Her dying seems a rehearsal of my own. We have the same disease.

“How are you doing, Kim?” I asked.

“I’m tired. I sleep all the time,” she sighed, “and I can’t keep anything down.”

“Can you drink … water?” I asked.

“A little, but I tried a smoothie and it wouldn’t set right,” she said.

“I hope you are not in pain.”

“Oh no, but I’m sleeping all the time. And I can’t keep anything down.”

“Would you like a visit? Is there something I can do or bring?” I asked.

“Oh, I don’t think so, no thanks.”

“Well,” I paused before saying goodbye, “be well.”

Be well? I didn’t even add something like, “Be as well as you can be.” I was tongue-tied. This was the failure that troubles me tonight.

Why couldn’t I say that we will miss her, that I am sorry she is dying, that she has coped so well for so long, and that I hope she will now find peace? I could inform an infant in my arms of our inexorable mortality, but I could not speak or even intimate the “D” word to someone on her deathbed.

Although I have tried to communicate to my family how I feel about end-of-life care, can we always know what we will want? Perhaps at the end of my life I will not welcome visitors, either. For departing may require as much concentration as arriving. As I look down at the vulnerable bundle I am holding, I marvel that each and every one of us has managed to come in and will also have to manage to go out. The baby nestles, pursing his mouth around the pacifier. He gazes intently at my face with a sly gaze that drifts toward a lamp, turning speculative before lids lower in tremulous increments.

Slowing my jiggling to his faint sucking, I think that the philosopher Jacques Derrida’s meditation on death pertains to birth as well. Each of these events “names the very irreplaceability of absolute singularity.” Just as “no one can die in my place or in the place of the other,” no one can be born in this particular infant’s place. He embodies his irreplaceable and absolute singularity.

Perhaps we should gestate during endings, as we do during beginnings. Like hatchings, the dispatchings caused by cancer give people like Kim and me a final trimester, more or less, in which we can labor to forgive and be forgiven, to speak and hear vows of devotion from our intimates, to visit or not be visited by acquaintances.

Maybe we need a doula for dying, I reflect as melodious words surface, telling me what I have to do with the life left to be lived: “To love that well, which thou must leave ere long.”

“Oh little baby,” I then whisper: “Though I cannot tell who you will become and where I will be — you, dear heart, deliver me.”

Read More..

Ramping Up U.S. Production, Ford Expands in Ohio

DETROIT — Ford Motor Company is adding 450 jobs and expanding an engine plant in Ohio to feed the growing demand for more fuel-efficient cars and S.U.V.'s in the American market.

Ford, the nation’s second largest automaker after General Motors, said Thursday it would spend $200 million to renovate its Cleveland engine plant to produce small, turbocharged engines for use in its top-selling models.

The move is the latest by automakers to expand production in the United States, where sales have increased 14 percent so far this year compared with 2012.

Last month, G.M. announced plans to invest $600 million in its assembly plant near Kansas City, Kan., one of the company’s oldest factories. And Chrysler, the smallest of the Detroit car companies, is adding a third shift to its Jeep plant in Detroit.

The expansions are another tangible sign of the steady recovery in the American auto market, which fell to historic lows during the recession.

Both G.M. and Chrysler were forced to declare bankruptcy in 2009 in exchange for big government bailouts. While Ford survived the industry’s financial crisis without help, it still cut thousands of jobs and shuttered several factories to reduce costs and bring production more in line with shrinking sales.

But the tide has turned in car showrooms across the United States, prompting automakers to strategically increase output in their remaining plants.

In Ford’s case, the company added about 8,000 salaried and hourly jobs last year, and has said it plans to hire about 2,200 white-collar workers in 2013. Ford is also moving some vehicle production from Mexico to a Michigan plant, where it will add 1,200 jobs.

The investment in Cleveland is indicative of how Ford and other carmakers have trimmed labor costs in the United States and improved productivity since the recession.

Just a few years ago, the company was forced to consolidate two engine plants into one in northern Ohio and to close a major component operation.

“No question we have been through a lot in northern Ohio,” said Joe Hinrichs, the head of Ford’s Americas region, in an interview. “But now our North American business is very competitive with the best in the world.”

Ford plans to centralize production of its 2-liter, EcoBoost engine — used in popular models such as the Fusion sedan and Explorer S.U.V. — at the Cleveland facility by the end of next year. Currently, the company makes the engines at a plant in Spain and ships them to America.

While Ford is adding jobs and production domestically, it is racing to reduce costs in its troubled European division. Workers who previously built the small engines in Spain will be moved to a nearby assembly plant that is taking on work from a plant to be closed in Belgium.

Mr. Hinrichs said that a new agreement with the United Automobile Workers union local in Cleveland paved the way for the expansion there. The plant now employs about 1,300 workers.

“This is about servicing more demand in the U.S.,” Mr. Hinrichs said. “And with our competitive labor agreements, we can bring business to the U.S. from Spain and Mexico.”

Read More..

Pistorius Defense Undermines Police Testimony at Bail Hearing

PRETORIA, South Africa — What began on Wednesday as a day for the prosecution to solidify what it had described as an irrefutable case of premeditated murder against Oscar Pistorius, the Paralympic champion, turned into a near-rout by the defense, which attacked the testimony of the state’s main witness, the chief police investigator.

It was the second full day of a hearing to decide whether Mr. Pistorius, the double amputee nicknamed Blade Runner who made Olympic history by running with able-bodied athletes in the 2012 Games in London, should be given bail as he awaits trial for shooting his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp, in the early morning hours last Thursday. Mr. Pistorius claimed in an affidavit read in court on Tuesday that he had mistaken Ms. Steenkamp for a burglar and had shot her out of fear.

But what was supposed to be merely a bail hearing took on the proportions of a full-blown trial, with sharp questions from the presiding magistrate, Desmond Nair, and a withering cross-examination that left the prosecution’s main witness, Detective Hilton Botha, grasping for answers that did not contradict his earlier testimony.

At first, Detective Botha’s testimony seemed to go well. He explained how preliminary ballistic evidence supported the prosecution’s assertion that Mr. Pistorius had been wearing prosthetic legs when he shot at the bathroom door, behind which hid Ms. Steenkamp. Mr. Pistorius claimed in his affidavit that he had hobbled over from his bedroom on his stumps, and felt extremely vulnerable to an intruder as a result.

As Detective Botha described how bullets had pierced Ms. Steenkamp’s skull and shattered her arm and hip bones, Mr. Pistorius sobbed with his head in his hands.

“A defenseless woman, unarmed, was gunned down,” Detective Botha said.

Using a schematic diagram of the bedroom, the prosecutor, Gerrie Nel, asked Detective Botha to walk Magistrate Nair through the crime scene. The detective explained that Ms. Steenkamp’s slippers and overnight bag were on the left side of the bed, next to the sliding balcony door that Mr. Pistorius claimed he got up in the middle of the night to close. He also said the holster of Mr. Pistorius’s 9-millimeter pistol was found under the left side of the bed, next to where Ms. Steenkamp would have been sleeping. That called into question Mr. Pistorius’s statement that he thought Ms. Steenkamp was still in bed when he heard the sound of a burglar, the detective said.

“If the girl was on the bed, that is where the holster was found,” Detective Botha said.

Detective Botha said investigators had found two boxes of testosterone along with syringes and needles in Mr. Pistorius’s bedroom. Testosterone is a banned substance for most professional athletes, and is known to increase aggression in people who take supplements of it.

Asked by Mr. Nel what he would have done had he suspected that an intruder was in his bedroom, Detective Botha replied, “I would get my girlfriend and try to get her out of the room.”

He said he had interviewed witnesses who said that they heard shouting in the house, and that the lights were on, contradicting Mr. Pistorius’s statement that it had been too dark to see anything in the bedroom.

A neighbor, he said, heard “two people talking loud at one another, it sounded like a fight,” between 2 and 3 a.m.

Other witnesses spoke about hearing two or three shots, then a woman’s scream, followed by more shots, Detective Botha said.

He also described previous violent incidents involving Mr. Pistorius. He had threatened to assault a man in an altercation about a woman at a racetrack, Detective Botha said. He told another man that he would “break his legs,” Detective Botha testified.

Detective Botha also testified that Mr. Pistorius had foreign bank accounts and a house in Italy, which made him a flight risk.

“I believe he knew that she was in the bathroom,” said Detective Botha. “And that he shot four shots through the door.”

Barry Roux, a lawyer for Mr. Pistorius, cross-examined Detective Botha, seeking to poke holes in his account.

The substance found, Mr. Roux said, was not testosterone at all but a herbal supplement called testocomposutim coenzyme, which is used by many athletes and not banned by anti-doping agencies. Asked if the substance had been tested, Detective Botha said tests had not yet been completed.

“I didn’t read the whole name” on the container, Detective Botha admitted.

He acknowledged that the witness who claimed to have heard the two arguing, he said, had lived almost 2,000 feet away, possibly out of earshot. Under questioning by the prosecutor, he later revised the estimate to 1,000 feet.

Detective Botha also acknowledged that there were no signs that Ms. Steenkamp had defended herself against an assailant, and that the police had no evidence that the couple’s relationship was anything but loving.

Mr. Roux accused the prosecution of selectively taking “every piece of evidence and try to extract the most possibly negative connotation and present it to the court.”

Detective Botha was forced to admit that the police forensic team had missed a shell casing that the defense lawyers later found in the toilet bowl, and that he had entered the crime scene without covering his shoes because the police had run out of shoe covers.

Eventually, Detective Botha conceded that he could not rule out Mr. Pistorius’s version of events based on the existing evidence.

Magistrate Nair seemed skeptical that Mr. Pistorius was a flight risk.

“Do you subjectively believe that he would take the option, being who he is, using prostheses to get around, familiar as he is, to flee South Africa if he were granted bail?” Magistrate Nair asked Detective Botha.

“Yes,” he replied.

The court was adjourned, and final arguments in the bail hearing are to be heard Thursday morning.

Alan Cowell contributed reporting from London.

Read More..

'Twilight' author Meyer plots another trilogy

MIAMI (AP) — Stephenie Meyer's "The Host" doesn't have much in common with her Twilight series, except maybe the potential for a franchise.

Meyer is working on a sequel to the 2008 novel she began writing as an escape from the editing of "Eclipse," the third book in the Twilight vampire saga. And now that it too has reached the big screen, she's got more books in mind.

"Once you've created characters that have life to them, unless you kill them all, you know where their stories go. You're always aware of what happens next," Meyer told The Associated Press in an interview Tuesday. "I've got outlines for the next books. I would hope that this would be a three-book arc, but we'll see."

At an advance screening of "The Host," which premieres March 29, Meyer said she wrote the book when she was "kind of overwhelmed with vampires and red ink and a lot of people kind of having expectations of what they wanted from the next book and knowing that I wasn't always answering those."

"The Host" trades the vampires and werewolves of Meyer's previous works for space invaders. An alien race takes over the minds of their human hosts but leaves their bodies intact so that they can perfect the planet they believed humans were ruining. One human, a young woman named Melanie Stryder, refuses to give up her head space so easily.

Saoirse Ronan plays both Melanie and her alien invader in the film. Max Irons and Jake Abel play her love interests.

"The Host" will inevitably draw comparisons to the book and film series that made Meyer a phenomenon, but she hopes the story stands alone and appeals to a broader audience than just "Twi-hards."

For one thing, she calls it her "guy friendly" work because it explores bonds and loyalties beyond simple romantic love.

"When you're a teenager, love feels like life and death, but this is actual life and death, which is kind of more fun," Meyer told the Miami audience.

"Not to mention all the explosions and gunfire," said Abel, who plays Ian O'Shea, one of the human rebels in the story.

What "The Host" does have in common with the Twilight saga is a love triangle, though one complicated further by two distinct entities sharing one body.

"Jake and Max call it the 'love box,'" Meyer told AP.

Though she's attracted to complicated relationships, that conflict probably won't surface in the sequel she's writing.

"I feel like the 'love box,' as it is, is played out in this novel. It completely resolves into two happy places, so that won't be a focus going forward," Meyer said.

Read More..

Well: Caffeine Linked to Low Birth Weight Babies

New research suggests that drinking caffeinated drinks during pregnancy raises the risk of having a low birth weight baby.

Caffeine has long been linked to adverse effects in pregnant women, prompting many expectant mothers to give up coffee and tea. But for those who cannot do without their morning coffee, health officials over the years have offered conflicting guidelines on safe amounts during pregnancy.

The World Health Organization recommends a limit of 300 milligrams of caffeine a day, equivalent to about three eight-ounce cups of regular brewed coffee. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists stated in 2010 that pregnant women could consume up to 200 milligrams a day without increasing their risk of miscarriage or preterm birth.

In the latest study, published in the journal BMC Medicine, researchers collected data on almost 60,000 pregnancies over a 10-year period. After excluding women with potentially problematic medical conditions, they found no link between caffeine consumption – from food or drinks – and the risk of preterm birth. But there was an association with low birth weight.

For a child expected to weigh about eight pounds at birth, the child lost between three-quarters of an ounce to an ounce in birth weight for each 100 milligrams of caffeine from all sources that the mother consumed each day. Even after the researchers excluded from their analysis smokers, a group that is at higher risk for complications and also includes many coffee drinkers, the link remained.

One study author, Dr. Verena Sengpiel of the Sahlgrenska University Hospital in Sweden, said the findings were not definitive because the study was observational, and correlation does not equal causation. But they do suggest that women might put their caffeine consumption “on pause” while pregnant, she said, or at least stay below two cups of coffee per day.

---

Correction: The story was revised to clarify that the child lost up to an ounce in birth weight for each 100 milligrams of caffeine that the mother consumed daily.

Read More..

DealBook: Office Depot and OfficeMax Announce Plans to Merge, After Erroneous Release

11:12 a.m. | Updated

Office Depot and OfficeMax announced plans to merge on Wednesday, just hours after an erroneous news release about the deal surfaced briefly.

Under the terms of the deal, Office Depot said it would issue 2.69 new shares of common stock for each share of OfficeMax. At that level, the transaction would value OfficeMax at $13.50 a share, or roughly $1.19 billion, a premium of more than 25 percent to the company’s closing price last week.

The deal has been anticipated, as the companies face an increasingly difficult competitive environment. Both companies, which are burdened with big real estate footprints, have struggled against lower-priced rivals like Amazon.com and Costco. By uniting, the two companies should be able to reduce costs and better negotiate prices.

“In the past decade, with the growth of the Internet, our industry has changed dramatically,” Neil R. Austrian, chairman and chief executive of Office Depot, said in a statement. “Combining our two companies will enhance our ability to serve customers around the world, offer new opportunities for our employees, make us a more attractive partner to our vendors and increase stockholder value.”

While the deal has been years in the making, it was initially announced prematurely. A news release announcing the merger of the companies was posted on Office Depot’s Web site early on Wednesday morning, but it quickly disappeared.

Several news organizations reported the terms disclosed in the errant news release for Office Depot’s earnings. The details were buried on page four of the release, under the header “Other Matters.”

As the details filtered through the market, shares of the companies jumped. In premarket trading, Office Depot’s stock rose more than 7 percent, while OfficeMax shares were up more than 8 percent.

In a call with analysts, Mr. Austrian said that Office Depot’s webcast provider “inadvertently” published his company’s fourth-quarter earnings “well ahead of schedule.”

The episode is reminiscent of other times that companies’ earnings releases were published prematurely. Last fall, Google‘s third-quarter earnings were published three hours early, which the technology giant blamed on a mistake by R.R. Donnelley & Sons, the company’s printer.

Representatives for Office Depot and OfficeMax were not immediately available for comment on the erroneous release.

Strategically, the deal makes sense, as the companies face a changing competitive environment.

Combined, the companies reported about $4.4 billion in revenue for their third quarter of 2012; in comparison, Staples disclosed $6.4 billion in revenue for the same period.

Office Depot has also been under pressure from an activist hedge fund, Starboard Value, which sent a letter to the retailer’s board last fall. In it, Starboard called for more cost cuts and a greater focus on higher-margin businesses like copy and print services. With a 14.8 percent stake, Starboard is the company’s biggest investor.

In announcing the deal, the two companies emphasized their new financial heft.

With the merger, the retailers expect to generate $400 million to $600 million in annual cost savings. The combined entity would also have $1 billion in cash, providing additional firepower to invest in the business.

“We are excited to bring together two companies intent on accelerating innovation for our customers and better differentiating us for success in a dynamic and highly competitive global industry,” Ravi K. Saligram, chief executive of OfficeMax, said in a statement. “We are confident that there will be exciting new opportunities for employees as part of a truly global business.”

Each company will have an equal number of directors on the board of the combined retailer. Before the deal closes, OfficeMax will pay a special dividend of $1.50 a share to its shareholders.

OfficeMax was advised by JPMorgan Chase and the law firms Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom and Dechert. Office Depot was counseled by Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, while its board was advised by the Peter J. Solomon Company, Morgan Stanley and Kirkland & Ellis. Perella Weinberg Partners provided financial advice to the board’s transaction committee.

Read More..

U.S. General Picked for Top NATO Military Post Will Retire

WASHINGTON — General John R. Allen, who served until earlier this month as the top United States commander in Afghanistan, will retire from the military to focus on “health issues within his family,” President Obama said Tuesday.

In January, General Allen was officially cleared of misconduct by the Pentagon after an investigation into his exchange of e-mails with a socialite in Tampa, Fla., and Mr. Obama had nominated him to be the supreme commander of NATO.

“I told General Allen that he has my deep, personal appreciation for his extraordinary service over the last 19 months in Afghanistan, as well as his decades of service in the United States Marine Corps,” Mr. Obama said in a statement. “John Allen is one of America’s finest military leaders, a true patriot, and a man I have come to respect greatly.”

General Allen, a highly decorated officer, was caught up in the scandal that led to the resignation of David H. Petraeus as the director of the Central Intelligence Agency. General Allen had gotten to know the socialite, Jill Kelley, when he was head of the Central Command in Tampa.

General Joseph F. Dunford Jr. succeeded General Allen as commander of both the American and intermational military forces in Afghanistan in a ceremony in Kabul on Feb. 10.

Read More..

McCartney, Mumford top eclectic Bonnaroo lineup

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) — There will be a British invasion of the main stage at Bonnaroo this year.

Paul McCartney and Mumford & Sons are among the headliners for the 2013 Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival in Manchester, Tenn.

The four-day festival, held on a rural 700-acre farm, always features an eclectic roster, but this year's event, to be held June 13-16, is even more varied than usual.

Returnees Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers also hold down a headliner spot. R. Kelly, Bjork, Wu-Tang Clan, Wilco, Pretty Lights, The Lumineers, The National, Kendrick Lamar, Nas and ZZ Top also top the list announced Tuesday by "Weird" Al Yankovic via Bonnaroo's YouTube channel.

Tickets will go on sale at noon Eastern Standard Time on Saturday.

Read More..