Soundgarden reunion fell into place by chance

(Reuters) - As rock'n'roll reunions go, the current reemergence of Soundgarden after a 13-year split is sadly short of salacious intrigue.

The four members of the hard rock band, working on a new album and preparing to begin a monthlong North American tour in July, did not have to complete prison terms or rehab stints.

And, despite a report in the satirical newspaper The Onion, lead guitarist Kim Thayil was not working as a daytime supervisor at a Cinnabon baked-goods store.

Thayil, 50, who did indeed keep a low profile after the band fell apart in 1997 amid internal tensions, told Reuters on Friday that the foursome remained good friends.

They frequently saw each other socially in their Seattle hometown, including at bars, concerts and each others' homes.

"Any acrimony was toward the band as a collective, not toward any individual," he said. "We're just too interconnected, going back to the '80s with so many mutual friends and family in common."

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Gov. Brown to skip tax increase this year

In March, Gov. Jerry Brown enacted 13 bills that aimed 

to cut $11.2 billion from California's budget deficit

. (Justin Sullivan / Getty Images / March 24, 2011)

Reporting from Sacramento -- A surge in revenue has prompted Gov. Jerry Brown to scale back his proposal for more taxes, even as his administration on Friday announced its intention to close 70 state parks.

Officials familiar with Brown's plans said the revised budget he presents Monday will propose raising income tax rates on Californians for four years rather than the five he initially wanted. The higher rate would not take effect until 2012.

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Army makes tough choice to save New Orleans, Baton Rouge

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Lee Esther Bridges, 58, stands near her Vicksburg, Miss., home Thursday and wonders what she will do once the floodwater recedes. / ROGELIO V. SOLIS/Associated Press

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Buildings outside a levee take on water Thursday in Morgan City, La., an area likely to be inundated when the Morganza Spillway releases water. / PATRICK SEMANSKY/Associated Press

BUTTE LAROSE, La. -- In an agonizing trade-off, Army engineers said they will open a key spillway along the bulging Mississippi River as early as Saturday and inundate thousands of homes and farms in Louisiana's Cajun country to avert a potentially bigger disaster in Baton Rouge and New Orleans.

About 25,000 people and 11,000 structures could be in harm's way when the gates on the Morganza spillway are unlocked for the first time in 38 years.

Opening the spillway will release a torrent that could submerge about 3,000 square miles under as much as 25 feet of water but take the pressure off the downstream levees protecting New Orleans, Baton Rouge and the numerous oil refineries and chemical plants along the lower reaches of the Mississippi.

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Three dead in Sukoharjo terrorism raid

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Bush says he wasn’t overjoyed by bin Laden news

Eds: Adds details. With AP Photos.

LAS VEGAS — George W. Bush says he was “not overjoyed” when President Barack Obama told him Osama bin Laden was dead because the campaign to track down the al-Qaida leader was done not “out of hatred, but to exact judgment.”

The former president who initiated the hunt for bin Laden after 9/11 made his first candid public comments on bin Laden’s killing Wednesday at a conference of hedge fund managers in Las Vegas, ABC News reported Friday.

Bush said he was eating souffle at a restaurant when he received the call from Obama, according to an ABC News contributor at the conference. Bush said he went home to take the call and, “Obama simply said, ‘Osama Bin Laden is dead.’”

Bush told the audience of about 1,800 people that Obama described the secret U.S.

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Morganza Spillway Expected to Open Today, Flooding Louisiana Cajun Country

The opening of Louisiana’s Morganza floodway today may send enough water to fill a football field 10 feet deep every second across the heart of Cajun country, eventually filling an area almost as large as Connecticut.

Major General Michael Walsh, president of the Mississippi River Commission, has told Col. Edward Fleming to open the spillway as soon as the river’s flow reaches 1.5 million cubic feet per second at Louisiana’s Red River Landing, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said in a statement.

The spillway, built in 1954, can release 600,000 cubic feet of water per second into central Louisiana and the Atchafalaya River at maximum capacity, taking pressure off the Mississippi and the cities downstream, according to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Corps inundation maps assume the spillway operating at 50 percent of capacity.

The corps expects to release 150,000 cubic feet per second from the Morganza, which is 310 river miles above New Orleans.

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