DES MOINES (AP) - An Iowa Homeland Security official confirmed four deaths after a tornado hit a western Iowa Boy Scout camp.
A dispatcher with the Harrison County sheriff's department in Iowa said first responders are at the camp and more are en route.
The Little Sioux Scout Ranch is located in rural western Iowa, about one hour north of Omaha, Neb.
Meanwhile, residents were ordered to evacuate low-lying sections of towns along the overflowing Cedar River today, and communities along the Mississippi River were warned that new rainfall would boost their expected flood crests.
Officials in Wisconsin, where this month's rainfall is approaching a record, planned to drain water from one reservoir to ease pressure on a dam, and were monitoring dams elsewhere in the state. High water in Indiana burst a levee today and flooded a vast stretch of farmland.
A new wave of rain showers spread across parts of Iowa today, including some flood-threatened areas. The rain came as a band of storms rippled across the northern Plains.
A sandbagged levee prevented the Cedar River from flooding Cedar Falls today, but officials asked for extra volunteers to help shore it up. Just downstream along the Cedar River, the neighboring city of Waterloo ordered a mandatory evacuation of some neighborhoods, not because of the river but because the ground was saturated and pumping stations couldn't keep up, officials said.
To the southeast in Cedar Rapids, more than 200 residents of a neighborhood near the river were told to seek higher ground.
In Vinton, electricity was cut this morning when rising water affected the city's municipal power plant, said Steve Meyer, the assistant emergency operations center manager. He said a 15-block area near the river had already been evacuated.
“The water is at least 3 feet deep. It's still coming up,” he said of the town, home of about 5,000 people between Cedar Falls and Cedar Rapids.

kxan.com

Our new slogan for Riverfest would be, "Riverfest: It’s Not Just Music." Having covered the Memorial Day weekend event as an entertainment writer for the previous eight years, before sports beckoned again, I can also say: It’s also not just screamin’ kids, dipping dots and face painting, and lining up for wrist bands and "river money" to buy your beer and internationally flavored eats, though that’s a lot of it too.
It’s also a sporting venue this year, as the Super Retriever Series brings its super jumping dog events, the Super Fly and Super V - the Olympic long jump and high jump for dogs, as it were - to the North Shore Riverwalk Park side of Riverfest this weekend.
Up the road just outside of Mayflower on Highway 89, the Retriever Crown Championship will be held Saturday and Sunday. As soon as a champion is determined, between 11 a.m. and noon, everyone will then tear out for North Little Rock again for the finals in the Super jumping divisions, starting at 12:30 p.m., as well as a Guinness World Record attempt at the most children blowing a duck call at one time.
With 3,000 duck calls boxed and ready to hand out, the organizers plan to beat the existing record by 2,700. Kids can participate by filling out a form at SuperRetrieverSeries.com/CallinTheRock/ for their free pass, then arriving Sunday at the Harvest Foods gate of Riverfest, picking up their Zink duck call and being on hand by 3 p.m. on the North Little Rock side in front of the Budweiser (read: the rock stage) for the big moment, being dubbed "Callin’ the Rock."
Most of the dog activities will be taped for rebroadcast on the Versus network in late June as the culmination of the championship sporting dog series. Dogs and their owners have been competing at 12 sites to finally arrive in Central Arkansas for a title.

arkansasbusiness.com

Malik, 13, who goes to Monroe Middle School in Omaha, says he doesn’t want a picture of him making a silly face to fall into the wrong hands - and end up mocking him on the social networking site MySpace.
Elazhia, 11, a sixth-grader at Omaha’s Central Park Elementary, says “only professionals” should take her picture. That, she said, is a way to protect herself from harassment through the Internet, text messages or video - known collectively as “cyberbullying.”
A Nebraska state law passed in February is requiring school districts to take on electronic abuse in new or updated anti-bullying policies. An Omaha Public Schools board committee will take the first vote Monday on the district’s updated policy.
Districts throughout the state are expected to take similar action before the 2008-09 school year begins, said Jim Luebbe of the Nebraska Association of School Boards.
Iowa adopted an anti-bullying law that includes electronic abuse more than a year ago.
Electronic bullying is “one of the worst things that can be done (to a child). If we’re going to deal with bullying, we can’t just ignore it,” said OPS board member Nancy Huston.
The proposed OPS policy outlines a range of penalties, from short-term suspension to expulsion. Students also may be reassigned to another school for the behavior. The penalties for all forms of bullying would be the same.
As proposed, the policy would apply to grades four through 12.
Maddie Fennell, president of the Omaha Education Association, has urged the board to add the earliest grades as well.
“You want to let kids know at the earliest age possible what’s appropriate and what’s not appropriate,” said Fennell, who taught first grade for nine years. Waiting until fourth grade sends the wrong message, she said, because children could send hurtful e-mails as they’re just learning to write.

zwire.com

Presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama greets students at the Little 500 Women’s race on Friday at Bill Armstrong Stadium. Obama spoke at Columbus eariler in the day and planned to visit Terre Haute later in the evening.
Jacob Kriese • IDS
For an hour Friday afternoon, every student on Kirkwood Avenue stopped drinking. In the heat of Little 500 festivities, on a gorgeous sunny day, students left Kilroy’s, emptied the Upstairs Pub and poured out onto the sidewalks and into the street, all looking for one man: the celebrity Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama. He came after all.
The Illinois senator crashed the Little 500 women’s race with a surprise appearance on campus and then traveled in his motorcade to Nick’s English Hut where he shook hands with all of the patrons inside.
His visit came with little advance warning. The campaign did not officially announce the stop until the senator’s motorcade began pulling into the driveway of Bill Armstrong Stadium.
Obama was greeted at both places by throngs of screaming and cheering students who crowded in, trying to catch at least a glimpse of the political phenom. The lucky ones got a handshake, a smile or a nod from the senator.
Sophomore Coco Goldenberg got one better. When she held out her pink Alpha Chi Omega trucker hat and asked Obama to sign it, he took out a pen and scribbled his signature across the brim.
Goldenberg, breathlessly excited, posed for photos with her friends, proudly sporting the hat.
“I’m a big, big Obama supporter. He’s so tight,” she said.
When the presidential contender showed up and walked around the circumference of the track at Bill Armstrong Stadium, he shook hands with riders and screaming IU students.
Obama then took a position off the field, surrounded by police officers and his Secret Service detail, and watched the start of the race.

idsnews.com

Storms hit isolated areas and residents along the White River in east Arkansas and the Black River in the northeast contended for another day with rising water and muck.
In northwest Arkansas, authorities reported Saturday that they had found a body believed to be that of a man whose pickup was found submerged in a creek after heavy rains 10 days ago.
The National Weather Service issued a 24-hour flood watch Saturday morning for Lawrence and Randolph counties, while predicting more rain through at least Monday.
Saturday, Margaret Walker stayed dry at her tobacco shop in Clarendon during a heavy rain. Storms and rising water two weeks ago chased her and her husband Gary from their home in the small community of East Lake. They set up house temporarily at a duck hunting club and have traveled by boat to check on their house.
“I had to go down there yesterday and take the food out of my refrigerator and freezer because a house had floated into a power pole or power lines and it knocked the electricity out,” Walker said. “I just stepped out of the house into the boat.”
Walker said the water was three feet from the front door of her home and many of the houses on the lake were under water.
“Nobody in their right minds would still be down there on the lower end,” she said. “I just pray and say ‘God, please take care of my home.’ But if it happens, it happens — we’ll survive.”
The Monroe County community of Maddox Bay along the White River, where at least one resident was sandbagging his home a few days ago, was under water and only a flock of birds seemed to be watching over the small community on the White River.
The March flooding was the most severe in Arkansas since 1982, and places along the White, Spring, Eleven Point and Black rivers reached 100-year flood stages, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. A 100-year flood is defined as having a 1% chance of happening in any given year.

usatoday.com

‘89. Ed Harris. Oil-platform workers, including an estranged couple, and a Navy SEAL make a startling deep-sea discovery. (PG-13) (4:00) SCI-FI: Thu. 11 P.M.
• Ace in the Hole
‘51. Kirk Douglas. A New York newsman in New Mexico delays a cave-in victim’s rescue to milk the story. (NR) (2:00) TCM: Mon. 2 P.M. (CC)
‘05. Charlize Theron. In the last city on Earth, underground rebels dispatch their top assassin to kill a government leader. (PG-13) (1:35) TMC: Tue. 11:45 A.M., 10 P.M. (CC)
‘90. Mel Gibson. CIA-funded pilots hit drug traffic while flying supplies for the covert war effort in Laos. (R) (2:00) TBS: Fri. 10 A.M. (CC)
‘97. Michael Jeter. Abandoned by a disagreeable clown, a golden retriever with a knack for basketball befriends a lonely boy. (PG) (1:40) ENC: Mon. 6:20 P.M. (CC)
‘80. Robert Hays. A pilot afraid to fly follows his stewardess ex-girlfriend and must take over for the poisoned crew. (PG) (2:00) COMEDY: Sun. 11:30 A.M., Sat. 4 P.M. (CC)
• Akeelah and the Bee
‘06. Laurence Fishburne. Akeelah, an 11-year-old girl living in South Los Angeles, discovers she has a talent for spelling, which she hopes will take her to the National Spelling Bee. (PG) (2:00) SHO: Wed. 4:15 P.M., Sat. 2:45 P.M. (CC)
‘35. Joe E. Brown. An eccentric ballplayer known for his unorthodox pitching style finds major-league trouble with a girl and gangsters. (NR) (1:30) TCM: Fri. 1 P.M. (CC)
• Alien Nation: Dark Horizon
‘94. Gary Graham. A police detective and his humanoid partner unearth a plot to destroy aliens in near-future Los Angeles. (NR) (1:35) MAX: Wed. 5 P.M.
• All About the Benjamins
‘02. Ice Cube. A bounty hunter and a con artist work together to retrieve a lottery ticket from a group of diamond thieves. (R) (2:00) USA: Sat. midnight (CC)

post-gazette.com

While Britney Spears may have a lot of problems, her own troubles, being a stingy sister ain’t one of them.
Girlfriend has reportedly spent $30,000 on the nursery for her baby sister, Jamie Lynn’s baby, reports our girl Courtney Hazlett of MSNBC Scoop.
Yes, for less than the price of a year’s worth of call girls, you could have the same ocean-themed baby bedroom being designed by the tres chic Petit Tresor. That includes a round crib for $1,150; a $995 dresser, organic blankets and bedding, etc.
And contrary to what had been the word, Jamie Lynn is going to raise her expected baby boy in Kentwood, La., a whole different La than LA.
Brooke Hogan, aspiring pop princess and daughter of Hulk, is not happy, not one little bit.
Word is that her muscle-bound daddy and her very good friend Christiane Plante, 33, had a thing going on and it’s that thing that broke up the Hulkster and Brooke’s mom, Linda, after 24 years.
Christiane’s already sold her soul, uh we mean, story to the National Enquirer, saying she and the Hulk man grew close after he and Linda realized the marriage was over. It always happens like that, doesn’t it?
Anyway, Brooke let it be known how she felt about former friend Christiane via her MySpace page, according to MSNBC’s Pop Tarts column.
“I think she shoulda thought about what kinda press she was gonna get when she slept with her best friend’s famous father,” she wrote. “I think we’re all seeing just exactly how karma works, Christiane. Nothing you say will ever put my family back together.”
Of course, now her posting is no longer there.
Heath Ledger’s former fiancee, Michelle Williams, and several of his good friends discuss the late actor in the April edition of Interview magazine, reports People.

post-gazette.com

FOR ANY FOODIE, dinner at the Inn at Little Washington amounts to both a pilgrimage and a feast. The seminal locavore restaurant, 90 miles from D.C. in Virginia, turns 30 this month. Chef Patrick O’Connell will be feted by Alice Waters, Gary Danko and other gourmet types with a downtown gala Wednesday.
» EXPRESS: You were championing local food before it was hip.
» O’CONNELL: We developed a regional cuisine out of necessity, not because it was cool. Nothing was delivered here — you could only use what you could scrounge or grow. But after a couple of years, you started seeing D.C. menus with “Virginia tomatoes” and this and that. Before that, people thought we didn’t grow anything except tobacco.
» EXPRESS: What is Virginia cuisine?
» O’CONNELL: It’s a fascinating juxtaposition. You’ve got settlers from England and Germany, and African influences because of the slaves. It’s a food very tied to the seasons.
» EXPRESS: Which foods represent the state?
» O’CONNELL: The morel mushroom, which some mountain people pronounce “miracle.” And definitely ham. My belief is that no one should come to Virginia without tasting the ham. You see very sophisticated French people coming here wanting to do that.
» EXPRESS: What’s so great about Virginia ham?
» O’CONNELL: It’s got all these nuances — there’s nothing quite like it. I think it got a bad rep because people cooked it with all that red-eye gravy. At the Inn, we use it as a tiny accent, like the Chinese would.
» EXPRESS: How about the wines in the state — are they getting better?
» O’CONNELL: It was an industry that came from nothing, except that the whole idea came from Thomas Jefferson. Now it has a real sense of place. You can give a Californian or a Frenchman something that grew within a stone’s throw of the restaurant.

readexpress.com

Each month has its own natural identity and April is no exception. As much as anything, this time of year means the return of song. On an April morning, the chorus of robins, cardinals, mourning doves and crows can be so loud that you have to get up and close the bedroom window. All day long, forests resonate with the drumming of ruffed grouse and the courtship hammering of yellow-bellied sapsuckers. When evening comes, the nasal “beep” of the woodcock is constantly repeated from damp fields and thickets until the bird suddenly launches itself into the air and begins its spectacular sky dance.
But song is not limited to only birds, for this is also a time of amphibian love as marshes, swamps and woodland ponds reverberate with the calls of countless frogs caught up in a frenzy to reproduce. Salamanders, too, join the fray as they venture over ice, rock and road to make their way back to ancestral breeding ponds. On our lakes, we hear yet another April music in the tinkling of black candle ice, the clamour of ice piling up in ridges, and the roar of waves rolling under the disintegrating surface.
Our noses recognize the season by the smell of the sodden, thawing earth and decaying leaves. And, for those of us old enough to remember, April will always be synonymous with the smell of grass fires.
New plant life, too, vies for our attention this month. The yellow flowers of coltsfoot push forth among roadside stones. Almost overnight, tree tops appear less open as dormant buds swell and begin to open. The flowers of willows, poplars, elms and alders stand out against the grey brown landscape and provide a foretaste of what is to come, because April is a time of great expectation. In only a few weeks, the explosive growth of flowers and leaves will totally transform the landscape.

thepeterboroughexaminer.com

Tonight’s episode of “American Idol” was like a battle between good and evil. On one side we have the contestants, the audience and this week’s guest mentor Dolly Parton. On the other side is cranky British judge Simon Cowell. For every great interpretation of a Dolly classic by a contestant, there was a snarky retort from Mr. Cowell. For every positive word Ms. Parton passed along, Simon had just as many unkind words ready to unveil. It didn’t matter that Brooke sang an awesome cover of “Jolene,” because Simon was just waiting to diss the band. And as good as Carly belted out “Here You Come Again,” all Cowell said was how much he hated her clothes. Even Ryan Seacrest noted the judge’s extra-cranky demeanor tonight. Maybe Simon was meaner because his Coca-Cola cup was empty. Or maybe he’s just as annoyed with those arm-waving fans near the stage as I am. But despite Simon’s determination to find a dark cloud in every silver lining tonight, several of the contestants did very well.
First up was Brooke White with her cover of “Jolene.” With an extremely cool backup band, consisting of a guitarist, violinist and a guy playing a washboard, Brooke delivered a great rendition. You can tell she’s quite at home sitting on a stool and playing her guitar. This week she hit all her notes and actually connected with the song, despite Simon saying her performance lacked emotion. And now that Chikezie is gone, she’s now become this season’s sole happy contestant, complete with polite compliments to the judges and a giant grin. After her streak of fun, folksy performances I’m predicting she’ll be in the Top 4.
The increasingly popular David Cook sang next. Interestingly, Ryan Seacrest asked him where he gets all those great alternative arrangements for his songs. The reason this is interesting, in case you haven’t heard, is that a Seattle rock group called Doxology issued a press release last week blasting Cook for not crediting their version of “Eleanor Rigby.” (Cook sang the song on March 11.) So when David answered Ryan’s question, he credited Doxology for their cover that he used, as well as Whitesnake for their cover of “Daytripper” and Chris Cornell for his cover of “Billie Jean.” Hopefully all is now right in David Cook’s world. And his performance sure had to put his mind at ease as well. He sang Dolly’s “Little Sparrow,” but created the arrangement himself this time. For once, he actually showed his whole range, including some surprising falsetto notes, which will probably silence some of those people who say he’s not original. Overall, the judges loved him, though Simon told him it wasn’t as good as last week. Oh Simon, ya big bummer, what are we going to do with you?

tvfodder.com