Tickets for the 2013 Bonnaroo Music and Arts Festival starts today. Early tickets are $224 (plus service charges) and $1,399.50 (for a pair) for VIP tickets. Early tickets will only be available through Dec. 31. For the past several years, tickets for the festival have gone on sale at a discount price for a limited time before the acts performing have been announced. The festival will be held June 13-16, 2013. Artists performing at the event are usually announced in late January and regular tickets (at a greater price) will go on sale around that time.

U.S. Rep. Scott DesJarlais said in an interview with the Chattanooga Times Free Press he never intentionally misled voters about his past and stressed that he has no plans to resign over recent revelations that depict a private life starkly at odds with his public image as an anti-abortion, family values congressman. In his first remarks since the release of a court transcript from his 14-year-old divorce, the Jasper Republican conceded that he often used “very poor judgment” during his first marriage and the lengthy separation that followed. But DesJarlais said he is not the same man who supported his first wife’s decision to have two abortions. The physician-turned-congressman said he also deeply regrets sexual relationships with multiple women, including two patients, three co-workers and a drug company representative while he was chief of staff at Grandview Medical Center in Jasper. DesJarlais, re-elected to a second term just two weeks ago, said he hopes voters will look at the job he has done while in office and will not judge him on his past. He formally represented Coffee County before the districts were changed.

Grundy County grand jurors have indicted two Palmer, Tenn., men in connection with unrelated slayings in Gruetli-Laager, Tenn., according to officials.
In one case, Troy E. Dent, 44, of 1274 Tatesville Road, was charged with second-degree murder in a fatal attack on another man with a ball peen hammer.
Doug Birdwell, 63, was lying on the ground off Colony Road when deputies found him late in the afternoon on Oct. 5, according to Grundy County Sheriff Brent Myers.
Birdwell was flown to Erlanger hospital in Chattanooga, where he died from severe brain injury, Myers said.
Dent turned himself in Nov. 14.
In the other case, Kurt Brewer, 31, of 257 Barker’s Cove Loop, was arrested on a charge of first-degree murder on July 29 and indicted this month on that charge, 12th Judicial District Attorney Mike Taylor said this week.
Brewer is charged in the shooting of Corey Henry, 29, at a home on Sweetan Road.
Brewer and Henry reportedly were arguing all day over a $25 debt, and Brewer had called Henry and threatened him several times before the shooting at the home of an acquaintance where Henry and several others were gathered, according to Myers and Taylor.
Officials said Henry was shot multiple times in the leg and back. He died later at Erlanger hospital.
Brewer and Dent are free on bond, according to Grundy County Jail officials. Both men are due in court on Nov. 30, Circuit Court officials said.

County non-seasonally adjusted unemployment rates for October 2012 have been released. They show the rate decreased in 14 counties, increased in 64, and remained the same in 17.
Tennessee’s unemployment rate for October decreased to 8.2 percent, down from the September revised rate of 8.3 percent. The national unemployment rate for October 2012 was 7.9 percent, 0.1 percentage point higher than the September rate of 7.8 percent.
Coffee County went up slightly going from 7.3% in September to 7.4 in October. Cannon County dropped from 6.9 to 6.8. Bedford County stayed the same at 8.7%. Franklin County also remained the same as it was in September at 7.2. Grundy County was another county staying the same as the previous month at 8.8%. Moore County went up in October from a September rate of 7.3 to 7.6. Warren County saw its rate go up slightly from 8.6 to 8.7%.
Lincoln County has the state’s lowest unemployment rate at 5.1% and the highest rate is Scott County at 16.4%.