IRS agents singled out dozens of organizations for additional reviews because they included the words "tea party" or "patriot" in their exemption applications, Lois Lerner, who heads the IRS division that oversees tax-exempt groups, said Friday. In some cases, groups were asked for lists of donors, which violates IRS policy in most cases, she said.

The agency led at the time by a Bush administration appointee blamed low-level employees, saying no high-level officials were aware. But that wasn't good enough for Republicans in Congress, who are conducting several investigations and asked for more.

"I call on the White House to conduct a transparent, government-wide review aimed at assuring the American people that these thuggish practices are not under way at the IRS or elsewhere in the administration against anyone, regardless of their political views," said Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.

White House spokesman Jay Carney declared it was indeed inappropriate for the IRS to target tea party groups. But he brushed aside questions about whether the White House itself would investigate.

Instead, Carney said the administration expects a thorough investigation by the Treasury Department's inspector general for tax administration. The inspector general has been looking into the issue since last summer, and his report is expected to come out next week, the IG's office said Friday.

Carney said he did not know when the White House first learned that tea party groups were being targeted.

Lerner acknowledged it was wrong for the agency to target groups based on political affiliation.

"That was absolutely incorrect, it was insensitive and it was inappropriate. That's not how we go about selecting cases for further review," Lerner said at a conference sponsored by the American Bar Association.

"The IRS would like to apologize for that," she added.

Lerner said the practice was initiated by low-level workers in Cincinnati and was not motivated by political bias. Agency officials found out about the practice last year and moved to correct it, the IRS said in a statement. The statement did not specify when officials found out.

About 75 groups were inappropriately targeted. None had their tax-exempt status revoked, Lerner said.

The IRS is an independent agency within the Treasury Department that enforces the nation's tax laws. Revelations that the agency was targeting political groups because they were affiliated with a movement that is critical of President Barack Obama could become a new headache for the White House.

"The admission by the Obama administration that the Internal Revenue Service targeted political opponents echoes some of the most shameful abuses of government power in 20th century American history," said House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio.

Many conservative groups complained during the campaign that they were being harassed by the IRS. They accused the agency of frustrating their attempts to become tax exempt by sending them lengthy, intrusive questionnaires.

The forms, which the groups have made available, sought information about group members' political activities, including details of their postings on social networking websites and about family members.

IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman told Congress in March 2012 that the IRS was not targeting groups based on politics.

"There's absolutely no targeting. This is the kind of back and forth that happens to people" who apply for tax-exempt status, Shulman told a House Ways and Means subcommittee.

The IRS said senior leaders were not aware that specific groups were being targeted at the time of the hearing.

"While we acknowledged centralization of these applications last year, the IRS did not acknowledge the use of names as part of the process earlier because the details were not initially known to senior leadership and (the inspector general) has been reviewing the situation," the IRS said in a statement. "Their work is now far enough along that it was appropriate to address the issue when it came up during (Friday's) tax conference."

Shulman was appointed by President George W. Bush. His 6-year term ended in November. President Barack Obama has yet to nominate a successor. The agency is now being run by acting Commissioner Steven Miller.

Rep. Charles Boustany, R-La., chairman of the Ways and Means oversight subcommittee, requested a trove of documents from the IRS on Friday, including all communications containing the words "tea party" and "patriot."

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp, R-Mich., said Friday he will hold a hearing on the matter has not yet set a date.

"The IRS absolutely must be non-partisan in its enforcement of our tax laws," Camp said. "We will hold the IRS accountable for its actions."

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., and the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee have also promised investigations.

Treasury spokesman Anthony Coley said the department will support the inspector general's investigation.

"The Treasury Department expects all individuals and organizations to be treated fairly by the IRS. Anything less is inappropriate and unacceptable."

There has been a surge of politically active groups claiming tax-exempt status in recent elections conservative and liberal. Among the highest profile are Republican Karl Rove's group, Crossroads GPS, and the liberal Moveon.org.

These groups claim tax-exempt status under section 501 (c) (4) of the federal tax code, which is for social welfare groups. Unlike other charitable groups, these organizations are allowed to participate in political activities but their primary activity must be social welfare.

That determination is up to the IRS.

Lerner said the number of groups filing for this tax-exempt status more than doubled from 2010 to 2012, to more than 3,400. To handle the influx, the IRS centralized its review of these applications in an office in Cincinnati.

Lerner said this was done to develop expertise among staffers and consistency in their reviews. As part of the review, staffers look for signs that groups are participating in political activity. If so, IRS agents take a closer look to make sure that politics isn't the group's primary activity.

As part of this process, agents in Cincinnati came up with a list of things to look for in an application. As part of the list, they included the words, "tea party" and "patriot," Lerner said.

"It's the line people that did it without talking to managers," Lerner told The AP. "They're IRS workers, they're revenue agents."

In all, about 300 groups were singled out for additional review, Lerner said. Of those, about a quarter were singled out because they had "tea party" or "patriot" somewhere in their applications.

The IRS statement said that once applications were chosen for review, they all "received the same, even-handed treatment."

Lerner said 150 of the cases have been closed and no group had its tax-exempt status revoked, though some withdrew their applications.

"Mistakes were made initially, but they were in no way due to any political or partisan rationale," the IRS said in a statement. "We fixed the situation last year and have made significant progress in moving the centralized cases through our system."

"I don't think there's any question we were unfairly targeted," said Tom Zawistowski, who until recently was president of the Ohio Liberty Coalition, an alliance of tea party groups in the state.

Zawistowski's group was among many conservative organizations that battled the IRS over what they saw as discriminatory treatment. The group first applied for nonprofit status in June 2009, and it was finally granted on Dec. 7, 2012, he said one month after Election Day.

"It is suspicious that the activity of these 'low-level workers' was unknown to IRS leadership at the time it occurred," said Jenny Beth Martin, national coordinator for Tea Party Patriots, which describes itself as the nation's largest tea party organization. "President Obama must also apologize for his administration ignoring repeated complaints by these broad grass-roots organizations of harassment by the IRS in 2012, and make concrete and transparent steps today to ensure this never happens again."

___

Associated Press writers Alan Fram and Jim Kuhnhenn in Washington and Steve Peoples in Boston contributed to this report.

___

Follow Stephen Ohlemacher on Twitter: http://twitter.com/stephenatap

NEW YORK/BOSTON (Reuters) - Carl Icahn and Southeastern Asset Management Inc have mounted an aggressive challenge to Michael Dell's controversial $24.4 billion offer to take Dell Inc private, offering $21 billion in cash to shareholders while vying to wrest control of the company from its co-founder.

Michael Dell, major shareholders such as Southeastern and billionaire activist investor Icahn are waging a battle over the future of the world's third largest personal computer maker, once a tech-industry high flyer, but now struggling to evolve as people embrace smartphones and tablet computers.

Michael Dell and private equity firm Silver Lake want to take the company private for $13.65 per share, making it the largest buyout since the 2008 financial crisis. But many shareholders, including Southeastern and T. Rowe Price, complain that offer severely undervalues the company.

Instead, Icahn and Southeastern, two of Dell's biggest shareholders, proposed a deal that gives shareholders $12 of cash for every share they own, as well as allow them to keep their stock. Given that they retain their stake in the company and that the rival offer is for $13.65 a share, every stock owned takes on a value of $1.65, Icahn and Southeastern argue. (http://r.reuters.com/tug97t)

At $12 apiece, the cash portion of Icahn's and Southeastern' s offer will come to $21 billion.

Should Dell's board rebuff them and put the go-private offer to a shareholder vote, the pair will nominate a slate of 12 directors to challenge the current board. In an interview with CNBC on Friday, the activist investor said Michael Dell will no longer run the company should his slate of candidates be elected.

The initial reaction from shareholders was favorable, though some investors hoped the latest offer would prompt Michael Dell to offer a counter. David Moon, Chairman of Moon Capital Management in Knoxville, Tennessee, said his firm sold its Dell shares weeks ago and warned that failure to secure any sort of deal might send Dell's shares back to $10 a share, before Michael Dell's takeover offer.

Mario Gabelli, chief executive of Gamco Investors Inc, said via e-mail he would vote in favor of the latest proposal. On Twitter, he wrote it was a "good alternative" to a leveraged buy-out. Gabelli investment funds own about 5.2 million Dell shares, latest filings show.

"It's improvement. It gives people a choice. The other (proposal) comes across like a ramrod," said Donald Yacktman, founder and CEO of Yacktman Asset Management which holds 14.8 million shares, according to Thomson Reuters data. "Whichever way things evolve, what this is doing is forcing better capital allocation than we have seen in the last five years."

On Friday, Icahn again suggested Michael Dell would be the biggest beneficiary of his own proposed buyout, which would exclude current shareholders from participating in the fruits of his restructuring effort.

Icahn's offer "gives us the opportunity to continue our participation in Dell's operating business and thus we believe it to be superior," said Tim Piechowski, associate portfolio manager, Alpine Capital Research, St Louis, Missouri, which owned 2.5 million shares as of May 10.

Dell shares were up 0.7 percent at $13.42 in late trade.

VISION

Icahn argued in a letter sent to Dell's board and made public in a filing on Friday that Dell operates a large enterprise-focused computing business in addition to its ailing PC division, with strong ties Microsoft Corp and Intel Corp. Without specifying details, he also said cost savings could be had from merging assembly plants across the world, while there remained opportunities to spin off non-core businesses.

That echoed Michael Dell's own strategic vision for a company he hopes to transform from a purveyor of low-margin PCs into a global provider of high-margin services for enterprises.

As for Southeastern, past filings show the fund management firm run by Mason Hawkins bought into Dell's shares at about $16.88, meaning a huge loss were they to accept a buyout.

Icahn told Reuters on Friday he will personally contribute a couple of billion dollars to finance a $5.2 billion bridge loan needed to effect his deal. He added that he had already reached out to several investment bankers. Later, he told CNBC in a TV interview that one of those investment banks included Jefferies, which would contribute $1.6 billion to the loan.

Jefferies & Co declined to comment.

The Icahn and Southeastern challenge comes after Blackstone LP ended its pursuit of Dell in April, and pulled out a month after it teamed up with Icahn to challenge the take-private attempt.

It was "insulting to shareholders' intelligence for the board to tell them that this board only has the best interests of shareholders at heart," Icahn and Southeastern said in the letter. "We are often cynical about corporate boards, but this Board has brought that cynicism to new heights."

Dell said in a statement on Friday that its special committee is reviewing the Southeastern Asset materials and will provide comment in "due course." A representative for Silver Lake declined to comment.

"I don't think Icahn and Southeastern have enough sway over the shareholders," Raymond James analyst Brian Alexander said. "As Dell has a lot of cash, (the latest deal) is basically like a leveraged private equity deal, without the company going private."

Both Icahn and Southeastern said they would take shares rather than cash. They would finance the proposal from existing cash and about $5.2 billion in new debt.

Icahn and Southeastern together hold about 13 percent of Dell stock. The billionaire investor previously proposed paying $15 per share for 58 percent of Dell.

"As a shareholder, what I'm most pleased about is that the pot continues to be stirred," said Robert Willis, president and CEO of Willis Investment Counsel in Gainesville, Georgia, which owns about 350,000 shares of Dell. "I like the fact that those who oppose this aren't going to lie down."

(Additional reporting by Jennifer Saba in New York, Aaron Pressman in Boston, and Sakthi Prasad and Supantha Mukherjee in Bangalore; writing by Edwin Chan, editing by Edwina Gibbs, Saumyadeb Chakrabarty, Jeffrey Benkoe and Andre Grenon)

PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Florida (Reuters) - Tiger Woods may get the red carpet treatment wherever he goes but that will be of little help to the world number one at TPC Sawgrass, site of this week's Players Championship.

Woods won his only Players title in 15 starts in 2001 and in addition to a field that includes the world's top 30 golfers, and 38 of the top 40, there is the diabolical Pete Dye layout that has frustrated contenders for four decades.

The 14-times major winner measures success by only the biggest championships, but he grudgingly admits that next in line after the Masters, U.S. Open, British Open and PGA Championship would be the Players Championship.

"I think we have our four major championships, and that's that," Woods said when asked if the Players could be considered the fifth major. "But if there was going to be another one, this would be it. This is the best field that we have."

Woods could be primed to become only the fifth golfer to win the tournament more than once since he is currently the hottest player in the world with three wins this season that helped him regain the world number one ranking from Rory McIlroy.

He was also in the lead at Augusta National before his third shot at the par-five 15th in the second round of last month's Masters hit the flagstick and ricocheted into the water.

The next morning he was hit with a controversial two-shot penalty - some called for his disqualification - for taking an improper drop following a review that was prompted by a phone call from a TV viewer.

Woods, who carded a triple-bogey on the hole, eventually finished tied for fourth, four shots out of a playoff won by Australian Adam Scott.

He said the Masters disappointment stayed with him for about a week.

"When I was away from it, I was reflecting on ... the things that I did right but also the things that I did wrong that week," Woods, who got the red carpet treatment at a New York fashion awards show this week with girlfriend and Olympic champion skier Lindsey Vonn, said on Tuesday.

"Unfortunately I hit a good shot and got a bad break. But I still had an opportunity over the next 36 holes to get it back, and I sort of had my opportunities to do it and I just didn't do it."

Winning at TPC Sawgrass is also no easy matter.

"It's one of those courses where they've got some tough lines, and if you're not playing well, you're going to get exposed," said Woods, who has just one top-10 finish here since his 2001 triumph. "You miss these greens at all, you've got some of the weirdest, funky little shots that you'll ever face."

Defending champion Matt Kuchar will tee it up with Woods and reigning end-of-season FedExCup winner Brandt Snedeker in Thursday's opening round as he embarks on a campaign to become the first repeat winner of the Players Championship.

"I think this is a great opportunity," said Kuchar, who won this year's WGC-Accenture Match Play, tied for eighth at the Masters and has had two other top 10s in 2013.

"They tell me nobody's defended the title. I don't think that this is necessarily a curse that nobody's defended the title here. It's just kind of one of those stats you pull out, and I'd like to be the first guy that is able to repeat."

(Editing by Frank Pingue)

Even a decline in the number of Americans applying for unemployment benefits failed to give stock prices a big boost. Markets drifted lower in early trading, then ticked higher in the early afternoon.

Unemployment claims dropped to a five-year low last week, signaling fewer layoffs and possibly more hiring.

An improvement in hiring has been one of the factors helping to push stocks to record levels. The Dow Jones industrial average climbed above 15,000 for the first time Tuesday and is on track to notch six straight months of gains. The Standard and Poor's 500 index also closed at a record high Wednesday.

The bar for economic news and corporate earnings has risen as stock prices have marched higher, said JJ Kinahan, chief derivative strategist at TD Ameritrade. "You have to beat by a lot to really move the market higher."

Rising corporate earnings, another support for the stock market, were also in focus on Thursday.

Tesla Motors soared $14.73, or 26 percent, to $70.34, after the electric car maker posted its first quarterly net profit since it was founded a decade ago. Green Mountain Coffee Roasters surged $14.42 or 24.5 percent, to $74.06 after the company reported late Wednesday that its net income rose 42 percent. It also raised its earnings forecast for the full year.

Monster Beverage, the maker of energy drinks, fell $3.63, or 6.4 percent, to $53.31, after it reported net income that fell short of analysts' estimates. The company's profits fell 17 percent, despite stronger sales, because of unfavorable currency rates, legal expenses and costs tied to distribution agreements.

Almost 90 percent of the companies in the S&P 500 index have reported earnings for the first quarter. Earnings are projected to rise 5 percent for the period and continue climbing throughout the year, according to S&P Capital IQ.

The Dow rose 19 points, or 0.1 percent, to 15,123 as of 2:20 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time. The Standard & Poor's 500 index was little changed at 1,633.

So far, markets have defied expectations for a slowdown heading into the summer.

The Standard & Poor's 500 index has started the second quarter well, gaining 1.9 percent so far in the period. But the index has declined in the second quarter in each of the past three years. Stocks slumped as Europe's debt crisis intensified last year and in 2011 they dipped as wrangling in Washington pushed the U.S. to the brink of default.

"The market has had a phenomenal run," said Ron Florance, managing director of investment strategy at Wells Fargo Private Bank. "We'll have to see how the second quarter plays out."

In government bond trading, the yield on the 10-year note continued to edge higher, climbing to 1.81 percent from 1.77 percent on Wednesday. The yield, which moves inversely to the bond's price, has risen from 1.63 early Friday before a surprisingly strong employment report.

The price of crude oil fell 59 cents, or 0.6 percent, $96.09 and gold fell $10.90, or 0.7 percent, to $1,463.40. The dollar rose against the euro and the yen. The U.S. currency traded above the 100 yen level for the first time in more than four years.

In other stock trading, the Nasdaq composite index, which is heavily weighted with technology stocks, was up one point at 3,414.

Barnes & Noble surged $2.89, or 16 percent, to $20.69 after TechCrunch reported that Microsoft was considering acquiring the book retailer's digital book venture Nook Media for $1 billion.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - LinkedIn Corp shares fell 10 percent on Thursday after disappointing revenue forecasts suggested that a revamped mobile app and other new products designed to keep smartphone users engaged will not deliver on advertising growth as quickly as anticipated.

The social network that targets professional users and specializes in recruiting services has in past months trotted a series of enhancements such as news content for mobile devices, to keep users signed in longer and sell more advertising.

But on Thursday, executives warned that its advertising business will undergo "a more moderate growth" than its other services. Its fledgling, mobile-oriented "newsfeed" ads - or promotions that appear directly in a users' stream of content - remained in testing and would only be introduced gradually.

"The stock is somewhat a victim of its own success," said Needham & Co analyst Kerry Rice.

"They had a really big acceleration in Q4," said Rice. "So I think the market kind of expected similar results in Q1 and throughout 2013."

Shares of LinkedIn have surged about 74 percent this year in a mostly disappointing social media sector. The company's bread-and-butter recruiting services - which accounted for 57 percent of sales - generated strong 80 percent growth in revenue to $184.3 million in the first quarter.

But it said current-quarter revenue would range from $342 million to $347 million, below the $359.3 million expected on average by analysts.

Although LinkedIn hiked its full-year revenue forecast by $20 million on Thursday, the high end of the forecast range was below the average analyst estimate of $1.49 billion, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

The company said net income for the first quarter rose to $22.6 million, or 20 cents a share, from $5 million, or 4 cents a share, over the same period. Excluding certain items, LinkedIn said it earned 45 cents a share in the first quarter, well above the 31 cents expected by analysts.

Revenue in the first three months of the year rose 72 percent to $324.7 million from $188.5 million in the year-ago period.

LinkedIn shares slid about 10 percent to $181 from a close of $201.67 on the New York Stock Exchange.

(Reporting by Alexei Oreskovic; Editing by Richard Chang and Lisa Shumaker)

Previously in charge of Buffalo's American Hockey League affiliate, the Rochester Americans, Rolston becomes the 16th head coach for the Sabres after guiding the team to a 15-11-5 record in 31 games since replacing Ruff.

The 46-year-old also spent seven seasons as head coach with USA Hockey's national team development program and led the U.S. under-18 team to gold medals at the International Ice Hockey Federation world championships in 2005, 2009 and 2011.

Buffalo finished fourth-last in the Eastern Conference with a 21-21-6 record, missing the playoffs for the second straight year and fourth time in six seasons. (Reporting by Mark Lamport-Stokes in Los Angeles; Editing by Frank Pingue)

Greeting the Israeli leader at the Great Hall of the People, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang made no direct mention of his meeting two days earlier with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who leads his people's efforts to achieve statehood. Talks between Israel and the Palestinians on the statehood issue have been deadlocked for four years, despite pressure on Jerusalem from the United States, Russia and the European Union, long the major players in Middle East diplomacy.

"I'm ready to exchange views with you today on how to strengthen our bilateral relationship, how to enhance our bilateral cooperation and also on regional issues such as the question of Palestine and the Middle East process," Li told Netanyahu before the two sat down to talks on the peace process and other regional issues.

The near simultaneous visits to China by Abbas and Netanyahu underscore China's desire to play a greater role in the Middle East, a region Beijing has long seen as a key source of energy.

"The Middle East confuses the Chinese," said China expert Yoram Evron of Israel's University of Haifa. "But in the past two years, there are people in China who think it needs to expand its activities in the region in order to safeguard its interests."

Evron's view was echoed by Middle East expert Li Weijian of the Shanghai Institute of Foreign Studies, who said the region was far too important for China to ignore, particularly in light of Beijing's increased economic and political clout elsewhere in the world.

"China needs to play a role in major international affairs, including the affairs of the Middle East, and China has been stepping up efforts in this respect," he said.

Last week, China's Foreign Ministry said it would be willing to arrange a meeting between Abbas and Netanyahu, but with the Israeli side casting Netanyahu's visit in largely commercial terms, the meeting didn't take place. Instead, Netanyahu devoted much of his time on his trip to pressing for an expansion of his country's $8 billion annual trade with China, and encouraging Chinese investment in Israeli industry.

Following their meeting, Li and Netanyahu presided over the signing of five agreements on aerospace, agricultural research, financial cooperation, science and technology, and on Chinese language instruction. Details were not immediately provided.

"There is a perfect marriage between our mutual capabilities," Netanyahu said at a ceremony marking the signing of business agreements between Israeli and Chinese companies. "The Israeli government stands firmly behind cooperation between Israeli and Chinese companies, (and) between Israeli research institutes and Chinese research institutes."

Netanyahu's emphasis on his trip will likely win only partial approval from Beijing, which for decades has taken a strong position on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, with very little to show for it.

Adopting a strongly pro-Palestinian stand in the mid-1950s, Beijing recognized Palestinian statehood in 1988, four years before establishing diplomatic relations with Israel.

While ties between Jerusalem and Beijing have expanded rapidly over the past 15 years China is now a major purchaser of Israeli know-how, from high-technology to agriculture, engineering and military-related services it maintains its Palestinian sympathies, amid a general critique of what it sometimes sees as Israeli belligerence in the area.

After last weekend's Israeli airstrike on a Syrian military complex, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying avoided criticizing Israel by name, but left little doubt that Beijing saw it as an unwelcome curtain raiser to Netanyahu's visit.

"We oppose the use of force and believe any country's sovereignty should be respected," she said.

That stance, and others, are part of the response that was signed by Jonathan F. Duncan, the NCAA's Interim Vice President of Enforcement, in response to a motion Miami filed with the association's Committee on Infractions to have the case brought to an end.

"Overall, the enforcement staff believes that the institution is again grasping at straws in an attempt to disqualify members of the enforcement team with the most knowledge about the case," Duncan wrote in the response, a copy of which was obtained Sunday by The Associated Press.

In late March, citing impropriety by the NCAA throughout the investigation, the Hurricanes asked the Committee on Infractions a group separate from the association's investigative arm to throw out the case. Four former Miami coaches, including current Missouri basketball coach Frank Haith, filed similar motions.

Miami's motion to dismiss included allegations that the NCAA used "impermissible and unethical" tactics when interviewing Haith and former men's basketball assistant coach Jake Morton, that the association misled the school on other issues, and other claims of wrongdoing.

One of Miami's biggest questions about the investigation has revolved around why the NCAA did not interview former Hurricanes athletic director Paul Dee, who died in May 2012.

Dee was Miami's AD for much of the time that the former booster at the center of the scandal, convicted Ponzi scheme architect Nevin Shapiro, was providing impermissible benefits to athletes, coaches and recruits.

Duncan's motion suggested that the NCAA was targeting June 2012 as the right time to interview Dee, who had battled health issues for many years.

"Because Dee's death was unexpected, the enforcement staff could not have predicted that he would not be available for an interview in June 2012," Duncan wrote. "Had the institution or enforcement staff known of Dee's condition or impending death, the enforcement staff would have exhausted all reasonable efforts to preserve Dee's testimony."

Duncan's response also strongly defended investigators Brynna Barnhart and Stephanie Hannah.

Miami alleged that Barnhart misled the school about the circumstances surrounding a February 2012 interview the NCAA conducted with former Hurricanes quarterback Kyle Wright, and that Hannah should have been disqualified from the case because the extent of her relationship with Shapiro attorney Maria Elena Perez was not revealed to the school.

"Not only are these personal attacks based on no evidence that would support the removal of Barnhart and Hannah from the case, they are also not a basis for dismissal of the case in its entirety," Duncan wrote.

Also, Duncan said that Miami was incorrect in its assertion that the NCAA was "incompetent, unprofessional, and uncooperative" in the timing of how basketball guard Durand Scott was declared ineligible on the very day the Hurricanes began play in the 2012 Atlantic Coast Conference tournament. Duncan's response included emails suggesting that the NCAA tried to rectify the Scott matter as fast as it could.

"While the enforcement staff acknowledges that the timing was unfortunate, nothing in the record indicates the enforcement staff intentionally orchestrated the timing to coincide with the ACC tournament," Duncan wrote.

There has already been one victory for Miami with regard to the motion to dismiss.

The AP first reported Friday that the enforcement staff made one concession that Miami wanted, that being the NCAA's decision to throw Wright's testimony out of the notice of allegations.

Miami argued that some things Wright was asked about by investigators in February 2012 stemmed from information the NCAA collected through depositions that Perez conducted under subpoena in Shapiro's bankruptcy proceeding. The NCAA does not have subpoena power.

Perez was paid by the NCAA after doing that work, though she contends that she never actually was employed by the association and that it was simply paying her for work that she conducted on Shapiro's behalf.

After the NCAA hired a firm to look into investigators' relationship with Perez, NCAA President Mark Emmert said that all the information that came in any way from clues or answers gleaned from those depositions was removed from the notice of allegations that Miami received in February. Wright was listed in that document with relation to claims of a half-dozen rules that the association said the Hurricanes violated.

The Committee on Infractions is scheduled to bring the case to a hearing June 14. Any sanctions against Miami would likely be decided weeks after that, unless the Hurricanes and the NCAA somehow resolve things beforehand.

Miami believes the Committee on Infractions has authority to dismiss the case, a stance the enforcement arm disagrees with.

The student remained hospitalized in critical condition Tuesday as classes resumed at La Salle High School, an all-male Catholic school west of Cincinnati.

"We are all greatly saddened by the shooting," Archbishop Dennis Schnurr said in a statement. "We pray for the young man's recovery, not only from the self-inflicted wound but also from the personal challenges that led him to take this action."

The Cincinnati archdiocese covers 19 counties, including 114 Catholic primary and secondary schools. Schnurr said there are also prayers for family, the other students and the teacher who were in the classroom Monday morning and for the entire La Salle school community.

Green Township police said there were at least 21 other students in the first-period classroom Monday morning when the student attempted suicide with a semi-automatic handgun. They said no other students or staff were threatened.

The student is a junior and an honors student. He made the top honor roll on the most recent academic report and has been active in Boy Scouts. School spokesman Greg Tankersley said he has an extensive record of community service, and has been "highly involved" in school life.

Green Township police said they would review security at the school, but Chief Bart West said school officials reacted according to their safety plan Monday. The school was put in lockdown, and students were later dismissed to parents.

Improving school security has been a high priority around the state in the aftermath of last year's fatal shooting of three students at Chardon High School in northeast Ohio and the December shooting rampage at Sandy Hook Elementary in Connecticut. Officials say the FBI and U.S. Secret Service have gotten involved in a bomb-threat investigation at Cuyahoga Falls in northeast Ohio, which was closed Monday as a precaution. There was a similar threat there in March.

The boy's family has requested privacy while they focus on efforts to save his life by the University of Cincinnati Medical Center doctors and staff.

___

Contact the reporter at http://www.twitter.com/dansewell

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Parents whose children are struggling with math often view intense tutoring as the best way to help them master crucial skills, but a new study released on Monday suggests that for some kids even that is a lost cause.

According to the research, the size of one key brain structure and the connections between it and other regions can help identify the 8- and 9-year olds who will hardly benefit from one-on-one math instruction.

"We could predict how much a child learned from the tutoring based on measures of brain structure and connectivity," said Vinod Menon, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University School of Medicine, who led the research.

The study, published in the online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is the first to use brain imaging to look for a connection between brain attributes and the ability to learn arithmetic. But despite its publication in a well-respected journal, the research immediately drew criticism.

Jonathan Moreno, professor of medical ethics at the University of Pennsylvania, fears that some parents and teachers might "give up now" on a math-challenged child. "If it gets into the popular consciousness that it's wise to have your kid's brain checked out" before making decisions about academic options, he said, "that raises huge issues."

Menon and his fellow scientists agree that their research shouldn't lead to hasty conclusions. They are exploring whether any interventions might change the brain in such a way that children who struggle with math can benefit more from tutoring.

Just as learning to juggle increases the amount of gray matter in the area of adult brains that is responsible for spatial attention, said Menon, maybe something could pump up regions relevant to learning arithmetic before a child begins math tutoring.

Until then, he said "it's conceivable" that parents will interpret the new study as saying some kids cannot benefit from math tutoring, "and give up before even trying. How this plays out is far from clear."

MENTAL MATH

The study was conceived as a way to understand why some children benefit more than others from math instruction, said study co-author Lynn Fuchs, professor of special education at Vanderbilt University and an expert on ways to improve reading and math skills in students with learning disabilities.

For the research, the scientists first ran several tests on 24 third-graders to measure their IQ, working memory and reading and math ability. The children also underwent brain imaging. Structural MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) revealed the size and shape of various regions, while functional MRIs revealed connections among them.

Then the children received 22 one-on-one tutoring sessions, spread over eight weeks, for eight to nine hours per week. The tutoring emphasized number knowledge (principles like 5 + 4 = 4 + 5, and that many pairs of numbers add up to, say, 9) and fast-paced mental math ("quick, what is 6 + 9?").

After the tutoring, the children all improved in their arithmetic ability, solving more problems correctly and more quickly. But the amount of improvement varied enormously, from 8 percent to 198 percent.

None of the measures - pre-tutoring IQ score, working memory and math skills - predicted how much a child would improve.

But when the scientists compared each child's improvement with his or her pre-tutoring brain images, two connections jumped out. The volume of gray matter (neurons) in the right hippocampus, one of the twin structures crucial for forming memories, varied by about 10 percent in the children, Stanford's Menon said. The strength of the wiring between the hippocampus and the prefrontal cortex and the basal ganglia varied by about 15 percent. Both predicted how much a child's math skills improved with tutoring, the scientists reported.

The prefrontal cortex, behind the forehead, "is important for cognitive control, which plays a role in the formation of long-term memories," Menon said. The basal ganglia, tucked under the brain's outer surface, "is involved in habit formation and procedural memory," such as how to add numbers.

"Children with a larger right hippocampus and greater connectivity between the hippocampus and these two structures improved their arithmetic problem-solving skills more," said Menon.

These brain features explained 25 percent to 55 percent of the variation in improvement after math tutoring, he said. That, of course, leaves almost half of the difference among children to be explained by other factors.

Among the concerns raised about the study is its size. It enrolled only two dozen children, on a par with many neuroimaging studies but quite small for research that might influence people's behavior, said psychologist Scott Lilienfeld of Emory University.

"This is very, very preliminary evidence that brain measurements might tell you something that psychological measurements don't," said Lilienfeld, co-author with psychiatrist Sally Satel of an upcoming book, "Brainwashed: The Seductive Appeal of Mindless Neuroscience," that critiques some uses of neuroimaging. "It's important to see if the findings hold up in a second sample, and if other labs corroborate this."

Because brain images seem more rigorous than psychological measures, he said, there is a risk that parents and educators will interpret the study as definitive evidence that some children are doomed to be innumerate.

"Caution has to be the watchword here," he said.

(Reporting by Sharon Begley; Editing by Michele Gershberg and Douglas Royalty)