By Kieran Mulvaney

LAS VEGAS, May 4 (Reuters) - Floyd Mayweather showed little sign of ring-rust after a year out of the sport as he used sublime defense and a steady parade of right hands to dominate fellow American Robert Guerrero and retain his WBC welterweight championship on Saturday.

One day short of 12 months since his last bout, Mayweather, who also spent two months in jail in 2012 for a domestic abuse offence, landed an astonishing 60 percent of his power punches en route to a unanimous 12-round decision.

All three judges scored the fight 117-111 in favour of the undefeated Mayweather, who admitted that a damaged hand had prevented him from ending the fight early.

"I really was looking for a knockout, but I hurt my right hand," he revealed. "After that, I just had to box smart.

"Robert Guerrero was a tough warrior. He was trying to press the attack. But I got really good work in the gym and I felt comfortable in the ring. My defense was on point."

After an opening two rounds in which the southpaw Guerrero (31-2-1, 18 KOs) had some success, Mayweather (44-0, 26 KOs) seemed to slip into his comfort zone from the third.

Although the challenger's game plan seemed to be to back Mayweather to the ropes with his jab and then land punches to the body, the champion repeatedly slipped under his opponent's left, landed one or more right hands and moved out of danger.

After being hit with several rights in the third, Guerrero appeared more hesitant to commit to his attack, giving Mayweather yet more time to slip in and out of range and land his key punches.

"I thought Floyd did an excellent job tonight," said the 36-year-old's father and trainer Floyd Mayweather Sr.

"There was nothing he couldn't do in there tonight. I told him to steal it with the right hand. That was a punch (Guerrero) couldn't see and wasn't expecting each time he threw it."

By the eighth round, Mayweather was stepping up his assault, landing right hands with greater force and mixing in left hooks as he opened up a cut over a clearly hurt Guerrero's left eye.

At that stage, it appeared that Mayweather would stop Guerrero inside the distance and although he continued to paint his opponent with right hands and left hooks, the champion remained content to focus on coasting toward the finish.

"Floyd was tricky with his punches," Guerrero said in a post-fight interview. "He's a great fighter. He's slick and he's quick. He's better than I thought. He was definitely on his game tonight." (Editing by John O'Brien)

Vance passed away at his Oakland, California, home on Sunday, according to the statement at www.jackvance.com, a site maintained by his friends and family.

He won the Hugo award for his science fiction book "The Dragon Masters" in 1963 and again in 1967 for "The Last Castle." The Hugo is given for excellence in the fields of science fiction and fantasy.

"The Dragon Masters" features medieval-style combat and describes humans who war with aliens, even as they rely on certain lizard-like aliens they took captive.

"The Last Castle" takes place on a fictional planet Earth where humans live like aristocrats in high-tech redoubts while aliens attend their needs, until a race of those aliens stages a violent revolt.

Vance, who wrote over 60 books, also authored mystery novels under his full name, John Holbrook Vance, and three titles under the pseudonym Ellery Queen, according to his website.

In 1974, the movie "Bad Ronald," which was based on a story by Vance about a teenager who accidentally kills a girl and conspires with his mother to hide in their house, was broadcast on television.

Pulitzer-prize winning author Michael Chabon in a 2009 New York Times magazine article about Vance called him "the most painful case of all the writers I love who I feel don't get the credit they deserve."

Vance was born in San Francisco and was raised on his maternal grandparents ranch in Northern California after his parents separated. After college, he worked at a naval shipyard in Hawaii but left shortly before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, according to his website.

He later served in the U.S. Merchant Marine and saw some of his earliest work published in pulp magazines.

A lifelong lover of music, Vance played the cornet, ukulele and harmonica and had an affection for jazz music.

He was legally blind since the 1980s but continued to write with the help of special computer software.

(Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis; Editing by Paul Simao)

All four brigades of the 25th Infantry Division, which are based in Alaska and Hawaii, aren't scheduled to go to the Middle East, Lt. Gen. Francis Wiercinski said this week. The I Corps, a command based in Washington state that includes three Stryker brigades, is refocusing on the Pacific.

"For the last 11 to 12 years, the (Pacific Command) commander has not had his Army arrow in his quiver. We've been rotating into the Middle East. You've either been prepping for that or you're been there or you've been recovering. And the PACOM commander didn't have an Army. He has an Army now," Wiercinski said in an interview Thursday at his Fort Shafter headquarters.

Wiercinski spoke about a month before he's due to hand over command of U.S. Army Pacific to Lt. Gen. Vincent Brooks on July 2.

The return of soldiers to the region comes as the Obama administration rebalances its forces to the Pacific in recognition of China's growing military power and the importance of the region to U.S. national security.

The availability of the soldiers has allowed the Army to match units with similarly skilled counterparts in other countries, Wiercinski said.

For example, northern warfare expert soldiers based in Alaska, trained in cold mountainous terrain, have been matched up with Everest climbers in Nepal's military.

"They have something to talk about. They have something to train about. There's a camaraderie already built in," Wiercinski said.

Alaska-based soldiers have also been aligned with partners in Mongolia, northern India, northern Japan and southern New Zealand.

The "jungle fighters" of the 25th Infantry Division based in Hawaii have been matched up with counterparts in Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Australia and the Philippines.

Sacked army chief Gen. Aronda Nyakairima was appointed minister of internal affairs, effectively cutting his links to the army's chain of command. Some other government officials were also moved around in a sudden shuffle of civilian and military officials.

Police, meanwhile, occupied for the fifth straight day the premises of a Kampala newspaper that had published details of a letter by another army general who asked for an investigation into reports that high-ranking officials opposed to the rise of Museveni's son could be assassinated. In letter late last month to the chief of the internal security service, Gen. David Sejusa Sejusa cited himself, Nyakairima and Prime Minister Amama Mbabazi as among those officials who are at risk of being murdered in the alleged plot.

Police on Monday disabled the Daily Monitor's printing press after forcibly entering its premises to look for evidence against Sejusa, nearly two weeks after the independent newspaper published details of the letter. They cordoned off the premises of with yellow tape Thursday, officially designating it a crime scene. Media watchdogs condemned the attack on press freedom.

Sejusa, who has postponed his journey back home from a trip to London, is wanted for questioning by Ugandan police who have searched his house and arrested four of his aides on unspecified charges.

After Sejusa's letter became public, Nyakairima dismissed it, saying it was divisive and full of opposition propaganda. Karoro Okurut, a spokeswoman for the government, has since said the Sejusa case is "a matter of national security."

Sejusa is a decorated hero of the bush war that brought Museveni to power in 1986, a four-star general with a seat on the army's high command.He is also in charge of the country's domestic and foreign intelligence agencies, the reason some in this East African country say his concerns about a purported plot to assassinate people should be taken seriously. Some lawmakers have called for an inquiry.

Rumors that Museveni is grooming his son, Muhoozi Kainerugaba, as a future president have been fueled in part by Kainerugaba's meteoric rise in the military. Kainerugaba was promoted to the rank of brigadier in changes last year that saw him take full charge of the country's special forces, an elite unit that protects the president and guards national assets such as oil fields. Analysts say Kainerugaba's powerful position in the army has alienated senior army officials including Sejusa and Nyakairima.

Ladislaus Rwakafuuzi, a prominent Ugandan lawyer and political analyst, said the new changes by Museveni are clearly part of the ongoing fallout from discontent over the alleged succession plan.

"In my opinion it is true that the army leadership has been grumbling about its loss of power to the first son," he said.

Journalists at the Daily Monitor there insist they will not reveal who gave them a copy of Sejusa's letter or give a copy to the police.Details of the letter were published May 7. The Daily Monitor says on Twitter that "police have defied the court order directing them to vacate the Monitor Publications premises they seized since Monday. Instead of opening the gates to allow employees to access their offices, police deployed more officers."

Uganda's army code of conduct bars serving army officers from speaking to journalists without official authorization. If the police can prove that Sejusa himself leaked the letter, he could face a court martial. Frank Tumwebaze, a government minister who speaks for Museveni, says Sejusa has "clear presidential ambitions."

Museveni, who says he was born in 1944 but doesn't know the exact date, has held power for nearly three decades. His current term expires in 2016.

Carbon dioxide was measured at 400 parts per million at the oldest monitoring station which is in Hawaii sets the global benchmark. The last time the worldwide carbon level was probably that high was about 2 million years ago, said Pieter Tans of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

That was during the Pleistocene Era. "It was much warmer than it is today," Tans said. "There were forests in Greenland. Sea level was higher, between 10 and 20 meters (33 to 66 feet)."

Other scientists say it may have been 10 million years ago that Earth last encountered this much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The first modern humans only appeared in Africa about 200,000 years ago.

The measurement was recorded Thursday and it is only a daily figure, the monthly and yearly average will be smaller. The number 400 has been anticipated by climate scientists and environmental activists for years as a notable indicator, in part because it's a round number not because any changes in man-made global warming happen by reaching it.

"Physically, we are no worse off at 400 ppm than we were at 399 ppm," Princeton University climate scientist Michael Oppenheimer said. "But as a symbol of the painfully slow pace of measures to avoid a dangerous level of warming, it's somewhat unnerving."

Environmental activists, such as former Vice President Al Gore, seized on the milestone.

"This number is a reminder that for the last 150 years and especially over the last several decades we have been recklessly polluting the protective sheath of atmosphere that surrounds the Earth and protects the conditions that have fostered the flourishing of our civilization," Gore said in a statement. "We are altering the composition of our atmosphere at an unprecedented rate."

Carbon dioxide traps heat just like in a greenhouse and most of it stays in the air for a century; some lasts for thousands of years, scientists say. It accounts for three-quarters of the planet's heat-trapping gases. There are others, such as methane, which has a shorter life span but traps heat more effectively. Both trigger temperatures to rise over time, scientists say, which is causing sea levels to rise and some weather patterns to change.

When measurements of carbon dioxide were first taken in 1958, it measured 315 parts per million. Some scientists and environmental groups promote 350 parts per million as a safe level for CO2, but scientists acknowledge they don't really know what levels would stop the effects of global warming.

The level of carbon dioxide in the air is rising faster than in the past decades, despite international efforts by developed nations to curb it. On average the amount is growing by about 2 parts per million per year. That's 100 times faster than at the end of the Ice Age.

Back then, it took 7,000 years for carbon dioxide to reach 80 parts per million, Tans said. Because of the burning of fossil fuels, such as oil and coal, carbon dioxide levels have gone up by that amount in just 55 years.

Before the Industrial Revolution, carbon dioxide levels were around 280 ppm, and they were closer to 200 during the Ice Age, which is when sea levels shrank and polar places went from green to icy. There are natural ups and downs of this greenhouse gas, which comes from volcanoes and decomposing plants and animals. But that's not what has driven current levels so high, Tans said. He said the amount should be even higher, but the world's oceans are absorbing quite a bit, keeping it out of the air.

"What we see today is 100 percent due to human activity," said Tans, a NOAA senior scientist. The burning of fossil fuels, such as coal for electricity and oil for gasoline, has caused the overwhelming bulk of the man-made increase in carbon in the air, scientists say.

The world pumps on average 2.4 million pounds of carbon dioxide into the air every second for a total of 38.2 billion tons in 2011, according international calculations published in a scientific journal in December. China spews 10 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the air per year, leading all countries, and its emissions are growing about 10 percent annually. The U.S. at No. 2 is slowly cutting emissions and is down to 5.9 billion tons per year.

The speed of the change is the big worry, said Pennsylvania State University climate scientist Michael Mann. If carbon dioxide levels go up 100 parts per million over thousands or millions of years, plants and animals can adapt. But that can't be done at the speed it is now happening.

Last year, regional monitors briefly hit 400 ppm in the Arctic. But those monitoring stations aren't seen as a world mark like the one at Mauna Loa, Hawaii.

Generally carbon levels peak in May then fall slightly, so the yearly average is usually a few parts per million lower than May levels.

___

Online:

NOAA monitoring at Mauna Loa: http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/weekly.html

Seth Borenstein can be followed at http://twitter.com/borenbears

However it's not always clear if our new labors to save species are herculean or Sisyphean. The only hope for sustaining America's whooping cranes might be men dressed in white costumes flying ultralight aircraft. Rescuing a single humpback whale may inadvertently leave a unique butterfly habitat destroyed. To save endangered salmon, humans might find themselves hazing sea lions with firecrackers. The future oflooks more and more complicated as humans become entangled in the lives of animals, and people can't always tell if their efforts will ultimately be futile, or worse, do more harm than good.

In his new book "Wild Ones" (Penguin), which hit shelves today (May 16), Jon Mooallem tackles this maddening uncertainty through the eyes of people working with animals that have fallen victim to human whims among them, birds dependent on people to survive,feeling the pressures of climate change, and butterflies boxed into a broken habitat. Mooallem, who is a contributing writer to the New York Times Magazine, talked to LiveScience this week about his book and how to decide which species to save and why. The following is an interview, edited for length and clarity. []

LiveScience: An underlying theme in your book seems to be that humans are uncomfortable with admitting how much power we have over other living things on the planet. Why do you think this is especially the case with animals?

Jon Mooallem: In just a very basic way, animals are the creatures we share the planet with. They're not like trees and rocks. They're not part of the scenery. They seem to have lives of their own going on, and that makes us really curious about them. And for a long time in human history, a lot of animals were also our competitors. We had to deal with predators. We were afraid of them, or we were trying to catch the same fish. Now we've evolved to a point where we really have so much of the planet on lockdown that even these rivals or these animals we've looked up to are under our control, and it's an incredibly uncomfortable thought. We shouldn't have that kind of purchase over these other beings.

LS: Some , like the Lange's metalmark butterfly featured in your book, are already living outside of their original context in the wild and, at this point, their extinction wouldn't seem to tear a big hole in the ecosystem. Is there an ultimate argument for saving a species even when their importance in the ecosystem is not so obvious?

JM: That gets at a core confusion in how we think about a lot of endangered species. Some of the arguments that we use to justify working to save these animals really aren't applicable and they really aren't the most powerful arguments either. Sometimes we try to make scientific arguments for species where it really comes down to a matter of emotion or even nostalgia. We'd like to preserve some of these things maybe because they're beautiful, maybe because we don't want to feel guilty about having exterminated them. I think those can be two really valid reasons for working very hard to save an . There's something gorgeous about trying to preserve something that we care about in an aesthetic sense or an emotional sense. Conservation, I find, doesn't really know how to talk through those arguments that well yet, and oftentimes people are wary of making them.

LS: Do you think revising our definition of wildness would change the way we look at animals and conservation?

JM: That's one of the real challenges right now, to figure out what it is we want to preserve when we say we want to preserve wilderness or wildness. The fact is that preserving a lot of species involves a kind of hands-on management that is completely at odds with our more romantic ideas of what wildness is. That doesn't necessarily mean that those projects aren't worth undertaking. I think it means we need to recalibrate our idea of what wildness is.

LS: You touch on how our emotional attachment to certain animals, like polar bears, colors the way we interact with them. Did you find yourself feeling sympathetic to any of your animal subjects?

JM: Amazingly, no. I was surprised by that. Doing reporting about wild animals actually involves very little exposure to actual animals. You always have to see the animal through the filter of the people who have access to it. I didn't write a book where I just wandered around the woods hoping to encounter a mountain lion. I went to the polar bear capital of the world in Manitoba to look at polar bears in a place where 10,000 tourists come every year to look at them. And in that context, I felt like the animals did become obscured somehow like they were part of the scenery individual animals, in any case. When I went to the place where they were breeding endangered butterflies it was basically a ramshacklefarm where the butterflies were in plastic deli containers on plants, so it was hard to form a one-on-one, gushy bond with the animals. []

LS: Did any of your human subjects emerge as personal heroes for you?

JM: I found something heroic in almost everyone in the book. Maybe not a storybook form of heroism, where you see an obstacle and you work very hard and you surmount it. It's more like a Zen heroism, where you see an obstacle and you try to surmount it, and you realize that it's going to be much more complicated and perhaps never-ending, and you still try to surmount it anyway. I think that there's a real nobility in that. I think the people at Operation Migration the nonprofit that flies ultralight aircraft in front of whooping cranes to teach them to migrate I think that they're a really exaggerated example of that in the sense that they're spending all fall on the road and trying to get these birds to Florida amid tons of very idiosyncratic frustrations, but somehow they're still able to wake up in the morning at dawn and check the wind and see if it's a good day to fly. I think, not just in terms of being a conservationist but in terms of being a human being, there's some really valuable lessons to be learned there. []

LS: Did you have a different idea about how this book was going to turn out when you started writing it?

JM: I don't know that I had expectations that were upended or anything like that. I will say I was pretty amazed at how much chance played into the stories of these people and the stories of these animals. When you scratch the surface of a lot of these recoveries and try to figure out, 'How do we get to this point where there's only 40 some-odd butterflies on a piece of land?' or 'How did this project get so elaborate that we have men in costumes flyingin front of birds?' when you try to trace back those histories and bring them up to the present you realize there isn't any grand design. The endangered species are so reliant on humankind right now that simple things like when a committed lepidopterist who's working to save the butterflies suddenly gets a rash and he has to give up his work little accidents like this, little freak occurrences, have humungous repercussions for the animals themselves.

LS: After immersing yourself in this world for a while, do you have any recommendations for conservationists or do you see any problems that they are going to need to confront in the near future?

JM: Conservation is a national project. Under the Endangered Species Act and other environmental laws, it's a project that our government has taken on and thinks there's going to have to be some really substantive policy talks about how that work is going to move forward. Just from a sheer funding standpoint, there's going to be some difficult decisions to make as a lot of the threats against these species continue to ramp up, and the work gets even more involved and in some cases more futile. I don't know at this point that I have policy talking points because I think the problem right now is that we're just not asking the right questions in a lot of cases. It's not a matter of having the right answers but basic questions like, Why are we saving this particular creature? Are we saving it because we want it to be part of this ecosystem, or are we saving it more for aesthetic reasons? What happens when the needs of an endangered species conflict with the needs of a person on the same land? I think we just need a clearer sense of what our priorities actually are and why we're doing what we're doing before we can go about trying to do it better.

Follow Megan Gannon onandFollow us ,& . Original article on .

Scandals? What Scandals? This Week Is Historical for Another Reason

Months or years from now, this past week may be remembered less for developments in a spate of White House scandals than as a turning point in the war on terror. It is rare to see the commander in chief recalibrate one policy and reconsider another.

President Obama may have made history this week:

While self-inflicted controversies over the IRS, Benghazi, and newsroom snooping may hound Obama for months, this week might be remembered for more.

Ron Fournier

OBAMA ADDRESSES MILITARY SEXUAL ASSAULTS. The presidentdelivered a commencement address to 1,047 graduates of the U.S. Naval Academy today, saying the nation depends on them to stem the rising tide of sexual assaults in the military, The New York Times reported. Those who commit sexual assault are not only committing a crime, they threaten the trust and discipline that makes our military strong, Obama said, adding, We need your honor, that inner compass that guides you. Even more than physical courage, we need your moral courage the strength to do whats right, even when its unpopular. The president urged the graduates to remember that honor, like character, iswhen nobody's looking.

RUSSIA: ASSAD GOVERNMENT WILL TAKE PART IN PEACE TALKS. The Russian Foreign Ministry announced today that the government of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has agreed to participate in U.S.- and Russia-led negotiations to end the ongoing Syrian civil war. The talks, to be held next month in Geneva, aim to establish parameters for a transitional government. While Assads government has not issued a statement on the talks, a Syrian legislator indicated that the government will participate. The Syrian National Coalition, the leading opposition group, is currently weighing whether to participate and emphasizes the importance of Assads ouster in any negotiated settlement. Russia has not committed to Assads departure, and Assad has said he will serve out his current term, which ends next year.

REPORT: HOLDER APPROVED SEARCH WARRANT ON FOX NEWS REPORTER. Attorney General Eric Holder authorized a search warrant for the private e-mail correspondence of Fox News reporter James Rosen, NBC News reports. Holder has said he recused himself from the Department of Justices investigation involving the Associated Press. Meanwhile, Fox News CEO Roger Ailes addressed the DOJs actions with respect to Rosento employees on Thursday. The administrations attempt to intimidate Fox News and its employees will not succeed and their excuses will stand neither the test of law, the test of decency, nor the test of time, he wrote.

THE CABAL THAT QUIETLY TOOK OVER THE HOUSE. For 40 years, the Republican Study Committee has prized ideological purity over partisan loyalty. Members consider themselves conservatives first and Republicans second. They did not come to Washington to play for the Republican team; they came to fight for conservative principles. If that means voting against party interests, so be it. For decades, the committees membership rolls were thin. But as National Journals Tim Alberta reports, for the first time in history, the committee known as the chambers conservative conscience is a majority of the House majority.

IRS SCANDAL MAY HAVE HELPED IMMIGRATION REFORM. The controversy over the IRSs targeting of conservative groups for additional scrutiny may have improved the prospects for comprehensive immigration reform by providing a distraction, The Washington Posts Chris Cillizza and Sean Sullivan write. Meanwhile, The Posts Ezra Kleinthat, while scandals often lead to reform, they may not this time.

POLL: ECONOMY STILL BAD, BUT IMPROVING. A new CNN/ORC International poll shows that two-thirds of respondents rated the nations economic state as poor, but that this figure is down from 74 percent in December. Twenty-nine percent of respondents rated economic conditions as very poor, the lowest percentage in more than a year. Any positive changes in the economy appear to have only helped college graduates, while the rest of the country is still struggling, said CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. The number of college graduates who say the economy is performing well increased to 42 percent from 34 percent, though there was no significant change among those without a college degree, he said.

MARKEYS CAMP RESPONDS TO POND SCUM COMMENT. Rep. Ed Markey hit back at Gabriel Gomez today after Gomez called Markey pond scum, Talking Points Memo reports. Gomezto a web video which includes a picture of Gomez along with one of Osama bin Laden. Markeys spokesperson, Andrew Zucker, called Gomezs comment a new low. Meanwhile, Boston Mayor Thomas Menino endorsed Markey, WCVB, a local Boston TV station, . Markey is also receiving criticism for being absent from Capitol Hill; the Boston Globe that the lawmaker hasnt voted since May 9.

OBAMA TO TOUR OKLAHOMA, NEW JERSEY. On Sunday, the presidentwill tour portions of Oklahoma ravaged by a massive tornado earlier this week, meeting with families and first responders, . On Tuesday, Obama will tour New Jerseys coastline, which was badly damaged by superstorm Sandy last year, with Republican Gov. Chris Christie. Christies praise for the Democratic president at the time of the storm made waves during the 2012 election.

NOMINATE YOUR PICK: 25 MOST INFLUENTIAL WOMEN UNDER 35. A generation of change has empowered women and transformed Washington in the process. Who are the young women emerging today as leaders and decision makers in the administration, Congress, the media, nonprofits, the private sector, and on K Street? National Journal wants want to hear who you think should make the list!  

ROMANCE-NOVEL AUTHOR POINTS TO BACHMANN AS INSPIRATION. Rep. Michele Bachmann, R-Minn., is the inspiration behind Fires of Siberia, an e-book set to be released next month, Politico reports. The novel is about a presidential candidate who must confront her deepest self and choose between civilization and a wild, primitive ecstasy. The author, Try Sager, said the main character had some physical resemblance to Bachmann, whom he admires. I do feel that one of the reasons that she drives people crazy is because shes a woman in power and I think that its a phenomenon in our culture that makes people react strongly. Couple that with her attractiveness and sex appeal, and I thought, OK, well maybe a romance novel is a good place to look into some of these cultural feelings.

Stop going online and texting and stuff, man! I aint worried about you, thats your business, just stay off line. Stay off Instagram, man!Lori Coad, a homeless woman, yelling at former Rep. Anthony Weiner at a Harlem metro station. ()

A GRIM MILESTONE FOR AMERICA. This year, the United States is expected to surpass 40,000 suicide deaths, the highest annual total ever recorded, Newsweek reports. The shootings, stabbings, poisonings, drownings, strangulations, and deaths by unspecified means (which the magazine describes as a catch-all column for the most inventive forms of self-destructionthe swan dives into lava, the encounters with farm equipment ) are more than what could be expected based on population growth. They now outpace the rate of driving deaths. And researchers are groping to explain the cause, with joblessness and similar reasons failing to provide a full answer. As author Tony Dokoupil observes, the takeaway is darkly profound: Weve become our own greatest danger.

COMEDIANS GIDDY OVER OBAMAS PROM PICS. WhenTime published a few photos of President Obama at age 17 at his prom in Hawaii, wearing a white jacket and a lei around his neck, the late-night television hosts were all over it. On NBC, The Tonight Show's Jay Leno quipped that Obama used to be able to get phone numbers without the aid of the Justice Department. ABCs Jimmy Kimmel commented on Obamas love life in high school, saying, Girls in Kenya are very good-looking.

HOW TO SURVIVE A MARATHON MARKUP. Rule One: Empty your bladder. Rule Two: Charge your phone. Veteran National Journal reporter Fawn Johnson offers lessons in survival for anyone covering, lobbying, or staffing lawmakers who mark up an 800-plus-page bill, as members of the Judiciary Committee did this week when passing immigration reform.  

INSIDE AN OKLAHOMA SCHOOL DURING THE TORNADO. As ABC News reports, a fifth-grade teacher at Briarwood Elementary School in Oklahoma captured the horrific moments as she huddled with her students in the dark during Mondays massive tornado, assuring them that its almost over. The tornado killed 24 people, 10 of them children. .

[More from BGR: ]

For video chat apps that come pre-loaded on devices, we currently give all OS and device makers the ability for those apps to work over cellular for our customers who are on Mobile Share or Tiered plans. Apple, Samsung and BlackBerry have chosen to enable this for their pre-loaded video chat apps. And by mid-June, well have enabled those apps over cellular for our unlimited plan customers who have LTE devices from those three manufacturers.

[More from BGR: ]

Throughout the second half of this year, we plan to enable pre-loaded video chat apps over cellular for all our customers, regardless of data plan or device; that work is expected to be complete by year end.

Today, all of our customers can use any mobile video chat app that they download from the Internet, such as Skype.

This article was

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) -- North Carolina's community colleges are working to train factory workers comfortable in a new manufacturing world of computers and robots.

State community college leaders are meeting Friday with manufacturers to assemble training courses in line with a skills certification plan that's recognized by factories across the country. The program mixes advanced manufacturing education and work-site training to turn out workers who can keep North Carolina makers competitive.

North Carolina was one of four states to try integrating the National Association of Manufacturers skills certification system into related community college curricula. The state's community colleges are also focused on developing a series of biotechnology and aviation industry skills certifications.

WASHINGTON/SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Using an unusual global tax structure, Apple Inchas kept billions of dollars in profits in Irish subsidiaries to pay little or no taxes to any government, a Senate report on the company's offshore tax structure said on Monday.

In a 40-page memorandum released a day before Apple CEO Tim Cook is scheduled to testify before Congress, the Senate's Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations identified three subsidiaries that have no "tax residency" in Ireland, where they are incorporated, or in the United States, where company executives manage those companies.

The main subsidiary, a holding company that includes Apple's retail stores throughout Europe, has not paid any corporate income tax in the last five years.

The subsidiary, which has a Cork, Ireland, mailing address, received $29.9 billion in dividends from lower-tiered offshore Apple affiliates from 2009 to 2012, comprising 30 percent of Apple's total worldwide net profits, the report said.

"Apple has exploited a difference between Irish and U.S. tax residency rules," the report said.

Apple said in a comment posted online on Monday it does not use "tax gimmicks." It said the existence of its subsidiary "Apple Operations International" in Ireland does not reduce Apple's U.S. tax liability and the company will pay more than $7 billion in U.S. taxes in fiscal 2013.

Subcommittee staffers said on Monday that Apple was not breaking any laws and had cooperated fully with the investigation.

CODE OVERHAUL SOUGHT

Tuesday's hearing is the second to be held by Senator Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat and chairman of the subcommittee, to shed light on the weaknesses of the U.S. corporate tax code. Levin has sought to overhaul the code in Congress.

Lawmakers globally are closely scrutinizing the taxes paid by multinational companies. In Britain, Google faces regulatory inquiries over its own tax policies, while Hewlett-Packard Coand Microsoft Corphave been called to Capitol Hill to answer questions about their own practices.

Corporations must pay the top U.S. 35-percent corporate tax on foreign profits, but not until those profits are brought into the United States from abroad. This exception is known as corporate offshore income deferral.

In submitted testimony ahead of Tuesday's hearing, Apple said any tax reform should favor lower corporate income tax rates regardless of revenue, eliminate tax expenditures and implement a "reasonable tax on foreign earnings that allows free movement of capital back to the US."

"Apple recognizes these and other improvements in the U.S. corporate tax system may increase the company's taxes," it said.

Large U.S. companies boosted their offshore earnings by 15 percent last year to a record $1.9 trillion, avoiding hefty tax bills by keeping the profits abroad, according to research firm Audit Analytics.

TAX SCRUTINY

Apple also uses two conventional offshore tax practices typical of multinational companies' tax-avoidance strategies, the report said.

Multinational corporations value goods and services moving across international borders from one corporate unit to another. Known as "transfer pricing," these moves are frequently managed to reduce corporations' global tax costs.

Apple's tax structure highlights flaws in the U.S. corporate tax code so that Congress "can effectively close the loopholes used by many U.S. multinational companies," Arizona Senator John McCain, the subcommittee's top Republican, said in a statement on Monday.

Levin, who announced he will retire at the end of 2014, introduced legislation in February to close tax loopholes. At a news conference on Monday, Levin said his bill should pass independent of any broader tax reform push in Congress.

McCain, the top Republican on the subcommittee, told the joint news conference he would co-sponsor Levin's bill, the first Republican to support the bill. He called Apple's tax practices "egregious, and (a) really outrageous scheme."

Similar legislation has been introduced in the House of Representatives.

Government tax officials from the Internal Revenue Service and Treasury Department also are scheduled to testify before the subcommittee on Tuesday.

(Reporting by Patrick Temple-West in Washington and Poornima Gupta in San Francisco; Editing by Howard Goller, Bernard Orr)