The legislation has been decades in the making, and is currently being considered by the House of Representatives, where it will likely face some opposition.

Nonetheless, many states are hoping it will pass, saying an Internet sales tax will allow them to bring in much-needed revenue.

The total estimates of how much money states can make by taxing purchases from outside their borders remains to be seen, and S&P said it "believes revenues would be unlikely to boost tax revenues significantly in the near term compared with the size of total state budgets."

S&P also said there will be no near-term credit implications.

But if the bill is delayed for several years and states do not pursue other revenue sources, there is a possibility state revenues will erode. That, in turn, would hurt their credit, the agency said.

(Reporting by Caryn Trokie, additional reporting by Lisa Lambert in Washington)

Boxing promoter Frank Warren has signed an agreement to stage six fights in the 7,000-seater Copper Box Arena which was used for handball and modern pentathlon fencing during last year's Games.

British middleweight champion Billy Joe Saunders will meet challenger John Ryder on September 21 in the first of the fights planned for the venue.

Britain spent around nine billion pounds of public money to put on the Games. Politicians and sports administrators are keen to show that the money was a sound investment that will prove of lasting benefit.

"The Copper Box is what all the investment in the Olympics was about - legacy and giving London a fantastic arena," Warren said on Monday.

Proceeds from putting on the fights will be used to subsidise other sports such as swimming in the Olympic pool, officials from the London Legacy Development Corporation said.

The Park, currently closed for conversion work, will host a series of rock concerts this year. Sprint champion Usain Bolt is scheduled to appear in a Diamond League athletics meeting in a sold-out Olympic Stadium at the end of July, one year on from the Games.

Longer-term, the Olympic Stadium will stage World Cup rugby matches in 2015 before becoming the home of Premier League soccer club West Ham United the following year.

($1 = 0.6436 British pounds)

(Writing by Keith Weir, editing by Ed Osmond)

Several dozen other people were hurt in Monday's blaze in Jilin province's Mishazi township, which appeared to have been sparked by three early morning explosions, the official Xinhua News Agency said. The provincial fire department attributed the blasts to an ammonia leak. The chemical is kept pressurized as part of the cooling system in meat processing plants.

The fire was one of China's worst recent industrial disasters, with the death toll the highest since a September 2008 mining cave-in that claimed 281 lives.

It was the third major industrial blaze to be reported in China in the past four days. The two earlier fires were an oil tank explosion in Liaoning province that caused another oil tank to catch fire, killing two, and a blaze in a large granary in Heilongjiang province that wiped out 1,000 tons of grain.

Monday's accident highlighted the high human costs of China's lax industrial safety standards, which continue to plague workplaces despite improvements in the country's work safety record in recent years.

Many of China's factories have sprung up in recent decades to drive the country's rapid economic growth, but accidents and chemical spills are common, often blamed on lax enforcement of safety rules and poor worker training.

The government has tightened checks on factories and mines to improve compliance with safety requirements, and deaths from workplace accidents fell nearly 5 percent last year from the previous year, according to Yang Dongliang, head of the State Administration of Work Safety.

Even in China's notoriously deadly coal mines, the death toll last year fell by more than 30 percent because of stricter management.

Monday's accident could also focus renewed scrutiny on China's biggest pork producer, Shuanghui International unrelated to the poultry plant as it aims to buy U.S. food giant Smithfield in what would be China's biggest takeover of an American company.

Jason Yan, technical director in Beijing of the U.S. Grains Council, said safety considerations usually take a backseat in China to features designed to maximize production and energy efficiency.

"I'm sure they consider some aspects of safety design. However, I think safety, to me, is not the first priority in their design plan," Yan said.

State media quoted survivors as saying it was difficult for workers to escape because only one door to the plant was open while other exits were locked and the fire spread quickly.

State broadcaster CCTV quoted unidentified workers as saying the fire broke out during a change of shifts when about 350 workers were at the plant, owned by Jilin Baoyuanfeng Poultry Co.

It wasn't clear how many workers had been accounted for and a provincial government media official, who refused to give his name, said he expected the death toll to rise further as more bodies were recovered from the charred building.

Some employees raised the alarm shortly after the shift began at 6 a.m., and then the lights went out, causing panic as workers rushed to find an exit, employee Wang Fengya told Xinhua.

"When I finally ran out and looked back at the plant, I saw high flames," Wang, 44, was quoted as saying. Xinhua said she and three other workers were sent to a hospital in the nearby provincial capital of Changchun.

Another worker quoted by Xinhua, 39-year-old Guo Yan, said the emergency exit at her workstation could not be opened and she was knocked to the ground in the crush of workers seeking to escape through a side door.

"I could only crawl desperately forward," Guo was quoted as saying. "I worked alongside an old lady and a young girl, but I don't know if they survived or not."

The newspaper Southern Metropolis Daily, known for its aggressive reporting, said the accident occurred in a factory building where chickens were being dismembered. The newspaper reported on its microblog that the fire spread rapidly, with industrial boilers exploding, and only a side door to the building was open with the rest of the exits locked.

It quoted an unidentified worker as saying the fire engulfed the building in three minutes, leaving too little time for many to flee.

The disaster killed 119 people, and 54 people were being treated in hospitals, the provincial government said on its microblog. Calls to fire and rescue services rang unanswered and hospital administrators said they had no information about the injured.

State media quoted hospital staffers as saying that most of the injured survivors were being treated for inhalation of toxic gases such as ammonia while others had burns of varying degrees.

By about noon, the fire had been mostly extinguished by about 500 firefighters, and bodies were being recovered from the charred buildings. CCTV footage showed dark smoke billowing up from the prefabricated cement structures topped with corrugated iron roofs.

Chinese President Xi Jinping and other top leaders ordered that no effort be spared to rescue and treat survivors as well as to investigate the cause of the incident.

It wasn't immediately clear if the workers were local residents or migrants from other areas.

The poultry plant is one of several in the area where chickens are slaughtered and then quickly cut up into pieces and shipped to market. The entire process takes place in near-freezing conditions and such plants are usually built with large amounts of flammable foam insulation to maintain a constant temperature.

Jilin Baoyuanfeng produces 67,000 tons of processed chicken per year and employs about 1,200 people. The plant is located outside the city of Dehui, about 800 kilometers (500 miles) northeast of China's capital, Beijing.

Established in 2009, the company serves markets in 20 cities nationwide and has won numerous awards for its contribution to the local economy, according to introductions posted online.

The area where the fire occurred is an agribusiness center, especially for poultry. Nearby is one of the biggest producers of broiler chickens in China, Jilin Deda Co., which is partly owned by Thailand-based conglomerate Charoen Pokphand Group.

Monday's fire hit a company that is much smaller than Jilin Deda. Though it's unlikely to have an impact on China's chicken supply, the accident came as chicken producers were seeing sales recover after an outbreak of a deadly new strain of bird flu, H7N9, briefly scared the public in April and early May.

___

Associated Press writer Gillian Wong contributed to this report.

That makes South Florida, in the midst of a spat over expensive stadium renovations, a loser for the 2016 game.

And Miami took a double defeat when Houston was awarded the 2017 championship game.

In two separate votes, NFL owners Tuesday went with the both San Francisco Bay Area and Houston on the first ballot at their spring meetings. The 49ers' new home is set to open next year in Santa Clara, and will host the first Super Bowl in the area since 1985.

Houston staged the 2004 Super Bowl. Miami has hosted 10 of them including the Jets upset of the Colts in 1969 and is tied with New Orleans for the most. But South Florida got rejected twice after the Florida Legislature did not support financing to renovate Sun Life Stadium.

"We are so excited to be able to be able to put on the 'Golden Super Bowl' in the Golden State," 49ers CEO Jed York said.

They will stage it in what is being promoted as the most technologically advanced stadium in the world, and earned that right on a day when the NFL made a $400 million deal with Microsoft to upgrade the fan viewing experience. Levi's Stadium figures to be the first cashless, ticketless venue in NFL championship history, with WiFi capability for 75,000 people.

"After losing a Super Bowl (to Baltimore last February), it feels really good to win a Super Bowl," York cracked.

Houston hosted once before, in 2004, and is calling the 51st Super Bowl an international experience that will include fans from Mexico.

"I think a lot of them just felt like, hey, it's Houston's time," Texans owner Robert McNair said of his colleagues. "They knew we could do a good job. From 2004 to '17, that's 13 years. So I agree, I think it's Houston's time."

The only previous Super Bowl played in northern California was at Stanford Stadium in 1985.

When NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell announced the 2016 decision, members of the San Francisco bid committee let out a roar of approval, then toasted each other with champagne.

Asked what he believed swayed the owners to vote for San Francisco, York added: "It's the will power of an entire area that gave an overwhelming push for us."

It was the first time in a decade that a Super Bowl was awarded on the first ballot.

"The Bay Area has been waiting for a (title) game since 1985. We have a stadium now ... we are just thrilled and couldn't be happier about this," said Daniel Lurie, a leader of the San Francisco bid.

"We are going to get to highlight the best the Bay Area has to offer."

That includes donating 25 percent of the proceeds from the game to fight poverty in the San Francisco Bay Area, York said.

The Dolphins were denied public money for a stadium upgrade in South Florida following widespread complaints about the public investment sunk into the Marlins' new baseball home.

Multibillionaire Dolphins owner Stephen Ross contends $350 million in stadium improvements are badly needed, but he doesn't want to pay for them by himself. Nor does he want a scaled-down renovation of the 26-year-old facility.

"I suspect there's a couple of state reps down in Miami-Dade County where I live who are going to look at this and realize this was a huge mistake," South Florida bid committee chairman Rodney Barreto said. "We had the better bid. I could just look at the body language from the NFL staff. It's a shame. We may not see another Super Bowl for another 10 years."

But, Ross said, South Florida "won't stop trying" to get one.

Goodell said some owners privately told him they were concerned with the stadium situation in Miami.

49ers owner John York suggested that San Francisco's winning effort offered a lesson in political cooperation.

"If this Super Bowl can show the state of California and other communities the opportunity with a new stadium to bring in fresh business, it could be a catalyst that stadiums can be built for Oakland and San Diego, which are in need of new ones," he said. "This may be the impetus to get one of those done."

For years, it was thought the NFL would seek to stage the 50th Super Bowl in Los Angeles, where the first one was played (but did not sell out) on Jan. 15, 1967. But with no franchise in LA and no suitable stadium projects approved, that hope disappeared.

Next Feb. 2, the game goes outdoors in a cold-weather site for the first time, at MetLife Stadium in the New Jersey Meadowlands. If that gamble pays off for the NFL, look for other cities in similar climates Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, Chicago, Denver to bid for future Super Bowls.

The 2015 game will be played in the Phoenix area.

Earlier Tuesday, owners approved a $200 million loan for stadium construction in Atlanta. The multipurpose stadium could cost as much as $1 billion, with team owner Arthur Blank committed to funding most of it. Blank, speaking at the NFL's spring meetings, called the decision by the team owners an "important milestone" in moving the project forward. The owners also approved financing for renovations of stadiums in Charlotte and Philadelphia.

Speaking with reporters after the votes, Goodell also said:

The draft will be held between May 8 and May 17 next year because the venue, Radio City Music Hall, is hosting an Easter show in April. He expects the draft will remain in May, with other adjustments to the NFL's calendar, including the dates for the combine and the opening of free agency, to be discussed with the players' union.

A third international game in upcoming seasons could be added now that both games for 2013 in London have sold out.

The Pro Bowl could be moved from Hawaii back to mainland cities after the 2014 game, but will remain on the Sunday one week before the Super Bowl.

Expanding the playoffs, and cutting two games off the preseason, still are being discussed. A reduced preseason could happen with either the current 16-game regular season or with an 18-game schedule.

___

AP Sports Writer Jimmy Golen contributed to this report.

In his weekly radio and Internet address, Obama calls on Congress to do more to ensure that progress continues. He's asking lawmakers to invest in roads and bridges, pass a comprehensive immigration overhaul and let homeowners save money by refinancing at low interest rates.

Obama says there's reason to be optimistic about the country's direction, but there are more jobs to create and more kids to educate.

In the Republican address, Alaska Gov. Sean Parnell says Republican governors are balancing their budgets and should be an example for Obama. He's calling on the president to ramp up domestic energy production.

___

Online:

Obama address: www.whitehouse.gov

GOP address: http://www.youtube.com/gopweeklyaddress

More than 1,000 of the animals have been confiscated from smugglers in the first three months of 2013 alone, the environmental group reported. A total of 54 ploughshare tortoises were intercepted in Thailand, and the species is "now the most common tortoise for sale in Bangkok's infamous Chatuchak wildlife market," according to the statement.

Thewas once common in northern Madagascar but as of 2008 it was estimated that there were only 400 individuals left in the wild, according to the International Union for Conservation of Nature. These reptiles can grow up to 19 inches (47 centimeters) long and weigh up to 42 pounds (19 kilograms).

Thelives in the country's south. Its dark brown or black domed shell is covered with bright yellow or orange starlike patterns and can grow up to 16 inches (40 cm) long. They can live for an estimated 100 years, according to the IUCN.

"These tortoises are truly one of Madagascar's most iconic species," James Deutsch, executive director of the Africa Program at WCS, said in the statement. "This level of exploitation is unsustainable. Unless immediate action is taken to better protect the wild populations, their extinction is imminent."

Due to their unique beauty, many of the animals are taken for the illegal pet trade. Illegal poaching and smuggling has increased about tenfold since Madagascar's political crisis began in 2009, accompanied by eroded law and order, the WCS said. In the past, it was considered taboo to harm the tortoises, although this tradition has faded with years of drought and increasing poverty, according to the statement.

Email or follow him . Follow us, or . Original article on LiveScience's OurAmazingPlanet.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Three congressional hearings during the past week have allowed lawmakers to vent their anger at the U.S. tax agency for its targeting of conservative groups for extra scrutiny, but the sessions have yielded few answers about who was responsible.

The frustration on Capitol Hill seemed to reach a crescendo on Wednesday when Lois Lerner, the Internal Revenue Service official who first acknowledged the targeting - and the day's star witness before a House panel - refused to testify.

Lerner, whom lawmakers have accused of providing false information to Congress because she did not tell them about the problems in the office she leads before revealing them at a lawyers' conference on May 10, told lawmakers that she had done nothing wrong.

She then invoked her constitutional right not to incriminate herself, and declined to answer questions.

"I have not broken any laws. I have not violated any IRS rules or regulations, and I have not provided false information to this or any congressional committee," Lerner told the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

"Because I am asserting my right not to testify, I know that some people will assume that I have done something wrong. I have not," she said.

The scene marked the latest in a series of failed attempts by lawmakers to pry details from high-level IRS officials about who precisely was responsible for targeting conservative groups that have sought tax-exempt status since 2010.

The scandal over what a Treasury inspector general called "inappropriate" targeting of groups with names that included terms like "Tea Party" and "Patriot" by the IRS has become a distraction for Democratic President Barack Obama as he pursues an ambitious second-term agenda.

And as Republicans in Congress seek to determine whether the White House might have had a hand in encouraging the extra scrutiny of populist groups that seek lower taxation and less government, the scandal has fueled Republicans' portrayals of an indifferent, overreaching federal bureaucracy.

The Justice Department has opened a criminal probe into the targeting scandal.

On Wednesday, former IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman, who unlike Lerner had appeared at a Senate hearing on Tuesday, again was asked who was behind the targeting done in the IRS office in Cincinnati, Ohio.

And again, Shulman said that he had no names to provide. Like outgoing acting IRS commissioner Steven Miller, whom Obama has fired, Shulman also rejected accusations that he had misled or lied to lawmakers about the matter.

"I answered truthfully based on the information that I had at the time," Shulman said.

Shulman's answers did not satisfy many lawmakers. "Either there was a cover-up or an extreme lack of curiosity on your part," said Republican Representative Mark Meadows from North Carolina.

House Oversight Chairman Darrell Issa released documents including internal emails between Cincinnati workers and Holly Paz, an IRS director in Washington who led an internal review of the matter in 2012. They seem to confirm the Treasury inspector general's conclusion that low-level employees came up with the controversial criteria.

"This is criteria the screening group came up with," Cindy Thomas, a Cincinnati-based IRS employee wrote to Paz in a June 2, 2011 email.

'THAT'S NOT THE WAY IT WORKS'

Issa and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle became exasperated that the officials on Wednesday provided so few answers about the scandal and whether there was a cover-up.

Lerner is seen as central to the scandal because she was alerted in June 2011 that the partisan criteria were being used, and she ordered them changed. They were then changed back in January 2012 to focus on the policy positions of organizations, but is it not clear who changed them.

Issa and other Republicans also questioned whether Lerner technically waived her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination by reading an opening statement declaring her innocence.

Republican Trey Gowdy of South Carolina demanded that she stay to answer questions, drawing applause from the crowd in the hearing room. "You don't get to tell your side of the story and then not be subject to cross-examination. That's not the way it works," Gowdy said.

Lerner has hired high-powered Washington attorney William Taylor to help defend her against accusations from Issa that she provided "false or misleading" information to Congress last year about the IRS' treatment of conservative groups.

Taylor, of the law firm Zuckerman Spaeder, told Reuters in an interview on Wednesday that there was no point in Lerner agreeing to answer lawmakers' questions at the hearing.

"Why should she go up there and confront people who have already decided she has done something wrong?" Taylor said.

After conferring with aides, Issa dismissed Lerner from the hearing but said he might call her to testify in the future.

CONGRESS IN THE DARK

At Wednesday's hearing, frustrated lawmakers repeatedly criticized former IRS chief Shulman and J. Russell George, the Treasury inspector general who published a watchdog report on the practice last week, for not alerting Congress to the practice earlier.

Democratic Representative Stephen Lynch of Massachusetts warned their failure to be more forthcoming could force the appointment of a special prosecutor to look into the scandal.

Issa noted that the IRS internal review uncovered the policy of scrutinizing conservative groups in May 2012 and that top officials, including Miller, were made aware of the findings but did not alert Congress for nearly a year.

He also questioned why George's investigators looking into the targeting allowed IRS officials to be present during interviews with subordinates, and he criticized the inspector general for waiting 10 months to give the committee information on the targeting.

George said it would have been "impractical for us to give you partial information that may not be accurate."

Shulman repeated testimony he gave at the Senate hearing on Tuesday that he did not know the full details of the targeting for two years after it started in 2010. Issa told Shulman, "If you didn't know, you were derelict in your duty."

Representative Elijah Cummings of Maryland, the ranking Democrat on the panel, criticized Shulman for not correcting congressional testimony he gave in March 2012 denying that targeting was occurring, after learning the results of the IRS internal review in May 2012.

"Why didn't you ever come back to the Congress to explain that you were mistaken?" Cummings asked.

"I didn't have all the facts, I didn't know what was on the list, exactly how it was used," Shulman said. He later acknowledged he "would have answered differently" in March 2012 if he had known what he did in May 2012.

Cummings also said the panel would like to hear from Daniel Werfel, the White House budget official who started on Wednesday as the new IRS head after Obama fired Miller last week.

Werfel is conducting a 30-day review of the IRS and is due to report back to Obama about how to correct failures that led to the targeting and how to hold IRS staff accountable for inappropriate actions.

(Additional reporting by Casey Sullivan; Writing by John Whitesides; Editing by Karey Van Hall and Tim Dobbyn)

KYOTO, Japan (Reuters) - Japanese author Haruki Murakami made his first public appearance in his homeland in 18 years on Monday, describing his newest novel, which was an instant-best seller, as a story that takes place in the real world, unlike many of his other novels.

"Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage" has attracted positive reviews, with readers spotting familiar Murakami themes such as people bonding through pain.

Publisher Bungeishunju made the rare decision to print 1 million copies within a week of its April release in Japan.

The novel is about a lonely 36-year-old engineer named Tsukuru Tazaki, who embarks on trips in Japan and Finland to overcome his most painful experience - broken friendships.

"Usually things are divided into the real and unreal, but I was wondering how it will be if I bring all of that into the stage of the real world," Murakami told an audience of about 500 fans in Kyoto.

"People get hurt and close their minds, but as time passes, they gradually open up, and they grow as they repeat that. This novel is about growth."

The fans who won a lottery to attend the event were surprised that the 64-year-old, whose fiction is often surreal and who has made a handful of speeches overseas in recent years but none in Japan, was actually speaking to the public.

"I am a fan of his novels but I have never seen him in person nor heard his voice. Is he a normal person?" Hiroko Yamada, 40, asked as she waited for the event to start.

Murakami said he decided to speak in public to honor his friend Hayao Kawai, a psychologist who died in 2007.

"It's not like I get purple dots all over myself when I am in front of many people. I like to go around on the bus and the subway and live a normal life," he joked.

"I want you to think of me like an endangered species - it's fine to look at me from far away, but be careful because I may bite if you come near and talk to me or touch me."

(Editing by Robert Birsel)