Organizations were singled out because they included the words "tea party" or "patriot" in their applications for tax-exempt status, said Lois Lerner, who heads the IRS division that oversees tax-exempt groups.

In some cases, groups were asked for their list of donors, which violates IRS policy in most cases, she said.

"That was wrong. 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. After her talk, she told The AP that no high level IRS officials knew about the practice.

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.

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky called on the White House to investigate.

"Today's acknowledgement by the Obama administration that the IRS did in fact target conservative groups in the heat of last year's national election is not enough," McConnell said. "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."

Many conservative groups complained during the election 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 made available at the time, sought information about group members' political activities, including details of their postings on social networking websites and about family members.

Certain tax-exempt charitable groups can conduct political activities but it cannot be their primary activity.

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

"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.

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.

"The Ways and Means Committee has persistently pushed the IRS to explain why it appeared to be unfairly targeting some political groups over others a charge they repeatedly denied," said Rep. Charles Boustany, R-La., chairman of the Ways and Means oversight subcommittee.

"The IRS's 'too little too late' response is unacceptable, and I will continue to work to ensure there are protections in place so no American, regardless of political affiliation, has their right to free speech threatened by the IRS," Boustany said.

Tea Party groups were livid on Friday.

"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 its discriminatory treatment of their effort to gain non-profit status. The group first applied for non-profit status in June 2009, and it was finally granted on Dec. 7, 2012, he said one month after Election Day.

During the 2012 election, many tea party groups applied for tax-exempt status under section 501 (c) (4) of the federal tax code, which grants tax-exempt status to 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, Lerner said.

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. "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."

Marcus S. Owens, who spent a decade leading the IRS division that oversees tax-exempt organizations, said Friday that it made sense that the problem arose among workers in Cincinnati because the agency "really has delegated a lot of authority" to local offices to make decisions about handling their workload.

But Tea Party groups weren't buying the idea that the decision to target them was solely the responsibility of low-level IRS workers.

"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 grassroots organizations of harassment by the IRS in 2012, and make concrete and transparent steps today to ensure this never happens again."

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Associated Press reporters Alan Fram and Steve Peoples in Boston contributed to this report.

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

The active sunspot went into overdrive on Mother's Day when it erupted late Sunday night (May 12) with an , the strongest type of solar storm possible, NASA scientists said in an update. That first eruption registered as an X1.7-class event on the space weather scale, and was followed midday Monday by an even more powerful X2.8 solar flare, which is the third-strongest solar storm in recent years.

You can see aas seen by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory and other spacecraft. []

The Mother's Day solar flare sent a super-hot wave of solar plasma, called a coronal mass ejection, hurtling through space at about 2.6 million mph (4.3 million km/h). The solar eruption was not aimed at Earth, so should pose no threat to satellites and astronauts in orbit, NASA officials said.

The solar storm could deliver a glancing blow to NASA's infrared Spitzer Space Telescope and sun-watching Stereo-B spacecraft, according to NASA's update.

"If warranted, operators can put spacecraft into safe mode to protect the instruments from solar material," NASA officials explained in a statement. "There is some particle radiation associated with this event, which is what can concern operators of interplanetary spacecraft since the particles can trip computer electronics on board."

The back-to-back solar storms erupted from an active sunspot region that is just out of sight over the left side of the sun. The region has been active in recent days, spouting off two medium-strength M-class solar flares, but the two X-class solar storms are its most powerful events yet.

The region "will soon rotate into view" as seen from Earth, NASA officials said. When it does, any major solar flares and eruptions could be aimed squarely at Earth.

"Increased numbers of flares are quite common at the moment because the sun's normal 11-year activity cycle is ramping up toward solar maximum, which is expected in 2013," NASA officials said in the update Monday.

When aimed directly at Earth, X-class solar flares can pose a serious risk to astronauts and satellites in space, and interfere with GPS and communications signals. The strongest solar storms can even affect ground-based power system infrastructure. Moderately strong solar flares can supercharge the Earth's northern lights to create spectacular aurora displays.

The sun's currentcycle is called Solar Cycle 24 and began in 2008. A fleet of spacecraft, including NASA's powerful Solar Dynamics Observatory, keep constant watch on the sun for signs of solar flare activity.

NASA and the Space Weather Prediction Center operated by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are providing updates throughout today on the recent solar flares.

Email Tariq Malik at tmalik@space.com or follow himand.Follow us,and. Original article on.

On the market for six years, the luxurious eight-bedroom "Altona" in exclusive Point Piper was bought in a secret deal with the businessman who currently lives in Melbourne, the newspapers reported.

The property and its heated waterside pool and boathouse, rented by U2 rock star Bono in 2006 for a family holiday, was last sold in 2002 for A$28 million.

While Australian capital city home prices rose by only 1.3 percent in March, top end Sydney properties have attracted strong interest from Chinese buyers, and almost three in four international sales have gone to Asian buyers in recent years.

The Altona sale beat the previous Sydney property sale record of A$45 million, but fell short of the national record of A$57.5 million paid in 2009 by mining services magnate Chris Ellison for a sprawling riverfront home in Perth.

(Reporting by Rob Taylor; Editing by Nick Macfie)

* Wins award for 4th time, seals place among the game's greats (Adds quotes, details)

May 5 (Reuters) - Miami Heat forward LeBron James was named the National Basketball Association's Most Valuable Player for the 2012-13 season on Sunday.

James received 120 first-place votes from the panel of 121 sports writers and broadcasters selected to choose the award. Oklahoma's Kevin Durant finished second overall and the New York Knicks' Carmelo Anthony, who received the other first-place vote, placed third.

It was the fourth time in five years that the 28-year-old James had won the game's most prestigious individual award, elevating him among the sport's greatest players.

"When people ask me, I tell them I just try to be the best player on the court every night I step on the floor," James said.

Only four other players - Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Michael Jordan, Bill Russell and Wilt Chamberlain - have won the trophy at least four times.

Abdul-Jabbar holds the record for six MVP wins, one ahead of Jordan and Russell and two in front of Chamberlain and now James.

James, who twice won the award with the Cleveland Cavaliers before moving to Miami, averaged 26.8 points, 8.0 rebounds and 7.3 assists during the 2012-13 regular season, where the Heat finished with the best record in the NBA.

James was the only player in the NBA to lead his team in all three categories during the season.

He shot a career-high from the field (.565) and from three-point range (.406). He produced a record streak of six straight games with at least 30 points and a .600-or-better field goal percentage.

He received his award at a special presentation on Sunday, attended by his team mates, family and friends, and broadcast live on national television.

In an emotional and heartfelt acceptance speech, James extended his thanks to everyone who had supported him both as a person and as a player.

He turned to his team mates, who were wearing shorts and t-shirts, and said they deserved the award as much as he did,

"Nothing I receive individually is possible without those 14 guys, and the sacrifices they make," he said.

"This really doesn't mean much to me. I'm humbled and I'm happy about it but I wish it was 15 of these up here because what a great group of guys that allows me to be the MVP." (Reporting by Julian Linden in New York; Editing by Gene Cherry)

The complaint filed late Monday in the U.S. District Court in Manhattan related to Citigroup's role in the Continuous Linked Settlement system, which was designed to ensure that foreign exchange trades are completed.

Citigroup said it sought to stop settling trades for Lehman's brokerage unit on September 17, 2008, two days after Lehman went bankrupt, because it was incurring large losses.

But Barclays was then in the process of buying Lehman's U.S. broker-dealer business, and, according to the complaint, urged Citigroup to keep providing the services. It also agreed to indemnify it for losses between September 17-19, 2008.

Citigroup said it incurred $580 million in losses over that period, but has reduced the amount to $90.8 million. The $141 million it seeks includes this sum plus interest and legal fees, which Citigroup said are covered by the indemnity.

"Barclays stood to gain enormous profits from LBI's continued ability to settle its FX trades," Citigroup lawyers said. "In clear breach of the parties' agreement, Barclays has refused Citibank's repeated demands that it honor its indemnity."

Barclays spokesman Brandon Ashcraft had no immediate comment.

Lehman's bankruptcy remains the largest in U.S. history, and was a major cause of the 2008 global financial crisis. During the crisis, Citigroup obtained a series of federal bailouts, which it has repaid.

The case is Citibank NA v. Barclays Bank Plc, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 13-03063.

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe)

The machines are used by athletes to build strength and are attached with adhesive electrodes. Manager Davey Johnson said the device could have been placed too close to a nerve in Strasburg's pitching arm, leading to discomfort in Monday night's start against the Atlanta Braves.

Johnson said the Nationals do not expect Strasburg to have continued problems with the irritated nerve but it was too early to determine whether Strasburg will make his next scheduled start Saturday at Pittsburgh. The manager wants to see how the right-hander throws in a bullpen session.

"I think it will settle down by the time he throws his side," Johnson said. "I think Strasburg feels a lot better about it. So do I."

Strasburg frequently shook his right arm while pitching six innings and allowing two runs in the Nationals' 3-2 loss Monday night.

Johnson said after the game Strasburg "doesn't look right to me." The manager said he was concerned Monday because Strasburg struggled with his control while walking four batters and shook his arm so often between pitches.

"He always does this a little bit, but it was so pronounced yesterday, it really worried me," Johnson said Tuesday. "But he feels all right about it so I feel all right about it."

Asked after the game why he was shaking his arm, Strasburg said "You just try to stay loose."

Strasburg insisted Monday "I'm not missing my next start. I'll tell you that right now."

He had lost a career-worst four straight starts before pitching six innings and getting a no-decision Monday night. He is 1-4 with a 3.13 ERA.

Strasburg struck out the side in the sixth inning, giving him eight strikeouts for the game.

The right-hander was examined by a doctor after the game but the Nationals said he was not given additional tests Tuesday.

"The way he finished off the sixth was pretty impressive, and the doctor didn't think anything was wrong, so that's good," Johnson said.

Washington held out right fielder Jayson Werth on Tuesday, a day after Werth crumpled to the ground when he fouled a ball off his left foot in the eighth inning. He completed his at-bat and was replaced in right field by Roger Bernadina in the bottom half.

Werth said he also struggled with a tight right hamstring on Monday night.

"I'm not too worried about it," he said of his injuries.

Tyler Moore started in left, with Bryce Harper shifting to right.

The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said rebels moved deep inside Mannagh air base, near the border with Turkey, despite fire from government warplanes. The Aleppo Media Center says rebels captured a tank unit inside the base and that the base commander, Brig. Gen. Ali Salim Mahmoud, was killed.

The fighting came hours after Israeli warplanes struck areas in and around the Syrian capital, setting off a series of explosions as they targeted a shipment of highly accurate, Iranian-made guided missiles believed to be bound for Lebanon's Hezbollah militant group, officials and activists said.

The attack, the second in three days and the third this year, signaled a sharp escalation of Israel's involvement in Syria's civil war. Syrian state media reported that Israeli missiles struck a military and scientific research center near Damascus and caused casualties.

Rebels have launched a wave of attacks on military air bases around the country in the past months in an attempt to deprive the army of a key weapon used to target anti-government forces.

Rebels have been trying to capture Mannagh air base for months but were only able to take small parts of it. The sprawling base has been under siege since last year.

The Observatory said rebels also fired mortar rounds at the Abu Zuhour air base in northwestern Idlib province. It did not say if there were casualties.

The Observatory also reported heavy fighting inside the contested town of Qusair near the Lebanese border. Troops captured several villages and towns surrounding Qusair in the past month.

The Local Coordination Committees, another activist group, said Syrian warplanes bombarded the northern Damascus neighborhood of Qaboun. It also reported air raids on the northern province of Raqq and the eastern region of Deir el-Zour.

The Syrian conflict started with largely peaceful protests against President Bashar Assad's regime in March 2011, but eventually turned into a civil war that has killed more than 70,000 people according to the United Nations.

The Election Commission reported that Prime Minister Najib Razak's National Front coalition captured 127 of Malaysia's 222 parliamentary seats to win a majority Sunday. Opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim's three-party alliance seized 77 seats, and other races were too close to call.

It was the National Front's 13th consecutive victory in general elections since independence from Britain in 1957. It faced its most unified challenge ever from an opposition that hoped to capitalize on allegations of arrogance, abuse of public funds and racial discrimination against the government.

Najib urged all Malaysians to accept his coalition's victory. "We have to show to the world that we are a mature democracy," he said.

"Despite the extent of the swing against us, (the National Front) did not fall," he said in a nationally televised news conference.

Anwar signaled the opposition might dispute the results, saying "irregularities" cost his alliance numerous seats with narrow margins. Within minutes of the National Front's declaration of victory, thousands of Malaysian opposition supporters replaced their Facebook profile photos with black boxes in a coordinated sign of dismay.

The Election Commission estimated more than 10 million voted for a record turnout of 80 percent of 13 million registered voters. They were also voting to fill vacancies in 12 of Malaysia's 13 state legislatures.

Though it retained power, the National Front is weaker than it was at its peak in 2004, when it won 90 percent of Parliament's seats, and about the same as it was a month before the vote, when it held 135 seats. Its hopes were dashed of regaining the two-thirds legislative majority that it held for years but lost in 2008.

Three well-known Cabinet ministers and at least one state chief minister were likely to lose their parliamentary seats. The Malaysian Chinese Association, the second-biggest party in the ruling coalition, saw many of its candidates defeated as Malaysia's ethnic Chinese minority community continued to abandon the National Front.

Among the major differences between the National Front and Anwar's alliance are coalition affirmative-action policies that benefit the majority but often poor Malay population. Malay leaders in the National Front say those policies are still needed to help poorer Malays, but opposition critics say they've been abused to benefit mainly well-connected Malays, and that all underprivileged Malaysians should get help regardless of race.

"I am really fed up," said Andrew Charles, a Malaysian businessman working in Australia who flew home to vote for the opposition in a suburb outside Kuala Lumpur. "There are more abuses in the system and there is no equality among the races. After 56 years, it is time to give others a chance to change this country."

Others saw the National Front as the path of stability.

"The government has made some mistakes but the prime minister has made changes and I believe they (the National Front) will do their best to take care of the people's welfare," said Mohamed Rafiq Idris, a car business owner who waited in a long line at a central Selangor state voting center with his wife and son.

Some voters lined up for more than an hour at schools and other polling places, showing off fingers marked with ink to prevent multiple voting after they had finished.

Najib said one of his priorities would be a "national reconciliation" plan to ease what he called a worrying trend of political polarization. He did not give details, but noted that ethnic Chinese, who comprise about a quarter of Malaysia's population, turned away from the National Front in what he called a "Chinese tsunami."

An opposition win would have represented a remarkable comeback for Anwar, a former deputy prime minister who was fired in 1998 and subsequently jailed on corruption and sodomy charges that he says were fabricated by his political enemies. He was released from jail in 2004.

Anwar and other opposition leaders voiced suspicions Sunday about electoral fraud. Claims of bogus ballots and an apparent ease in which some voters cleaned the ink stains off their fingers dominated social media.

Opposition leaders said the National Front used foreign migrants from Bangladesh, the Philippines and Indonesia to vote unlawfully. Government and electoral authorities denied the allegations, saying private donors had paid for legitimate voters to fly home.

The opposition stayed in control of northern Penang state, one of Malaysia's wealthiest territories, and remained strong in Kuala Lumpur, where middle-class voters have clamored for national change.

The National Front's held firm in many traditional rural strongholds, especially in Borneo, where Anwar's alliance had been hoping to make major inroads to bolster its chances of victory.

The National Front's aura of invincibility has been under threat since three of Malaysia's main opposition parties combined forces five years ago. In recent years the National Front has been increasingly accused of complacency and heavy-handed rule.

Najib, who took office in 2009, embarked on a major campaign to restore his coalition's luster. In recent months, authorities have provided cash handouts to low-income families and used government-linked newspapers and TV stations to criticize the opposition's ability to rule.

If users choose to download Facebook's Home software starting on April 12, the social network will become the hub of their Android smartphones. A phone from HTC that comes pre-loaded with Home will also be available starting that day, with AT&T Inc. as the carrier.

The idea behind the software is to bring Facebook content right to the home screen, rather than requiring users to check apps. "Home" comes amid rapid growth in the number of people who access Facebook from phones and tablet computers. Of its 1.06 billion monthly users, 680 million log in to Facebook using a mobile gadget.

The service is part of Facebook's move to shift its users' focus from "apps and tasks" to people, said CEO Mark Zuckerberg during Home's unveiling at the company's Menlo Park, Calif., headquarters on Thursday.

The new product, which resides on the home screen of Android phones, is a family of apps designed to help people share things with their Facebook friends. Rather than seeing a set of apps for email, maps and other services when they first turn on their phones, users will be greeted with photos and updates from their Facebook feeds. There will be ads too, eventually.

"We think this is the best version of Facebook there is," Zuckerberg said.

Zuckerberg says users can have an experience on Android phones that they can't have on other platforms. That's because Google makes the software available on an open-source basis, allowing others to adapt it to their needs.

Recognizing that text messaging is one of the most important tasks on a mobile phone, Facebook also showed off a feature called "chat heads." This lets users communicate with their friends directly from their phone's home screen without opening a separate app.

The move that coincides with rapid growth among the number of users who access the social network from smartphones and tablet computers and Facebook's aim to evolve from its Web-based roots into a "mobile-first" company.

"What Facebook wants is to put itself at the front of the Android user experience for as many Facebook users as possible and make Facebook more elemental to their customers' experience," said Forrester analyst Charles Golvin.

The new Home service won't be available on Apple's iPhone and iPad devices. Apple's iOS and Mac operating systems include features that integrate Facebook's services, but Zuckerberg says doing something like Home would require a closer partnership.

Apple had no immediate comment.

The deeper mobile integration will likely help Facebook to attract more mobile advertisers. Though mobile ads were a big concern for Facebook's investors even before the company's initial public offering last May, some of the worry has subsided as the company muscles its way into the market.

Last year, Facebook began showing ads to its mobile audience by shoehorning corporate-sponsored content into users' news feeds, which also include updates from friends and brands they follow. Facebook now faces the challenge of showing people mobile ads without annoying or alienating them.

The mobile advertising market is growing quickly, thanks in large part to Facebook and Twitter, which also entered the space in 2012. Research firm eMarketer expects U.S. mobile ad spending to grow 77 percent this year to $7.29 billion, from $4.11 billion last year.

EMarketer said Wednesday that it expects Facebook Inc. to reap $965 million in U.S. mobile ad revenue in 2013. That's about 2.5 times the $391 million in 2012, the first year that Facebook started showing mobile ads. Clark Fredricksen, vice president at eMarketer, says "there are some clear reasons why a deeper integration with mobile operating systems and handsets make sense for Facebook. At the end of the day, the more deeply Facebook can engage consumers, no matter what device or operating system or handset," the better.

Facebook's stock rose 82 cents, or 3.1 percent, to close at $27.07 following the announcement. It's still 23 percent below its initial public offering price of $35.

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Barbara Ortutay reported from New York.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama will travel on Thursday to Austin, Texas, the first stop in a new series of day trips designed to draw attention to policies and programs that help spur the economy, and build support for his economic policies, the White House said on Sunday.

In Austin, Obama will visit a high school and a technology company, and will talk with entrepreneurs and workers about proposals he made earlier this year to boost jobs and training.

Despite often saying that his top priority is creating more jobs, Obama's proposals have been overshadowed by debates over reforms to gun and immigration laws as well as efforts to reduce the deficit.

Unemployment in the United States fell to 7.5 percent last month, the lowest level since Obama took office.

"Things are getting better, but our economic recovery is not as strong as it could be and far too many middle class families are still struggling," said Josh Earnest, Obama's deputy press secretary.

"There are things Washington could be doing right now to help American businesses, schools and workers," he said, explaining the tours are designed to engage Americans and push Congress to act.

In February, Obama said he wanted to invest in manufacturing "hubs" around the country, spend $50 billion on roads, bridges and other infrastructure, and raise the minimum wage to $9 per hour from the current $7.25.

Most of the proposals require Congressional approval, but there have been few signs of broad support for the measures on Capitol Hill.

(Reporting by Roberta Rampton; Editing by Sandra Maler)