But that's not all. One of the devices is said to be a high-end phone "featuring a screen that allows for three-dimensional images without glasses," . 

That's right: Amazon is reportedly building a 3D smartphone.

Using retina-tracking technology, images on the smartphone would seem to float above the screen like a hologram and appear three-dimensional at all angles, they said. Users may be able to navigate through content using just their eyes, two of the people said. []

Just like the 3D TV, phones with three-dimensional screens never really caught on with American consumers. LG, HTC, Samsung, and even Motorola have been making Androids with glasses-free 3D screens — which use ato give the illusion of depth — since at least 2010.

Engadget'sof the LG Optimus 3D (2011), for example, said the 3D viewing experience was "definitely cool" in a "let me whip out my phone at a bar and make conversation" kind of way. However, Engadget said the display eventually made your eyes feel like they were just "juggled through a meat grinder."

In Japan it's been a different story.has been producing 3D phones for our ultra-hip friends overseas since all the way back in 2002. The phones have been such a consistent hit that  in 2011. (It looks pretty fun, too.)

As for what Amazon's planning — who knows? Maybe the Kindle Fire Phone 3D (not its real name) will be great for getting your Michael Bay fix on the go. Or maybe you'll be able to snag one on-contract for Amazon's favorite hardware price point: $0.

What about you? Would you use a 3D Amazon phone?

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You might also be wary if you're a small-business owner in one of dozens of communities near San Francisco, Houston, Atlanta or the District of Columbia.

A new study by the National Taxpayer Advocate used confidential IRS data to show large clusters of potential tax cheats in these five metropolitan areas. The IRS uses the information to target taxpayers for audits.

The taxpayer advocate, Nina Olsen, runs an independent office within the IRS. She got access to the data as part of an effort to learn more about why some taxpayers are more likely to cheat than others.

The study also looked at tax compliance in different industries, and found that people who own construction companies or real estate rental firms may be more likely to fudge their taxes than business owners in other fields.

Many of the communities identified by the study are very wealthy, including Beverly Hills and Newport Beach in California. Others are more middle class, such as New Carrollton, Md., a Washington suburb, and College Park, Ga., home to a section of Atlanta's massive airport.

Steve Rosansky, president and CEO of the Newport Beach Chamber of Commerce, said business owners in his city are probably targeted because many have high incomes. The likelihood of an audit does increase with income, according to IRS data.

"I imagine it's just a matter of them going where they think the money's at," Rosansky said in an interview. "I guess if I was running the IRS I'd probably do the same thing."

The study focused on small-business owners sole proprietorships, to be specific because they have more opportunity than the typical individual to cheat on their taxes. Many small businesses deal in cash while most individuals get paid in wages that are reported to the IRS.

The IRS only audits about 1 percent of tax returns each year, so the agency tries to pick returns that are most likely to yield additional tax money.

The IRS will not say much about how agents choose their targets. But as millions of procrastinators scramble to meet Monday's deadline to file their taxes, the agency is running every tax return through a confidential computer program to determine the chances of collecting more money from an audit.

Each tax return is assigned a score. The higher your score, the more likely you are to get audited because, according to the IRS, the more likely you are cheating on your taxes.

The score is called the Discriminant Inventory Function, or DIF. A high DIF score does not guarantee you are a tax cheat but the IRS claims it's reliable.

"If your return is selected because of a high score under the DIF system, the potential is high that an examination of your return will result in a change to your income tax liability," says an IRS publication that explains the auditing process.

How do you get high score? The IRS won't say, but veteran tax preparers and former IRS workers believe they have a pretty good idea.

"If you're reporting $8,000 of charitable contributions when you're only making $50,000, that's a red flag," said Bob Meighan, vice president of TurboTax, an online tax preparation service. "Likewise if you're reporting business or employee expenses that are out of the ordinary for your income range, that would attract the interest of the IRS as well."

The bottom line, according to the experts: People who take unusually large deductions for their income get a high score. Also, business owners who claim unusually large expenses for the size and type of their business get a high score.

"I had a case here where the person made about $40,000 and they claimed $25,000 of employment-related expenses," said Elizabeth Maresca, a former IRS lawyer who now teaches law at Fordham University. "Most people don't spend $25,000 to earn $40,000. That's an unusual number."

DIF scores can vary across industry, according to the study by the taxpayer advocate. For example, people who owned construction and real estate rental companies were more likely to have high scores. Lawyers, accountants and architects and people who provided other professional services were more likely to have low scores.

Olsen said construction and real estate rental companies probably deduct more expenses that are not independently reported to the IRS. The IRS does not like those kinds of expenses because they are harder to verify without an audit.

"Construction for sole proprietors has been historically a cash business," Olsen said.

The study, which was included in Olsen's annual report to Congress in January, used data from 2009 tax returns to plot the DIF scores for sole proprietorships across the country. The city where you live is not a component of the score, according to the study. Nevertheless, researchers were able to identify clusters of likely tax cheats.

Sole proprietorships make up about two-thirds of all U.S. businesses. Sole proprietors report business income on their individual tax returns and, the IRS says, they account for the biggest share of the tax gap, which is the difference between what taxpayers owe each year under the law and what they actually pay.

The tax gap was $345 billion in 2006, according the latest IRS estimate.

In all, researchers identified clusters of potential tax cheats in more than 350 communities in 24 states, mostly cities and towns but some neighborhoods, too. About one-third of them were in California, with most near Los Angeles and San Francisco.

Most of the others were in communities near Houston and Atlanta, and in the Maryland suburbs of Washington. There were relatively few in the Midwest or the Northeast.

The researchers also looked for areas with high concentrations of small business owners who were very unlikely to cheat on their taxes.

They came up with four: the Aleutian Islands in Alaska; West Somerville, Mass., a neighborhood in Somerville, a suburb of Boston; Portersville, Ind., an unincorporated town in the southern part of the state; and Mott Haven, a neighborhood in the Bronx, one of New York City's boroughs.

Stephen Mackey, president and CEO of the Somerville Chamber of Commerce, said he's glad the business owners in his community excel at civic virtue. But he was at a loss to explain why they stood out from so many others across the country.

"I'd like to think we're not alone in terms of the civic engagement of business people," said Mackey. "But I would say two things. One is they are very close to the community inside and outside their businesses. At the same time, it's not small town America. It's minutes from downtown Boston."

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AP Director of Polling Jennifer Agiesta contributed to this report.

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

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Obama says that recognizing same-sex relationships in the bill is "the right thing to do." But he says it would be premature to telegraph what he will or won't do before lawmakers send him a bill.

Gay rights supporters are pushing for an amendment to the bill to allow gays to sponsor their partners to come to the U.S.

But Republicans, including some who helped draft the bill, have made it clear that amending the legislation in that fashion would cost their support.

Obama commented at a news conference Friday evening in San Jose, Costa Rica, with President Laura Chinchilla.

After teasing subscribers to its Facebook page withready to ship in a factory, Geeksphone -- one of Mozilla's partners for the new breed of Firefox smartphones -- announced in an email Wednesday that "Next week at last" its smartphones would finally ship. Once ready, they'll be available

both powered by Mozilla's Firefox OS, aren't the only "Firefox phones" out there. They may be the only ones being sold to a North American audience right now, though, even if they're targeted at Firefox app developers more than the general public.

Here's a look at the phones, the OS, and a couple of free ways to try out the Firefox experience.

The Keon

A bright orange handset about the size of the original iPhone, the Keon also has similar limitations -- no flash, no front-facing camera, and no apps except for "web apps." It has a 3.5 inch screen, a 3 megapixel camera, 4 GB of internal storage, and a microSD card slot to add more. Its 1 GHz processor and 512 MB RAM place it closer to iPhone 4 territory, however.

The Keon will sell for "91 plus taxes," or about $120 USD.

The Peak

A bright white smartphone evocative of the original MacBook, the Peak has a 4.3 inch qHD (960 x 540) screen, a dual-core 1.2 GHz processor, and an 8 megapixel camera, plus the flash and front-facing camera the Keon lacks. It has the same 512 MB of RAM and 4 GB of internal storage, though.

The Peak will sell for "149 plus taxes," or about $195.

The OS

was called "Boot to Gecko" early on in its development, after the Gecko web rendering engine at the core of theThat's because it's basically just a web browser, where the home page looks like a smartphone's home screen.

The apps

Firefox OS runs apps from themany of which are just links to web pages but some of which are actually games or traditional apps, designed to work inside of the Firefox browser.

The opportunities

All of the programming code to both the OS and the Marketplace is released under an open-source Free Software license, and is partly developed using volunteer labor.

is available as a Firefox extension, and allows web developers and hobbyists to basically install the OS in their desktop browser and see how it works. Android device owners who want to try out Firefox apps can download thethen go to Tools -> Apps from the menu to visit the Marketplace.

Jared Spurbeck is an open-source software enthusiast, who uses an Android phone and an Ubuntu laptop PC. He has been writing about technology and electronics since 2008.

Japan's leading maker of liquid crystal displays had a 500 billion yen ($5.1 billion) net loss for the year, worse than the 450 billion yen deficit it forecast in November, the sources said on condition that they not be identified.

Its operating profit for the second half of its business year was 20 billion yen, compared with the company's forecast for 13.8 billion yen, the sources added.

The company needed a second-half operating profit to allow its lenders to justify a bail-out that rescued it from failing last year.

The write-off of excess capacity, however, highlights softer demand from Apple, which has seen its profit growth slow dramatically from more than 60 percent over the past five years to a projected rate of less than 5 percent for the next decade.

At the start of the year, Sharp was forced to curtail production of 9.7-inch screens for Apple's iPad, sources told Reuters in January.

That has stepped up the urgency for Sharp to find new customers and uses for its leading-technology displays and may make it harder for the company to convince investors and lenders it remains a viable company.

Sharp, which will announce its results for latest business year on May 14, said in statement through the Tokyo Stock Exchange that it had not released the earnings number, without commenting directly on whether it would report a bigger loss than forecast.

In addition to the write-offs, the company is also taking a charge to put aside cash for possible fines from a display price-fixing investigation in Europe, the sources said.

The expanded net loss was first reported in the Nikkei business daily.

The news sent Sharp's shares falling as much as 5.6 percent on Wednesday to 319 yen, their lowest in nearly three weeks, compared with a 0.2 percent drop in the benchmark Nikkei average. The shares have lost more than half their value since the start of last year as the company's troubles mounted, while the benchmark has risen 63 percent.

Sharp in October received a $4.4 billion bailout from banks including Mizuho Financial Group and Mitsubishi Financial Group in return for mortgaging nearly all its factories and offices in Japan and pledging to cut 10,000 jobs.

It has since raised additional cash by selling equity stakes to Qualcomm Inc, which in December agreed to invest as much as $120 million in the Japanese company, and South Korea's Samsung Electronics Co, which in March said it would inject $103 million in return for a 3 percent stake.

It is also in talks to offload its overseas television assembly plants. But with a 200 billion yen convertible bond falling due in September, that money plus the investments from Qualcomm and Samsung will not be enough to cover its financing needs, leading analysts to speculate it will need to find fresh funding sources.

($1 = 97.4100 Japanese yen)

(Reporting by Reiji Murai; Writing by Tim Kelly; Editing by Edmund Klamann)

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)

(Reuters) - Vertex Pharmaceuticals Inc on Tuesday increased by $20 million the 2013 forecast for sales of its cystic fibrosis drug Kalydeco, and said it anticipates seeking approval in 2014 of a CF combination therapy that has become a focus for investors.

The new cystic fibrosis drug Kalydeco had sales of $61.8 million, up from $58.5 million in the previous quarter. The company now expects 2013 Kalydeco sales of $300 million to $340 million, up from its prior view of $280 million to $320 million.

Vertex shares are up about 80 percent this year with most of the gain driven by enthusiasm over data generated from a combination of Kalydeco and an experimental cystic fibrosis drug that the company hopes will eventually be able to help a far larger portion of the CF population.

The company said it expects to have late stage clinical data from the combination therapy and to file for U.S. approval next year. Kalydeco alone works for only about 4 percent of patients with a specific gene mutation.

Vertex said it believes the vast majority of eligible U.S. patients were already being treated with Kalydeco, but that it expects sales in Europe to accelerate given progress in achieving reimbursement approvals in major European markets.

Vertex posted a net loss of $308 million, or $1.43 per share, compared with a profit of $91.6 million, or 43 cents per share, a year ago, due to plunging sales of the hepatitis C drug Incivek. Excluding one-time items, such as a large charge related to an impairment of an intangible asset, Vertex said it earned 3 cents per share.

Incivek sales fell 74 percent from a year ago to $205.6 million and were also down from the prior quarter's sales of $222.8 million.

After eclipsing $1 billion in sales faster than any drug in pharmaceutical history in its first year on the market, Incivek sales have plunged as many patients await new drugs that promise fewer side effects and a shorter treatment duration, or have signed up for clinical trials of new treatment combinations being pursued by several companies, including Vertex.

RBC Capital Markets analyst Michael Yee said the Kalydeco launch was going well. But he said the next Vertex stock jump was likely to come from hepatitis C data expected later this year of an experimental Vertex drug in combination with a highly promising drug from a different class being developed by Bristol-Myers Squibb Co that could lead to very high cure rates for the liver disease.

"The combination data could really increase the value of that program within Vertex's stock," said Yee, adding that it was currently under appreciated.

Revenue for the quarter fell 25 percent to $328.4 million, but topped Wall Street estimates of $307.9 million, according to Thomson Reuters I/B/E/S.

The company said it still expects full-year revenue of $1.10 billion to $1.25 billion. Analysts are looking for $1.17 billion.

After initially rising more than one percent in extended trading, Vertex shares gave back the gain and were flat with a Nasdaq close at $76.82.

(Reporting by Bill Berkrot; Editing by Steve Orlofsky, Bernard Orr)

Two governors eyeing possible White House bids Bob McDonnell of Virginia and Bobby Jindal of Louisiana suddenly find themselves fending off critics and trying to shore up legacies they hope will withstand national scrutiny. Other high-profile governors run the gamut from maintaining solid popularity to being in danger of losing re-election next year.

Governorships can be springboards to the White House, as Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush and others have shown. But the high visibility also can lead to painful falls.

McDonnell, who built an image as a competent problem-solver, confronted questions Tuesday about an FBI inquiry into gifts he accepted from a wealthy Virginia businessman. And Jindal, even in a Republican-dominated state, had to pull back his ambitious plan to replace Louisiana's corporate and personal income taxes with higher sales taxes. His popularity has sagged lately.

The 2016 presidential election is far away, of course, and the GOP has plenty of possible contenders. They include current and former governors, such as Chris Christie of New Jersey and Jeb Bush of Florida.

Still, McDonnell's and Jindal's struggles combined with those of Republican governors in Pennsylvania, Florida, South Carolina and elsewhere prove that governorships can be far from ideal incubators of political ideas and national ambitions.

"It's a double-edge sword, being chief executive," said John Ullyot, a Republican strategist and former Senate aide from Virginia. Effective governors, he said, can implement agendas and build reputations for bipartisanship, as Christie has sometimes done in New Jersey.

"But if something goes wrong in your state," Ullyot said, "there's no one to blame but you."

Starting with McDonnell and Christie in 2009, and followed by an impressive class the following year, Republicans won gubernatorial races in numerous states carried by President Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012. They included Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Florida and New Mexico.

Politically, the timing was ideal. GOP control of these battleground states enabled Republicans to dominate the once-a-decade redrawing of congressional districts after the 2010 census. It's one reason Republicans hold a 31-seat House majority even though Americans cast a million more votes last November for Democratic House candidates than for Republicans.

Some of these new GOP governors mostly notably John Kasich of Ohio and Scott Walker of Wisconsin pushed conservative agendas so fast and fiercely that the public backlash forced them to regroup and proceed more diplomatically.

Republican Govs. Tom Corbett of Pennsylvania and Rick Scott of Florida, who have lower national profiles, are among those still struggling to rebound from early problems.

McDonnell's and Jindal's woes draw notice beyond their states because they are among the half-dozen or so most-discussed Republicans in early political chatter about 2016. Democrats have ambitious governors, too, including Maryland's Martin O'Malley and New York's Andrew Cuomo. But Hillary Rodham Clinton and Vice President Joe Biden tend to dominate early Democratic talk about Obama's possible successor.

In Virginia, McDonnell had enjoyed comfortable approval ratings and was seen as a conservative pragmatist unafraid to compromise. Last winter, he achieved a landmark overhaul of the state's failing system for funding road construction and addressing acute gridlock in the Washington suburbs and the Norfolk region.

That image was rocked by Monday's news that the FBI is examining ties McDonnell and his wife, Maureen, have with a Virginia-based food supplements maker that's the subject of a federal securities probe and two shareholder lawsuits.

McDonnell told WTOP radio that his administration never gave special treatment to Star Scientific Inc. or its CEO, Jonnie Williams, who had given McDonnell more than $100,000 in political contributions and spent thousands of dollars more on personal gifts to McDonnell and his family.

Virginia law did not require the governor to disclose the $15,000 that Williams gave McDonnell's daughter Cailin for her wedding. But in his radio appearance Tuesday, McDonnell acknowledged the political sensitivity of the matter.

"I think, obviously, from the attention it has gotten, it has certainly now been disclosed," he said. He said it was hard to say whether he would ask his daughter to reject the gift if given a chance to do it over. "It's caused a fair amount of pain for me personally," McDonnell said. "I'm a governor, but I'm also a dad and I love my daughter very much."

In Louisiana, polls and anecdotal evidence suggest many people have grown tired of Jindal's national travels, state government layoffs and budget cuts, especially to health care and higher education. His sweeping tax plan drew wide criticism.

It marked a setback for the fast-talking Rhodes scholar, who has urged the GOP to stop being "the stupid party" that's out of step on key social matters.

In the past 50 years, more governors and vice presidents have been elected president than have sitting senators, although a few senators almost always try. Republican senators weighing possible presidential bids in 2016 include Rand Paul of Kentucky and Marco Rubio of Florida.

Republican Mitt Romney and Democrat Michael Dukakis are among the incumbent or former governors who won their party's nomination but failed to win the White House. Four of the last six presidents, however, were governors.

Republican Governors Association spokesman Jon Thompson defended his team. GOP governors, he said, are balancing budgets "while tackling energy, pension and education reform. Their successful brand of results-oriented conservatism shows why today's leaders of the GOP come from the states."

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Lewis reported from Richmond, Va.

Conte was jailed in 2005 after pleading guilty to conspiracy to distribute banned steroids and his association with Khan has been criticized by UK Anti-Doping.

However, Khan said the controversial American, who was introduced to the boxer by trainer Virgil Hunter, had passed on a lot of invaluable tips.

"The advice he's been giving me has been brilliant," Khan told the BBC's website. "I know he's had a bad background and has done things he shouldn't have.

"Virgil Hunter is my trainer and he's the one who's told me we are going to use Victor Conte as an assistant in a way, as he has a team of trainers who can teach you stuff.

"On the training methods he's brought so much good training into the game. He's introduced me to a lot of new trainers who have helped me on my running, sprinting, on my engine really, which is working my fitness, also breathing methods and telling me what to do and what not to do."

Conte was at the center of the BALCO doping program which included several high profile athletes like Marion Jones and Tim Montgomery.

A steroid specifically designed to fool testers, dubbed tetrahydrogestrinone (THG), was produced and distributed by BALCO.

Following his release from prison, Conte became an anti-drug campaigner who works with several anti-doping bodies in a bid to clean up sport.

(Editing by Greg Stutchbury)