The Italian-born challenger briefly ruffled the champion by landing a couple of punches in the second round but apart from that appeared out of his depth.

Klitschko twice sent his opponent to the canvas in the fourth round before the referee called a halt to proceedings eight seconds from the end of the sixth as Pianeta took a pounding.

The 37-year-old Ukrainian extended his unbeaten run to 18 fights, his last defeat coming when he challenged Lamon Brewster for the WBO title in 2004.

Overall, he has won 60 of his 63 fights, including 52 within the distance.

Klitschko holds the IBF, IBO, WBO and WBA crown and his older brother Vitali holds the WBC crown. The two have pledged not to fight each other.

Pianeta, who at 1.93 meters is five centimeters shorter than his opponent, was previously undefeated with 28 wins and one draw.

"He started well and he tried to take the fight to me, he fought with great courage," said Klitschko.

(Reporting by Brian Homewood, editing by Alan Baldwin)

DUBLIN (Reuters) - Ireland is preparing to officially reject accusations by U.S. Senators this week that it acts as a tax haven for large multinationals and launch a diplomatic offensive to repair the damage done to its reputation abroad.

Ireland has been forced to defend its low corporate tax rate after the Senate said last week that iPhone and iPad maker Apple paid little or no tax on tens of billions of dollars in profits channeled through Irish subsidiaries and that it had effectively negotiated a special corporate tax rate of less than 2 percent.

Irish ministers and officials have lined up to insist that their tax system is transparent and that other countries were responsible if Apple paid tax at such low rates. Finance Minister Michael Noonan said Ireland would not be the "whipping boy" for the Senate subcommittee.

The government will likely put its response on the record this week, two government sources said, and will tell the committee led by veteran tax sleuth Senator Carl Levin that Ireland is not a tax haven, nor did it cut Apple a special tax deal.

"Undoubtedly there's a risk of reputational damage if we don't defend our corner and set out the facts, so of course that's happening," Ireland's European Affairs Minister Lucinda Creighton told Reuters, referring to the response being drafted.

"I've no doubt there will be a strong response, and we will strongly defend Ireland as a safe, a legally sound and a good place to do business. What you see is what you get, and that is why so many global companies are headquartered in Ireland."

Creighton was speaking from Dublin airport ahead of a four-day trip to Washington and New York where she will meet business leaders and politicians and address the prestigious Columbia University.

While the trade mission was planned long before last week's revelations on Capitol Hill, Creighton said she and her fellow ministers would use every opportunity to put right the "misinformation" heard in the Senate last week.

Ireland has a network in place to quickly spread that message. After it took a financial bailout in late 2010, Dublin set up its Economic Messaging Unit to coordinate communications between all government agencies, departments and embassies.

Irish embassies from Beijing to Buenos Aires were issued rebuttal points last week, a normal practice for major stories, while Ireland's ambassador in Washington held a conference call with government departments and the state agency charged with attracting investment into Ireland to discuss the next steps.

DINNER JOKES IN BRUSSELS

Within weeks of coming to office in 2011, Prime Minister Enda Kenny summoned all the country's ambassadors to Dublin to brief them on how best to restore a reputation he said was in tatters.

The fresh assault will be similar, one diplomatic source said, adding that the key focus would be liaising with a strong network of contacts in the U.S. Administration and on Capitol Hill, where the leaders of Ireland and the United States traditionally meet for lunch to mark St. Patrick's Day.

While Dublin was able to call on ex-President Bill Clinton to tell U.S. companies last year that they would be "nuts" not to invest in Ireland, the task could be trickier this time with the criticism emanating from its normally friendly ally.

"That was a blindside for Ireland Inc. because we always thought we were on the same page as Anglo-American capitalism. We thought it would stick up for us," said Hugo Brady, senior research fellow at the Centre for European Reform in Brussels.

"The PR side of it is really bad for Ireland because Ireland and tax haven are going together in mainstream conversation in Brussels. It hasn't done our image much good when people start making dinner jokes about Apple being an Irish company."

While Ireland will concentrate its energy in the United States to keep attracting jobs from the likes of Apple, Google and Pfizer, it will also need to keep an eye out for any backlash in Europe where its low corporate tax rate of 12.5 percent has drawn criticism in the past.

One influential member of the European Parliament said that while Dublin should be given time to adjust, it should adopt a standardized European Union tax system and ultimately a minimum rate of corporation tax.

"Ireland should take its hands out of other countries' pockets. Ireland's tax system is designed to tax income other people have earned," Sven Giegold told Reuters, underscoring how emotive the issue will be in elections in his native Germany.

"If you want to heat up a room in an election meeting in Germany, you have to talk about tax avoidance. It has become one of the most emotional topics. People are outraged."

(Additional reporting by John O'Donnell in Brussels; Editing by Will Waterman)

The 36-year-old welterweight - considered the best defensive boxer of his generation - topped the magazine's Fortunate 50 list, issued on Wednesday. Mayweather also took the top spot last year, earning an estimated $85 million, again from just two fights, the magazine reported.

Miami Heat basketball star LeBron James, 28, a four-time National Basketball Association Most Valuable Player, came in this year in the number two slot, earning a total of $56.5 million.

The list is calculated by combining estimated salary, winnings and endorsements. Mayweather's total earnings are even more impressive considering he received no endorsement money either this year or last.

James' $56.5 million income combines a $17.5 million salary with an additional $39 million in endorsements.

Golfer Tiger Woods, the highest paid U.S. athlete from 2004, when the list was first published, through 2011, dropped to the No. 5 slot on this year's list, earning $40.8 million.

Chicago Cubs outfielder Alfonso Soriano came in as the 50th highest-paid U.S. athlete with an estimated $18.2 million.

Candidates for the list must be U.S. citizens and compete in a U.S.-based league.

Internationally, soccer great David Beckham is estimated to earn more than $48 million, landing him the top spot on the magazine's annual list of highest-paid athletes worldwide, The International 20.

(Reporting by Chris Francescani; Editing by Cynthia Johnston and Tim Dobbyn)

Adding to Tuesday's investor optimism, the Conference Board's newest consumer confidence index showed a , from 69 in April, suggesting that Americans are feeling more bullish than at any point since February 2008. Even Tiffany & Co. notched surprisingly strong sales for the first quarter of 2008. The Dow Jones Industrial Average soared 108 points to close atof 15,411.

Uh oh, : "The good old days are back," but for those with short memories, those boom days were "during the last housing bubble, when money grew on trees." Look at where housing prices rose the most — Phoenix: 22.5 percent; San Francisco: 22.2 percent; Las Vegas: 20.6 percent. "I'm already hearing it again": You can't lose money in real estate. For heaven's sake: Even "flipping houses is back in vogue," Richter says:

On NPR, an "economist" said that the housing market was "on fire." And everybody fingers the "tight" inventory — as hundreds of thousands of vacant and for-sale homes have evaporated, and as bidding wars are breaking out over what's left. Or so it seems. But vacant homes don't evaporate. Private-equity funds have poured tens of billions into gobbling up vacant single-family homes in specific markets. And now some of them are planning IPOs as a way of dumping this stuff into funds that unsuspecting worker bees hold in their 401(k)s. It's called an exit, and they have to do it before it blows up in their faces....

Everybody loves bubbles. People either don't remember the wealth destruction and wealth transfers that took place when the last bubble blew up, or they think they, but not others, can get out in time, whether it's through an IPO, a quick stock sale, or a real estate transaction. Governments love bubbles because they generate a flood of tax revenues.... It's an amazing show, with fireworks, suspense, dramatic plot twists, and a rousing score. And we get to watch it over and over again. []

Look, , "real estate is a good investment as a place to live whenever it costs no more than leasing a comparable house or apartment." But "as soon as it costs more, you're buying in a bubble," and that's clearly true again in places like San Francisco, where the median house price just hit $1 million. New York, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C., are in a similar boat, Layne says.

The only way a million-dollar median home price is sustainable, even in the very short term, is when you have an endless supply of six-figure two-income earners who are willing to drain their 401k accounts and clip coupons just to have a modest house somewhat close to where they work....

We cannot seem to get out of the terrible loop from real estate bust to housing bubble. Playing the residential property market is the one drug addiction that's still socially acceptable. Despite what just happened a few years ago and is still lingering in much of the country, the housing boom is back. []

Real estate website Trulia agrees that some markets are now "overvalued" relative to fundamentals , but nationwide home prices are 7 percent undervalued. According to Trulia, "that makes today's price gains a rebound, not a new bubble," and the rebound seems healthy on the whole.

The pace of home price gains is expected to slow as more inventory becomes available, mortgage interest rates rise and investor buyers slow down purchases, says Jed Kolko, Trulia's chief economist. Today's low mortgage interest rates and tight supply of homes for sale are "creating a kind of witch's brew of extreme price spikes," says Stan Humphries, Zillow chief economist. []

I know plenty of people who "called" the bubble in 2004, then looked silly for a couple of years, then looked super-smart as prices crashed for a few years, but who now look... I dunno. Prices have fallen only very slightly since that time and they're back on the rise. It could be that this is a bull trap and there'll be a whole secondary housing price collapse that brings us back down to 1990s levels. Or prices could rise a bit more and stabilize at 2004 levels. Financial markets are simply very hard to predict. Relative to rents, houses still look cheap in most markets, and that situation seems unlikely to persist. But whether that means rents will fall or housing prices will rise is very difficult to know. []

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The Canucks ended the regular season by winning the Northwest Division championship with a 26-15-7 record but were swept 4-0 by the San Jose Sharks in the Western Conference quarter-finals.

"Alain, Rick and Newell worked tirelessly to lead this team to great on-ice success," Canucks president and general manager Michael Gillis said in a statement.

"I am personally grateful to each of them and their families for their commitment to the Canucks and the city of Vancouver and wish them continued success in future."

Vigneault, 52, was the all-time leader in coaching wins for Vancouver and guided the club to six Northwest Division titles, two Presidents' Trophy titles and into the 2011 Stanley Cup Final where they lost to the Boston Bruins in seven games.

He compiled a 313-170-57 coaching record during seven seasons with the Canucks.

(Reporting by Mark Lamport-Stokes in Los Angeles; Editing by Gene Cherry)

The prestigious Institute of Medicine is recommending that schools provide opportunities for at least 60 minutes of physical activity each day for students and that PE become a core subject.

The report, released Thursday, says only about half of the nation's youngsters are getting at least an hour of vigorous or moderate-intensity physical activity every day.

Another concern, the report says, is that 44 percent of school administrators report slashing big chunks of time from physical education, arts and recess since the passage of the No Child Left Behind law in 2001 in order to boost classroom time for reading and math.

With childhood obesity on the rise about 17 percent of children ages 2 through 19 are obese and kids spending much of the day in the classroom, the chairman of the committee that wrote the report said schools are the best place to help shape up the nation's children.

"Schools for years have been responsible for various health programs such as nutrition, breakfast and lunch, immunizations, screenings," Harold W. Kohl III, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Texas School of Public Health, said in an interview with The Associated Press.

"Physical activity should be placed alongside those programs to make it a priority for us as a society," he said.

The report calls on the Education Department to recommend that PE be adopted as a core subject.

It says physical education in school is the "only sure opportunity" for youngsters to have access to activity that will help keep them healthy.

The majority of states, about 75 percent, mandate PE, according to the American Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation, and Dance. But most do not require a specific amount of time for PE in school, and more than half allow exemptions or substitutions, such as marching band, cheerleading and community sports.

Many kids also aren't going to gym class at school every single day. According to the CDC, only about 30 percent of students nationwide attend PE classes five days a week.

Specifically, the report recommends:

All elementary school students should spend an average of 30 minutes each day in PE class.

Middle and high school students should spend an average of 45 minutes each day in PE class.

State and local officials should find ways get children more physical activity in the school environment.

PE isn't the sole solution, though.

The report advocates a "whole-of-school" approach where recess and before-and-after-school activities including sports are made accessible to all students to help achieve the 60-minutes-a-day recommendation for physical activity. It could be as simple as having kids walk or bike to school, or finding ways to add a physical component to math and science class lessons.

The report also cautions against taking away recess as a form of punishment, and it urges schools to give students frequent classroom breaks.

Schools can do this if they make it a priority, said Paul Roetert, CEO of the American Alliance for Health, Physical Education, Recreation, and Dance.

"We have an obligation to keep kids active," Roetert said in an interview. "We have research to show that physical activity helps kids perform better in school. It helps them focus better in the classroom ... and they behave better in school. So there are all kinds of side benefits."

Kitty Porterfield, spokeswoman for The School Superintendents Association, said nobody is opposed to physical education.

"Everybody would love to see more of it in schools," said Porterfield. "Given the testing and academic pressures for excellence on schools, often physical education slides to the bottom of the barrel."

The idea of putting more of an emphasis on physical education in schools has support in Congress.

Rep. Marcia Fudge, D-Ohio, plans to introduce the PHYSICAL Act on Thursday. It would recognize health education and physical education as core subjects within elementary and secondary schools. Reps. John Lewis, D-Ga., and Jared Polis, D-Colo., will join Fudge as co-sponsors.

When high school senior Jenny Bonilla got her college acceptance letter in March, she felt shock and heartbreak rather than joy. Thats because the letter from Goucher College, a private liberal arts school in Baltimore, also brought news that she would owe an unaffordable $20,000 a year in tuition and board, even with a scholarship the college was offering.

Bonilla had been in the running for a full ride to Goucher but eventually lost out because her parents combined income of $57,000 a year was deemed too high.

That was heartbreaking, she said.

Bonillas experience is all too familiar to many students and their parents contemplating college, as higher education price increases have far outpaced the growth in middle-class wages over the past three decades.

The average tuition and fees at a public, four-year university rose to $8,655 in 2012-13, not counting the costs of room and board, . Thats 250 percent more than it would have cost in 1982, when a year of college would have set the average student back just $2,423 in todays dollars.

The tuition at private colleges has increased at a slightly lower rate over the same period: The average four-year private institution costs $29,056, not counting room and board. It would have cost $10,901 in 2012 dollars in 1982.

The pricey degree comes with big returns, on average:and were much less likely to be unemployed.

The pain of the price hikes has been partly offset by an increase in federal grants and tax breaks for college, as well as by private schools offering deeply discounted tuition rates to lower-income students. But even with that help, some students like Bonilla are finding themselves locked out of the system.

Why is college so much more expensive now than it was 30 years ago? Economists fall into two main schools of thought in explaining the trend.

One theory, referred to as the Bowen Rule, says the decisions made by many colleges and universitiessuch as how many administrators to hire and how to spend its cashprimarily drive the cost.

A competing theory, called Baumols cost disease, posits that higher education is expensive because of outside macroeconomic factors that affect other businesses, specifically that it costs more to hire highly educated workers even in fields that have not grown more productive.

In other words, its either the colleges fault, or it isnt.

In their book, Why Does College Cost So Much? Robert Archibald and David Feldman, economists at the College of William & Mary, are firmly in the Baumol camp. They argue that a colleges hefty price tag isnt actually surprising at all, given that it depends on the performance of its workforcehighly educated professors and teachers who provide a face-to-face service, not a material good.

Larger economic trends have jacked up the salaries of highly educated workers across the board in recent decades, while the cost of face-to-face services has also remained high, because technological advances do not necessarily make these services cheaper.

Feldman used the example of the cost of a haircut, which has also outpaced inflation in the past 30 years.

While technology has made factories vastly more efficient at producing goods for less money, technological advances have not been able to make the time a haircut takes shorter or replace the skilled person who has to give the haircut. College is like a haircut on steroids, because the barbers have PhDs.

Higher education is an industry where theres not a whole lot of productivity growth and not a whole lot of scope for productivity growth, Feldman said.

The vast majority of most colleges budgets go to personnel, and that cost is unlikely to come down any time soon.

Benjamin Ginsberg, a political science professor at Johns Hopkins University, takes the Bowen view.

In his book, The Fall of the Faculty: The Rise of the All-Administrative University and Why It Matters, Ginsberg argues that a significant increase in administrative employees is in part responsible for colleges runaway pricing.

He writes that between 1975 and 2005, the faculty to student ratio has remained fairly constant at universities, while the student to professional staffer (such as an admissions officer) ratio increased from 1-to-50 to 1-to-24.

As colleges and universities have had more money to spend, they have not chosen to spend it on expanding their instructional resourcesthat is, on paying faculty, Ginsberg writes. They have chosen, instead, to enhance their administrative and staff resources.

Feldman discounts this argument. He points out that students demand a broader bundle of services from college now than they did 50 years ago and that the price reflects that. Students want staffers to plan student life activities, career counselors, fancy dorms, nice gyms and up-to-date technology.

The economy as a whole, not just higher education, has also shifted to include more administrative positions in the past decades, he argues.

Some argue that colleges have had no choice but to hire more administrative staff, in part because they are so thoroughly regulated by both state and federal governments. Colleges are required to report to the government all gifts accepted from foreign governments, supply information about the salaries of coaches and prove they commemorated Constitution Day every September 17, among other rules. Complying with the regulations requires staff.

Externally imposed regulations increase the cost of doing business, and that cost is passed on to consumers, Terry Hartle, one of the chief lobbyists for the higher education industry, said. Hartle is senior vice president for the American Council on Education.

State budget woes have also hiked the cost of many colleges. Sandy Baum, an economist and independent policy analyst for the College Board, says the price increases at public institutions have been driven by declining support from states, which have cut higher education in order to balance their budgets.

Its not actually that the colleges are spending more money on the students, its that theyre getting much less money per student from the state government, Baum said.

That means students arent necessarily getting more for their money, especially at public institutions.

Advances in technology might help colleges cut costs in the future, either by allowing them to have fewer in-person classes as more people take classes online or by streamlining some library costs, among other possibilities. But higher education experts say theres no silver bullet.

Colleges are looking at how to save money, and they need to look harder because its just so expensive, said Baum. She mentioned increasing technology, streamlining government regulations and cutting back on administrators as some possible things to help costs. Theres no miracles there, she said.

Jenny Bonilla didnt have time to wait for a miracle. Bonillas father lost his job just days after she received her letter from Goucher, reducing the familys annual income to $40,000.

Bonillas parents didnt want her to take on $60,000 in debt and knew they couldnt come up with the money to help her on their own. They decided she should enroll in nearby Prince George's Community College for two years and then try to transfer to a four-year public school from there.

I applied to so many schools, and then for me to end up at community college is kind of devastating, Bonilla says.

Scariolo, who also coaches struggling Italian club side Emporio Armani Milan, took over the Spanish national team in 2009, leading a squad including brothers Pau and Marc Gasol to back-to-back Eurobasket triumphs.

They won silver at the London Olympics in Scariolo's last major competition in charge, losing to the United States in the gold medal match in a repeat of the 2008 final in Beijing.

"After a long and difficult evaluation I have decided to leave the Spanish national team," Italian Scariolo said on his personal website (www.sergioscariolo.com).

"This decision is motivated by the desire to devote more time to my family after four very intense years," added the 51-year-old.

"A difficult decision because of the quality of personal relationships and the results achieved, but also for the perspective of continuing the streak of successes in the coming years."

Scariolo said farewell at a news conference in Madrid on Wednesday, where FEB president Jose Luis Saez announced that Spaniard Orenga would be taking over.

"I have decided that the next coach will be Juan Antonio Orenga," Saez said after paying an emotional tribute to Scariolo.

"He (Orenga) represented Spain 128 times as a player, he has worked with the youth teams, with the Under-20 side, and he has been with the senior squad for five years," he added.

"I think it was the right time to go for continuity and bet on the existing structures in the federation."

Scariolo's Emporio Armani face a key Euroleague away game at Spaniards Caja Laboral Vitoria on Thursday. They have three wins and four losses in their section and defeat would put them in danger of missing out on a top-16 berth.

"I wish the Spanish basketball federation a brilliant future in the short and medium terms ... there are all the ingredients to make this happen," Scariolo said.

(Additional reporting by Zoran Milosavljevic, writing by Iain Rogers, editing by Alison Wildey)

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi urged Republicans to allow a vote on legislation to extend tax cuts on the first $250,000 of personal income and delay the debate over tax cuts for the wealthiest taxpayers until next year.

"This doesn't have to be a cliffhanger," Pelosi, D-Calif., said after a meeting Thursday afternoon with Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner. "The president has his pen poised to sign a middle-income tax cut. It has already passed the Senate. House Democrats are prepared to vote for it. We urge our Republican colleagues in the House to bring a middle-income tax cut to the floor."

Earlier Thursday,said that there has been "no substantive progress" during the past two weeks of negotiations to avert the so-calledat the end of the year.

Pelosi surmised that extending tax breaks for the middle class would be "a Christmas present to the American people" that would not only increase the confidence of consumers, but also financial markets.

"The president has been clear, and we support him, on holding firm to theexpiration of tax cuts for people making over $250,000 a year," she added. "That would be part of a big, bold and balanced package that has big cuts."

A senior aide to the speaker revealed that Geithner came to Boehner with an offer of $1.6 trillion in tax increases over the next decade, an undisclosed amount of new stimulus spending, home mortgage refinancing and an end to Congressional control over statutory borrowing limits.

Another attendee at the Geithner meeting, the Assistant Democratic Leader James Clyburn of South Carolina, called the meeting "very fruitful."

"The time for posturing is over," Clyburn said. "We are in the holiday season when people would love to turn to their families with some certainty, and I think we ought to give them that."

Rep. Xavier Becerra, the Democratic Caucus chairman, said that Geithner's equation is "simple math" and results in "a bold but balanced plan that could easily get the [president's] signature and votes" to pass into law.

"We believe that we can move forward," Becerra, D-Calif., said. "At least let us vote here in the House of Representatives on what has already passed in the Senate on a bipartisan basis, and that is protection for the middle class from seeing the rates rise for them."

Whileabout the prospects of a deal, Pelosi said she was confident the leaders would strike a bipartisan agreement.

"Why am I confident? Because it's the right thing to do," she said. "They're tough choices for us. This isn't easy, but it's necessary, and I have confidence that my Republican colleagues will see the light and at least pass the middle-income tax cut."