GEOGRAPHY BEE
10 make finals of National Geographic Bee
WASHINGTON (AP) - Ten young scholars have made it to the finals of the National Geographic Bee, where they'll compete for a $25,000 college scholarship.
The preliminary rounds of the national competition were held Monday, narrowing the field of 54 state-level winners to the final 10.
The field for Wednesday's finals includes one repeat participant - 14-year-old Neelam Sandhu of Bedford, N.H.
Asha Jain of Minocqua, Wis., the younger sister of last year's runner-up, also made the finals. Other states represented will be California, Colorado, Georgia, Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, Oregon and Virginia. The participants range in age from 11 to 14.
They'll answer questions about history, world cultures, landmarks and climates. Alex Trebek of "Jeopardy!" will host the finals, which will be broadcast Thursday on the National Geographic Channel.
DOG THEFT
DC man gets 4 years for armed robbery of dog
WASHINGTON (AP) - An 18-year-old man has been sentenced to four years in prison after he stole a dog from a woman at gunpoint.
The U.S. attorney's office in Washington says Christopher Young was sentenced Monday. He pleaded guilty to the crime in March.
According to prosecutors, Young approached a woman who was walking her Yorkshire Terrier in the area of Fifth and Kennedy Streets northeast in Washington. Young displayed a handgun and said, "Give me your dog. Yorkies cost a lot of money." He then grabbed the dog, which later escaped and ran home.
The dog's owner noticed that Young dropped his phone. Police were able to tie the phone to Young and learned he had a GPS device on his ankle. Records put him at the scene of the crime.
APPLE-UNTAXED PROFITS
Panel: Apple uses firms outside US to avoid taxes
WASHINGTON (AP) - Apple Inc. employs a group of affiliate companies located outside the United States to avoid paying billions of dollars in U.S. income taxes, a Senate investigation has found.
The world's most valuable company is holding overseas some $102 billion of its $145 billion in cash, and an Irish subsidiary that earned $22 billion in 2011 paid only $10 million in taxes, according to the report issued Monday by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.
The strategies Apple uses are legal, and many other multinational corporations use similar tax techniques to avoid paying U.S. income taxes on profits they reap overseas. But Apple uses a unique twist, the report found. The company's tactics raise questions about loopholes in the U.S. tax code, lawmakers say.
FBI AGENTS KILLED
Official: FBI agents' cause of death unlikely soon
NORFOLK, Va. (AP) - The Virginia medical examiner's office says it will likely be weeks before the cause of death is determined for two FBI agents who died during a training exercise off the coast of Virginia Beach.
Special Agents Christopher Lorek and Stephen Shaw were members of the FBI's elite Hostage Rescue Team, which is federal law enforcement's only full-time counterterrorism unit.
The FBI has declined to specify what kind of training they were participating in before their deaths on Friday. Among other things, the team is trained how to fast-rope out of helicopters, SCUBA dive and conduct close-quarter battle.
Glenn McBride, a spokesman for the state medical examiner's office in Norfolk, said Monday the office is waiting for toxicology results to come back before making a determination on the cause of death.
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