Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call(CONCORD, N.H.) -- Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul made another stop in an early voting state Monday evening, continuing to feed the speculation that he will possibly run for president in 2016. Just 10 days after stopping in the first caucus state of Iowa, he visited the first primary state of New Hampshire to address a GOP fundraiser and said the targeting of tea party groups by the IRS was “un-American.”

“Any person who would use the power or abuse the power of government to go after their political opponents, I don’t care if you are a Republican or a Democrat or an independent, to take that brute force, that bullying force of government and to use it against your opponents, there is something distinctly and profoundly un-American about that,” Paul said at a fundraiser for the state Republican Party in Concord, N.H.

The Republican senator joked that the trio of scandals hitting the Obama administration -- the IRS’s admitted targeting of tea party groups, increased criticism and outrage at the administration’s response to last year’s attack in Benghazi, Libya, and news of the Department of Justice’s seizure of phone records of the Associated Press, as well as spying on a Fox News reporter as part of a leak investigation -- all reminded him of the children’s song “Old MacDonald.”

“Old MacDonald’s Farm of Scandals: here’s a scandal, there’s a scandal, everywhere a scandal,” Paul said. “So it’s hard to know which scandal we want to talk about, but I think they all sort of stem from one problem and that’s the government has accumulated too much power, the president has accumulated too much power. Not just this president, but maybe the last 10 presidents, because we allowed that power to go from Congress to the presidency. We’ve allowed the presidency to become too strong.”

Paul said the revelations from the IRS scandal will create “such a level of distrust” that there is “going to have to be some kind of independent commission” to investigate.

“I don’t see any way the president can gain back trust, and for goodness sake, somebody’s got to get fired or go to prison,” Paul said to cheers.

He repeated some of the themes from his speech at the Lincoln Day Dinner in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, earlier this month, repeating his criticism of then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s response to the attack on the consulate in Benghazi in September that killed four Americans, blaming her for not providing adequate security and repeating that if he was president at the time he would have “relieved” Clinton “from office,” adding, “It’s inexcusable.”

“Benghazi should have be treated, and still to this day should be treated, like Baghdad,” Paul said. “It should be under military control, not State Department control.”

Paul continued his call for the GOP to broaden its outreach, saying Mitt Romney is an “upstanding” person, “but as a party we need to grow bigger.”

“If you want to be the party of white people, we’re winning all the white vote,” Paul said. “But we are a diverse nation. We are going to win when we look like America, we need to be white, we need to be brown, we need to be black, we need to be with tattoos, without tattoos, with ponytails, without ponytails, with beards, without beards. We need to look like the rest of America.”

Paul didn’t hide his libertarian streak when talking about the prosecution of the surviving suspect in the Boston Marathon terrorist attack. Although other Republicans have said Dzhokar Tsarnaev should have been held longer without being read his Miranda Rights in order to get more information for the investigation, Paul recounted a conversation with a first responder in Boston in order to prove his point.

“He said, ‘What separates us from them is that when we did finally capture him...we sent the suspect to a hospital, he’s going to be tried in a court of law, he’s going to have an attorney,’” Paul said. “If this had been their country, he would have been dragged through the streets if he were an American...and beaten to death with a tire iron. We are different than they are.”

The speech wasn’t all serious, though. He earned some laughs at the beginning when he seemed to be talking about “border control.” He was, but not the border the crowd may have been thinking of.

“We’ve got to keep those people in Massachusetts out of New Hampshire,” Paul said to cheers.

Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus spoke before Paul, calling him a “great leader.”

Priebus also had some tough words for the recent scandals embroiling the Obama administration.

“It’s the IRS that is going to enforce Obamacare, the same people that targeted conservative groups and it wasn’t just conservative groups it was any person or any group that had something critical to say of the current administration,” Priebus said. “A president that touts ego, power, and a hatred for dissent above everything else, that’s Barack Obama, that’s the leader of this country. I don’t think this administration realizes that the First Amendment wasn’t a suggestion. The Bill of Rights is not a wish list, it’s a set of non-negotiable limits on the federal government.”

Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio

Win McNamee/Getty Images(NEW YORK) -- Americans in a new ABC News/Washington Post poll sharply reject the targeting of conservative groups by the Internal Revenue Service, suspect an administration cover-up of the Benghazi incident and express substantial distrust of the federal government more generally.
 
Yet the national survey also finds no backlash against Barack Obama, at least at this point. His job approval rating is stable, albeit at a tepid 51 percent; he’s aided by accelerating economic optimism as well as by comparison with the much less-popular Republicans in Congress.
 
Longer-term impacts of contentious current issues remain to be seen, but there’s potential for significant damage to the administration. Americans by a vast 74-20 percent see the IRS’ behavior as inappropriate, with most feeling that way strongly – and 56 percent see it as a deliberate attempt to harass conservative organizations, not a mere administrative error.
 
The public divides on whether or not the administration is honestly disclosing what it knows about the IRS’ actions; 45 percent suspect a cover-up, 42 percent instead see full transparency. And more than a third overall in this poll, produced for ABC by Langer Research Associates, think these actions not only are inappropriate, but illegal.
 
Further, on the attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, last fall, suspicions of a cover-up rise to a majority, 55 percent. And in this case only a third of Americans are persuaded that the Obama administration is disclosing honestly what it knows about what occurred.
 
Beyond this negative view of the administration’s disclosure on Benghazi, Americans divide evenly on whether Republican criticisms on the issue reflect legitimate concerns or “political posturing.” But Hillary Clinton’s reputation thus far is largely intact: Despite criticisms of her handling of the incident, 62 percent approve of her work as secretary of state overall, down a bit from about six months ago but still a strong rating.
 
DISTRUST – Another result underscores the level of general distrust of the federal government. Americans by 54-38 percent say they think the government is doing more to threaten the rights of average Americans than to protect those rights. That’s not IRS-specific, however, since it was about as high in a similar Pew Research question in January.
 
There’s a high level of partisanship in suspicion of the government: Seventy-one percent of Republicans see it more as threatening than as protecting their rights, while just 31 percent of Democrats agree. But the balance is tipped by political independents, among whom a clear majority (61 percent) sees the government more as a threat than a source of protection.
 
Beyond politics, there’s an apparent economic element to trust in government, suggesting a perceived right to economic opportunity. People who see or expect economic recovery are much more likely than economic pessimists also to think that the government is protecting rather than threatening most people’s rights – regardless of their political or ideological preferences.
 
Beyond a sense of general distrust, there’s broad public concern about press freedoms, an issue related to federal prosecutors obtaining Associated Press telephone records in an effort to find the source of classified information about terrorism that was leaked to the news agency. Americans by 69-29 percent in this poll say they’re concerned that in trying to protect classified information the federal government will improperly intrude on the freedom of the press.
 
Specific to the AP issue, however, the public by 52-33 percent says prosecutors were justified in obtaining phone records via a court order, with results, in this case, similar across partisan and ideological lines. That may be because the leak related to terrorism, an issue on which the public tends to side with investigative efforts over privacy rights. Further, it’s not clear if the administration used a court order or instead a grand jury subpoena, which is not technically a court order but has a similar effect. Specifics on this issue, as well as other particulars of the case as they become known, could influence public attitudes.
 
OBAMA/ECONOMY – None of these issues appears to have impacted views of the president’s job performance; his approval rating, now 51 percent, has been essentially unchanged after slipping in March from a brief post-election foray into the mid-50s. An open question, though, is whether the president may have gained ground had these controversies not arisen.
 
In any case, strong sentiment about the president now divides evenly, after tilting slightly more negative in March and April. Moreover, the partisan gap in views of his performance, while still vast, is its smallest since December 2011, and Obama has majority approval among men for the first time since December 2010. Both may reflect the effects of an improving economy.
 
On that score, 56 percent of Americans now say the economy is beginning to recover, up by a dramatic 20 percentage points in the past year and a half, to the most since ABC and the Post first asked the question in late 2009. The change is broadly based, but strongest among financially better-off adults.
 
Additionally, more than half, 53 percent, now say they’re optimistic about the economy’s prospects in the year ahead, a majority for the first time in four years. (A steadier majority, two-thirds, expresses optimism about their own finances.)
 
These economic views, as noted, are closely related to political sentiment; Obama’s rating is far higher among those who see economic gains.
 
None of this means the economy’s in great shakes; Americans divide evenly, 48-48 percent, in approval or disapproval of how Obama’s handled it overall, with more “strongly” negative views than strongly positive ones. But that’s still one of his best scores on the economy since mid-2009. A little more than a year ago, by contrast, more disapproved than approved by a 21-point margin.
 
THE GOP – Obama also benefits from a comparative advantage vs. the Republicans in Congress. Regardless of his own rating on the economy, he leads the GOP in trust to handle it by 46-37 percent. That’s fluctuated; it’s a bit better for the president now than in March, but down from his wider 18-point advantage on the economy during his post-election bump in December.
 
Obama has a larger advantage in a more general question: Fifty-one percent of Americans say he is “mainly concentrating on things that are important to you personally.” That’s 8 points more than say the same about the Democrats in Congress – and 18 points more than say so about the Republicans.
 
Notably, Obama also is well ahead of his predecessor. At about this point in George W. Bush’s second term just 41 percent said he was focused on issues important to them, 10 points weaker than Obama’s score. Similarly, at that point 55 percent said Bush had done more to divide than to unite the country; 45 percent say the same about Obama now, with more undecided.
 
TEA TIME – In one division of interest, this poll finds a continued roughly even split in views of the Tea Party political movement, with 40 percent of adults saying they support it overall, 43 percent opposed. “Strong” support for the movement, at 10 percent, is numerically its lowest on record, and just about half the level of strong opposition, 22 percent.
 
Sizable majorities of Tea Party supporters and opponents alike say it was inappropriate for the IRS to single out conservative groups for extra scrutiny on their applications for tax-exempt status. At the same time, Tea Party aficionados are much more apt than its critics to think the IRS’ actions constituted intentional harassment, were illegal and are the subject of an attempted cover-up by the Obama administration.
 
ONWARD AND (POLITICALLY) DOWNWARD? – This survey, in sum, finds items for individuals across the political spectrum to enjoy, and others for them to worry about. After years in the tank, views on the economy unabashedly are improving, a positive result any way you slice it. That’s helping to support the president’s ratings, as are his comparisons to the long-lagging GOP. But the IRS issue, in particular, looks to pose a real risk to the administration, given the depth and breadth of criticism about it.
 
Most threatening, perhaps – to both sides of the aisle – is the public’s political mood more broadly. Views of the government as a threat ebb and flow, but are not new; as long ago as 1995, 55 percent in a Los Angeles Times poll said the government’s activities threatened their constitutional rights. But the return to that sentiment is a clear negative.
 
There are others: Even with improving economic views, 57 percent in this poll say the country continues to head “seriously off on the wrong track.” And while a majority now expresses economic optimism, when Americans are asked the likelihood that Obama and the Republicans will work together in the year ahead, the response is pessimistic by a resounding 2-1 margin.

Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio

iStockphoto/Thinkstock(WASHINGTON) -- In yet another Justice Department leak investigation of journalists, the U.S. Department of Justice reportedly seized emails and phone records of Fox News correspondent James Rosen, and even tracked his comings and goings into the State Department by tracking when he scanned his ID at the building’s entrance.

The story was first reported Monday by The Washington Post.

Court documents in the case quote extensively from Rosen’s personal emails in making the case against the alleged leaker, former State Department adviser Stephen Jin-Woo Kim. The New Yorker has posted the documents online.

It was all part of an investigation into a story Rosen did in 2009 about intelligence officials warning that North Korea was likely to respond to U.N. sanctions with more nuclear tests.  Kim was one of 95 people who saw the intelligence report.

For First Amendment advocates, the most chilling part of the court documents is the suggestion by DOJ that Rosen was, “an aider and abettor and/or co-conspirator in the crime” because he was trying to get the information, which was classified, from his source.  Seeking sensitive and secret information is something reporters do every day.

The Rosen story comes after news the Justice Department had also subpoenaed the phone records of 20 employees of The Associated Press a different leak investigation.

White House spokesman Jay Carney was peppered with questions about this at Monday’s briefing, beginning with this exchange with ABC News chief White House correspondent Jonathan Karl:

KARL: And just one more question. Does the president approve of the Justice Department’s handling of the Jin-Woo Kim leak investigation? We now know that the FBI investigators in this case not only seized James Rosen’s phone records, they went through and read his emails, they tracked his comings and goings inside the State Department. Does the president approve of that kind of action by the Justice Department against a reporter?

CARNEY: I will refer you to what the president said in response to a question about another matter along these lines, and that is that he is a strong defender of the First Amendment and a firm believer in the need for the press to be able to conduct investigative reporting and facilitate a free flow of information.

He is also, as a citizen and as commander in chief, insistent that we protect our secrets, that we protect classified information, and that leaks -- that we take very seriously the leaks of classified information because leaks can endanger the lives of men and women in uniform and other Americans serving overseas for our country.

And that is a balance he seeks, and it is reflected in the media shield law that his administration negotiated with the Senate in 2009 and which the president is very happy to see the Senate take up again. That’s a balance that was endorsed at the time by -- you know, from media organizations to federal prosecutors. I cannot, of course, comment on a specific ongoing criminal investigation.

Q: Jay, do you, as a former reporter, approve of those kind of tactics -- reading through the emails of a reporter?

MR. CARNEY: Again, I cannot comment on a specific ongoing investigation. I certainly share -- and I think most Americans do -- the president’s belief that we need to have, you know, a press that is able to pursue investigative journalism and that we have to defend the First Amendment. I also think it’s very important, as I think members of both parties have said, that we need to make sure that leaks are not tolerated, because leaks that can endanger the lives of our men and women and endanger our national security need to be taken very seriously. But that is, again, not a comment on a specific case, because I cannot comment on a specific case.

Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio

Herman Verwey/City Press/Gallo Images/Getty Images(PRETORIA, South Africa) -- Oscar Pistorius's agent says the international athlete known as "Blade Runner," who is accused of murdering his girlfriend, will not compete again this year as he fights to clear his name.

The 26-year-old Olympic sprinter is currently awaiting trial after being charged with the murder of his girlfriend Reeva Steenkamp in February. Pistorius maintains he shot Steenkamp, 29, by accident, mistaking her for an intruder on Valentine's Day. He is due back in court on June 4 with a trial scheduled to take place before the end of this year.

In a statement Monday, Peet van Zyl, confirmed Pistorius will not be seen on an athletics track before then.

“There was never any pressure from me or his coach to return to competition. It is his decision and it is his decision not to compete,” van Zyl said.

Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio

Creatas/Thinkstock(MOSCOW) -- Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) claims to have cornered a group of suspected militants in the town of Orekhovo-Zuyevo, east of Moscow, thwarting a possible terror attack, according to Russian news reports. The group opened fire, and two suspects were killed in the shootout. A third person was detained.

The reports don’t say when the operation took place.

The FSB claims the suspects were planning a terror attack in Moscow, but reports thus far don’t provide any details of their plans. The three are reportedly from Russia and received training in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
 
Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio

iStockphoto/Thinkstock(BAGHLAN, Afghanistan) -- At least 14 people, including a senior political official, were killed Monday by a suicide attacker in the northern Afghanistan province of Baghlan.

The attacker entered the provincial council compound on foot wearing a police uniform before detonating a suicide vest at the gate of the council's headquarters, BBC News reports.

According to the spokesperson of the governor of Baghlan province, the attack claimed the lives of 14 people, including council head Haji Rasool Khan Mohseni, a key Taliban opponent in the province. Nine others were injured in the attack.

Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio

iStockphoto/Thinkstock(WASHINGTON) -- Gas prices across the country are still rising ahead of one of the year's busiest travel weekends. The weekly average price of a gallon of regular gas is $3.67, up 7 cents from a week earlier, according to data from the Department of Energy.

The biggest price jump in the country has been recorded in Minnesota, with a record high of $4.29, a rise of 43 cents in the just the last week.  
Minnesota is ground zero for the high prices with a record high of $4.29, a rise of 43 cents in the just the last week. Other Midwestern states and parts of the Rockies are also seeing big spikes because of refinery outages and the mandatory switch by gas stations over to summer fuel blends to comply with federal clean-air standards.

This price rise can significantly increase the price of a summer trip.  Filling up your gas tank for a drive from Minneapolis to the Grand Canyon could cost up to $200 more today than it would have a month ago.

There may be some relief on the way though. As the summer gets going, prices are expected to start coming down in June.  For now though it will be a pricey holiday weekend at the pump, likely the most expensive since 2011.

While prices remain high some tips on how to save:

• Keeping your car out of the sun can, in fact, help you save some gas, this keep the gas from evaporating out of your tank.
• Also pump only when you need to and skip the mini fill ups because you end up wasting time gas hopping.
• Finally skip the AC when not on the highway. This will help you get the best mileage out of your car.

Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio

David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images(NEW YORK) -- It's a big day for Yahoo. A few hours after announcing its $1.1 billion acquisition of Tumblr, Yahoo announced some major updates to its Flickr photo-sharing service.

"Tonight is about Flickr," Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer said at an event in New York City Monday evening. "It is about that other 'R' brand and how we can make Flickr awesome again."

To that end, Yahoo announced three main changes to Flickr: a cleaner design, a new Android app and much more storage space than any competing photo service offers.

The new design scraps all the white space and blue links for large photos. Every user profile has a full-lead image or a cover photo, and below that a user's large photos are displayed in a grid. When users visit other profiles, they will see the same layout. There's also a photo stream page, which will bring in photos from people you follow.

Those big photos are a crucial part to the new parts of the service, Mayer and SVP of mobile products Adam Cahan said Monday evening. Those photos are uploaded in full resolution. "We never want you to compromise a single pixel at Flickr," Cahan said from the stage.

While Facebook and other photo services compress photos when uploading, Flickr will upload the full resolution image -- every pixel at the full size, no degradation. Google announced last week that its photo service, which is integrated into Google Plus, will also allow users to view and upload full-resolution images taken on phones or with digital cameras.

Yahoo, however, is planning to stand out from Google in one key way when it comes to photos. Yahoo will offer everyone a full free terabyte of storage space to users. Google offers 15GB of free space; it charges $49.99 a month for a terabyte of space.

"No other tech company has ever offered a terabyte of storage," Cahan said. A terabyte, which Yahoo says is basically like offering unlimited storage, can house more than a half a million photos (537,731 photos to be exact).

Yahoo plans to roll out the new features Monday at Flickr.com and release a new Android app. The company also plans to remind people about Flickr, which was once a very popular photo-sharing service before the days of Facebook, with a new marketing campaign. The advertising efforts will kick off with 11 billboards in New York's Times Square.

Mayer, who took over as CEO of Yahoo in July 2012, has worked to turn the company around. In addition to the Tumblr acquisition, which is her largest acquisition to date, she has announced refreshes to Yahoo Mail and Flickr's iPhone app.  

Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio

Feng Li/Getty Images(WASHINGTON) -- A new Senate investigation has found that Apple Inc. has used a complex web of offshore companies – particularly three in Ireland – to avoid paying billions of dollars in U.S. income taxes.

Apple executives will visit Capitol Hill on Tuesday to respond to the findings contained in a 40-page review by the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations. It is the first time CEO Tim Cook and the Apple executives will have appeared before a Senate committee.

The committee is releasing its findings to build support for a major overhaul of the nation’s tax code.

The company is not accused of breaking the law, but rather using loopholes in the American tax code.

“It’s like saying you haven’t shifted the golden eggs offshore after you transferred the golden goose offshore,” Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, chairman of the committee, told reporters late Monday at the Capitol.

The Senate committee, which conducted similar investigations last fall of Microsoft and Hewlett Packard, accused Apple of shifting profits overseas by using a cost-sharing agreement to transfer intellectual property offshore.

The investigation found that Apple negotiated a tax rate of less than 2 percent with the government of Ireland – far lower than the normal rate of 12 percent. An Irish subsidiary of Apple, which was not registered as paying taxes anywhere, had sales totaling $74 billion from 2009 to 2012.

“Apple claims to be the largest U.S. corporate taxpayer, but by sheer size and scale, it is also among America’s largest tax avoiders,” Sen. John McCain said on Monday. “A company that found remarkable success by harnessing American ingenuity and the opportunities afforded by the U.S. economy should not be shifting its profits overseas to avoid the payment of U.S. tax, purposefully depriving the American people of revenue.”

The findings of the investigation were set to be released at 7 p.m., but Apple sought to get ahead of the report by releasing its testimony Monday. In a 16-page response, Apple vigorously defended its business practices and described its company as “likely the largest corporate income tax payer” in the country — with $6 billion in 2012 alone.

“Apple does not use tax gimmicks,” the company said in a statement. “Apple does not move its intellectual property into offshore tax havens and use it to sell products back into the U.S. in order to avoid U.S. tax.”

While Apple will be singled out at the hearing on Tuesday, it is hardly the only company that keeps its profits off-shore.

A JPMorgan report found that more than 1,000 U.S. companies have an estimated $1.7 trillion in earnings overseas. Apple has reported having $145 billion in cash, but analysts estimate the company only has $45 billion available in the United States.

Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio

George Doyle/Stockbyte/Thinkstock(NEW YORK) -- In light of the real-life devastation that tornados are causing in the Midwest, CBS has decided to postpone the finale of the sitcom Mike & Molly, which dealt with a tornado hitting Chicago.

“Due to the tragic events this afternoon in Oklahoma, we are pre-empting tonight’s season finale of Mike & Molly, which has a related storyline,” a CBS spokesperson tells ABC News in a statement. “A repeat broadcast of Mike & Molly will run in the time period.”

On Monday, a huge tornado ripped through Oklahoma City, delivering a “direct hit” on an elementary school. The twister is just one of more than 50 devastating storms that have ravaged the Midwest since Sunday, leaving dozens of people dead and injured.

Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio

The Doors in 1968. Ray Manzarek (far right) died May 20, 2013 (Express/Express/Getty Images)(ROSENHEIM, Germany) -- Ray Manzarek, founding keyboardist of The Doors, died Monday at age 74 at a medical clinic in Rosenheim, Germany, after a long battle with bile duct cancer.  At his side was his wife of 45 years, Dorothy, as well as his brothers Rick and James Manczarek.

Ray co-founded The Doors in Venice Beach, California, in 1965 with singer and fellow UCLA film student Jim Morrison, along with guitarist Robby Krieger and drummer John Densmore.  Driven by Morrison's charismatic stage presence, powerful voice and poetic lyrics, as well as Manzarek's hypnotic, jazzy keyboards, the band soon shot to stardom on the strength of such classic hits as the chart-topping "Light My Fire" and "Hello, I Love You."  The group continued to release popular albums and singles until Morrison's death from heart failure at age 27 in July 1971.  On the strength of The Doors' enduring body of work, the band has gone on to influence and inspire countless other artists, while selling more than 100 million albums worldwide.

After The Doors broke up in 1973, Manzarek continued his music career, releasing a number of solo albums and collaborative albums.  From 2001 until his death, Manzarek performed Doors music in a popular touring group with Krieger that most recently was called the Manzarek-Krieger Band.  Manzarek also has recorded albums with blues guitarist Roy Rogers and poet Michael McClure, has produced music by such bands as Echo and the Bunnymen and X, and has written a memoir and two novels.

Commenting on Manzarek's death, Krieger said in a statement, "I was deeply saddened to hear about the passing of my friend and bandmate Ray Manzarek today.  I'm just glad to have been able to have played Doors songs with him for the last decade.  Ray was a huge part of my life and I will always miss him."

Besides his wife and brothers, Manzarek is survived by a son, Pablo Manzarek, as well as three grandchildren -- Noah, Apollo and Camille.  No official funeral plans have been confirmed.  The family is suggesting that rather than sending flowers, fans can make a donation in honor of Ray to StandUp2Cancer.org.

Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio

ABC/Adam Taylor(LOS ANGELES) -- This week, a new Dancing with the Stars champion will be crowned. 

The finals begin Monday night with the four remaining couples -- Jacoby Jones and Karina Smirnoff, Kellie Pickler and Derek Hough, Aly Raisman and Mark Ballas, and Zendaya and Val Chmerkovskiy -- stepping onto the dance floor to perform three times.

First, the duos will have to repeat a dance style as chosen by the judges.  Next, the couples will take part in a "cha cha relay," in which they each dance to a different section of the same song.  Finally, the pairs will participate in a "supersized freestyle."

Zendaya isn't lacking in confidence; she says she knew from the get-go that she would advance this far into the competition.

The Disney star tells ABC News Radio, "I've always kind of thought I'm here to the end.  I'm going to work hard, and it's always been in my thought process."

Olympic gold-medal-winning gymnast Aly Raisman suggests she's just happy to be in the finals.

She comments, "I just really, really wanted to make it to the finals.  You know, this competition is so tough. It's going to be a very, very tough final."

Super Bowl-winning football player Jacoby Jones isn't satisfied with his performance yet.  He has his eyes on the prize: "I want the trophy.  It is a competition at the end of the day, and I am competitive."

Kellie Pickler undoubtedly wants the Mirror Ball trophy, too, but if she does take it, it will have come at a price.

The country singer laments, "My legs are sore.  My calf is, we have to do the quickstep this week.  That dance is exhausting.  My legs, they're like overcooked noodles where they're just like, they're going to collapse at any minute."

The performance show airs Monday on ABC at 8 p.m. Eastern time.  The Mirror Ball trophy will be awarded Tuesday night, at the end of a two-hour results show.

Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio

iStockphoto/Thinkstock(BOSTON)  -- Binge drinking has become a bigger problem for college females than for their male classmates, according to new research.

The Center for Science in the Public Interest says 44 percent of students at four-year colleges at some time drink alcohol at binge levels. But a new study from Harvard Medical School finds female students are more likely to exceed weekly alcohol limits than males.

For the study, researchers at Harvard's Center for Addiction looked at nearly a thousand students at three New England universities during their first year at college. They found the women exceeded their recommended limit of no more than three drinks a day and seven per week more frequently than the men outdid their limit. For males, the recommendation is no more than four drinks a day and seven per week. In fact, women were 1.57 times as likely as men to exceed weekly limits, and exceeded those limits for 15 percent of the weeks.  For men, it was 12 percent of the weeks.

And while the men's drinking declined over time, the women's drinking did not.

The study authors warn that women who do not grow out of this drinking behavior after they leave college increase their risk for liver disease and breast cancer as they age.

This study's findings have been published in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research.

Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio

iStockphoto/Thinkstock(NEW HAVEN, Conn.) -- The $165,000 fine against Yale University for underreporting the frequency of sexual assaults might be a catalyst needed to remind colleges of their obligation to protect students from such crimes, according to a victims' advocacy group.

"I think once these cases come to light, it actually draws victims from other cases to speak up," Tracy Cox, spokeswoman for the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, said. "I think it says something about the culture everywhere."

"This may very well be a tipping point."

More than 90 percent of sexual assaults on U.S. campuses go unreported, according to a 2000 U.S. Department of Justice Study, and students have filed complaints this year against two universities for the way administrators handled students' reporting sexual assaults.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Department of Education has fined Yale for its underreporting of sexual assaults on campus more than a decade ago.

In a letter last month issued to the New Haven, Conn., university's president, Dr. Richard Levin, the Department of Education cited Yale for failing to report four "forcible sex offenses" that took place in 2001 and 2002. The school also failed to designate parts of Yale-New Haven Hospital as part of its campus and, subsequently, report crime statistics in those areas to the federal government, for which it was fined.

The university was also fined for failing to include several statements that disclosed campus crime statistics, including sex offenses, in its 2004 Annual Security Report issued to enrolled and prospective university students and employees, according to the April 19 letter.

While the letter stated that the university had since corrected its crime reporting, "the correction of violations does not diminish the seriousness of not correctly reporting these incidents at the time they occurred."

The Department of Education characterized Yale's violations as "very serious and numerous."

The Department of Education initiated a review of the Ivy League university's compliance with the Clery Act after a 2004 Yale Alumni Magazine article questioned the university's policies with respect to sexual misconduct, according to the letter.

The Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act is a federal statute that requires colleges and universities participating in federal financial aid programs to record and disclose campus crime statistics to students, faculty and staff, as well as the Department of Education.

Failing to abide by the Clery Act might jeopardize an institution's ability to provide federal aid to students.

University spokesman Tom Conroy told ABC News Monday that the university has requested that the fines be reduced, and is waiting for a final determination from the Department of Education.

"Yale has a structure in place to address these issues that is as strong as any school in the nation," he said. "Whatever guidance that the Department of Education gives to Yale in interpreting the Clery Act, we're going to follow."

Conroy said he was not aware of any student community reactions to the fines, but noted that the crimes in question, "were from over a decade ago."

"There is nothing Yale needs to do as a result of its letter with regard to its reporting," he said.

This isn't the first time a university's handling of sexual misconduct has come under fire.

Students at both the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Occidental College in Los Angeles, Calif. filed complaints this year with the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights against their universities for the way administrators allegedly mishandled students' reporting sexual assaults.

Cox, the National Sexual Violence Resource Center spokeswoman, said underreporting of sexual assaults on college campuses is still a major issue, despite its recently becoming a subject that victims are more comfortable taking to authorities.

Raw numbers are difficult to come by, but the perceived increases in the number of rapes on U.S. campuses in recent years might be a result of more people reporting rather than more assaults, Cox said.

She added that university leadership should be out front of the charge to change policy, which is difficult when enrollment is often a school's top priority.

"It's kind of a double-edged sword for them," she said. "They want to promote safe campuses, but when you have more people reporting [sexual misconduct], and more people going to the police, it may look like they don't have a safe campus.

But Cox said the increase in sexual assault reporting might result, in part, from improvements in campus policies that allow for victims to come forward more easily.

"In order for change to happen, there has to be a level of transparency at schools and institutions," she said.

Abigail Boyer, a spokeswoman for the Clery Center for Security on Campus, a nonprofit that works to prevent crimes on university campuses, including violence, said, "We always caution people to look past just the data, to look beyond the numbers."

She said that when institutions provide support and resources for students, it is possible for the number of sexual assaults reported on campus to increase.

"It's not a reflection of how safe a campus is," she said of the reporting. "It's a reflection of institutions using best practices and doing things correctly."

Cox said the Yale University fines might serve as a wakeup call for college campuses that they can still be penalized for failing to report sexual assaults more than a decade after the fact.

"It still says that just because they happened 10 years ago doesn't make them any less important," she said. "If anything, it does show that if these crimes are committed on campus and there is a failure to report, they will be addressed."

"No one is going to skate through without any accountability," Cox vowed.

Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio

iStockphoto/Thinkstock(PITTSBURGH) -- Sleep. It occupies about one-third of our lives. We need it for our mental and physical health, and for our survival.

Compared with other health behaviors such as smoking or exercise, sleep is unique because for most adults, it is a behavior they “share” with a partner.  But according to studies funded by the National Institutes of Health and the American Psychological Association, sharing a bed doesn’t always produce sweet dreams.

Research by Wendy Troxel, a clinical psychologist and behavioral scientist at the nonprofit RAND Corporation and an adjunct assistant professor at the University of Pittsburgh, and colleagues found that for men, poor sleep predicts more negative interactions with his partner the next day.  For women, the converse was true: How she interacts with her partner during the day predicts how soundly she sleeps at night.  In other words, for women, marital strife can lead to a sleepless night; for men, a sleepless night can lead to marital strife. Taken together, these interactions can create a vicious cycle, potentially increasingly poor sleep and distressed relationships.

Despite the fact that most adults share their bed with a partner, and that sleep problems and relationship problems co-occur, only a handful of studies have investigated how sleeping together affects the sleep of both partners.

Evidence from these studies suggests that there may be costs to sharing a bed with a partner. That is, on nights when couples sleep together, they tend to have more fragmented or restless sleep than nights when they sleep alone. Some evidence suggests that these consequences are stronger for women. On the other hand, people generally prefer to sleep with a partner and believe that they sleep better when sharing a bed.

So why do we prefer to share our beds when, at least by objective measures, we tend to sleep better alone? Looking to our evolutionary past may help answer this question.

Sleep is a universal and essential health behavior, but it is also extraordinarily dangerous from an evolutionary perspective. Think about it: Sleep occurs while a person is lying down, in a semi-conscious state, and highly vulnerable to potential threats from the environment. But it is nearly impossible to fall asleep if you are feeling unsafe or insecure.

Humans are inherently social beings, and we derive a sense of safety and security from our social environment. This fundamental need for safety and security at night may explain why we generally prefer to sleep with another human being, even when sharing a bed may not always result in the best quality sleep.

Humans may no longer depend on sharing a bed to protect them from harm in the hostile environment of our evolutionary past. But focusing on the potentially adverse consequences of sleeping with another may obscure the importance of stable, good-quality relationships for healthy sleep.

For example, some research has indicated that women in stable, long-term relationships have better quality sleep than their unpartnered counterparts, and women who are in highly satisfying relationships have lower rates of insomnia than those in distressed relationships.

Should couples sleep together or sleep apart? The answer may be … it depends.

There is no one-size-fits-all approach. Couples need to decide what works best for them and consider how to optimize their sleep as well as their time together so that they can be the best possible partner for their loved one.

Ultimately, the time couples spend together before falling asleep may be the most important time for connecting, being intimate and just being “alone together” without all of the other distractions of the day.  Whether couples sleep in the same bed or separate beds, they need not give up on that important and satisfying pre-sleep time together. Perhaps the real benefits of “sleeping together” are realized in the precious lull before sleep comes.

Copyright 2013 ABC News Radio