The newspaper said that the exceptionally high level of taxation was due to a one-off levy last year on 2011 incomes for households with assets of more than 1.3 million euros ($1.67 million).

President Francois Hollande’s Socialist government imposed the tax surcharge last year, shortly after taking office, to offset the impact of a rebate scheme created by its conservative predecessor to cap an individual’s overall taxation at 50 percent of income.

The government has been forced to redraft a proposed bill to levy a temporary 75 percent tax on earnings over 1 million euros, which had been one of Hollande’s campaign pledges.

Crusading state Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli, facing no intra-party opposition, accepted the Republican gubernatorial nomination at the state convention here and used his remarks to preempt attacks on his conservative views and lash Terry McAuliffe, his Democratic opponent.

Conservative state Sen. Mark Obenshain, whose father was the Virginia GOP’s Senate nominee 35 years ago only to die in a plane crash, easily beat a single opponent to win the attorney general race here. And thanks in part to what was far by the best-received speech of the day, E.W. Jackson, a little-known conservative, African-American pastor, won the lieutenant governor nomination in an upset, besting six opponents after four ballots.

Virginia Democrats, gleeful about Jackson’s win, immediately seized on the ultra-conservative nature of the GOP ticket.

With a joke about not having yet been audited, Cuccinelli made only one direct reference to the recent controversies embroiling President Barack Obama. But the Republican standard bearer sought to tie McAuliffe, a former DNC chairman, to the nation’s capital.

“For Virginians who think Washington works well, they have a candidate in this race,” said Cuccinelli. “For the rest of the Virginians who don’t think Washington works so well, well, you have a candidate in this race, too.”

U.S. District Judge Susan Webber Wright granted the motion for preliminary injunction in a lawsuit brought by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Arkansas and the Center for Reproductive Rights on behalf of two Little Rock abortion providers.

The ruling prevents the law from going into effect in August. The lawsuit on the law’s constitutionality will proceed on the merits.

The law was defended by Arkansas Deputy Attorney General Colin Jorgensen, who argued that the 2003 Supreme Court decision that upheld the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act showed that state regulations of abortions can be constitutional.

However, ACLU attorney Bettina Brownstein said U.S. Supreme Court rulings, including the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, say that states cannot block abortions of “non-viable fetuses,” or those that cannot live outside the womb.

Arkansas’ new abortion law permits abortions in some circumstances, but “it is still a ban,” the judge ruled. ” … A plain reading of the act itself shows that.”

Host Chris Wallace reminds Pfeiffer that Obama didn’t really talk with Secretary Clinton, Secretary Panetta, or Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, that night. “He was talking to his national security staff,” Pfeiffer insists.

Asked about whether the president entered the Situation Room, Pfeiffer says, “I don’t remember what room the president was in on that night, and that’s a largely irrelevant fact.”

The name of the provider is not yet known, United Press International said. But Courthouse News Service said the suit claims the agency violated the Fourth Amendment in 2011, when agents executed a search warrant for financial data on one employee – and that led to the seizure of information on 10 million, including state judges.

The search warrant did not specify that the IRS could take medical information, UPI said. And information technology officials warned the IRS about the potential to violate medical privacy laws before agents executed the warrant, the complaint said, as reported by UPI.

“Despite knowing that these medical records were not within the scope of the warrant, defendants threatened to ‘rip’ the servers containing the medical data out of the building if IT personnel would not voluntarily hand them over,” the complaint states, UPI reported.

“No one has suggested that she did anything wrong yet,” said White House senior adviser Dan Pfeiffer, speaking on “Fox News Sunday.”Mr. Pfeiffer added that no one should jump to conclusions about whether Sarah Hall Ingram, given a promotion at the IRS as the agency’s singling out of tea party and conservative groups began to come to light, was directly involved in any wrongdoing.

“Before everyone in this town convicts this person in the court of public opinion with no evidence, let’s actually get the facts and make decisions after that,” Mr. Pfeiffer said. “There’s nothing that suggests she did anything wrong.”

There will be a top-down investigation of the IRS, he added, and Ms. Ingram’s role will be examined as part of that probe. Ms. Ingram served as the head of the agency’s tax-exempt division from 2009 to 2012. Her successor, Joseph Grant, already has announced his retirement, despite taking the job only a few weeks ago.

By keeping Ms. Ingram in place, the administration is fueling criticism from those who say this IRS, which admittedly targets Americans based on their political beliefs, should never be put in charge of health care reform.

“The race is indeed something that I am considering,” Cain told CQ Roll Call in an email from China. “Many friends and supporters around the state are encouraging me to challenge Senator [Kay] Hagan.”

Cain is a former Republican National committeeman and served as ambassador to Denmark during President George W. Bush’s second term. An attorney at Kilpatrick Townsend, Cain previously served as president and chief operating officer of the National Hockey League’s Carolina Hurricanes. His candidacy would likely draw significant support from the Raleigh business community.

Despite the state’s GOP lean, Republicans know they will have a tough fight against Democratic Sen. Kay Hagan. Still, several Republicans are considering taking her on.

State Speaker Thom Tillis is likely to join the race at some point after the legislative session ends early this summer. Both parties are awaiting his candidacy, with state Democrats already regularly targeting Tillis in released statements.

The North fired two missiles Saturday morning and another in the afternoon, South Korean Defense Ministry spokesman Kim Min-seok said by phone. He said the North’s intent was unclear. His ministry said it is watching North Korea carefully in case it conducts a provocation against South Korea.

In March, North Korea launched what appeared to be two KN-02 missiles off its east coast. Experts believe the country is trying to improve the range and accuracy of its arsenal.

North Korea recently withdrew two mid-range “Musudan” missiles believed to be capable of reaching Guam after moving them to its east coast earlier this year, U.S. officials said. The North is banned from testing ballistic missiles under U.N. Security Council resolutions.

Rep. Dave Camp, Michigan Republican, while speaking at a hearing his panel held regarding the IRS’s improper targeting of tea party and other conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status, suggested the White House hid the scandal until after the 2012 elections.

“This appears to be just the latest example of a culture of cover-ups and political intimidation in this administration,” said Mr. Camp at the nearly four-hour hearing, the first of several that will take place on Capitol Hill on the matter.

Mr. Camp said the IRS scandal shows the tax-collecting agency has become too large and powerful and called for widespread reforms within he agency.

“This systematic abuse cannot be fixed with just one resignation or two,” he said. “And as much as I expect more people need to go, the reality is this is not a personnel problem.”

Rep. Darrell Issa, California Republican, issued the subpoena for Ambassador Thomas R. Pickering, who headed the Accountability Review Board that looked into the State Department’s failure to bolster security at the consulate in Benghazi, Libya, ahead of last year’s terrorist assault that left Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens and three other Americans dead.

“Your refusal to allow staff investigators to interview you is inconsistent with your commitment to be ‘tough and transparent,’” Mr. Issa said in a letter to Mr. Pickering.

Transcribed interviews with investigators aren’t a requirement of every witness, but committee staffers said they are fairly common in important cases.
The subpoena raises the temperature of already testy negotiations between House Republicans and the Obama administration over Benghazi. Earlier this week the White House, responding to GOP demands, released emails detailing editing of critical talking points in the days after the attack. But the emails did little to settle the matter, with each side saying the contents bolstered their interpretation.