Obama holds last-ditch meeting to avoid "fiscal cliff"

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., called on lawmakers to "act quickly" to provide relief to Moore, Okla. - a community destroyed by a monstrous tornado that killed dozens, including many children.

As the investigation continues into potentially discriminatory activities at the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), former commissioner Douglas Shulman said Tuesday he was "saddened" that the agency had been judged as having acted in a way that was not "non-political and non-partisan," though he said he couldn't say exactly what happened to lead to the practices now under fire.

House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, and Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., joined Oklahoma Republican Reps. James Lankford and Frank Lucas to offer words of encouragement to a Moore, Okla., community destroyed by a monstrous tornado. "We have a lot of tornados in Oklahoma but we don't have tornados like this," Lankford said.

Addressing an Oklahoma community ripped apart by a monstrous tornado that left dozens - including many children - dead, President Obama told survivors and those grief-stricken by "human and economic losses" that their fellow Americans "will back up prayers with deeds for as long as it takes."

In a strange reference presumably to news that the Department of Justice secretly subpoenaed two months' worth of phone records from the Associated Press, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., joked with reporters that "we're going to subpoena all of you if you don't go to mute on your phones."

As a "diplomatic courtesy," the United States "has begun to allow limited use of the name Myanmar" to describe the former pariah state of Burma as it inches closer toward democracy, White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters Monday - but official U.S. policy, he added, "remains that Burma is the name of the country."