this is "nightly business report" with tyler mattison and susie, brought to you by -- >> thestreet.com. for an ever-changing financial world. our dividends stock adviser guides and helps generate income during a period of low interest rates. real money helps you think through ideas for investing and trading stocks. action alerts plus is a charitable trust portfolio that provides trade-by-trade strategies. online, mobile, social media. we are thestreet.com. we pay all the taxes we owe every single dollar. we don't stash money on some caribbean island. >> a defiant apple ceo on capitol hill defending his company's tax strategy as billions of dollars sit overseas.

it's a lie by admission. >> mr. hatch, i did not lie. >> you what? >> i did not lie, sir. >> a defiant irs executive also on capitol hill disputing allegations he kept the practice of targeting conservative groups a secret from congress. >> and our series on the future of health care kicks off tonight with a look how super computers are revolutionizing the way we treat cancer. all that and more tonight on "nightly business report "for tuesday, may 21st. new milestones for the dow and s&p 500 today, they stand at new record highs. on wall street, stocks got a big boost after two top federal reserve street presidents say they don't expect the central bank to ease back on its massive bond buying program just yet. they said when the time is right the fed will adjust its buying of assets up or down as needed. well, investors liked what they heard. the dow stocks added 52 points, and scoring another record by

making gains for the 19th tuesday in a row. a lot of people keeping on that tuesday watch. the nasdaq edged up two points and the s&p added five points. politics and business met head on on capitol hill today. the issue, apple computers tax practices and whether the company uses gimmicks to avoid paying its fair share. in feisty senate testimony today, ceo tim cook defended apple's practice of storing profits in overseas subsidiaries. a senate report says apple's tactics helped it pay little or no tax anywhere on at least $74 billion in income over the past four years. amon was there and joins us now from washington. amon? >> reporter: hi, tyler. we expected fireworks today at this hearing today. what we didn't expect is we would get those fireworks before tim cook even began to testify. there was a dispute here between

senator rand paul of kentucky and senator carl levin, the chairman of this committee. senator paul didn't believe this hearing should be held in the first place. take a listen. >> frankly, i'm offended by the tone and tenor of this hearing. i'm offended by a $4 trillion bullying, berating, and badgering one of america's greatest success stories. if anyone should be on trial here, it should be congress. i frankly think the committee should apologize to apple. i think that the congress should be on trial here for creating a bizarre and byzantine tax code. >> you can apologize to anyone you want. this subcommittee is not going to apologize to apple. we did not drag them in front of this subcommittee. >> carl levin not in the mood to apologize to apple and did not and instead drilled down on very specific and at times uncomfortable questions for the

apple executives that were there, including tim cook. take a listen to that. >> you point out, and accurately so, mr. cook, that 95% of the creativity that goes into those products is in california. but two-thirds of the profits are in ireland, and you've made a decision, which you have a right to do, not to bring that money home. >> senator, we're proud that all of our rnd, or the vast majority of it, is in the united states. >> i know, but the profits that result from it are sitting in ireland in corporations that you control that don't pay taxes. >> so, some tense moments there. tense moments between these senators. tyler, politically an interesting moment here was when senator john mccain had to jump in and sort of leap to the defense of carl levin here, john mccain, a republican, former presidential candidate. tyler? >> aman, it's susie here. a lot of tough conversation back and forth. how do you think apple came out through all of this and tim cook

in particular? do you think apple's reputation was hurt by this hearing today? >> reporter: i don't. i think there was less damage done here to apple than a lot of folks in washington expected, particularly given the tough revelations in that senate report that came out last night. the senate report said apple created three companies around the world that were not legal tax residents of any country anywhere in the world. that was the first time these senate investigators had seen anything like that. a lot of people were heaping praise on the company and holding up their iphones and how great they thought iphone was. >> fascinating to watch. thank you so much, reporting coming up a little later in the program, how many other big corporations are taking advantage of tax loopholes and what's the impact? we'll discuss it with david of the new york times. tyler? apple's tim cook wasn't the only ceo under fire today, the ceo of jpmorgan chase received backlash. they wanted to strip diamond of

his chairman title, saying the bank of diamond himself needs more oversight following a $6 billion trading loss last year, but the effort failed and diamond gets to keep both titles. kayla has more. >> reporter: america's biggest bank is keeping its larger than life leader. jamie dimon, chairman and ceo of jpmorgan chase since 2006 is holding on to both title, despite a proposal to split them. 32% of shareholders voted for it, that's far fewer than support of the same move last year, coming after the bank exposed a gaping trading loss. >> compared to last year, i thought it was an easier meeting. for a number of reasons, the $6 billion loss was huge. that's material and substance. obviously, they already knew what the votes were on the question of separation and ceo, so i think probably relaxed everybody up there, because 40% last year and this year 32%.

>> reporter: there certainly have been other troubles at the house of dimon, currently, fewer than eight regulators investigating over trading and more. the company could ease concerns the board was doing too little to keep dimon and deputies in check, but two weeks ago, a new fear emerged, strip dimon of one title and he'll resign from both. >> we expected a higher vote this year and i think it became a referendum on chaining dimon and his leadership and it was never intended as a referendum on jamie dimon and his leadership. it was about putting an independent chairman in place. i think by making it about jamie dimon they reflected away from him. >> reporter: meaning the bank won the battle, but not the war. overall at the board level could be near. three members of the board's risk committee barely won approval. the lead director, formerly of

exxonmobil, says issues there need to be addressed. rising to highs not seen before the financial crisis as investors breathed easy dimon would stay. still, similar battles rage on in boardrooms across the nation. >> this is an amazing event in terms of share holder rights. this is one step of many likely to happen over the next few years. >> reporter: kayla, "nightly business report," tampa, florida. >> jpmorgan keeps shareholders at bay, at least for now, but no question investors are speaking more and more about how companies govern themselves and about how having a single person as chairman and ceo is a conflict of interest. at least 200 dead and hundreds more injured from the devastating tornado that ripped through the town of moore, oklahoma. president obama promised the victims that the american people and the u.s. government will be

there for them. jane wells saw the damage firsthand and has the latest developments and what some businesses are doing to help. jane? >> reporter: thunderstorms and hail throughout much of the day made it very difficult to continue searching here, let alone begin recovery, but here late in the afternoon, officials said they believe they have accounted for at least all of the missing from a tornado that's now been upgraded to the most powerful category, an ef-5, and the economic toll will be catastrophic. >> it will be billions, billions of dollars, i believe, because of all the tremendous amount of structures and, certainly, the interruption of business in this area. it's going to take a long time to get all this cleaned up to rebuild the structures. we had five schools that were hit with this storm, and we lost several of the schools totally. the hospital was hit, huge movie theater was hit.

many different facilities and buildings, a bank was destroyed. >> reporter: now the rebuilding begins, national guardsmen, fema, and others will be joined by the private sector, volunteers with supplies from lowe's, a million dollars from home depot, who's letting first responders use the store as a command center, water from walmart, portable cell towers from verizon wireless and pledge from oklahoma's large energy companies, and oklahoma city thunder player kevin durant is contributing $1 million to the city he's adopted for "nightly business report," jane wells, moore, oklahoma. and coming up a little later in the program, we're going to show you some new ways that companies are helping to keep cell phones charged during the oklahoma crisis and also in everyday life. still ahead, senators were on the attack and irs officials were firing back during the latest hearing. but do we know more now than we did before?

first, though, stocks have closed at 52-week highs today. what did the former head of the irs know and when did he know it? those are the key questions lawmakers asked today regarding the tax agency subjecting conservative political groups seeking tax exempt status to extra scrutiny. john harwood joins us from capitol hill with the latest. over to you, john. >> reporter: he said he didn't know much. that's the short version. we didn't learn much new from doug shulman or from steven miller, who replaced him as the

acting irs commissioner until president obama fired him last week. steve miller did acknowledge that he was the one who orchestrated that planted question at a bar conference that resulted in the disclosure of this in advance of the i.g. report, and he took some flak from senators on the committee for not having corrected the record after earlier irs officials had said the targeting had not taken place. >> you didn't mention any of this in your responses to me, to the senate, or any other congressional body. mr. miller, that's a lie by omission. there's no question about that in my mind. it's a lie by omission. >> mr. hatch, i did not lie. >> you what? >> i did not lie, sir. >> you lied by omission. you knew it was going on, and you knew that we had asked. you should have told us. >> now, we don't expect to get much news tomorrow either at the house oversight committee, but that doesn't mean it won't be a bad day for the white house,

because we heard lois learnor plans to take the fifth amendment. that has the potential for lending an err of criminality to something the inspector general didn't find partisan, much less criminal. >> john, let me ask you a question about the fact that the white house council, one of the things we've learned since last week, was the white house council was aware of some of the contents of an inspector general's report for at least a couple of weeks before that information was made public. is that likely to come up and continue to keep the coals burning under this scandal? >> reporter: you know, come up, but i don't think it's significant, tyler, because the i.g. report had not come out. we're simply talking about a delay of a couple of days of discrepancy of a couple of days in when they were notified about something that was about to come out and the white house couldn't do anything until the i.g. report came out anyway.

it's not about the underlying conduct, why it happened, what motivated it. >> tomorrow an irs presumably going to take the fifth amendment. very interesting. john harwood, thanks very much. we begin with a number of big retailers out with earnings. home depot raised sales and profit outlooks. they credit the recovery in u.s. housing for the boost. the results sent the stock to an all-time high, closing 2.5% higher in today's session, it sits at $78.71. >> shares with sachs also rose after better than expected quarterly results. sales at stores open at least a year were well above estimates. the company is in the middle of a multiyear, multimillion effort to close underperforming stores, upgrade computer systems, and improve online sales. the stock jumped to $13.67, then moved higher in after hours trading on an unconfirmed report of a possible sale.

different story at best buy. the nation's biggest electronics retailer reported a loss last quarter. excludeing that european sale, best buy posted a profit that did beat analysts forecast, but investors still dumped the stock on concerns of stick competition on companies like amazon. best buy fell to $25.64. carnival shares also near the bottom of the s&p 500 today after a pair of analyst downgrades a day after the cruise ship operator cut its full year forecast. that follows a string of highly publicized incidents aboard ships, forcing the company to lower ticket prices to attract more passengers. shares fell more than 4% today. they finished at $33.81. as we mentioned earlier, apple ceo tim cook fielded a lot of heated questions today. and, in fact, the corporate tax code itself was a subject of great debate.

our next guest is here to shed light on what he says big loopholes at apple and tech companies in general, he's won pulitzer prizes for his coverage of apple. welcome, good to have you with us. >> thanks for having me. >> mr. cook today said, quote, apple pays all the taxes we owe, every single dollar. have they? >> i think they have. i think the question here is not a question of legality, but a question of pushing the envelope, and that's when if you looked at the hearings, there's a lot of discussion about when is a company a shell company, when is it a real company, when is money that's held in u.s. banks by apple affiliates considered offshore income, so you get into the big reason, the arcane bits of the tax code and it becomes a matter of, you know, how much should you pay and is it fair for a corporation that has gotten as much out of the u.s. as apple to pay as

little as it does. >> david, what it comes down to is the $2 trillion that is held overseas by american companies that have made these profits in other countries and how do you get that money back here. that's the core of all this, so business leaders like tim cook are saying, you know, give us a lower tax rate. he was proposing single digits. others have tax holidays, stuff like that. what can the u.s. do to incentivize these companies to bring that money back? >> i think there's a question, a policy question, about should -- how much should they do to incentivize it. the companies can bring it back by paying the stated tax rate, and if you want to give them a break in 2004 they were allowed a 5% tax rate rather than 35%. the question then becomes does that give them an unfair competitive advantage with all the u.s. companies that cannot afford to offshore their earnings. so, i think that is a question.

in 2004, i think $300 billion was brought back at a reduced rate. there was a big promise it was going to lead to hiring and investment in the u.s. in fact, just the opposite happened. the companies that brought the most back, laid off workers and a study later showed 92 cents on the dollar was given back to shareholders, which is fine, but if the inducement of doing it is that it's some sort of stimulus, you know, the question why should taxpayers give a break to these shareholders. >> you're of the point of view it would seem from your first answer that apple did, in fact, pay what it owed, but took advantage of gaps in both irish and american tax law. if apple was living up to the letter of those laws and availing itself of the letter of the law, on the other hand, did it live up to the spirit of the law, in your view? >> i think that's the question, and what the report pointed out was that apple's, by having entities offshore, that technically in limbo. they are stateless companies

that apple says do not owe taxes to any country, even though they are incorporated in ireland, they have part ownership in the british virgin islands. all the decision making is done in the u.s., but this is stateless. we don't owe any taxes. i think the common sense sniff test says is that right. the report said all the very highly sophisticated techniques that apple used might have saved company $10 billion a year in taxes in the u.s. and elsewhere. >> david, thank you very much, of the new york times. coming up in the program, there's a new front in the war on cancer, and a key player here is watson. this is the super computer of ibm, and he's doing things never done before to treat the disease. but first, let's get a check on how commodities, treasuries, and currencies fared today.

millions of us, smartphones have become a lifeline for phone calls, texts, e-mails to the web, but what happens when your phone battery runs low or out and you can't recharge it, like so many people in oklahoma today, they are unable to do that. big companies are working on ways to keep devices fully charged and working longer. john ford has more now from the annual ctia wireless convention in las vegas. >> this time it's going to go -- >> when disaster strikes, communication is a lifeline. people need their smartphones to keep connected to the outside world and stay on top of the latest developments. that's led today's relief organizations to try supplying more than just water and shelter. these days, disaster relief means taking care of your technology, too.

this is the american red cross's new prototype. inside, you can charge your gadgets by usb and you've got wifi. the red cross currently doesn't have the wireless power stations. the organization plans to have about two dozen in service by year end. >> is important when your life has been turned upsidedown to have contact with the outside world, know there are people out there that are caring for you and wanting to help you. >> to be prepared, shoppers can find a few gadgets that can be extra useful during disasters, this one uses solar power to charge phones and tablets. less than $150. when the sun isn't out, there are external batteries from companies like iwok and duracel that cost $100 or less, they charge a phone one or two times and hold a charge for several weeks. that's become especially important today when we rely on so many gadgets. >> because batteries are so

limited and the gap between the phone's performance and what the battery is able to provide is only increasing, then having infrastructure, think of it like atm machines, for example, or gas stations. >> and the goal, of course, is to stay connected, especially important during times like these. for "nightly business report," i'm john ford. during a crisis, battery power and overloaded cellular infrastructure can be issues. that is why all the major carriers recommend those in impacted areas of emergencies text rather than make phone calls. and finally tonight, another story of technology helping out. this time big data could reap big benefits. a recent study says the use of realtime analytics could cut health care costs up to 15% annually. that works out as much as half a trillion dollars a year. and now there's a push by

private businesses to help medical researchers collect data and treat patients, so we kick off a new series on the future of health care tonight with how ibm's watson computer is helping doctors at the forefront of battling cancer. bertha kuhns reports. >> not enough people are cured. people are hurt by our therapies, and we've got to find a better way. >> reporter: chief of oncology at the cancer center. >> there are some drug regiments that contain a targeted agent. >> reporter: oncologists have been working with ibm to turn watson, the cognitive computer famous for winning at jeopardy into a tool to help doctors provide the best cancer treatment options for patients. >> getting potentially a chemotherapy. >> reporter: to train watson, this last year the team ingested more than 2.5 million cancer

data, written text from medical journals, clinical trial research, and 1,500 case files. >> teaching the system how to read the medical records and medical reports, which is not a simple task. >> reporter: dr. chris said watson's ability to learn was one thing that surprised him. >> and the second thing is just totally counterintuitive, that this machine is ultimately going to improve the care of each person. i mean, it's going to be the ultimate in personalized medicine. >> also counterintuitive says ibm, watson's gotten smaller, using less server hardware or getting smarter. >> about this size, two racks. >> reporter: analysts say with the rising cost of cancer medications, there's a big push towards evidence-based medical care. watson gives providers the

evidence they need. >> it's humanly impossible for the doctors to pull all of the medical records, pathology reports, your family history, the most recent diseases and drugs that are, and bring it together to the point of treatment. that's where watson is a support system, we believe, will have breakthrough implications. >> reporter: until now, watson has been used with file cases. this summer, beta testing begins with patients in realtime. if the trial goes well, the commercial product should launch for cancer care providers by 2014. in new york, bertha kuhns for "nightly business report." tomorrow in part two of our series, we take a look how realtime data can be a game changer for improving patient care. that's it for us tonight, "nightly business report," thanks so much for joining us. >> thanks from me, as well. have a great evening, everybody, and we hope to see you back here tomorrow night. "nightly business report" has been brought to you by --

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if there's one thing most of us in the bay area have in common, it's this -- most of us, the vast majority, come from someplace else. even those of us who were born here or whose families have lived here for generations often think of home as a place thousands of miles away. ♪ tonight on "spark," we'll see how the arts are helping to keep our cultural roots alive. we'll visit with some of the 3100 south bay students who have picked up the basics of music, along with a sense of their own rich history through the mexican heritage plaza's mariachi youth program. ♪ but first, we'll see how the aloha spirit is spreg