NEW YORK (TheWrap.com) - Larry King is returning to U.S. television by way of a Russian station.

RT, the English-language news channel owned by the Russian government, said it will begin airing "Larry King Now" in June on its U.S. station, RT America. It will also air a new show called "Politics With Larry King."

"Larry King Now, which debuted in July 2012 on Hulu.com and Ora.tv, will continue to be streamed from both sites, and will also be available online on rt.com. Ora.tv, a new online network backed by Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim, will also produce the new "Politics with Larry King."

King's programs will be recorded in RT America's Washington, D.C., studios and Ora TV's studio in Los Angeles.

Over nearly six decades, the 79-year-old has conducted more than 50,000 interviews. His CNN series, "Larry King Live," ended in 2010 after 25 years.

In his new role, King says he will not shy away from conflict and will try to give a voice to people shut out by other media outlets.

"I have interviewed every US president since Nixon, and lest people forget, I helped usher Ross Perot into the national conversation during the 1992 presidential contest," he said in a statement. "I appreciate the importance of providing a platform to those with real alternative visions for our country's future."

"Whether a president or an activist or a rock star was sitting across from him, Larry King never shied away from asking the tough questions, which makes him a terrific fit for our network," said RT editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan.

Formerly known as Russia Today, RT broadcasts in Arabic, English and Spanish and says it is available to 630 million people worldwide in more than 100 countries.

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Cook was responding to a question on government attention towards the company, which lately has been in the form of scrutiny of the company's tax dodging practices. Here's what he said, viaof Cook's interview at the conference: 

"When you get larger, you get more attention. It comes with the territory. We're doing incredible work in the environment for example. We've been focused on that for a long time...eliminated toxins from all of our products, running data centers on 100% renewable energy, largest solar farm of any non-utility. Lisa Jackson is joining Apple...she recently left the EPA and will be coordinating efforts across the company. She'll be reporting to me."

Jackson stepped down at the end of 2012 from the EPA. She was, as theexplained at the time of her resignation, something of a punching bag for the Republican-led House after the 2010 elections. She was a rumored candidate for the presidency at Princeton, but that obviously didn't happen. 

"The complexity of the law didn't require the IRS to target people for their political beliefs," said Rep. David Camp, the Michigan Republican who chairs the tax-writing House Ways and Means Committee. But, he added, "I think giving the IRS less discretion is going to be important, and that's what a simplified code would do."

Most taxpayers now pay someone to do their taxes or buy commercial software to help them file. In a report earlier this year, national taxpayer advocate Nina E. Olson ranked complexity as the most serious problem facing both taxpayers and the IRS. People simply trying to comply with the rules often make inadvertent errors and overpay or underpay, she said. Others, she added, "often find loopholes that enable them to reduce or eliminate their tax liabilities."

Camp and his Democratic counterpart in the Senate, Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus of Montana, have been working for months on what would be the first major tax overhaul since 1986. At nearly 4 million words, Camp likes to say the current code is "10 times the size of the Bible with none of the good news."

Lawmakers in both parties say the current storm buffeting the IRS underscores how overly complex tax provisions have given the agency too much discretion in interpreting and enforcing the law.

"This is the perfect example of why we need tax reform," said Rep. Tim Griffin, R-Ark., a member of the Ways and Means Committee. "If you want to diminish and limit the power of the IRS, you have got to reduce the complexity of the tax code and take them out of it."

There are formidable obstacles to completing a major tax overhaul this year or next. Both parties say they want to cut overall tax rates by getting rid of tax breaks but they disagree on whether more revenues should be part of the equation. And for all the work Camp and Baucus have done, they have yet to answer hard questions about which tax breaks to scrap.

Americans like their credits, deductions and exemptions the provisions that make the tax law so complicated in the first place. In exchange for lower tax rates, would workers be willing to pay taxes on employer-provided health benefits or on contributions to their retirement plans? How would homeowners feel about losing the mortgage interest deduction?

Those are among the three biggest tax breaks in the tax code, according to congressional estimates, together saving taxpayers nearly $300 billion this year.

The IRS scandal erupted a little over two weeks ago when the agency revealed that agents assigned to a special team in Cincinnati had targeted tea party and other conservative groups for additional, often burdensome scrutiny when they applied for tax-exempt status. The targeting lasted more than 18 months during the 2010 and 2012 election campaigns, hindering the groups' ability to raise money, according to a report by the agency's inspector general.

Since then, two top IRS have officials lost their jobs, and a third has been placed on paid administrative leave. Investigations by Congress and the Justice Department are under way.

The IRS was screening the groups' applications because agents were trying to determine their level of political activity. IRS regulations say tax-exempt social welfare organizations may engage in some political activity but the activity may not be their primary mission. It is a vague standard that agents struggled to apply, according to the inspector general's report. Lawmakers in both parties have complained for years that overtly political groups on the left and right have taken advantage of the rules to claim tax-exempt status and hide the identities of their donors.

"There are countless political organizations at both ends of the spectrum masquerading as social welfare groups in order to skirt the tax code," Baucus said. "Once the smoke of the current controversy clears, we need to examine the root of this issue and reform the nation's vague tax laws pertaining to these groups."

Some Republicans hope to use an upcoming debate over increasing the federal government's borrowing authority to trigger action on tax change. The government is expected to reach the borrowing limit by early fall, raising the possibility of another debt standoff like the one in 2011 that brought it to the brink of default.

Details are fluid, but congressional aides have been working on mechanisms to streamline the process of passing a tax package, in exchange for raising the debt ceiling, perhaps guaranteeing floor votes on bills approved by the tax-writing committees in the House and Senate.

President Barack Obama, however, has said he won't negotiate over raising the debt ceiling.

Obama has called for an overhaul of corporate taxes, and he laid some groundwork to accomplish that in his latest budget proposal. He also has said he wants to do comprehensive tax reform as part of a broad budget deal that cuts spending and reformulates entitlement programs. Such a grand bargain has proven elusive.

Camp and Baucus say they are open to a process that links tax reform to the debt ceiling. But Baucus warns: "I don't want to be part of something that's political or partisan. But I do want to be part of something that's practical and pragmatic that looks like it's going to advance the ball."

Baucus, who has been in the Senate since 1978, announced in April he won't run for re-election in 2014. He said he will focus much of his remaining time in the Senate on trying to steer a tax package through Congress.

Camp says he is committed to passing a tax bill out of his committee by the end of the year. There is no guarantee the full House would take up the bill, but Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, has signaled his support for the effort by reserving the prestigious bill number HR 1 for a tax overhaul measure.

Lawmakers in both parties are convinced that simpler, easier-to-understand tax laws would spur economic activity. But there are significant partisan differences.

The Republican recipe calls for reducing or eliminating tax breaks that benefit targeted taxpayers, and using all the additional revenue to reduce overall rates for everyone. The tax system would raise about the same amount of money, but businesses could focus on being more efficient instead of trying to take advantage of targeted tax breaks, supporters say.

Obama and Democratic leaders in Congress also want to reduce or eliminate various tax breaks. Overall income tax rates would be lower, but the wealthy would pay more each year because they would lose certain exemptions, deductions and credits.

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Follow Stephen Ohlemacher on Twitter: http://twitter.com/stephenatap

LONDON/NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. health regulators have approved two new GlaxoSmithKline drugs for treating advanced melanoma, in the latest sign that companies are having more success getting novel medicines to market.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) gave the green light to Tafinlar and Mekinist late on Wednesday, bringing the tally of new drugs approved by the U.S. agency so far this year to 13, compared with 11 at the same stage in 2012.

After 39 FDA approvals last year - a record only beaten in 1996 - the continuing healthy run-rate for so-called new molecular entities is fuelling investor hopes the industry may finally be pulling out of a long period of poor productivity.

The FDA approved the two GSK drugs to be used as single agents against melanoma - the deadliest form of skin cancer - and not in combination after the medicines delayed tumor growth in separate clinical trials.

GSK, however, hopes further trials now underway will prove there is an additional benefit from combining the treatments, potentially giving it an edge over Roche's rival melanoma medicine Zelboraf.

After decades with virtually no progress in the fight against advanced melanoma and little to offer patients facing a virtual death sentence, Tafinlar and Mekinist mark the third and fourth new drugs approved by the FDA for metastatic melanoma in the past two years.

The drugs are a further step forward in targeted cancer care and will be used in patients with a specific genetic profile - an approach that will limit the number of people who get them.

As a result, sales expectations for the two medicines are relatively modest and analysts, on average, predict annual global revenue of $371 million for Tafinlar by 2017, with Mekinist expected to sell $425 million by the same time, according to forecasts compiled by Thomson Reuters Pharma.

FURTHER BOOST

Tafinlar, known chemically as dabrafenib, belongs to a class of cancer drugs called as BRAF inhibitors. Mekinist, or trametinib, inhibits a protein associated with cancerous tumors known as MEK.

Tafinlar was approved to treat patients with melanoma whose tumors express the BRAF V600E gene mutation, while Mekinist is for patients with either the BRAF V600E or V600K gene mutations. About half of skin melanomas have a BRAF mutation.

The FDA also approved the THxID BRAF test, made by France's Biomerieux, which will be used to determine if a patient's melanoma cells have the V600E or V600K mutation in the BRAF gene.

GSK also got further boost from another cancer drug late on Wednesday as its already marketed drug Arzerra, developed with Denmark's Genmab, proved successful in a late-stage study as a first-line treatment for chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL).

Alongside the melanoma drug approvals, Deutsche Bank analyst Mark Clark said the Arzerra results represented "a triple dose of good news" for Britain's biggest drugmaker.

So far, Arzerra has only be used in a subset of hard-to-treat CLL patients and analysts' annual sales forecasts for the drug stand at $297 million by 2017, according to Thomson Reuters Pharma.

Deutsche Bank said this number was likely to rise as the medicine becomes a more viable competitor to Roche's Rituxan, which is also known as MabThera.

Shares in Genmab, whose fortunes are closely tied to sales of Arzerra, jumped more than 7 percent in early trading on Thursday, while GSK was little changed in a broadly flat London stock market.

(Editing by John Wallace and David Holmes)

The mayor's spokeswoman, Jessica Michan, says two firefighters are hospitalized in critical condition, while four others suffered chest pains or leg injuries. She also says three people are missing.

The blaze broke out just after noon Friday at a restaurant and club at the Southwest Inn on U.S. 59, one of Houston's most heavily traveled expressways. Flames spread to the motel and were shooting from the roof before firefighters extinguished the blaze about two hours later.

The fire's cause hasn't been released. Phone messages with the fire department weren't immediately returned.

Temperatures in the low 90s and high humidity hampered firefighting efforts. Smoke from the fire snarled traffic.