Letts takes home the trophy for best performance by an actor in a play for playing George, one-half of the bickering couple at the heart of Edward Albee's "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?"

He beat out Nathan Lane, Tom Hanks, David Hyde Pierce and Tom Sturridge.

Letts, a member of the Steppenwolf Theatre Co. ensemble since 2002, burst to worldwide fame when his "August: Osage County" won the Pulitzer and five Tonys, including the best play trophy in 2008.

His other plays include "Man from Nebraska," a Pulitzer finalist in 2004, "Killer Joe," ''Superior Donuts" and "Bug." His previous acting credits include "Betrayal," ''The Pillowman," ''Homebody/Kabul" and "Glengarry Glen Ross."

I have asked Dad not to do it because it is inconsiderate of the other guests. I can see people are bothered by it, so now they make a beeline to the buffet so they can beat him to it.

Dad got offended when I talked to him about it, but he continues to do it. Mom refuses to get involved, and I have said all I can say. What to do? -- BURNED UP IN ILLINOIS

DEAR BURNED UP: A guest who grabs all the goodies at a dinner party is a hog. Because your father refuses to change his behavior, I will offer a few suggestions: The first is to alter your menu to avoid serving casserole dishes. If that's not possible, make your father his own separate casserole with his name on it, so he can have it all to himself. Or plate the food in the kitchen and stop serving it buffet-style.

DEAR ABBY: Over the past few years, as social media has become more popular, I have noticed a trend among many people. They now favor that form of communication over personal human interaction. This is especially true of my girlfriend of five years.

We have the normal relationship problems I feel could be addressed, but from the moment she gets home from work she's in front of the computer playing Facebook games, posting status updates or messaging "friends." She sits there for hours, lost in her virtual world. We rarely talk anymore, and when we do it turns into an argument because I'm trying to discuss what I see as a serious problem.

The Internet and social media are great tools for bringing worlds together, if they are not abused. But for many people, I think, social media is doing more harm than good. It has depersonalized human contact and has the potential to destroy relationships and isolate individuals.

I'm interested in your opinion and any advice you can give me on helping my girlfriend understand my concerns. -- ALONE IN THE REAL WORLD

DEAR ALONE: People cannot be two places at once. When relationships aren't nurtured, they wither. If this has been going on for an extended period, then it's time you give your girlfriend a wake-up call: You feel abandoned. By spending more time in the virtual world than in the real one, she is neglecting her relationship with you.

Ask her if she would be willing to work on a compromise so that she spends time with you. If she can't do that, and the Internet is giving her everything she needs, then you should find a lady who is willing to give you more of what you need, which is undivided attention.

DEAR ABBY: If a person compliments me on my hair, am I obliged to reveal that it isn't my natural color? I am a henna redhead, and it looks very natural, but my friend who is a natural redhead says I have to fess up. She will even tell people "for me" that my color is "fake." What should I do? -- HENNA REDHEAD IN NEW YORK

DEAR HENNA REDHEAD: Start spending more time with blondes and brunettes than with a redhead who doesn't know when to keep her mouth shut. She is jealous of the attention you're getting.

Dear Abby is written by Abigail Van Buren, also known as Jeanne Phillips, and was founded by her mother, Pauline Phillips. Write Dear Abby ator P.O. Box 69440, Los Angeles, CA 90069.

To receive a collection of Abby's most memorable -- and most frequently requested -- poems and essays, send your name and mailing address, plus check or money order for $7 (U.S. funds) to: Dear Abby -- Keepers Booklet, P.O. Box 447, Mount Morris, IL 61054-0447. Shipping and handling are included in the price.

RANCHO MIRAGE, California (Reuters) - President Barack Obama will complain to Chinese President Xi Jinping at a summit on Friday about suspected Chinese cyber hacking of U.S. secrets, even as the White House faces growing questions at home over American government surveillance.

Meeting at the luxurious Sunnylands estate near Palm Springs in California, Obama will seek Xi's assurance that he takes seriously accusations of growing Chinese cyber spying, including snooping on advanced U.S. weapons designs.

"All nations need to abide by international norms and affirm clear rules of the road," a senior U.S. official told reporters. "That's the backdrop to the discussions that the two presidents will have."

Dispute over cybersecurity could test the two leaders' ability to get along when they meet in the California desert in talks that are billed as an informal get-to-know-you encounter.

Obama, who arrived at the sun-baked summit venue on Friday afternoon and will welcome his Chinese counterpart later in the day, intends to tell Xi that Washington considers Beijing responsible for any cyber attacks originating from its territory and that it must take action, U.S. officials said.

But in his first meeting with Obama since taking over China's presidency in March, Xi may not be in a conciliatory mood.

He is expected to voice discomfort over Washington's strategic "pivot" toward Asia, a military rebalancing of U.S. forces toward the Pacific that Beijing sees as an effort to hamper its economic and political expansion. He also wants a new "big power" relationship that takes into account China's rise.

And Obama's protests about Chinese cyberspying might be blunted by news that the U.S. government has been quietly collecting the telephone records of millions of Americans as part of U.S. counter-terrorism efforts.

On the eve of the California summit, more questions were raised about the extent of U.S. government domestic spying when the Washington Post reported that the National Security Agency and the FBI are also tapping into the central servers of leading American Internet companies to examine emails and photos. But major tech companies said they do not provide any government agency with "direct access" to their servers.

Obama, visiting California's Silicon Valley earlier on Friday, staunchly defended the surveillance, calling it a "modest encroachment" on privacy that was necessary to protect the United States from terrorist attack.

Pushing back against years of U.S. allegations of Chinese hacking, Beijing insists it is more a victim than a perpetrator of cyber espionage. China's top Internet security official said this week that he has "mountains of data" pointing to U.S. hacking aimed at China.

But the U.S. Congress is losing patience, particularly after a report that Chinese hackers had gained access to design plans for U.S. weapons systems like the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter. China denied that, saying it needed no outside help for its military development.

The two leaders may try to deflect pressure at the summit for immediate progress on cyber disputes by promising more in-depth deliberations by a U.S.-China "working group" already set to convene in July for the first time.

'BIG POWER' RELATIONSHIP

High-level U.S.-Chinese encounters of recent decades have been unable to match President Richard Nixon's groundbreaking visit to Communist China in 1972 that ended decades of estrangement between Washington and Beijing.

U.S. officials believe Obama and Xi will develop personal rapport - something lacking between American presidents and Xi's notoriously stiff predecessor, Hu Jintao - that could help ease tensions between the world's top two economic powers.

Now almost five months into his second term, Obama talked about the meeting at a Democratic fundraiser on Thursday.

"The transformation that is taking place in China is extraordinary and never in the history of humanity have we seen so many people move out of poverty so rapidly in part because of what is happening in China and what's happening in India," he said. "And yet when you look at the challenges they face and the challenges we face I'll take our challenges any day of the week."

In an apparent concession before the summit, China granted passports to the mother and eldest brother of blind activist Chen Guangcheng, whom they hope to visit in the United States. Chen escaped house arrest last year and fled to the U.S. Embassy in Beijing.

Obama aides played down the chances of any big breakthroughs in more than five hours of talks with Xi over two days in Sunnylands, a 200-acre (81-hectare) desert estate that has hosted presidents such as Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton.

A willingness to forgo the traditional pomp and scripted discussions of a White House visit appears to signal a fresh approach by Xi, who as president-in-waiting met Obama in Washington in February 2012. He is a Communist Party "princeling," the son of a revolutionary leader. But he is also fond of Hollywood movie war dramas.

"He seems to be someone who is fast on his feet, who is open to engagement," another Obama aide said, drawing a contrast to Xi's more buttoned-down predecessors.

Despite the relative informality, the meetings are expected to be anything but laid back.

The leaders face longstanding differences on issues such as North Korea, China's territorial disputes with U.S. allies in Asian waters, trade problems and China's human rights record.

Obama will be looking to build on growing Chinese impatience with North Korea over its nuclear and missile programs, a shift that could bring Beijing - the closest thing Pyongyang has to an ally - closer to Washington's position.

Obama is likely to ask Xi to brief him on a visit to China last month by an envoy of North Korea's young leader, Kim Jong-un. Beijing's message to Pyongyang was to halt its internationally banned tests, although the North showed little sign of acquiescing, according to a source.

Shedding jacket and tie, Xi, 59, will have the kind of face time with his 51-year-old U.S. counterpart that few foreign leaders have been afforded.

The White House may have missed an opportunity for even deeper relationship-building.

Xi's glamorous wife, Peng Liyuan, a famous singer who has broken the mold of Chinese first ladies who have traditionally kept out of the limelight, is accompanying her husband. But popular American first lady Michelle Obama will remain in Washington as their two daughters finish the school year.

Near the gates of Sunnylands, about 100 protesters - including Vietnamese angered by China's muscular approach to territorial disputes in the South China Sea, Tibetan rights supporters and adherents to the banned Falun Gong spiritual group - braved withering heat to wave banners and signs.

(Additional reporting by John Ruwitch in Palm Springs and Ben Blanchard in Beijing; Writing by Matt Spetalnick; Editing by Alistair Bell, Doina Chiacu and Paul Simao)

A total of 132 IRS officials received room upgrades at the 2010 conference in Anaheim, Calif., according to the report being released by J. Russell George, the Treasury inspector general for tax administration.

One official stayed five nights in a room that regularly goes for $3,500 a night, George's report said, and another stayed four nights in a room that regularly goes for $1,499 a night. The agency paid a flat daily fee of $135 per hotel room, it said, but the upgrades were part of a package deal that added to the overall cost of the conference. Without the upgrades, the IRS could have negotiated a lower room rate, as required by agency procedures.

The inspector general's report was surfacing as the IRS came under fire again in connection with its targeting of conservative groups during the 2010 and 2012 elections. The Associated Press obtained a copy of the IG report ahead of its release.

In all, the IRS held 225 employee conferences from 2010 through 2012, at a total cost of $49 million, the report said. The Anaheim conference was the most expensive, but others were costly, too.

In 2010, for instance, the agency held a conference in Philadelphia that cost $2.9 million, one in San Diego that cost $1.2 million, and one in Atlanta that also cost $1.2 million.

Acting IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel has called the conferences "an unfortunate vestige from a prior era." Werfel took over the agency about two weeks ago, after President Barack Obama forced the previous acting commissioner to resign.

For more than 18 months during the 2010 and 2012 election campaigns, IRS agents in a Cincinnati office singled out tea party and other conservative groups for additional scrutiny when they sought tax-exempt status, according to a previous report by George.

The report issued last month said tea party groups were asked inappropriate questions about their donors, their political affiliations and their positions on political issues. The additional scrutiny delayed applications for an average of nearly two years, making it difficult for many of the groups to raise money.

On Tuesday, leaders of conservative groups complained to Congress that they were abused by the Internal Revenue Service for years as they sought tax-exempt status, including questions one Iowa anti-abortion group said it got about prayer meetings.

The testimony of the tea party and other conservative organizations before the House Ways and Means Committee was the first time groups complaining about the IRS's treatment have appeared directly before lawmakers since the IRS revealed the problem and apologized for it last month. They talked about applications for tax-exempt status that took three years for approval or in some cases haven't yet been approved and queries from the agency about the identity of their donors, video of meetings and whether speakers at such gatherings expressed political views.

"I'm a born-free American woman," Becky Gerritson, president of the Wetumpka Tea Party in Alabama, tearfully told the committee, adding, "I'm telling my government, you've forgotten your place."

Sue Martinek, president of the Coalition for Life of Iowa, an anti-abortion group, said the IRS asked them about "the content of our prayers."

"As Christians, we know we needed to pray for better solutions for unplanned pregnancies," she said.

The president of another group, the National Organization for Marriage, said the IRS publicly disclosed confidential information about donors. George Eastman said he thought the IRS's release of that information was designed to intimidate contributors to the group which opposes same-sex marriage "to chill them from donating again."

At Tuesday's Ways and Means hearing, committee Chairman Dave Camp, R-Mich., said the conservative groups were being singled out for their beliefs.

"They are Americans who did what we ask people to do every day add their voice to the dialogue that defines our country," Camp said. "And for pursuing that passion, for simply exercising their First Amendment rights the freedoms of association, expression and religion the IRS singled them out."

The committee's top Democrat, Rep. Sander Levin, said it was time to correct the IRS's problems.

"You are owed an apology," Levin, from Michigan, told the witnesses. "We say to you that each of us is committed to doing our part to ensure this does not happen again."

The leader of a small South Carolina tea party group said her organization first applied for tax-exempt status in 2010 and is still waiting for the application to be processed.

"Nearly three years in waiting for an answer is totally unacceptable," said Dianne Belsom, president of the Laurens County Tea Party. "The IRS needs to be fully investigated and held accountable for its incompetence harassment and targeting of conservative groups."

Belsom said her group in rural South Carolina has about 60 members and "seeks to educate ourselves and fellow citizens on various issues pertinent to living in a free country." The group also holds candidate forums in election years, she said.

"I'd like to note that our group is a small-time operation with very little money and this represents a complete waste of time by the IRS in terms of any money they would collect if we were not tax-exempt," Belsom said.

___

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

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DUBLIN, Ohio (Reuters) - Luke Donald gave himself a timely boost for next week's U.S. Open at Merion Golf Club by piling up 13 birdies in his last two rounds at the Memorial Tournament, which ended at Muirfield Village on Sunday.

The former world number one has not produced winning form so far this season but believes his game is running into good shape as he prepares for the year's second major championship.

"I made a lot of birdies in the last two rounds, my game is coming around," the Englishman told Reuters after closing with a two-under-par 70 in the PGA Tour event hosted by tournament founder Jack Nicklaus.

"Just a few too many mistakes so I've got to tidy up my control with the irons, keep hitting greens. I feel like I am putting better now."

Donald recorded six birdies in the third round and seven on Sunday on a challenging layout which had posed all sorts of problems for the players during the week, mainly because of lightning-fast greens.

In the final round, the gusting winds were not as severe and fickle as they had been on Friday and Saturday at Muirfield Village Golf Club, and he was delighted to take advantage.

"I am excited about where my game is heading," said Donald, who finished tied for 21st at one under.

"I certainly feel this year my play has been better than my scores and in previous years it has almost been the opposite. I have generally scored really well through a great short game.

"That's why I have never been too worried about some of my form this year because I feel as a player that I am hitting it pretty well. I'm just waiting for some things to happen, kind of fall into place."

Donald has recorded two top-10s in seven starts on the 2013 PGA Tour, his best finish a tie for third at the RBC Heritage in April.

On the European Tour, where he has won seven titles during his career, he missed the cut at the Malaysian Open in March and also at last month's flagship BMW PGA Championship.

U.S. OPEN SIMILARITIES

Asked how much he could draw upon his week at Memorial going into the year's second major, Donald replied: "There are some similarities with fast slopey greens where you can miss in the wrong places.

"Those are similar characteristics to a U.S. Open so it's switching your brain in the right direction in terms of that and how to manage your way round the golf course.

"I made a few mental errors with some misses (at the Memorial) but I think all that is good. It engages your brain in the right way."

The U.S. Open returns to the iconic Merion Golf Club in Ardmore, Pennsylvania for the first time since 1981, and Donald looks forward to the challenge of a layout measuring only 6,996 yards off the back tees.

"There's a mixture of some very long holes with some very short holes, so it has a good variety," the 35-year-old smiled. "Short game and wedges is going to be a priority. If I can do that well, then hopefully I will have a good week."

Perhaps surprisingly for many golf fans who regard Donald as a straight-shooter with a stellar short game, the Englishman does not have a particularly impressive U.S. Open record.

He has three missed cuts and one withdrawal in nine starts, no top-10s and a best finish of joint 12th in the 2006 Open at Winged Foot.

"I always think there is a little bit of a misunderstanding of how people perceive me and how I perceive myself," said Donald, who has yet to win a major title.

"I perceive myself as someone who is a really good short-game player, gets a lot out of my game but not necessarily someone who hits a lot of fairways and hits a lot of greens.

"Maybe in my early career I was a bit more like that but nowadays I am known more for my short game prowess. That would really explain my U.S. Open record. At the U.S. Open, you really have to have great ball control to be able to contend."

(Reporting by Mark Lamport-Stokes; Editing by Julian Linden)

The hawkish Abe has pursued the formation of Japan's version of the White House's National Security Council to centralise information gathering and speed up decision-making, a move welcomed by U.S. security experts.

"We have put in place a structure that allows Japan to comprehensively monitor the country's security," Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga told reporters at a news conference.

The bills are now to be submitted to the current session of parliament, which ends on June 26, for possible enactment in an extraordinary diet session in the fall.

The need for a centralised national security body has been highlighted by North Korea's recent sabre-rattling and a deadly January raid by jihadists on a natural gas plant in Algeria.

Japan struggled to obtain information on the Algeria hostage crisis, where 10 Japanese nationals were among three dozen foreign workers killed during the four-day siege of the desert gas plant.

In the East China Sea, a maritime territory dispute has escalated to the point where Beijing and Tokyo scramble fighter jets and patrol ships shadow each other, raising fear that miscalculation could lead to a broader clash.

Similar legislation was presented to parliament six years ago when Abe served his first term as prime minister, but it was dropped after his resignation in the wake of a one-year stint troubled by cabinet-level scandals and his Liberal Democratic Party's rout in an upper-house poll.

Referring to the Sino-Japanese island spat, former U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage told a seminar last month that several Japanese ministries were involved but there was "no process which can get all the information ... to the prime minister in a timely fashion so he can make a decision."

"This formation of an NSC will be very key to Japan's decision-making as we move forward," he said.

Under the security council framework, the prime minister, chief cabinet secretary, foreign and defence ministers would meet regularly to hammer out strategy, while relevant ministers would be called together to respond to emergency situations.

Ministries would be required to quickly provide key information to help the council play a commanding role in setting security policies and handling national emergencies.

The current security council of nine ministers has been criticised as being too cumbersome, while relevant offices such as the defence and foreign ministries are said to take too long to share critical information.

In a move to boost Japan's defensive capabilities, Abe has also proposed amending the pacifist, U.S.-drafted constitution to loosen restraints on the military.

Koichi Oizumi, professor at Aomori Chuo Gakuin University, said the creation of the national security council would be a step in the right direction but Japan would still face a tough task of training intelligence specialists.

"What's important is training people, which is time-consuming and money-consuming. They can set up a system, but without the right people, how can the system function?" Oizumi said.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said late in May that the government recognised the importance of nurturing experts in the field, but that no specific measures had been decided.

(Reporting by Kiyoshi Takenaka and Linda Sieg; Editing by Stephen Coates)

The Internet has been widely used by Putin's foes in recent years as a tool for exposing corruption among officials and organizing protests. Prominent opposition figures, including anti-graft blogger Alexei Navalny, made their names online.

But United Russia, regularly satirized on the Internet, is fighting back with a bid for more positive online coverage before Moscow mayoral elections in which the incumbent Sergei Sobyanin, a close Putin ally, will seek a five-year term.

"We need the 'Jedis' of the social networks ... the idols of audiences in their thousands," United Russia's Moscow branch said in a note announcing the launch of the Summer Blogger School offering training to sympathizers.

Navalny, who coined the phrase "party of swindlers and thieves" that went viral among Moscow's urban elite, plans to challenge Sobyanin in the September 8 vote unless he is convicted before then in an ongoing trial.

He has been the face of the largest wave of protests against Putin's 13-year rule that erupted over accusations of widespread violations in parliamentary elections in 2011.

At their height, the protests brought tens of thousands of people into Moscow's streets, but they have since subsided and opposition leaders hope a march due on June 12 will again turn the tables.

(Writing by Gabriela Baczynska; editing by Mike Collett-White)

A prominent expert called the work a landmark, but noted that a different, simpler technique now under development may prove more useful.

Stem cells can turn into any cell of the body, so scientists are interested in using them to create tissue for treating disease. Transplanting brain tissue might treat Parkinson's disorder, for example, and pancreatic tissue might be used for diabetes.

But transplants run the risk of rejection, so more than a decade ago, researchers proposed a way around that: Create tissue from stem cells that bear the patient's own DNA, obtained with a process called therapeutic cloning.

If DNA from a patient is put into a human egg, which is then grown into an early embryo, the stem cells from that embryo would provide a virtual genetic match. So in theory, tissues created from them would not be rejected by the patient.

That idea was met with some ethical objections because harvesting the stem cells involved destroying human embryos.

Scientists have tried to get stem cells from cloned human embryos for about a decade, but they've failed. Generally, that's because the embryos stopped developing before producing the cells. In 2004, a South Korean scientist claimed to have gotten stem cells from cloned human embryos, but that turned out to be a fraud.

In Wednesday's edition of the journal Cell, however, scientists in Oregon report harvesting stem cells from six embryos created from donated eggs. Two embryos had been given DNA from skin cells of a child with a genetic disorder, and the others had DNA from fetal skin cells.

Shoukhrat Mitalipov of the Oregon Health & Science University, who led the research, said the success came not from a single technical innovation, but from revising a series of steps in the process. He noted it had taken six years to reach the goal after doing it with monkey embryos.

Mitalipov also said that based on monkey work, he believes human embryos made with the technique could not develop into cloned babies, and he has no interest in trying to do that.Scientists have cloned more than a dozen kinds of mammals, starting with Dolly the sheep.

The new work was financed by the university and the Leducq Foundation in Paris.

Dr. George Daley, a stem cell expert at Children's Hospital Boston who didn't participate in the work, called the new results "one landmark step in a very long journey" toward creating DNA-matched transplant tissue.

Now, Daley said, scientists must compare the embryo-cloning approach with another technology that reprograms blood or skin cells directly into substitutes for embryonic stem cells. This reprogramming approach is technically simpler and doesn't involve embryos or require the donation of human eggs, and it was widely acclaimed when it was reported in 2007. Its Japanese developer shared a Nobel Prize last year.

But these substitute cells show some molecular differences compared to embryonic ones, which has led to questions about whether they can safely be used for treating patients. So it's essential to compare the cells from the two methods, Daley said.

The new results mean "we have another tool," he said. "We have to learn more about this tool."

Daley said he believed scientists will prefer using the reprogramming approach unless it can be proven "beyond a shadow of a doubt" that embryo cloning produces better cells for treating patients.

Mitalipov said he believed his technique would present a particular advantage for treating patients with a certain type of rare diseases. These are caused by mutations in genes of the mitochondria, the power plants of cells. He noted his technique, unlike the cell-reprogramming approach, would supply tissue with new mitochondrial genes that could replace defective ones. Those new genes would come from the egg.

The Rev. Tad Pacholczyk, director of education for National Catholic Bioethics Center, an independent think tank in Philadelphia, reiterated his opposition to embryo cloning, calling the approach unethical.

"It involves the decision to utilize early human beings as repositories for obtaining desired cells," he said. "You're creating them only to destroy them."

Marcy Darnovsky, executive director of the Center for Genetics and Society in Berkeley, Calif., said she was glad that Mitalipov doubted the embryos could be used to clone babies. She said the report still provides a good opportunity for the federal government to ban the use of cloning for reproduction.

___

Online:

Journal Cell: http://www.cell.com/

___ Malcolm Ritter can be followed at http://www.twitter.com/malcolmritter

TORONTO (Reuters) - Canada has charged two of the world's biggest candy makers, Nestle SA and Mars Inc, with colluding to fix the price of chocolate, the Canadian competition watchdog said on Thursday.

Canada's Competition Bureau recommended lenient treatment for the Canadian arm of Hershey Co, which cooperated with the investigation. Hershey said it had reached a deal with the bureau, and would plead guilty to a single count of price fixing.

Both Mars and Nestle said they intend to "vigorously defend" themselves against the allegations.

In its statement Hershey expressed regret for its actions and blamed workers who had already left the company.

"The current Hershey Canada senior management team as well as The Hershey Company and its management had no involvement in this conduct," the statement said.

The Competition Bureau has been probing the allegations of price fixing for five years in a scandal that has already resulted in a major class-action suit. Hershey, Mars and Nestle all agreed to settlements as part of that suit.

A similar class-action suit in the United States is still making its way through a Pennsylvania court.

The Canadian Competition Bureau has also charged ITWAL Limited, a national network of independent wholesale distributors, as well as three individuals: Robert Leonidas, the former chief executive of Nestle Canada; Sandra Martinez, former Nestle Canada president and David Glenn Stevens, president and chief executive ITWAL Limited.

The three executives face up to five years in prison if convicted, while the companies and the executives could each be fined up to $10 million.

(Editing by Jeffrey Hodgson, Bob Burgdorfer and Janet Guttsman; Editing by David Gregorio)