LONDON (Reuters) - Sting has turned back to his childhood in the shadow of a struggling shipyard in northern England for a musical that will debut on Broadway next year and his first album of original material in 10 years.

The musical, "The Last Ship", is based on Sting's experiences of living near the Swan Hunter Shipyard in Wallsend, Newcastle, and watching the demise of Britain's shipbuilding industry in the 1980s.

A spokeswoman for Sting on Wednesday said the musical had also inspired the rock star to produce his first album of new material in nearly 10 years, also called "The Last Ship", that will be released on September 23.

"Guest artists on "The Last Ship" with roots in the northeast (of England) include Brian Johnson, Jimmy Nail, The Unthanks, The Wilson Brothers and Kathryn Tickell," the spokeswoman said in a statement.

"The Last Ship", released on Universal Music Group's Polydor Records, will feature 12 songs and be produced by Rob Mathes.

Sting, 61, has released 10 albums since going solo from the band the Police around 1984. This will be his first album of original material since "Sacred Love" in 2003.

As well as his music, Sting has acted in a list of films, including "Quadrophenia" and "Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels", and appeared as himself in TV shows like "The Simpsons" but this is the first time he has taken a major role in producing a musical.

He spent nearly three years working on the story that is focused on relationships, family, and community, collaborating with Joe Mantello, the director of the hit musical "Wicked" and John Logan, co-writer of the latest James Bond film "Skyfall".

Sting, born Gordon Sumner, was raised in Wallsend.

The Swan Hunter Shipyard on the River Tyne was once one of the world's leading shipbuilding operations that came under national ownership in 1977 with its construction operations wound back in the 1990s.

(Editing by Belinda Goldsmith)

In the wake of 2011's Fukushima nuclear disaster, Japan installed solar panels at such a furious rate that the small nation is quickly becoming the largest solar market in the world, at least in terms of revenue, .

After years of neglecting renewable energy in favor of atomic power, Japan should have the capacity by year's end to generate 13.5 to 16.8 gigawatts of solar energy that's the equivalent of five to seven nuclear reactors worth. (For context: One gigawatt is enough to power an estimated 250,000 homes.)

Behind the sudden solar explosion is something called a feed-in tariff, implemented following the earthquake and tsunami that forced the country to shut down its . Naoto Kan, the prime minister at the time whose ratings were in the gutter due to his perceived lack of leadership, implemented the plan as part of a suicide deal with the opposition party: If they passed a few bills, including the feed-in tariff, he'd resign.

Feed-in tariffs obligate utility companies to buy electricity from a renewable source at a fixed rate one that's artificially high to spur start-up investment.

Japan's rate is guaranteed over 20 years, and solar has the highest price tag above wind and geothermal at 37.8 yen (37.5 cents) to 42 yen per kilowatt hour. The price is twice that of Germany and France.

With solar suddenly in demand (by government fiat), entrepreneurial individuals and companies are installing solar panels by the dozens, says the , and utility companies are buying that extra energy to meet their quotas. In a helpful, illustration-heavy booklet,breaks it down like this:

In case of typical household with a 4-kw solar PV panel (that costs about 2 million at present) installed, the monthly electricity charge will be reduced from about 7,000 to 3,660 by using the electricity generated by the solar PV panel for the household. In addition, by selling the excess electricity generated by the panel, the household will be able to earn about 9,000. []

In spite of such opportunities, cost remains a big drawback of this forced solar boom. "Renewables are several times pricier than nuclear power or fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas," says . "The rising use of solar power means energy bills will spike, potentially complicating [the] plan to jump-start Japan's long-foundering economy." (For more on this Abenomics plan, .)

Furthermore, explains , "free market economists in general do not like feed-in-tariffs because they say these fixed pre-agreed prices distort the play of the electricity markets. Instead of allowing the best electricity provider to be the source, winners are pre-picked in this case, solar and wind farms." But there's a catch.

What critics do not mention is that the percentage of renewables compared to fossil sources like coal is so small that there is hardly an effect on price movement, and the intent is not to give all future renewable energy generators the feed-in-tariff, but only the first few investors to allow the renewable sector to jumpstart itself. This is somewhat akin to mixing a drop of expensive scotch with a barrel of cheap scotch, then claiming that the price of the blended scotch has risen significantly. []

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Merck & Co's experimental insomnia drug suvorexant appears generally effective, according to reviewers at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, but they questioned the company's proposed dosing levels.

The reviewers posted their comments on the FDA's website on Monday, two days ahead of a meeting of outside medical experts which will advise the agency on whether or not it should approve the drug. Merck's shares fell 1.1 percent to $45.49 in midday trading.

Suvorexant is the first in a new class of sleep medications that block chemicals in the brain called orexins that help keep people awake. Known as orexigen receptor antagonists, these drugs are designed both to help patients fall asleep and stay asleep.

Merck studied two different doses of the drug. In one trial, non-elderly patients received 40 milligrams while patients over the age of 65 received 30. In another, non-elderly patients were given 20 milligrams while elderly patients were given 15. A third study examined doses as low as 10 milligrams and as high as 80.

The reviewers said that while there appeared to be clear evidence that the drug was more effective than a placebo, there was little evidence to show that the higher doses are substantially superior to the 10-15 milligram doses and considerable evidence showing they were less safe.

"Suvorexant clearly causes dose related, next day effects, including sedation, which can be of significant concern," the reviewers said. "Perhaps most importantly, the results of a formal driving study demonstrate that suvorexant can cause significant impairment in driving the morning after dosing."

The reviewers said the data suggest that a low dose should be recommended, at least initially.

Peter Kellogg, Merck's chief financial officer, said he is not surprised by the FDA's review, given the agency's broader concerns about sleep drugs.

Speaking in a breakout session at the UBS Global Healthcare Conference in New York, Kellogg said it is "understandable" that the FDA has questions about dosage.

About 60 million prescriptions for sleeping pills were written in the United States in 2011, according to healthcare research firm I.M.S. Of those, roughly 40 million contained zolpidem, the active ingredient in Sanofi SA's Ambien.

In January, the FDA told drugmakers they should lower the recommended dose of zolpidem in women to 5 milligrams from 10 for immediate-release products such as Ambien, Edluar and Zolpimist, while doses for extended-release products should be lowered to 6.25 milligrams from 12.5.

The recommendation came in response to hundreds of reports of driving accidents involving people taking zolpidem. The drug typically stays in women's bodies longer than in men's. The FDA said that for men, healthcare providers should consider prescribing lower doses.

In the case of Merck's drug, even the 15 mg dose -- the lowest proposed for marketing by Merck -- may be too high for certain populations such as obese women, the reviewers noted.

"If a dosage strength lower than 15 mg is unavailable, we would need to consider if the drug could be marketed safely at all," they said.

They also noted that suvorexant seems to increase the risk of suicidal thoughts and behavior in a dose-related fashion, and they said it seems to be associated with certain elements of a "Narcolepsy-like syndrome."

Narcolepsy is a disorder that causes periods of extreme daytime sleepiness. It may also cause cataplexy, in which a patient may experience muscle weakness, sometimes precipitated by strong emotions.

Merck asked an external committee to review reports and suspected reports of cataplexy. The committee reviewed 45 cases of suspected cataplexy and determined that none could be defined as cataplexy. The FDA reviewers said, however, that their own review suggests that at least one, and perhaps several more of those cases could reasonably have been cases of actual cataplexy.

"The documents are tough, in our opinion," said Mark Schoenebaum, an analyst at ISI Group. "The high dose is deemed unsafe, and the FDA wonders if there is enough data at the safer low dose to draw firm safety conclusions."

If the FDA were to require the company to run an additional low-dose trial, it would take about a year, giving Merck the ability to refile its application in about 18 months.

Given the safety questions raised by the reviewers, "we expect a contentious panel discussion," said Seamus Fernandez, an analyst at Leerink Swann.

While analysts do not expect suvorexant to take a major share of the market for sleeping pills, many of which are now generic, it is expected, if approved, to generate sales of $521 million by 2017 according to an average estimate of 7 analysts polled by Thomson Reuters.

(Reporting by Toni Clarke in Washington; additional reporting by Jessica Toonkel in New York; Editing by Theodore d'Afflisio and Sofina Mirza-Reid)

In one of the most electric moments since the IRS controversy erupted nearly two weeks ago, Lois Lerner unwaveringly but briefly defended herself before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. But she would say no more, citing legal advice in the face of a federal investigation.

Members of Congress have angrily complained that Lerner and other high-ranking IRS officials did not inform them that conservative groups were singled out, even though lawmakers repeatedly asked the IRS about it after hearing complaints from local tea party groups.

The Justice Department has launched a criminal probe of the murky events over the 2010 and 2012 election campaigns, saying it is looking into potential civil rights violations. Top IRS officials say Lerner didn't tell them for nearly a year after she learned that agents working under her had improperly singled out conservative groups for additional scrutiny when they applied for tax-exempt status.

Under unrelenting criticism most forcefully from Republicans but also from Democrats and people outside politics administration officials from President Barack Obama on down have denounced the targeting as inappropriate and inexcusable.

Lerner, who heads the IRS division that handles applications for tax-exempt status and first disclosed the targeting at a legal conference, has said the same. But she also spoke up for herself Wednesday, sitting stern-faced at the committee witness table.

"I have not done anything wrong," she said. "I have not broken any laws, I have not violated any IRS rules or regulations, and I have not provided false information to this or any other congressional committee."

By one lawmaker's count, Lerner was asked 14 times by members of Congress or their staffs without revealing that the groups had been targeted. On Wednesday, lawmakers didn't get a chance to ask Lerner again.

Nine minutes after she began speaking, Lerner was excused, though committee Chairman Darrell Issa, R-Calif., said he might recall her. He and other Republicans say they believe she forfeited her Fifth Amendment privilege not to testify by giving an opening statement in which she proclaimed her innocence, but several law professors were skeptical they could make that stick.

Issa later said he would consult with others including her lawyer and House attorneys before determining whether to summon her again, hopefully deciding by the time Congress returns from an upcoming recess early next month.

"She's a fact witness with a tremendous amount that she could tell us," Issa said.

By leaving early, Lerner missed out on a six-hour grilling that three other witnesses endured.

The hearing was Congress' third on the IRS controversy in the past week. Taken together, testimony by current and former officials indicates that Lerner's actions were consistent with theirs: Once officials learned that conservative groups were being targeted, they say they made sure the practice was stopped, but they were slow to tell superiors, if they did so at all.

They also didn't tell Congress, until Lerner herself made it public at a May 10 legal conference.

"Think about it. For more than a year, the IRS knew that it had inappropriately targeted groups of Americans based on their political beliefs without mentioning it," Issa said. "There seemed to be a culture of insulation that puts higher priority on deniability than addressing blatant wrongdoing."

The hearings have been notable for what they have not shown as well as what they have. No evidence has emerged that anyone outside the IRS, including the White House, directed agents to go after conservative groups. And there has been no evidence that anyone outside the IRS was made aware that the groups were being targeted until a few weeks before the inspector general released his report on the situation last week.

Still, Obama's top spokesman said Wednesday the White House is facing "legitimate criticisms" for its shifting accounts about who knew what, and when they knew it.

Press secretary Jay Carney first said only Obama's top lawyer knew the IRS was being investigated in the weeks before the inspector general's report was released. Later, he said the chief of staff and other top officials also knew.

"There have been some legitimate criticisms about how we're handling this," Carney said. "And I say 'legitimate' because I mean it."

The report said IRS agents in a Cincinnati office started targeting tea party and other conservative groups for additional scrutiny in March or April of 2010. By August 2010, "tea party" became part of a "be on the lookout," or "BOLO" list of terms to flag for additional screening.

Lerner learned in June 2011 that agents in her division were singling out groups with "Tea Party" and "Patriots" in their applications for tax-exempt status, the report said. She ordered agents to scrap the criteria immediately, but later it evolved to include groups that promoted the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

"After that date, Ms. Lerner had 14 opportunities in direct and distinct interactions with the Ways & Means Committee and with this committee 14 different occasions where she could have set the record straight, and she chose not to do it," said Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio.

Lerner, 62, is an attorney who joined the IRS in 2001. She expressed pride in her 34-year career in federal government, which has included work at the Justice Department and Federal Election Commission, and she said she currently oversees 900 workers and a budget approaching $100 million.

She has faced no discipline for her actions, IRS officials said. A new acting commissioner is conducting a 30-day review of the division.

J. Russell George, the Treasury Department inspector general for tax administration, has blamed ineffective management for allowing agents to improperly target conservative groups for more than 18 months.

On Wednesday, he hinted that there may be more revelations to come. He told the oversight committee that his office has since uncovered other questionable criteria used by agents to screen applications for tax-exempt status. But he refused to elaborate.

"As we continue our review of this matter, we have recently identified some other BOLOs that raised concerns about political factors," George said. "I can't get into more detail at this time as to the information that is there because it's still incomplete.

Lerner's supervisors said they, too, were kept in the dark for nearly a year. One of those supervisors was Deputy IRS Commissioner Steven Miller, who later became acting head of the agency. He was forced last week to resign.

Miller said he first learned in May 2012 that conservative groups had been singled out. He promptly told his boss, IRS Commissioner Douglas Shulman.

But for the second straight day, Shulman testified that he didn't tell anyone in the Treasury Department or the White House because he was awaiting the results of an audit by the agency's inspector general. The IRS is part of the Treasury Department.

Shulman stood by that Wednesday, and was pressed once again by lawmakers about why he didn't say anything.

"At the time I learned about this list, I felt I was taking the appropriate actions and that my course was the proper one, and I still feel that way today," Shulman said.

Shulman, who was appointed by President George W. Bush, left in November when his five-year term expired. Miller became acting commissioner when Shulman left.

In the spring of 2012, George told a top Treasury official that the inspector general's office was investigating complaints by conservative groups. George, however, did not reveal any details about what he had uncovered, said Deputy Treasury Secretary Neal Wolin, who also testified Wednesday.

"He told me only of the fact that he had undertaken such an audit, and he did not provide any findings," Wolin testified. "I told him that he should follow the facts wherever they lead. I told him that our job is to stay out of the way and let him do his work."

Wolin said he didn't tell any of his superiors at Treasury or the White House about the investigation.

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AP White House Correspondent Julie Pace contributed to this report.

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

But if you can get past this Mother of All Product Placements, you'll likely find yourself chuckling a lot during this silly but warm-hearted film, directed by Shawn Levy. Sure, it could be shorter, the script less predictable, the action (much) more believable.

But hey, this is Vaughn and Wilson, and if their onscreen banter doesn't quite live up to the riotous 2005 "Wedding Crashers," it's still pretty darned funny. These two may be woefully inept at technology or at least, their characters in the film are. But chemistry? That Vaughn and Wilson have down.

The premise, like the whole movie, is far-fetched but enjoyable. Billy (Vaughn) and Nick (Wilson) are watch salesmen. On a client call, they discover their company has shut down. Their own boss (John Goodman, appearing too briefly) thinks they're dinosaurs. And so, of course, they apply for an unpaid internship at Google.

Huh?

There was nothing else they could think of? Better to repress such logic-driven questions. Soon, the two are interviewing via video chat for the job, and here the actors are at their best, talking over each other as the duo improvises hysterical answers to geeky questions.

They get the job diversity, wouldn't ya know. At orientation, a stern taskmaster (a seriously funny Aasif Mandvi), describes the "Hunger Games"-like ordeal ahead: a set of challenges, with only the winning team attaining Google employment.

Perhaps because Google helped out with the film, it is never once questioned that this is the ultimate place to work. From the free food to the nap pods to the driverless cars to the adult-sized slides, and the always sunny days, this is the Shangri-La of the corporate world. No wonder a woman as beautiful as Rose Byrne, who plays Nick's love interest, works there.

As Billy and Nick endure coding seminars and the like, evoking sneers from the brilliant, obnoxious youths around them, jokes about the generation gap abound. Implausibly, Vaughn's Billy keeps saying "on the line" instead of "online" really, if he knew enough about Google to apply there, wouldn't he know the term "online"?

Still, it's amusing. And he does seem stuck in 1983, so obsessed is he with the film "Flashdance." Plenty of other movie references pop up. There's even a Quidditch game yup, everyone knows how to play except Billy and Nick and a very funny reference to "Back to the Future." Apt, really, because you could say this is a film about time travel.

Will Billy and Nick survive their trial-by-technology? Will their self-centered competitors come to see the value of a couple of old dinosaurs?

Do we really need to ask?

As corny and obvious as the script, co-written by Vaughn and Jared Stern, can be, there's a sliver of realism here too a few serious lines, painfully true, about the state of the job market for young people.

But hey, let's focus on the positive message: Even old fogeys can reinvent themselves. And perhaps even get a job at Google.

"The Internship," a 20th Century Fox Film Corp. release, is rated PG-13 for sexuality, some crude humor, partying and language. Running time: 119 minutes. Two and a half stars out of four.

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Motion Picture Association of America rating definitions:

PG-13 Parents strongly cautioned. Some material may be inappropriate for children under 13.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Despite the more than $50 billion that U.S. pharmaceutical companies have spent every year since the mid-2000s to discover new medications, drugmakers have barely improved on old standbys developed decades ago.

Research published on Monday showed that the effectiveness of new drugs, as measured by comparing the response of patients on those treatments to those taking a placebo, has plummeted since the 1970s.

While that is already unwelcome news to drug and biotech companies, the consequences for the pharmaceutical industry could get worse under President Barack Obama's healthcare law.

The law established an independent research institute to compare the effectiveness of different treatments for the same condition. That way, patients as well as private insurers and government programs such as Medicare can stop paying for less effective therapies. If the new analysis is correct, then "comparative effectiveness research" could conclude that older drugs, which are more likely to be generics, are better than pricey new brand names that deliver the most profits for drugmakers.

Fears of a crisis in drug innovation have grown over the years. When the healthcare journal Prescrire in 2011 ranked new drugs, only 17 of the 984 developed since 2001 were deemed "a real advance" or better. And a survey of 184 expert physicians in 15 specialties published last month in Nature Reviews Drug Discovery showed the doctors were more likely to rate drugs more than a decade old as "transformative."

To be sure, drugs that completely change outcomes for patients continue to emerge. Gleevec, from Novartis, greatly extends life for leukemia patients, for instance. New antivirals such as Incivek from Vertex Pharmaceuticals have doubled the cure rate in hepatitis C, and Eylea from Regeneron Pharmaceuticals is better than anything previously developed for macular degeneration.

Because of those and other examples, "we believe that a lot continues to be accomplished in terms of yielding very, very positive results for patients, so there seems to be a disconnect between that and this paper," said Randy Burkholder, deputy vice president of policy at the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA) trade group.

CANCER TO MENTAL ILLNESS

The new study in the journal Health Affairs examined 315 clinical trials that compared a drug to a placebo and were published in four of the world's top medical journals (BMJ, Journal of the American Medical Association, Lancet and New England Journal of Medicine) from 1966 to 2010. The drugs targeted the full range of human ills, from cardiovascular disease and infections to cancer, mental disorders and respiratory illness.

In the early years, drugs easily beat the placebo: They were, on average, 4.5 times as effective, where effectiveness means how well they lowered blood pressure, vanquished tumors, lifted depression or did whatever else they were intended to.

But the trend line was inexorably downhill, found Dr Mark Olfson of Columbia University and statistician Steven Marcus of the University of Pennsylvania. By the 1980s drugs were less than four times better; by the 1990s, twice as good, and by the 2000s just 36 percent better than a placebo. Since older drugs were much superior to placebo and newer ones only slightly so, that means older drugs were generally more effective than newer ones.

"Their results are pretty compelling," said Dr Aaron Kesselheim of Harvard Medical School, who helped conduct the survey of physicians on "transformative" drugs but was not involved in this study. "It does appear that things are headed in the same direction, with newer drugs having relatively less efficacy."

Experts disagree on why that should be, but suspicions range from the U.S. regulatory process to basic biology.

"It may be that the drug discoveries based on low-hanging fruit were made long ago," said Olfson, as with discoveries based on the most basic or easily targeted causes of high blood pressure. In that case, older drugs based on those targets would pack a bigger punch than newer ones that target less-central causes of disease.

Or, it could be that the patients who volunteer for clinical trials have gotten harder to treat. In many cases, people volunteer because existing drugs are not helping their cancer, schizophrenia or other condition, Olfson said, "and may have forms of the disease where it's harder for a drug to demonstrate a benefit."

Another explanation could be that the scientific quality of clinical trials has improved over the decades, as the Health Affairs analysis found. Human studies in the 2000s were more likely than those in the 1960s to enroll hundreds of patients rather than dozens.

"It may be that the compounds aren't getting less effective but that they're getting looked at more carefully," said Dr Harold Sox of the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice and former editor of the Annals of Internal Medicine.

'SOMETHING REAL IS GOING ON'

While experts agree that tougher trials and similar factors explain some of the decline in drugs' reported effectiveness, "something real is going on here," said Olfson. "Physicians keep saying that many of the new things just aren't working as well," and therefore prescribe antidepressant drugs called tricyclics (developed in the 1950s) instead of SSRIs (from the 1980s), or diuretics (invented in the 1920s) for high blood pressure instead of newer anti-hypertensives.

Whatever the reason for many new drugs packing less punch than old ones, that will not keep them from reaching patients.

"The way the drug regulatory system is set up, even if you have just a small advance, if you market it right it can be very profitable," said Kesselheim.

Critics of the high prices of drugs that are only marginally (if at all) more effective than older, cheaper, often generic medications hope that head-to-head studies will persuade more physicians to stop prescribing expensive but less effective drugs. The Affordable Care Act of 2010 - "Obamacare" - established the Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) to conduct such comparative effectiveness research.

The drug industry says it isn't worried. "Our sector is not concerned about objective, high-quality patient-centered comparative effectiveness research," said PhRMA's Burkholder. "We believe the substantial value of our products will continue to be demonstrated."

(Reporting by Sharon Begley; Editing by Michele Gershberg and Douglas Royalty)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The new chief of the Internal Revenue Service conceded on Friday there was "inappropriate" spending on a 2010 agency conference, a subject set to be the focus of one of three U.S. congressional hearings next week at which the IRS will likely face more criticism.

The IRS is already embroiled in a major political scandal over extra scrutiny it gave to conservative groups seeking tax-free status, and Republicans in the House of Representatives are likely to keep the White House on the defensive over the agency's actions.

Acting IRS Commissioner Danny Werfel said expenses associated with a conference held three years ago "should not have occurred."

The conference will be the focus of a report set for release on Tuesday from an IRS watchdog, Werfel said in a statement.

"This conference is an unfortunate vestige from a prior era. While there were legitimate reasons for holding the meeting, many of the expenses associated with it were inappropriate," said Werfel, named acting IRS commissioner two weeks ago.

The IRS has been under a spotlight for three weeks since a mid-level administrator publicly apologized at a conference for the extra scrutiny given to applications for tax-exempt status filed by conservative political groups.

The controversy that followed led to the ousting by President Barack Obama of the agency's top executive and an FBI investigation, and has become a major distraction for the White House.

The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, a watchdog agency that monitors the IRS, is expected to issue a long-planned report on the agency's spending on conferences, travel and awards, next week.

Republican Representative Darrell Issa, among the lawmakers probing the IRS, will hold a hearing on the report on Thursday, a congressional aide said.

The panel will hear from watchdog agency head J. Russell George, who earlier this month issued an audit on the extra scrutiny by the IRS of Tea Party groups' applications.

The aide said the hearing would be about "an upcoming audit uncovering information about excessive spending at IRS conferences."

A spokesman for the watchdog agency said he could not comment on the matter.

Werfel said that a conference like the one that took place in 2010 would not happen today. "Sweeping new spending restrictions have been put in place at the IRS," he said.

Earlier this year, Representative Charles Boustany, a Republican in charge of a House oversight subcommittee, wrote the IRS about reports that it produced a video including a parody of the television show "Star Trek" as part of an employee training program.

Steve Miller, whose last day as acting IRS Commissioner was Friday after he was asked by Obama to resign, responded at the time that the video was part of worker education to reduce travel and other costs, according to Boustany.

Boustany on Friday released what he said was a video made by IRS employees, showing several in a mock dance lesson of "SB-SE" executives at "an undisclosed location." Those initials refer to the IRS small business-self employed division.

The earlier "Star Trek" video shows IRS workers dressed as characters from the show in a spaceship.

"Its never-ending mission is to seek out new tax forms, to explore strange new regulations, to boldly go where no government employee has gone before," a narrator says.

These two and a third video with a theme using the television show "Gilligan's Island" were all produced for an Anaheim, California, employee conference, according to a congressional aide.

Boustany said Miller acknowledged that the Star Trek and Gilligan's Island videos cost at least $60,000 to make.

THREE HEARINGS

Several congressional committees are probing the scandal involving extra scrutiny for the conservative groups, while others in the past week have raised other concerns.

Issa's House Government and Oversight Committee will hear from George on Thursday. The House Ways and Means Committee will hear from Tea Party groups on Tuesday, and Werfel will testify before the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government on Monday.

All are controlled by Republicans.

Obama tapped Werfel to take over as acting IRS head several days after an IRS official apologized for the scrutiny to a meeting of tax attorneys in Washington. The president said he first learned about the scrutiny when that official revealed it on May 10.

The watchdog agency report found no evidence that Obama administration officials directed the targeting of groups with "Tea Party" in their names. Still, many Republicans are skeptical and note that there seems to have been no corresponding list of names for liberal groups seeking tax-exempt status.

Agency officials say the rise of the Tea Party movement at the time led low-level officials to take shortcuts in processing a surge of new applications for tax-exempt statue.

The IRS is late in providing documents to three of the congressional committees that have sought internal emails and other correspondence.

The agency in a statement said it is "moving aggressively and taking the data requests very seriously. As a precautionary measure, the IRS is casting a wide net to capture any potentially related materials."

(Additional reporting by Patrick Temple-West; Editing by Nick Zieminski and Eric Walsh)

Jolie, 37, revealed on Tuesday that she carries a defective BRCA1 gene that puts her at high risk of developing breast and ovarian cancer. She had mastectomies in February followed by reconstruction with implants in April, Dr. Kristi Funk said in an interview with The Associated Press.

Funk treated Jolie at the Pink Lotus Breast Center in Beverly Hills and detailed her care on the center's website. She would not disclose when Jolie learned she carried the faulty gene, which gives a woman up to an 87 percent lifetime risk of developing breast cancer and up to a 54 percent chance of ovarian cancer.

"This family history would certainly meet any insurance carrier's criteria to cover genetic testing," Funk wrote.

It is unclear whether Jolie will have her ovaries removed, although she wrote in her op-ed piece in the New York Times that she "started with the breasts" because they posed the highest cancer risk.

Removing the ovaries is often advised for women with such gene mutations, said Dr. Charis Eng, a medical geneticist and cancer specialist at the Cleveland Clinic who had no role in Jolie's care.

"We usually say 'try to have your kids'" and then have your ovaries removed by age 40, Eng said. It's not possible to remove every speck of breast tissue, but removing the breasts and ovaries leaves very little behind that could develop cancer, so it dramatically lowers a woman's risks, she explained.

On the surgery center's website, Funk described Jolie's three operations, which were done through the crease underneath each breast. Jolie's partner, actor Brad Pitt, "was on hand to greet her as soon as she came around from the anesthetic, as he was during each of the operations," Funk wrote.

On Feb. 2, Jolie had a procedure aimed at preserving the nipples, which usually are removed when a mastectomy is done to treat breast cancer. Half of the skin is lifted from the surface of the breast tissue and a small disc of tissue is taken to be checked for cancer.

The tissue proved healthy and on Feb. 16 she had the two mastectomies. Doctors also took an unusual step: injecting dye to determine which lymph nodes in her arms were draining fluid from the breasts. Those nodes would be most likely to contain cancer if any turned out to be lurking in the breast, Funk explained.

When a preventive mastectomy is done, "there's a 2 to 8 percent chance" of finding cancer, even though there was no indication of cancer beforehand, Funk said. Stitches or a tiny clip can be placed to show the location of these key "sentinel" lymph nodes in case Jolie ever were to develop cancer in the future and those nodes would need to be checked again.

Also during this operation, doctors placed a tissue expander, a balloon-like device that is slowly inflated with saline to stretch the skin and make room for a permanent implant. Even though the implant could have been done at the time of the mastectomy, Jolie chose the two-step procedure to optimize the final cosmetic appearance.

Four days after her mastectomies, "I was pleased to find her not only in good spirits with bountiful energy, but with two walls in her house covered with freshly assembled storyboards for the next project she is directing," Funk wrote on the website.

On April 27, doctors did her reconstruction, using a newer teardrop-shaped implant plus sheets of cadaver skin, which "creates like a sling under the implant" to give a more natural look, Funk said.

The website describes how women with gene mutations that raise their risk for cancer are monitored starting at age 18, but Funk said she could not disclose when Jolie was tested and learned she had the BRCA1 gene. About 5 percent to 10 percent of breast cancers and about 15 percent of ovarian cancers are thought to be due to BRCA gene mutations.

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Online:

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Researchers at Ohio University in Athens found that while awhips its head from side to side to gorge on its victims, the Allosaurus a theropod that lived about 150 million years ago in the late may have been a more dexterous hunter, using its neck and body to tug flesh from carcasses, the same way a falcon does.

"Apparently one size doesn't fit all when it comes to dinosaur feeding styles," Eric Snively, a paleontologist at Ohio University and lead author of the new study, said in a statement. "Many people think ofas a smaller and earlier version of T. rex, but our engineering analyses show that they were very different predators." []

The study's findings were published online today (May 21) in the .

Build-a-dinosaur

To study the dinosaur's feeding technique, Snively and his colleagues ran sophisticated computer simulations of an Allosaurus' head and neck movements using a high-resolution cast of the dinosaur's skull and neck, plus CT scans of its bones. By combining dinosaur anatomy with mechanical engineering and computer visualization, the researchers were able to experiment with how the Allosaurus attacked prey, fed, or simply looked around.

"The engineering approach combines all the biological data things like where the muscle forces attach and where the joints stop motion into a single model," study co-author John Cotton, a mechanical engineer and assistant professor in the Russ College of Engineering and Technology at Ohio University, said in a statement. "We can then simulate the physics and predict what Allosaurus was actually capable of doing."

The researchers worked with anatomists to "re-flesh" their 3D Allosaurus computer model. In the process of building these neck and jaw muscles, air sinuses, and other soft tissues, the researchers found an unusually placed neck muscle, called longissimus capitis superficialis.

In most other predatory dinosaurs, including the , this neck muscle stretches from the side of the neck to a bony structure on the back outer corners of the skull, the researchers said.

"This neck muscle acts like a rider pulling on the reins of a horse's bridle," Snively explained. "If the muscle on one side contracts, it would turn the head in that direction, but if the muscles on both sides pull, it pulls the head straight back."

A different kind of predator

With the Allosaurus, however, the researchers found that the longissimus muscle was attached much lower on the skull, which would have equipped the dinosaur with a different set of head and neck movements.

"Allosaurus was uniquely equipped to drive its head down into prey, hold it there, and then pull the head straight up and back with the neck and body, tearing flesh from the carcass kind of like how a power shovel or backhoe rips into the ground," Snively said.

In today's modern world, this same feeding technique is seen with small falcons, the researchers said.

The scientists also found that the Allosaurus had a relatively light skull, which likely made it a more dexterous predator, compared with .

"Allosaurus, with its lighter head and neck, was like a skater who starts spinning with her arms tucked in, whereas T. rex, with its massive head and neck and heavy teeth out front, was more like the skater with her arms fully extended and holding bowling balls in her hand," Snively said. "She and the T. rex need a lot more muscle force to get going."

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DUBLIN (Reuters) - Ireland is preparing to officially reject accusations by U.S. Senators this week that it acts as a tax haven for large multinationals and launch a diplomatic offensive to repair the damage done to its reputation abroad.

Ireland has been forced to defend its low corporate tax rate after the Senate said last week that iPhone and iPad maker Apple paid little or no tax on tens of billions of dollars in profits channeled through Irish subsidiaries and that it had effectively negotiated a special corporate tax rate of less than 2 percent.

Irish ministers and officials have lined up to insist that their tax system is transparent and that other countries were responsible if Apple paid tax at such low rates. Finance Minister Michael Noonan said Ireland would not be the "whipping boy" for the Senate subcommittee.

The government will likely put its response on the record this week, two government sources said, and will tell the committee led by veteran tax sleuth Senator Carl Levin that Ireland is not a tax haven, nor did it cut Apple a special tax deal.

"Undoubtedly there's a risk of reputational damage if we don't defend our corner and set out the facts, so of course that's happening," Ireland's European Affairs Minister Lucinda Creighton told Reuters, referring to the response being drafted.

"I've no doubt there will be a strong response, and we will strongly defend Ireland as a safe, a legally sound and a good place to do business. What you see is what you get, and that is why so many global companies are headquartered in Ireland."

Creighton was speaking from Dublin airport ahead of a four-day trip to Washington and New York where she will meet business leaders and politicians and address the prestigious Columbia University.

While the trade mission was planned long before last week's revelations on Capitol Hill, Creighton said she and her fellow ministers would use every opportunity to put right the "misinformation" heard in the Senate last week.

Ireland has a network in place to quickly spread that message. After it took a financial bailout in late 2010, Dublin set up its Economic Messaging Unit to coordinate communications between all government agencies, departments and embassies.

Irish embassies from Beijing to Buenos Aires were issued rebuttal points last week, a normal practice for major stories, while Ireland's ambassador in Washington held a conference call with government departments and the state agency charged with attracting investment into Ireland to discuss the next steps.

DINNER JOKES IN BRUSSELS

Within weeks of coming to office in 2011, Prime Minister Enda Kenny summoned all the country's ambassadors to Dublin to brief them on how best to restore a reputation he said was in tatters.

The fresh assault will be similar, one diplomatic source said, adding that the key focus would be liaising with a strong network of contacts in the U.S. Administration and on Capitol Hill, where the leaders of Ireland and the United States traditionally meet for lunch to mark St. Patrick's Day.

While Dublin was able to call on ex-President Bill Clinton to tell U.S. companies last year that they would be "nuts" not to invest in Ireland, the task could be trickier this time with the criticism emanating from its normally friendly ally.

"That was a blindside for Ireland Inc. because we always thought we were on the same page as Anglo-American capitalism. We thought it would stick up for us," said Hugo Brady, senior research fellow at the Centre for European Reform in Brussels.

"The PR side of it is really bad for Ireland because Ireland and tax haven are going together in mainstream conversation in Brussels. It hasn't done our image much good when people start making dinner jokes about Apple being an Irish company."

While Ireland will concentrate its energy in the United States to keep attracting jobs from the likes of Apple, Google and Pfizer, it will also need to keep an eye out for any backlash in Europe where its low corporate tax rate of 12.5 percent has drawn criticism in the past.

One influential member of the European Parliament said that while Dublin should be given time to adjust, it should adopt a standardized European Union tax system and ultimately a minimum rate of corporation tax.

"Ireland should take its hands out of other countries' pockets. Ireland's tax system is designed to tax income other people have earned," Sven Giegold told Reuters, underscoring how emotive the issue will be in elections in his native Germany.

"If you want to heat up a room in an election meeting in Germany, you have to talk about tax avoidance. It has become one of the most emotional topics. People are outraged."

(Additional reporting by John O'Donnell in Brussels; Editing by Will Waterman)