Daily News Channel
As prosecutors asked to jail Bernard Madoff for 150 years, a U.S. District Court judge Friday entered a preliminary order calling on the convicted Ponzi schemer to forfeit more than $170 billion in assets, prosecutors announced. Madoff’s wife, Ruth, will be allowed to keep $2.5 million in funds “in settlement of the claims she would have otherwise brought against the property,” acting U.S.
The horde of people gathered on the streets outside Liverpool Street train station, one of the city’s major transport hubs, and burst out into cheers, chants and dances to the tunes of “Billie Jean,” “Bad” and “Thriller.” Life-long Jackson fan Milo Yiannopoulos organized the moonwalk, the singer’s trademark backwards shuffle, by sending messages via Twitter and Facebook. His messages went “viral” –spreading like wildfire around the Internet — as the number of people wanting to join his impromptu “flash mob” event far exceeded his expectations: “I don’t know what I’ve unleashed here,” Yiannopoulos, who said he doesn’t even know how to moonwalk, told CNN
Sales of Michael Jackson’s albums have gone through the roof since the news of his death. On Friday, the late singer was enjoying the commercial revival that had been eluding him in recent years, due to a lack of new material and public interest. Michael Jackson albums took top 15 slots on Amazon.com top 50 album downloads
Michael Jackson’s sudden death has thrown the peculiar path of his later life back into the spotlight. He spent much of the past four years flitting from one part of the globe to another, failing to put down permanent roots.
An autopsy on entertainer Michael Jackson has been scheduled for Friday and results are expected by afternoon, according to the Los Angeles, California, coroner’s office. The “King of Pop,” who was preparing for a comeback tour, died Thursday at age 50. Jackson, under apparent cardiac arrest, was taken from his home by paramedics to Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, where a team of physicians tried to resuscitate him for more than an hour, said Jackson’s brother Jermaine
Embattled South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford plans to return to work Friday, despite calls for him to resign because of a sex scandal. “After spending Thursday with his family in Sullivan’s Island, South Carolina, Governor Mark Sanford has returned to Columbia and plans on holding a Cabinet meeting on Friday,” his office told CNN by e-mail Thursday, a day after he admitted having an extramarital affair with an Argentine woman
As the news of Michael Jackson’s death slowly filtered through the crowds at the world’s largest music festival this evening, there was a feeling of confusion and shock among fans. Festival goers at Worthy Farm in Somerset, England could not quite believe the news as it was sent by text message and email from friends and relatives on mobile phones. “It’s totally weird,” Sally Anne Aldous, 29, told CNN over the phone from Glastonbury.
The tragedy of Michael Jackson’s death at age 50, reportedly from cardiac arrest, pales in comparison to the tragedy of his life. To understand all that Jackson had and lost requires wiping away three decades of plastic surgeries that deformed him, erratic behavior that made his name synonymous with the warping powers of fame, and a 2005 trial for sexually abusing a child that, even though he was spared of any finding of wrongdoing, made him a pariah to all but the most brainwashed of fans. But if you can forgive or forget all that, underneath was one of the most talented entertainers of the 20th century.
Michael Jackson help usher in the age of video, and his life — for better and worse — was beamed into homes for decades. In 1984, Jackson was burned while singing for a Pepsi-Cola commercial in Los Angeles, when the special effects smoke bomb misfired.
Sharp-witted. Direct. In control.