Forums Forums National News King of Pop Michael Jackson Has Died

Never mind the singing - the dancing, just think how many are still copying his dances, he will live on in dance.

How long before the "Jokes" start circulating?

Already 10-20 Mates on Facebook acting like nobheads.... trying to be cool by not caring about current events.

Jokes have already started as well...wont be many new ones though from what were used to.

Thing is.. Ive also seen someone else complaining about all this hype... yet people were mean about Jade Goody???

Im sorry..but Michael actually did something with his life, and brought enjoyment to millions....Thats why

GUTTED

Just got in from the pub to this...Gobsmacked!!

Michael Jackson has died in hospital after suffering a heart attack

The 50-year-old eccentric singer was pronounced dead after being taken to hospital in Los Angeles in a deep coma, city and law enforcement officials said.

Paramedics called to his home in LA found Jackson was not breathing. He was given CPR as the ambulance raced to hospital, a fire department captain told reporters.

Jackson was pronounced dead at about 2226 British time.

He had arrived at UCLA Medical Centre in Los Angeles in full cardiac arrest, said Fred Corral, of the Los Angeles County Coroner's office.

He said the cause of death was not known and a post-mortem was due to take place later today.

A spokesman for the Los Angeles Police Department said the robbery and homicide
team was investigating Jackson's death because of its "high profile" but
warned reporters not to read anything into this.

People are gathering outside the hospital to pay their respects.

Sky's US correspondent Robert Nesbit said people had descended on the legendary Apollo Theatre in New York and flowers were being placed on Jackson's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in Los Angeles.

sky news.co.uk

Tributes paid to Michael Jackson

Friends and colleagues of Michael Jackson and music industry insiders have been paying tribute to the star following his death at the age of 50.


QUINCY JONES, MUSIC PRODUCER
"I'm absolutely devastated at this news. I just don't have the words. Divinity brought our souls together and allowed us to do what we could do through the 80s.

"To this day that music is played in every corner of the world, and the reason is because he had it all - talent, grace and professionalism. I've lost my little brother today and part of my soul has gone with him."


LISA MARIE PRESLEY, JACKSON'S EX-WIFE
"I am so very sad and confused with every emotion possible. I am heartbroken for his children, who I know were everything to him and for his family. This is such a massive loss on so many levels, words fail me."

REV AL SHARPTON, CIVIL RIGHTS CAMPAIGNER
"As a friend of Michael's for the past 35 years, I call on people from around the world to pray for him and his family."


P DIDDY, SINGER
"Michael Jackson showed me that you can actually see the beat. He made the music come to life! He made me believe in magic. I will miss him!"


JANE FONDA, ACTRESS
"I am stunned. My friend, Michael Jackson is dead. He lived with me for a week on 'Golden Pond' set after Thriller.


ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER, CALIFORNIA GOVERNOR
"He was one of the most influential and iconic figures in the music industry... Our hearts go out to the Jackson family, Michael's children and to his fans worldwide."

USHER, SINGER
"My heart goes out to the King of Pop and his family."


PAUL GAMBACCINI, MUSIC JOURNALIST
"Definitely one of the greatest stars of recorded music. There is no doubt of that. He would be in the top 10 of all time, regardless of who the other nine people were.

"But you also have to remember that he went through different stages and owed some of his popularity to collaborators - who I'm sure will be feeling particularly struck tonight - Quincy Jones, with whom he did the great trilogy of albums: Off The Wall, Thriller and Bad.

And he had his historic string of hits Motown with the Jackson Five. And there's no doubt that the records will be listened to for decades to come."


URI GELLER, FRIEND"I'm just devastated, very very sad. I pray that his soul is up there now. I'm still trying to hold on to the glimmer that it is not true. It is too surreal for me to absorb that Michael is no longer with us.

"Michael was in good shape because he was practising, he was training, he was rehearsing for the shows [due to start in London next month]. Michael was careful with what he ate, he was just fine. Last time I know and heard of what he was doing he was in great shape. And this is why I'm so absolutely shocked by this news."


MATT FIDDES, FORMER BODYGUARD
"He's the most misunderstood man in world. Everyone thought he was this weird freak but when you're with him he's as normal as everyone else. I don't think he felt he was as famous as everyone else thought, he didn't know any different.

"He was a very caring guy who would go out of his way to help the sick. One night in London he wanted to see some homeless people. He sent them loads of pizzas in secret. The guy had a good heart.

"We used to dress him up and sneak out of hotel room and do normal things in shops, people wouldn't know who he was but we wanted to give him a taste of the real life."


STUART WILLIAMS, MUSIC JOURNALIST
''Michael Jackson was the biggest news story this year in music anyway, you know, a man who has not played live for over a decade, a huge come back, one of the biggest selling artists of all time, 50 sold-out dates, 750,000 tickets at the 02.

"And that was going to be, people thought, the beginning of the next stage of his career, maybe getting back with The Jackson Five, maybe playing in Vegas, it is just utterly flabbergasting."

The people who tried to destroy him over 25 years are now paying 'tributes'? I don't understand.

Pop 'Genius' Michael Jackson Has Died At 50




Stars from the world of showbiz have joined devastated Michael Jackson fans in paying tribute to the pop legend, who has died after suffering from a suspected heart attack.


The King of Pop suffered a cardiac arrest at his home in Holmby Hills and was taken to the UCLA medical centre where he was pronounced dead.
His brother Jermaine Jackson confirmed the death of the "legendary" star at the age of 50 after doctors worked for more than an hour to try to revive him.

He said: "We believe he suffered a cardiac arrest at his home, however the cause of his death is unknown until the results of the autopsy are known.

"The personal physician who was with him at the time attempted to resuscitate him."

Police in LA are investigating Jackson's death because of its "high profile", but a spokesman said nothing else should be read into their involvement.

The star's body was flown by helicopter from the hospital to the LA coroner's office and a post-mortem examination is expected to take place later today.


The first reports of Jackson's death emerged on the internet and sparked a huge surge in online traffic as people searched for the latest news.

Twitter has been flooded with tributes from fans and celebrities alike including Demi Moore, Ashton Kutcher and Stephen Fry.

Moore also paid tribute to Charlie's Angels actress Farrah Fawcett, who died earlier on Thursday.


A tweet from Emily Eavis, organiser of the Glastonbury music festival, said there would be tributes "all over the site all weekend".

TV channels around the world interrupted programmes to break the news of Jackson's death, while many radio stations are playing his hits back-to-back.

His first wife Lisa Marie Presley led the tributes saying: "I'm so very sad and confused with every emotion possible.

"This is such a massive loss on so many levels, words fail me."

Sir Howard Stringer, head of Jackson's record company Sony, added: "Michael Jackson was a brilliant troubadour for his generation, a genius whose music reflected the passion and creativity of an era."

And Justin Timberlake - who has been compared to a young Jackson - said: "We have lost a genius and a true ambassador of not only pop music, but of all music."

Fans gathered near Jackson's childhood home in Gary, Indiana, to pay their respects to the singer who left the city years ago.

In LA, people lined the streets outside the hospital and coroner's office while others laid flowers and candles on his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
Office worker Yoshiko Plair, who went to the hospital as soon as she heard reports of Jackson's heart attack, said: "He changed music, he's the reason all that black music is on MTV now.

"I followed him from that first song. I'm going to mourn him today and probably for the rest of my life."

On the other side of America, fans congregated at the Apollo Theatre in Harlem, New York, where Jackson gave some of his earliest performances, to sing and dance in his memory.

Civil rights campaigner the Rev Al Sharpton was among crowds and told mourners: "I have known him at his high moments and his low moments and I know he would want us to pray for his family."

Rumours spread about the state of Jackson's health when four of his This Is It comeback concerts were postponed last month.

Close friend Uri Geller suggested it may have been the stress of preparing for the shows, which were due to be held at the O2 Arena in London, that killed him.

But organisers AEG Live insisted the concerts were moved because of huge scale of the 50-date tour and had "absolutely nothing to do with health".

Jackson lived most of his life in the public spotlight after first performing in public with his brothers at the age of just six.


He released his first solo album in 1972 and the worldwide smash-hit Thriller ten years later.

The album spawned seven singles which made the Top 10 and its global sales have been estimated at anywhere between 50 million and 100 million.

He unveiled his signature "moonwalk" dance move in 1983 while performing Billie Jean, gliding across the stage and instantly setting a trend which would be copied countless times.

But alongside his success, his personal life was frequently the subject of controversy and his eccentric behaviour saw him nicknamed Wacko Jacko.

In 1993, he was accused of sexually abusing a 13-year-old boy, but no charges were filed against him and the matter was settled out of court in 1994.

In the same year, he married Presley, the only child of Elvis, but the union ended in divorce in 1996.

He went on to marry Debbie Rowe, the mother of his two eldest children Prince Michael I and Paris Michael.

Jackson was widely criticised when he held his third child Prince Michael II - known as Blanket - over the rails of a hotel balcony in 2002.

After being accused in another child abuse case, he was acquitted in 2005 and spent much of his time since living outside the US.

Sky News showbiz correspondent Steve Hargrave said: "We can't underestimate the effect this will have on Michael Jackson fans who have loved his music and career.
"They would have been assuming that in about three weeks' time their idol would have been back on the stage performing his greatest hits. To suddenly find out this news will be devastating."

SKY NEWS

Future Of Jackson's Children Now In Doubt


The death of Michael Jackson leaves his three children facing an uncertain future

It is reported Jackson's mother Katherine has offered to take in Michael Joseph Jackson Junior, Paris Michael Katherine Jackson and Prince Michael Jackson II.

Jackson family lawer Brian Oxman said: "Probably Mrs Jackson will take care of them, she loves them dearly."

Michael Joseph, 12, and his 11-year-old sister Paris Michael were from Jackson's marriage to nurse Debbie Rowe in 1996.

Early that year, Ms Rowe was artificially inseminated and she was six months pregnant with their son when they married in Australia in November.

Their eldest was born in February 2007.

In an interview with the Daily Mail last year, Ms Rowe said: "Of course it was artificial insemination. Paris was conceived in Paris, that's how she got her name. Michael wanted to call her Princess, but I thought that was stupid."

Paris Katherine Jackson was born on April 3, 1998.

"I had so many problems when I was pregnant with Paris," Ms Rowe said.

"After that, I couldn't have any more children. Michael was upset about that, he couldn't understand it. He wanted more babies."



After the couple divorced in 1999, Jackson took on sole responsibility for their children's upbringing but Ms Rowe told the Mail she still saw them.

"Michael and I are fine. I see him and the kids all the time. They live in Las Vegas now, just a three-hour drive away."

Prince Michael was born to a surrogate mother Jackson never met.

In 2002, he caused a public outcry by dangling the baby - referred to as "Blanket" - out of a third-floor hotel balcony in front of the world's press.

Jackson always denied allegations that his first two children were not biologically his.

"I used a surrogate mother (for Blanket) and my own sperm cells. I had my own sperm cells in my other two children. They are all my children," he said.

When they appeared in public the children wore veils to disguise their identity.

However, in Las Vegas last year snappers managed to take photographs of three children with Jackson's entourage, believed to be his.

Ms Rowe told the Mail: "I turned out two pretty good-looking kids. For that I am proud."

She added: "The veils were my idea, not Michael's. I had kidnap threats when they were babies. I did not want them to be recognised. I'm not happy they've been photographed without the veils."

The fate of the three is expected to be revealed when Jackson's will is read.

SKY NEWS

The impact on the news was worldwide
-------------------------------------
Web slows after Jackson's death

The internet suffered a number of slowdowns as people the world over rushed to verify accounts of Michael Jackson's death.

Search giant Google confirmed to the BBC that when the news first broke it feared it was under attack.

Millions of people who Googled the star's name were greeted with an error page rather than a list of results.

It warned users "your query looks similar to automated requests from a computer virus or spyware application".

"It's true that between approximately 2.40PM Pacific and 3.15PM Pacific, some Google News users experienced difficulty accessing search results for queries related to Michael Jackson and saw the error page," said Google spokesman Gabriel Stricker.

It was around this time that the singer was officially pronounced dead.

Google's trends page showed that searches for Michael Jackson had reached such a volume that in its so called "hotness" gauge the topic was rated "volcanic".

The BBC news website reported that traffic to the site at 0400 BST was 48% higher than average.

Fail

Google was not the only company overwhelmed by the public's clamour for information.

The microblogging service Twitter crashed with the sheer volume of people using the service.


Searches for topics related to Michael Jackson peaked at 3PM Pacific
Queries about the star soon rocketed to the top of its updates and searches. But the amount of traffic meant it suffered one of its well-known outages.

Before the company's servers crashed, TweetVolume noted that "Michael Jackson" appeared in more than 66,500 Twitter updates.

According to initial data from Trendrr, a Web service that tracks activity on social media sites, the number of Twitter posts Thursday afternoon containing "Michael Jackson" totaled more than 100,000 per hour.

That put news of Jackson's death at least on par with the Iran protests, as Twitter posts about Iran topped 100,000 per hour on June 16 and eventually climbed to 220,000 per hour.

Early reports of Mr Jackson's death and the confusion surrounding it caused a rash of changes and corrections to be made on his Wikipedia page as editors tried to keep up with events and the number of people trying to update the page.

TMZ, the popular celebrity gossip site that broke the story following a tip-off that a paramedic had visited the singers home also crashed.

There was a domino effect as users then fled to other sites. Hollywood gossip writer Perez Hilton's site was among those to flame out.

Keynote Systems reported that its monitoring showed performance problems for the web sites of AOL, CBS, CNN, MSNBC and Yahoo.

Beginning at 2.30PM Pacific "the average speed for downloading news sites doubled from less than four seconds to almost nine seconds," said Shawn White, Keynote's director of external operations.

He told Data Center Knowledge that "during the same period, the average availability of sites on the index dropped from almost 100% to 86%".

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8120324.stm

Im gutted. Had to switch the tele on this mornin to double check i didnt dream it.
Sky news are now sayin he took a morphine o.d and his dr gone awol!!?

They already started,

Apparently, AEG only had his first 10 concerts insured... they could'nt find anyone who were prepared to insure the rest.

Gonna be an expensive problem for AEG, I hope it does'nt put the future of The o2 into doubt.