International News

It still has not hit me. It feels so strange. Michael Jackson is dead. He was only 50 years old, a milestone age. He just celebrated the 25 th anniversary of "Thriller," the best-selling album of all time, and re-released it in February. He was scheduled to start his show run in London in a few weeks. Maybe Michael's career had reached its peak, but I was not convinced that he was done with music. When he turned 50 last August, I did a series of interviews with radio stations. All of the DJs asked me if I thought Michael Jackson could make a comeback. They wanted to know if he could get past the controversies that dominated his news coverage over the last 10-plus years. My answer was a matter-of-fact "yes." People often underestimate the power of music, and the effect that it has on us. We sometimes forget how a great song with a feel-good message lifts us up, and makes us smile and remember the place we had the most fun dancing to it and with whom. ...

Michael Joseph Jackson (August 29, 1958 – June 25, 2009) was an American recording artist, entertainer and businessman. The seventh child of the Jackson family, he made his début onto the professional music scene at the age of 11 as a member of The Jackson 5 in 1969, and began a solo career in 1971 while still a member of the group. Jackson was referred to as the "King of Pop" in subsequent years; his 1982 album Thriller is the world's best-selling record of all time and four other solo studio albums are also among the world's best-selling records: Off the Wall (1979), Bad (1987), Dangerous (1991) and HIStory (1995). In the early 1980s, he became a dominant figure in popular music and the first African American entertainer to amass a strong crossover following on MTV. The popularity of his music videos airing on MTV, such as "Beat It", "Billie Jean" and "Thriller" — widely credited with transforming the music video from a promotional tool...

By Michael Lim Ubac Philippine Daily Inquirer First Posted 20:04:00 06/20/2009 GENEVA—The global disaster risk reduction conference ended Friday with 1,800 participants from 165 nations calling on political leaders around the world to halve the number of deaths from natural hazards by 2015. The participants in the four-day Second Session of the Global Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction said they want their governments to implement measures to drastically bring down the mortality rate in disasters and minimize economic losses. In 2008 alone, 250,000 people died due to disasters that affected 200 million people, said Jerry Velasquez, the regional coordinator for the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR) in the Asia-Pacific region. The total economic cost last year was US$180 billion, he said. The Global Platform is the main biennial forum on reducing deaths and other risks associated with disasters, bringing together a wide cross-section of the...

Rihanna and Chris Brown were both in the stands to watch the nail-biting fourth game of the NBA Finals in Orlando. A source told People that the two had asked to sit together, but that was not the case. They sat on opposite ends of the same row. When ABC showed the celebrities in attendance, she appeared on camera; Brown did not. Both attended earlier games in the series separately. If the two had indeed attended the game together, the timing would have been strange, considering Rihanna has been subpoenaed to testify against Brown at a preliminary hearing on June 22 and her attorney has said she will appear. Rihanna's representative declined to comment. See other stars supporting their home team in Laker Lovers gallery!

Alaska's Rat Island is finally rat-free, 229 years after a Japanese shipwreck spilled rampaging rodents onto the remote Aleutian island, decimating the local bird population. After dropping poison onto the island from helicopter-hoisted buckets for a week and a half last autumn, there are no signs of living rats and some birds have returned, according to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Rats have ruled the island since 1780, when they jumped off a sinking Japanese ship and terrorized all but the largest birds on the island. The incident introduced the non-native Norway rat -- also known as the brown rat -- to Alaska. The $2.5 million Rat Island eradication project, a joint effort between the U.S. federal government, the Nature Conservancy and Island Conservation, is one of the world's most ambitious attempts to remove destructive alien species from an island.

An explosion ripped through a coal mine in western Indonesia on Tuesday, killing six people and trapping at least 24 others who were feared dead. Dozens of rescuers tried to reach the trapped men in the 300-foot (100-meter) -deep mine, but rock slides and a mix of gas and coal debris forced them to resurface after four hours of digging, police Chief Yasman Esha of West Sumatra province said by phone from the scene. "We fear the miners are dead by now," Esha said. Rescuers recovered six bodies in the hours after the morning blast. Officials said three other people were in critical condition at a hospital. Police were trying to determine what caused the blast. A preliminary investigation said it was triggered by leaking methane gas. The mine, owned by a local company, is 560 miles (900 kilometers) northwest of the capital, Jakarta. Indonesia has some of the world's largest coal deposits and is a major coal exporter.