links for 2009-06-25

Los Angeles County Coroner Fred Corell last night confirmed that Jackson had died of heart failure at 2.26pm local time.

Last night it was suspected his collapse could have been caused by an overdose of painkiller.

An Emergency Room source at UCLA hospital said Jackson aides told medics he had collapsed after an injection of potent Demerol — similar to morphine.

A Jacko source said: “Shortly after taking the Demerol he started to experience slow shallow breathing.

“His breathing gradually got slower and slower until it stopped.

“His staff started mouth-to-mouth and an ambulance was called which got there in eight minutes “Butfound he was in full respiratory arrest, no breathing and no pulse. They started full CPR and rushed him to hospital.

“When he arrived they started resuscitation, giving him heart shocks and inserted a breathing tube and other supportive measures to try and save his life.

“He never regained consciousness.The family was told that he had passed.”

Last night Michael Jackson had the “best show ever”—a rehearsal at Los Angeles’ Staples Center. Sources tell me he was thrilled about the show and very excited about his upcoming London shows.

That should scotch any rumors about Jackson being unable to perform, or depressed or anything else.

Felony charges have been filed and an arrest warrant issued for a well-known Orange County political activist suspected of committing election and voter registration fraud, the California secretary of State's office announced Wednesday.

Investigators in the agency's election-fraud unit said Nativo V. Lopez, 57, of Santa Ana leased office space in Boyle Heights and registered to vote using that address although he lived with his family in Orange County. They also say Lopez, president of the Mexican American Political Assn., cast an illegal ballot in L.A. in the 2008 presidential primary.

The Los Angeles County district attorney's office, which is working with the secretary of State, charged Lopez with four felonies: fraudulent voter registration, fraudulent document filing, perjury and fraudulent voting. A warrant was issued for his arrest and bail was set at $10,000. The offenses carry penalties of up to three years in prison.

The number of Americans filing claims for unemployment benefits unexpectedly rose last week, a reminder that companies will keep cutting staff even as the economy stabilizes.

Initial jobless claims rose by 15,000 to 627,000 in the week ended June 20, from a revised 612,000 the week before, the Labor Department said today in Washington. A report from the Commerce Department showed gross domestic product shrank at a 5.5 percent annual pace in the first three months of the year.

Recent data show some areas of the economy, such as housing and manufacturing, are seeing a smaller pace of decline, consistent with the Federal Reserve’s projection that the slump is “slowing.” Even so, companies are unlikely to hire until there are sustained gains in demand, meaning a recovery remains dependent on the effectiveness of government stimulus efforts.

The U.S. House of Representatives was poised to approve on Thursday a $550.4 billion defense authorization bill for fiscal 2010 that has drawn a veto threat from President Barack Obama because it contains money for fighter jets he does not want.

The bill also authorizes $130 billion to fund the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in the fiscal year that begins October 1.

The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) said it supported the overall bill but the president's senior advisers would recommend a veto unless some provisions were dropped.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has put cap-and-trade legislation on a forced march through the House, and the bill may get a full vote as early as Friday. It looks as if the Democrats will have to destroy the discipline of economics to get it done.

Despite House Energy and Commerce Chairman Henry Waxman's many payoffs to Members, rural and Blue Dog Democrats remain wary of voting for a bill that will impose crushing costs on their home-district businesses and consumers. The leadership's solution to this problem is to simply claim the bill defies the laws of economics.

The White House put out some guidance on this afternoon's immigration meeting that seems to diminish expectations of any actual reform measure passing Congress this year, without totally abandoning the campaign pledge to "make it a top priority in my first year as President."

"The meeting is intended to launch a policy conversation by having an honest discussion about the issues and identifying areas of agreement and areas where we still have work to do, with the hope of beginning the debate in earnest later this year," says the White House press office's guidance.

President Obama's town hall meeting on health care delivered a sickly rating Wednesday evening.

The one-hour ABC News special "Primetime: Questions for the President: Prescription for America" (4.7 million viewers, 1.1 preliminary adults 18-49 rating) had the fewest viewers in the 10 p.m. hour. The special tied some 8 p.m. comedy repeats as the lowest-rated program on a major broadcast network.

California's controller said on Wednesday that he would have to issue IOUs in a week if lawmakers can't quickly solve a $24 billion budget deficit, and the state's treasurer plans to tap a reserve fund to meet debt service costs.

The measures came as a budget crisis deepened in the most populous U.S. state and the gridlocked legislature failed to pass a proposed $11 billion in cuts.

"Next Wednesday we start a fiscal year with a massively unbalanced spending plan and a cash shortfall not seen since the Great Depression," Controller John Chiang said in a statement announcing that he would be forced to use IOUs to pay the state's bills beginning on July 2.

TLC is hoping there is happiness — or at least, good ratings — after divorce.
The cable channel’s ratings have never been higher, thanks to “Jon & Kate Plus 8,” the big-brood reality show that has reinvigorated the once-ailing channel. Those three letters, TLC, are on the tip of the tongue of the reality TV industry.

But with those upsides also come downsides, ones that quickly became apparent on Tuesday, the morning after Jon and Kate Gosselin confirmed (to a record-breaking audience of 10.6 million TV viewers) that they were separating after 10 years of marriage.

The channel took the highly unusual step of placing “Jon & Kate Plus 8” — one of cable’s highest-rated shows this year — on hiatus for more than a month. In an interview on Tuesday, TLC’s president, Eileen O’Neill, said the decision was made by TLC.

“It’s hard to walk away from a big number,” she said, acknowledging the high ratings, “but a hiatus really made sense so that everyone could adjust to the new circumstances.”

President Barack Obama on Wednesday night opened the door further than he has in the past to taxing health benefits to pay for health care reform.

Asked by host Charlie Gibson on a prime-time special — filmed in the East Room and broadcast Wednesday night exclusively by ABC — whether he would consider taxing health benefits to pay for reform, Obama drew a distinction between eliminating the tax exclusion altogether, which he said is “the wrong way to go,” and what he said is actually being talked about in Congress: putting a cap on the tax-free benefit.

He said lawmakers are looking at taxing above a level like $13,000 or $17,000 in benefits, which he derisively called “Cadillac plans.” He said that even with this approach, “I continue to believe that’s the wrong way to do it,” noting that he still backs his own proposal to pay for expanded coverage by eliminating some deductions for higher-earning taxpayers.

A flood of security forces using tear gas and clubs quickly overwhelmed a small group of rock-throwing protesters near Iran's parliament Wednesday, and the country's supreme leader said the outcome of the disputed presidential election will stand – the latest signs of the government's growing confidence in quelling unrest on the streets.

As the election showdown has shifted, demonstrators are finding themselves increasingly scattered and struggling under a blanket crackdown that the wife of opposition leader Mir Hossein Mousavi compared to martial law. In Wednesday's clashes, thousands of police crushed hundreds of Mousavi supporters.

The statement by supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei that the June 12 election of hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad would not be reversed was accompanied by a vow that the nation's rulers would never yield to demands from the streets.

President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad accused Barack Obama on Thursday of behaving like his predecessor towards Iran and said there was not much point in talking to Washington unless the U.S. president apologised.
"Mr Obama made a mistake to say those things … our question is why he fell into this trap and said things that previously (former U.S. President George W.) Bush used to say," the semi-official Fars News Agency quoted Ahmadinejad as saying.

"Do you want to speak with this tone? If that is your stance then what is left to talk about … I hope you avoid interfering in Iran's affairs and express your regret in a way that the Iranian nation is informed of it," he said.