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As police make plans to conduct a second interview with Michael Jackson's doctor, the autopsy on the singer began Friday morning to determine the cause of his mysterious death, with Los Angeles County's top medical examiner conducting the procedure himself.

Jackson, 50, was declared dead at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center on Thursday afternoon after suffering a cardiac arrest in his home. His body was airlifted across town to the offices of the Los Angeles coroner for the autopsy that began fewer than 24 hours later.

Police already interviewed the physician who was present with Jackson at the time he was stricken, and contrary to reports the doctor "is not a missing person," says LAPD spokeswoman Officer Karen Rayner. The doctor "needs to be interviewed further," but the interview "just has not happened yet," she said. The doctor's car was impounded because "it contains potential information, medications or other evidence," she added.

At the coroner's office, Dr. Lakshmanan Sathyavagiswaran, who has handled the high-profile O.J. Simpson and Phil Specter murder cases, was conducting the autopsy, which should take several hours, according to Ed Winter, chief of investigations for the coroner's office.

Given allegations of possible prescription drug abuse by the entertainer, a final determination of the cause of death will likely have to await toxicology tests, which can take days or weeks.

Michael Jackson was pronounced dead this afternoon, the Los Angeles Times reported. The pop star arrived at a hospital in a deep coma, city and law enforcement sources told the Times.

Jackson was rushed to a hospital in Los Angeles after he suffered a heart attack. Paramedics administered CPR in the ambulance, according to TMZ.

TMZ reported that the call to 9-1-1 came in about 12:21 p.m. P.S.T. (3:21 p.m. Eastern) from Jackson's home in Los Angeles.

Capt. Steve Ruda of the Los Angeles Fire Department said Jackson was not breathing when paramedics arrived, the Los Angeles Times reported. The singer was taken to UCLA Medical Center.

The singer's 50-show residency at London's O2 Arena is supposed to kick off July 13.

A handful of Apple Inc. (AAPL) executives has emerged as the company's new crop of leaders as expectations grow that Chief Executive Steve Jobs will take a less active role when he returns from medical leave later this month.

Chief Operating Officer Tim Cook, who has assumed Jobs' day-to-day responsibilities since the Apple co-founder went on leave in January, and senior vice president for marketing Phil Schiller, who has stood in for Jobs at several important company functions, are the most visible stars on Apple's deep bench. Others include Scott Forstall, who runs Apple's iPhone software operations, and Jonathan Ive, who heads the team that designs Apple's sleek products.

These and other members of Apple's management team took on new importance over the weekend after The Wall Street Journal reported that Jobs, a pancreatic cancer survivor, had gotten a liver transplant. Jobs is credited with being the visionary behind products like the iPod music player and the iPhone smart phone, both of which helped resurrect a once-pioneering computer company that had fallen on hard times.

Analysts say that giving some of these executives responsibilities that used to be Jobs' won't disrupt the company. That's because the executives have worked with Jobs for years and learned from him.

"All of Apple's top management uses the 'What would Steve do?' mantra," said Tim Bajarin, president of Creative Strategies Inc., who has tracked Apple for decades. "That would continue to be the case even if Steve was not there to guide them in person."

An Apple spokesman had no immediate comment for this story.

Jobs also sits on the board of Walt Disney Co. (DIS) and became its largest shareholder in early 2006 when it agreed to acquire Pixar Animation Studios, where Jobs served as chairman and chief executive.

Disney Chief Executive Robert Iger has said he frequently consults Jobs on business decisions, and Jobs helps oversee the company's animation businesses with a seat on a special six-man steering committee. So the new revelations about his health situation could lead to more questions about Jobs' ability to perform his duties at the media giant.

Disney didn't respond to an inquiry for this story, but its chairman, John Pepper, was questioned about the issue at Disney's annual shareholders meeting in March after Jobs was a no-show.

"We have not thought at all of the contingency of Steve not being on this board," Pepper said. "Our only thoughts are with him and his rapid recovery."

Already, Apple has demonstrated that it can function smoothly without Jobs' presence. Its latest iPhone, introduced last week, is outpacing sales expectations and has gotten rave reviews. Meanwhile, the company has delivered two quarters of Wall Street-pleasing results. And even without Jobs, Apple shares have surged 75% from a 52-week low hit in late January. On Monday, Apple shares fell 1.5% to $137.37.

Cook is the most visible of Apple's stars, establishing himself as the CEO-in-waiting since taking over for Jobs.

Cook joined Apple in 1998 as senior vice president of operations, and four years later was promoted to executive vice president of worldwide sales and operations. He was promoted to senior vice president of operations in 2002. In 2004, his responsibilities were expanded to include Apple's Macintosh division. He was named COO in October 2005.

Cook and Jobs are the tech industry's odd couple. Cook is known for being easygoing, and Jobs' edginess is legendary. While Jobs is Apple's brilliant idea man, Cook is an operations wizard who turns those visions into reality.

Cook's ability to make Apple's sprawling operations move on time has many observers betting he'll be appointed CEO when and if Jobs takes a diminished role upon his return. The Wall Street Journal has also reported he may be appointed to Apple's board as well.

"He's as intense as Steve is, but with a different style," said Michael Janes, who worked at Apple for five years under Cook and Jobs, and now runs online ticket bazaar FansSnap.com

Schiller, who went to work for Apple in 1997, is now responsible for Apple's product marketing, developer relations and business marketing programs.

Forstall is arguably in charge of the company's most important product: the software that runs the iPhone. He joined Apple about 11 years ago and was one of the original architects of Apple's Mac OS X operating system software and, most recently, worked on Mac OS X Leopard.

Ive, a Londoner, has also been making lots of appearances at Apple events. His team is responsible for designing the look and feel of Apple products, which are widely considered to be among the most aesthetically pleasing in the tech space.

Rev. Alberto Cutie, left, reads a statement as his girlfriend Ruhama Canellis, right, looks on during a May 28 news conference at the Trinity Cathedral Church in Miami. The telegenic Miami priest left the Catholic Church amid an uproar over published photos of him kissing his girlfriend on the beach.

A telegenic Miami priest known as "Father Oprah," who left the Catholic Church amid an uproar over tabloid photos of him kissing his girlfriend on the beach, has made the relationship official, marrying the woman he was involved with for about two years.

The Rev. Alberto Cutie and Ruhama Canellis were married Tuesday by a judge in Coral Gables, according to Miami-Dade County court records. No other details of the wedding were known.

It was the latest in the public spectacle that started when photos of Cutie embracing his longtime girlfriend surfaced last month.

The battle on the streets is fought also online as authorities attempt to block, jam and cut off communications.

Iran has slipped into a guerrilla-style Internet and Twitter game of strategies and slogans pecked out by protesters attempting to outflank a government that has shut down communication outlets, leaving the nation breathless on snippets of text and stealthily uploaded pictures.

It is a battle on the streets and across the airways affecting the rest of the Middle East as well, a realm where technology is both churning out and smothering polarizing messages and images. Iranian authorities have blocked opposition websites, jammed satellite TV channels and cut off text messaging. Still, word is trickling beyond the censors, linking, however sparsely, opponents of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's rule from the capital of Tehran to those in villages in the north.



The StopAhmadi twitter is both philosophical and terse:

"In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act. Over n' out."

"Girl shot in Tehran."

The Persiankiwi twitter lists updates of police movements and arrests: "Our street is quiet now -- we cannot move tonight but must move asap when dawn starts."

Iranians are limited in what they see on television or hear on the radio regarding the extent of the outrage over Ahmadinejad's reelection in disputed balloting last week. They are navigating in a vacuum sealed by a security-force crackdown. But footage of burning cars, masked boys and bloodied protesters is playing across the Middle East, captivating Arab countries where repressive regimes have for years been arresting their own political bloggers and cyberspace dissidents.

Egypt, Saudi Arabia and other Sunni nations have tense relations with Ahmadinejad and Shiite-led theocracy controlling Iran. But they don't want the protests in Iran to ignite similar democratic fervor in their countries, especially the merging of the Internet, texting and Facebook with a potent opposition leader.

So far, that has yet to happen. Egyptian activists, for example, have over the last year called for rallies and strikes on Facebook and Twitter, but they have no galvanizing personality and are not organized enough to pose a threat to a police state controlled by President Hosni Mubarak.

Iran is offering an intriguing glimpse into how years of disillusionment can suddenly leap from cafes and university campuses to a national revolt where dueling political voices and agendas square off amid banners, rhetoric and allegations of election fraud. It is a mix of political activism, democratic expression and shorthand typed in tight grids of letters and numbers onto screens large and small.

"I don't think similar events could even take place in Egypt or other Arab countries," said Ibrahim Issa. The editor of the Cairo independent Al Dustour, Issa has been arrested a number of times for criticizing the government of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. "We hope and we always keep faith that what's happening in Iran could push Arabs to try and do the same against their oppressive regimes. But reality tells us that this is not applicable. We are comparing 30 years of what I can call Iranian democracy to 30 years of Egyptian tyranny."

The Iranian elections have "imposed themselves on everything. The masses of young men, the noticeable presence of young women -- especially female university students -- and the slogans of change, the intense competition that raged," Mohammad Hussein Yusifi wrote in the Kuwait daily Awan. "All these factors left us no possibility but to observe closely what is happening on the Iranian scene."

The characters in that tumult, appearing amid videos of tear gas and police swinging batons, have provided alluring narratives: presidential challenger Mir-Hossein Mousavi, whose Facebook fan group has about 50,000 members, standing amid throngs of his supporters; Ahmadinejad proclaiming victory and calling for calm; and the hovering visage of Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Each is mentioned on Twitter missives bristling with rumors and innuendo about what might happen next.

But sometimes things go blank. Today, one writer on Persiankiwi, which has nearly 19,000 followers, posted this: "I must log off now -- will log on when I have more info -- need phone line -- no mobile cover, no sms, no satellite, no radio."

Similar difficulties also are encountered by international media organizations. Teymoor Nabili, a reporter for Al Jazeera, wrote on the network's website: "Day-by-day our ability to access any information has been slowly whittled away. . . . I am no longer allowed to take a camera out into the streets. I'm not even sure I can walk out into the streets with a mobile phone without getting into trouble."

Activists and bloggers watching developments in Iran from afar say the protests show the promise and limits of technology in orchestrating the kind of social unrest seen in Tehran. There is also the sentiment that Iranian activists rising up against a hard-line, anti-Western regime enjoy more international support than their counterparts in Arab countries where anti-democratic governments are close U.S. allies.

"A cyber war and its bloggers [can't] carry out a revolution or overthrow a certain regime on its own. This will never happen, not in Iran, Egypt or anywhere else in the world. Bloggers never promised that they can change political systems," said Wael Abbas, a blogger and human rights activist in Egypt. "Full revolution has to come from the masses in the streets."

The massive street rallies and placards in Tehran make Issa, the Cairo editor, envious. "The current Egyptian system was built on fraud while the Iranian revolution was built by the people, and that is why they are fighting for such a system," he said. "The bottom line is that, unlike Iran, we are politically dead."

Some columnists in the Arab world believe -- like they view many issues in the region -- that the protests in Iran are influenced by American foreign policy. The thinking goes that Iran's Islamic leadership remains divided over how to respond to conciliatory gestures by the Obama administration. One side wants to open up to Washington to enhance Iran's stature and protect its regional interests.

"But another camp believes that the U.S. has not and will not abandon the aim of toppling the regime," wrote Sa'd Mehio in the United Arab Emirates' daily Al Khaleej. "If violence does not do it, as the Bush administration was planning to do, then diplomacy and temptations might do it, as the Obama administration is currently doing. In addition, some sectors of this camp are genuinely concerned about the negative repercussions of this dialogue on the Iranian Revolution's ideological coherence."

Iran's revolutionary spirit has been unbottled again. And for the Arab world, it is a lesson in resistance and a maturing democracy that may be controlled by clerics but is expressing its will in the streets and in blips of Twitters and tweets.

A sex theme park that featured explicit exhibits of genitalia and sexual culture is being demolished before it can even open, a government spokesman in southwestern China said Monday.The park, christened "Love Land" by its owners, went under the wrecking ball over the weekend in the city of Chongqing, said the spokesman, who like many Chinese bureaucrats would give only his surname, Yang.

Yang refused to give the reason for the demolition or other details. However, photographs of the adult-only park had circulated widely on the Internet over the weekend, prompting widespread mockery and condemnation.

Exhibits had included giant-sized reproductions of male and female anatomy, dissertations on how the topic of sex is treated in various cultures and what the official China Daily newspaper called "sex technique workshops."

The park's main investor, Lu Xiaoqing, had earlier claimed that the attractions sought only to boost sexual awareness and improve people's sex-lives.

Conflicted views
The demolition highlights conflicted views on sex in modern China, where a prudish attitude toward discussion of sexuality is paired with an almost clinical approach to its physical aspects.

While pornography is banned and sex education largely unheard of, shops selling sex toys and related items stand out prominently in many neighborhoods and sex outside marriage is widely tolerated. Prostitution, while technically illegal, is widespread and the keeping of mistresses among prominent businessmen and Communist Party officials is considered commonplace.

Such attitudes are blamed in part for risky sex and ignorance about birth control among minors. With public discussion of sex so limited, there is relatively little awareness of sexual harassment and abuse and laws and regulations covering such matters are weaker in China than in many countries.

Newspapers last week carried prominent reports on a government official who was let off with a fine simply because he claimed he had not known that the 13-year-old girl he paid to have sex with was underage.

The man, Lu Yumin, a local tax bureau official in Sichuan province's Yibin county, was arrested on charges of child rape, but was convicted only of visiting a prostitute and fined 5,000 yuan ($730).

Lawyers for Pirate Bay have demanded a retrial after it's revealed that the judge in the trial is a member of the Swedish Copyright Association and sits on the board of Swedish Association for the Protection of Industrial Property.

Is it a conflict of interest? The founders of file-sharing site The Pirate Bay were in the dock for breaking copyright law, and the judge in the case, Tomas Norström, was a member of the Swedish Copyright Association and sits on the board of Swedish Association for the Protection of Industrial Property.

However, his association with those bodies wasn’t revealed until this week, after the verdict – a year in jail for each of the four men and a $4.5 million fine – had been handed down.

Now lawyers for The Pirate Bay are demanding a retrial, claiming the judge had a conflict of interest.

However, the judge denies that, telling Swedish radio:

"These activities do not constitute a conflict of interest."

It will all apparently be decided by the court of appeal. Peter Althin, lawyer for defendant Peter Sunde, said:

"I will point that out in my appeal, then the court of appeal will decide if the district court decision should be set aside and the case revisited."

"In the autumn I received information that a lay judge could have similar connections. I sent these to the court and the judge was excluded in order to prevent a conflict of interest. It would have been reasonable to then review this situation as well," he told Swedish radio.

The Australian government technology agency CSIRO has reportedly reached settlements with all the companies it had been suing for patent infringement regarding a technology built into 802.11g and later Wi-Fi wireless networking. The patent covers portions of the orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) implementation that first appeared in 802.11g. Although aspects of the patent were openly questioned by other players in the industry, CSIRO doggedly pursued 14 technology companies over patent infringement, including Japanese-owned Buffalo Technology, which had its products banned from the U.S. market for a time in part because CSIRO won a judgement against Buffalo.

Although CSIRO sued some 14 companies for infringement—and some of those companies, in turn, countersued CSIRO—the long-running case never made it to court, apparently in part because CSIRO wasn't asking for exorbitant royalty fees; that meant the cost of negotiating a settlement with CSIRO was likely far less than the cost of taking the case to trial. Industry watchers were skeptical how well CSIRO's rather broad patent would hold up in court. Terms of CSIRO's settlements with Wi-Fi equipment makers weren't released, but the agency apparently intends to put money from the settlements into research, same as it would with commercial implementations of any of the technology it develops.