Families

reporting from washington In the short time Americans have come to know their new first family, they've learned that the president doesn't want a puppy sleeping on his bed, the girls hate green veggies but at least one loves peanut butter, and the first lady believes her husband should stay out of her closet. Like a reality show set on the glorified soundstage at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

The elegant woman in the forest green frock held up a slender right hand and swore to tell the truth. She was matter-of-fact as she described herself as unemployed, just "an average housewife" taking care of her husband, Henry, and their home.

"It's just before midnight and we just have been attacked by pirates." So began a not entirely atypical blog post by Kaye Caldwell of Hermosa Beach, who since last summer has been traveling the world with her husband and three children. The April 26 attack on their Italian cruise ship far off the coast of Somalia was but the latest installment in an adventure that has taken the family to the Australian outback, riot-torn Thailand and South African townships.

The son of James von Brunn said Sunday that his father, who is accused of killing a security guard at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, had long burdened his family with his white supremacist views and that he wishes his father would have died in the shooting instead. Von Brunn, 88, has been charged with first-degree murder in the death of 39-year-old Stephen T. Johns, who was black. "I cannot express enough how deeply sorry I am it was Mr.

Los Angeles police completed a three-hour interview Saturday night with the doctor who was with Michael Jackson when the pop star went into cardiac arrest, and a source close to the investigation said detectives found "no red flag" during the discussion. A private pathologist, meanwhile, conducted a second autopsy on Jackson's body hours after it was released to relatives by the Los Angeles County coroner.

As Michael Jackson's father moved Sunday to assert control over his son's estate, his attorney said that the family has not been able to locate a will for the pop icon and that Jackson's mother will seek custody of his three children. "That's who Michael would have wanted to have the children. She loves them dearly," lawyer L. Londell McMillan told CNN outside the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles before the BET Awards.

In the lowest moment of Michael Jackson's life -- his 2005 criminal trial -- his mother, Katherine, was his greatest supporter. In breaks between testimony of witnesses accusing the pop star of molesting young boys, she and her son would repair to a private room in the courthouse with his legal team and she would murmur comforting words to him. "She would tell him that the truth would prevail, that God would help him. She just kept him strong," defense lawyer Thomas A. Mesereau Jr. recalled.

As afternoon turned to evening July 8, Robert Alan Korda seemed to have disappeared into thin air. The former L.A. Philharmonic violinist left his Van Nuys home about 3 p.m. but never showed up at the Hollywood studio where he was scheduled to work that evening. His family made frantic calls to police and hospitals and to his cellphone provider. When they received little clue as to his whereabouts, they turned to the Internet as a last resort.

As if a tough earnings report for Viacom Inc. and the looming debt issues of National Amusements Inc. weren't enough of a headache for Sumner Redstone this week, he's also dealing with the latest legal fight involving his fractious family. Today marks the third and final day of testimony in a lawsuit by the Viacom and CBS Corp. chairman's nephew Michael Redstone against his father, Edward, and uncle Sumner.

Talk around the dinner table at Osvaldo Reza's home in South Los Angeles usually revolves around his mother's excellent homemade salsas. But this evening, between bites of chicken taquitos and salad, the discussion turned to his father, a truck driver whose company recently cut his hours because of the bad economy. After car and house payments, there's no money left, Carlos Reza said.