Michael Jackson

Janice Min, editor in chief of US Weekly magazine, was on vacation in Colorado when news of the biggest celebrity death since, well, Farrah Fawcett's a few hours earlier, started her cellphone ringing. And ringing and ringing and ringing. Min, who was driving, didn't pick up, but she glanced at her incoming e-mails. "Oh my God, I got like 40 e-mails in 60 seconds," said Min, whose holiday evaporated with news of Michael Jackson's death this week. "I haven't been out of my hotel room since."

In a fit of creativity, Nathan Holsey stayed up all night painting a 24-by-48 acrylic portrait of Michael Jackson, singing with a microphone in his hand. Like other heartsick fans of the pop star, he couldn't bear to show up empty-handed when he made his pilgrimage to the Jackson family's Encino home on Friday.

Michael Jackson's ex-wife and the mother of his two older children is in line to obtain custody of them, even if the pop star designated another person as their guardian after his death, legal experts said Friday. Although UC Berkeley law professor Herma Hill Kay said it was "not a slam dunk" that ex-wife Debbie Rowe would win custody, four other experts in family law said she would have the advantage if there is a custody battle.

When a famous person dies, their life flashes before our eyes. As with any world figure, Michael Jackson's death was a television event. Though they were slow to pick up and then confirm the news of his passing, once the newshounds had arrived, they stayed put. "We're going to stay on top of this story," Wolf Blitzer said Friday on CNN, which, like its fellow cable news outlets, declared it Michael Jackson Day. "We're not going to go very far away."

One of Michael Jackson's most famous lyrics proclaims, "It don't matter if you're black or white." But when it comes to the late singer's identification with African Americans, that declaration becomes much cloudier.

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.

Cheers greeted Janet Jackson when she appeared on the stage of the Shrine Auditorium on Sunday at the end of the BET Awards, but her face was etched with pain. For several moments, her mouth quivered, and it looked as if she might not be able to speak. "My entire family wanted to be here tonight, but it was just too painful, so they elected me to speak for all of us," she finally said. It was only three days since her brother Michael Jackson died suddenly, shocking the world.

Two encounters with the phenomenon of Michael Jackson: 1991: A vast refugee camp on the outskirts of El Obeid, Sudan, a place of surpassing misery and squalor where the distribution of relief food sometimes provokes riots that can take a dozen lives. In one crowd of displaced tribespeople sheltered under a tattered canvas, I spy a child of 3 or 4, barefooted, wearing only a grimy T-shirt featuring the cover art of the album "Thriller." 2002: The marble and gilt lobby of the Bellagio Las Vegas.

A 200-member choir sang "Man in the Mirror" in Culver City. Musicians on the red carpet at the BET Awards in South Los Angeles spoke of their admiration for Michael Jackson. And dozens of fans continued to brave the heat on Sunday to pay tribute to the music icon at his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and outside the Jackson family compound in Encino. "I grew up with his music," said Nancy Bingham, 25, of Glendale, who was among those at the scene in Encino.

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.