In surprisingly quick time, a jury was selected that will decide Michael Jackson’s fate on child sex charges.

Michael Jackson says in a television interview scheduled to air tomorrow that many of the news reports about him are “fiction” and that his celebrity makes him a target.

Judge Rodney Melville has given Michael Jackson permission to make a public statement on his pal Geraldo Rivera's American news show - as long as he doesn't mention his upcoming child molestation trial.

Attacking the news media for pandering to a “gossip-hungry” audience, Santa Barbara County prosecutors has urged the state Supreme Court to uphold a gagging order in the Michael Jackson child molestation case.

Michael Jackson and the mother of two of his children have struck a deal which will see her backing off from a custody battle, it was reported today.

THERE’s talk of a reality show and a clothing line, speaking appearances and a book — a lot of attention for a 13-year-old girl who has never recorded a song or rehearsed a script.

TWO of television’s marquis journalists were dismissed from high-profile reporting assignments in Iraq yesterday, chastised for allegedly breaking ironclad, if sometimes unspoken rules that govern reporting in the US-led war there.