As the funeral for Michael Jackson got under way in California Tuesday, fans of the King of Pop gathered in locations across the globe to pay homage to their idol. Thousands of fans poured in to Los Angeles en route to the public memorial service at the Staples Center arena, while Jackson's family and closest friends attended a private gathering at the Hollywood Hills Forest Lawn cemetery before going on to the memorial downtown. In Germany, thousands of Jackson fans ...

His death nearly brought the Web to a standstill with several sites buckling under the sheer weight of traffic. And Michael Jackson's memorial service promises to be no different -- with media organizations bracing for a tsunami of traffic. Given the feverish interest in all things Jackson, the Los Angeles memorial could be the most-viewed online event of all time. "This will obviously be a huge media event," said Toni Fitzgerald, of Media Life, in an ...

The FBI, in a rare response to rampant rumors on the Internet, said it is not investigating Alaska Gov. Sara Palin on public corruption charges. "Normally, we don't confirm or deny those kind of allegations out there. But, by not doing so, it just casts her in a very bad light," said FBI Special Agent Eric Gonzalez, who confirmed for CNN the statement he made to the Anchorage Daily News. "There is just no truth to those rumors ...

Personal details and photographs of the incoming head of Britain's international spy agency have been posted on Facebook, British Foreign Secretary David Miliband acknowledged Sunday. But he insisted that no compromising information had been revealed. "You know that he wears Speedo swimsuits. That is not a state secret," Miliband said on a BBC Sunday morning talk show. Have you ever posted something you should not have on a social-networking Web site The man in question, John Sawers, is ...

Bloody attacks and midnight arrests, combined with a regime growing more technologically savvy, have begun stemming the flow of online information from dissidents in Iran, activists and human rights officials say. Once emboldened by their ability to dodge the government and spread news about their protests to the world, many in the youth-driven protest movement, they say, are now scared of the consequences of getting caught. "It's absolutely chilling," said Drewery Dyke, a member of human rights group Amnesty International's ...

Iran's government will allow a demonstration at Tehran's Ghoba mosque Sunday, CNN has confirmed. The gathering is officially meant to honor Mohammad Beheshti, a hero of the 1979 Islamic Revolution who was killed in a bombing on this date in 1981. The demonstration comes after two weeks of protests against the official results of the June 12 presidential elections, which President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won. A post on a Web site associated with opposition leader Mir Hossein Moussavi urged people to ...

From street corners, buses and subways to phone calls, text messages, online posts and tweets, people around the world commented, pondered, and paid tribute to pop legend Michael Jackson, who died Thursday afternoon in Los Angeles. Around midnight at London's Leicester Square, as news of Jackson's death spread, Luis Carlos Ameida and his friends were surrounding a car listening to the star's music. Ameida said he'd gotten tickets to see Jackson at his "This Is It" concerts beginning on ...

When the sun went down, their voices did not. "Allah O Akbar!" the crowds on the tops of building chanted over and over. Cell phone footage shows the nighttime scene in Tehran, Iran, which was sent to CNN's iReport. As the camera pans with a jerk from building to building, protesters whistle and shout loudly while cars are heard honking in support. The phrase, which means, "God is great" has become a rallying cry for protesting Iranians ...

To the triumvirate Iranians blame for the disputed election result and ensuing violence — Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Supreme Leader Ali Khameni and their henchmen, the Basij militia — Iranians have added an unlikely candidate: state media. The wrath of many Iranians toward the state's all-powerful organ of propaganda, the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting , known in Iran as seda va sima, has been mounting over the past two weeks. It reached a fever pitch this weekend, as state television ...

Iranian state television yesterday broadcast the soap operas and covered the news about Rafael Nadal's withdrawal from Wimbledon and Pakistani operations against the Taliban as if they were the most important stories in the world. Meanwhile, arriving over the internet transom, rough and insistent and bloody, were the tiny electronic dispatches from protesters forced off the streets of Tehran, shaky videos from a city screaming for help. For outsiders tuned into the blog posts, Facebook updates, Tweets and YouTube ...