Eunice Kennedy Shriver, the sister of President John F. Kennedy and a champion of the disabled who founded the Special Olympics, died Tuesday, the Special Olympics said. She was 88. Born on July 10, 1921, in Brookline, Massachusetts, Shriver was the fifth of nine children to Joseph P. and Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy. She emerged from the long shadow of siblings John F. Kennedy, Robert F. Kennedy and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy as the founder of the Special Olympics, which started ...

The Los Angeles coroner's chief investigator visited Michael Jackson's dermatologist Tuesday to view medical records, the investigator said. The coroner's report on what killed Jackson last month should be ready the middle of this next week, assistant chief coroner Ed Winter said as he emerged from Dr. Arnold Klein's Beverly Hills, California, office Tuesday afternoon. "We're looking at some documentation that Dr. Klein has agreed to provide to us," Winter said. A lawyer for Klein said he met with ...

There is no concert and the only music heard will be the tinny sound of portable speakers blaring Michael Jackson's greatest hits. But event organizers expect thousands of the singer's fans to converge on the O2 Arena in London Monday to mark what would have been the opening night of the singer's long-awaited comeback, the first in a grueling 50-date "This Is It" concert tour. They will be bringing candles, flowers and photos for an impromptu memorial service organized over ...

Michael Jackson was the pride of Gary, Indiana, growing up, and on Tuesday his hometown paid tribute to the late entertainer with a memorial and celebration in his honor. They remembered him as not just the King of Pop or the musician who took Hollywood by storm, but as someone with an unmatched enthusiasm and talent for entertaining even as a little boy growing up in this city of about 100,000 in northwestern Indiana, 30 miles from downtown Chicago, Illinois. ...

Mike Loverde was 29 when his family intervened in his addiction to prescription painkillers. He remembers his parents driving him from Chicago, Illinois, to a rehab center in rural Indiana. He was crying because he wanted to get high. Eight years later, Loverde is a counselor and director of program services at the Intervention Services Inc. branch outside Chicago. When someone seems to have lost control of life, or has become a danger to himself or herself, family members ...

When Glynis McCants looks at Michael Jackson's life, she sees the number five. Jackson's talent was discovered when he was 5 years old, he came to fame as a member of the Jackson 5 and he planned a series of 50 concert dates in London, England, as part of a comeback tour before he died on June 25 at the age of 50. For McCants, a noted numerologist and author, those facts are very telling: "Five is the number for ...

A rarely seen portrait of Michael Jackson is on display inside a Harlem luxury car dealership. Macky Dancy, a partner at Dancy-Power Automotive, said the oil painting titled "The Book" is believed to be the only portrait for which Jackson sat. A different portrait of the entertainer was among items auctioned from his Neverland Ranch in April. It is not clear whether Jackson sat for that painting. The painting on display in Harlem belongs to Marty Abrams, a friend and ...

Even at the beginning of the 20th century — before mass reproductions, package tours to France and The Da Vinci Code — Mona Lisa was different from other pictures. The woman with the enigmatic smile got so many love letters that her portrait was the only artwork at the Louvre to have its own mailbox. A heartbroken suitor once shot himself to death in front of her. So is it any surprise that somebody finally eloped with her On the ...

London's Shakespeare Birthplace Trust Monday unveiled what they called the only portrait of William Shakespeare painted during his lifetime. "The evidence that it represents Shakespeare and that is was done from life, though it is circumstantial, is in my view overwhelming," Professor Stanley Wells, chairman of the trust, said Monday. "I feel in little doubt that this is a portrait of Shakespeare, done from life." The announcement comes after three years of research. The Cobbe portrait -- named after the ...

We all know what William Shakespeare looks like. A bit like a hippie uncle — balding, moustached, longish hair in back. How do we know? Mostly from an engraving by Martin Droeshout that appeared with the First Folio, the collection of Shakespeare's work that was published in 1623, seven years after his death. That engraving is reproduced with almost every edition of Shakespeare that offers a picture of him at all. But engravings are typically copied from another source, a ...