Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, Michael Jackson’s confidant, sat down with the King of Pop and taped 30 hours of interviews.

Michael Jackson feared his father so much he would faint or vomit sometimes when his father entered the room — even when the pop singer was an adult, according to a book written by a former Jackson confidant.

Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, Michael Jackson’s confidant, sat down with the King of Pop and taped 30 hours of interviews.

“The Michael Jackson Tapes” includes Jackson talking about his fear of growing old, his relationship with children, his friendships with Madonna and Brooke Shields, and his remarkable shyness around people that made his surround himself with mannequins.

Jackson opened up to Rabbi Shmuley Boteach for 30 hours of interviews, which were taped nine years ago and intended for a book Jackson wanted written, Boteach said.

“He was trying to reclaim his life,” Boteach said Friday in an NBC “Today Show” interview.

Jackson, who died on June 25 of what the coroner found to be a deadly combination of drugs, “lost the will to live, I think he was just going through the motions of life toward the end,” Boteach told NBC.

CNN has not independently confirmed Jackson’s quotes in the book, but Boteach was known to be a spiritual adviser to Jackson for several years beginning about 1999.

Ken Sunshine, spokesman for the family, including the singer’s father, Joe, issued a statement on the book. “We are not going to dignify this with a comment,” he said.

The book was not published during Jackson’s lifetime because of the pop star’s child molestation trial, which ended with an acquittal in 2005, the author said. The author said Jackson’s arrest ended any interest in a book about him.

“I don’t want to grow old,” Jackson is quoted as saying in one interview with Boteach.

“When the body breaks down and you start to wrinkle, I think it’s so bad,” Jackson said.

Hip-hop group the Black Eyed Peas have played to a mixed audience in Malaysia after a government ban on Muslims attending the concert was lifted.

The event was initially restricted to non-Muslims because it was being sponsored by beer company Guinness.

Alcohol sales at Friday’s concert were restricted to areas which signs said were off-limits to Muslims.

The group’s glamorous singer, Fergie, dressed down in jeans and a t-shirt for the concert in Kuala Lumpur.

“I have had to change my costume,” she said before taking to the stage, “but I mean the woman’s silhouette is still there, whether it’s clothes or not, whether you see skin or you don’t”.

‘Thrilled’

Frontman will.i.am told reporters he was glad the ban on Muslims attending the concert had been relaxed.

“I’m so thrilled,” he said at a press conference. “When we go to Dubai, when we go to Philippines, it’s Muslims, Christians, everyone.”

“The Black Eyed Peas is everybody’s music. It feels so good to be able to come here and everyone’s able to see us. And we’ll be able to see everyone.”

In the end, around 5,000 fans turned out to hear the band’s hits, including Let’s Get It Started, My Humps and Boom Boom Pow.

Muslims account for nearly 60% of Malaysia’s 27 million people and they are barred from consuming alcohol under Islamic laws.

Government regulations also forbid alcohol firms from organising public concerts, but the Black Eyed Peas show had been allowed in order to boost tourism.

Performances by other touring pop stars such as Pussycat Dolls, Gwen Stefani and Avril Lavigne have faced opposition in Malaysia from conservative Muslims protesting about immodest clothing, forcing the artists to wear clothes that revealed little skin.

The conservative Islamic party PAS is currently calling for a concert by R&B star Beyonce on October 25 to be banned, two years after her Malaysian debut was shelved over fears of demonstrations.

Red Cross officials from the South and North met in August to discuss reunions.

Families long separated by the Korean War will be able to see their loved ones for the first time in years in a series of reunions starting Saturday near the border between North and South Korea.

Red Cross officials from the South and North met in August to discuss reunions.

The reunions — the first in nearly two years — are taking place through October 1 on Mount Keumgang, a North Korean resort near the eastern part of the border.

Millions of families were separated by the Korean War, which ended in 1953 with a cease-fire and no formal peace treaty. No mail, telephone or e-mail exchanges exist between ordinary citizens across the Korean border.

The agreement to hold the reunions came after North and South Korea held three days of talks, mediated by the International Committee of the Red Cross, last month, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency reported at the time.

About 10,000 people applied to take part in the reuinion, but fewer than 200 families were allowed to participate. Ninety-seven families were scheduled to meet Saturday and another 99 families are expected to meet next week, authorities said.

Participants are selected randomly, and there is no date set for a further reunion, which means the tens of thousands of others who were separated by the Korean War have no idea when they may get a chance to see their loved ones — if ever.

For the many separated family members who are elderly, a reunion may never be possible.

Reunions between North and South have been taking place off and on since 2000 after an inter-Korean summit in Pyongyang, Yonhap says. The last reunion took place in October 2007.

Rapprochement talks between the two Koreas have hit a wall since conservative South Korean President Lee Myung-bak took office in early 2008 with a tougher stance toward the North than his liberal predecessor, Roh Moo-Hyun.

The two Koreas have remained in conflict since the conclusion of the Korean War in 1953.

Last month, officials from both sides had the first high-level, cross-border contact in nearly two years when South Korean Unification Minister Hyun In Taek met with North Korean unity leader Kim Yang Gon.

The meetings and reunions are in stark contrast to the tense public statements each side made about each other earlier this year.

Tensions between the two were heightened in July when North Korea launched seven short-range missiles toward the Sea of Japan. The launches came after North Korea conducted a nuclear test on May 25 and threatened the United States and South Korean ships near its territorial waters.

South Korea condemned the action, calling the launches “unwise.”

As campaigning was closing for the German general election Sunday, attention was already turning to what coalition will rule the country.

Social Democrats handing out flowers hope their party will stay in the ruling coalition.

Few doubt that Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union, CDU, will win most votes.

So, will Merkel continue the current center right-center left “grand coalition” with the Social Democrats or will the votes suffice for a coalition with the business liberal but centrist Liberal Democrats or the FDP, a constellation Germans refer to as “Black-Yellow.”

At a press conference ostensibly to outline Germany’s position at this week’s G-20 summit Merkel apparently let the cat out of the bag. “We are in a time of crisis,” she said, “and I believe we can pull out of the crisis faster with a Black-Yellow government.”

But some political analysts believe she would prefer to keep the Social Democrats as the junior coalition partner.

Polls indicate the CDU and FDP could gain a razor thin majority to form a governing coalition. Recent polls put their combined tally at around 48 percent.

That is not exactly a large majority, but it’s two percent more than the left of center parties, the Social Democrats, the Green Party, and the left wing “Die Linke,” who would reach about 46 percent if polls are accurate.

The Liberal Democrats have been in opposition since 1998 and at a rally in Berlin, their leader Guido Westerwelle was sure his time has come.

“I think the voters won’t allow a coalition of the left to be in power. I think they want a conservative government and they will vote to put us in power,” he said.

Westerwelle is eyeing the post of foreign minister under a future Merkel government.

A government of CDU and FDP, conservatives and liberal would probably be more business friendly than the current grand coalition.

Both the CDU and FDP want to cut taxes to further jumpstart Europe’s largest economy which emerged from its deepest recession only a few months ago.

But even optimistic economists believe cutting taxes will be all but impossible for a government which will inherit the largest public deficit in German history after the current government was forced to ruin in its public finances to bail out banks and industrial companies in the wake of the international financial crisis.

And it appears more trouble lies ahead.

“After the economic crisis we will see a social crisis,” says Henrik Enderlein an economics professor at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin.

Enderlein believes a coalition with the liberals would put Merkel under pressure to implement wider ranging tax breaks than she feels are sustainable.

That is why some believe Merkel would not mind continuing her coalition with the Social Democrats who oppose tax cuts and call them irresponsible in a time of disastrous public deficits.

The Social Democratic contender running against Merkel, Frank Walter Steinmeier, however, has all but given up any hopes of winning. “We want to prevent a “black–yellow” coalition,” he keeps repeating at rallies. Confidence sounds different.

Polls currently have the Social Democrats at around 26 percent of the vote, a disastrous figure for a party that in 1998 gained more than 40 percent.

But the Social Democrat ranks were decimated in the seven years they ruled the country under Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.

Many traditional left wing SPD voters felt Schroeder betrayed the powerful labor wing of the party by cutting social benefits while making it easier for companies to fire employees in times of crisis.

The SPD was further hit when many loyal members splintered off and joined the left wing party die Linke which also incorporates remnants of the former communist party that rules East Germany.

Now Steinmeier is trying to lead the Social Democrats out of the impasse and he realizes his real chance to stay in power would be as the junior partner to Merkel.

Steinmeier would keep his post as foreign minister and many political experts in Berlin think this might be what both Merkel and Steinmeier are really striving for.

“They worked very well together,” said Gero Neugebauer of the Freie Universitat Berlin. “The atmosphere was very good and that is very important for such a coalition.”

For Germans it seems like the two choices are realistic: A coalition of CDU and FDP, or a grand coalition of CDU and SPD, like the one that is currently governing the country.

Those options haven’t exactly fired up the election campaigns.

Both Merkel and Steinmeier were loath to attacking each other and both of them cancelled several scheduled TV appearances which would have seen them go head to head.

“This election seems kind of lame,” one young summed it up when I asked him near Berlin’s technical university. International experts have a similar opinion.

One issue they feel has gotten short shrift was the war in Afghanistan. Germans have the third largest troop contingent in the country with about 4,200 soldiers stationed in the north.

But Afghanistan played only a minor role in the election campaigns and in their only televised debate, Merkel and Steinmeier devoted less than three minutes to the issue, less than a week after a German ground commander had called an air strike that killed almost 100 Afghans and possibly also civilians.

“It is simply not high on the political agenda,” says Jan Techau of the German Council on Foreign Relations., “Most Germans are against the war in Afghanistan and having German troops there, but they don’t care about it enough for it to influence the way they vote.”

So Merkel and Steinmeier were careful to keep Afghanistan off the campaign agenda as best they could because they agree German troops need to stay in Afghanistan like they agree on so many topics.

That did not make for an exciting campaign, but it could make for a good continuation of the grand coalition.

The world’s leading nations have agreed “tough new regulations” to prevent another global financial crisis, US President Barack Obama has said.

These relate to the amount of money banks have to hold in reserve and to excessive pay for bankers.

Speaking at the end of a two-day G20 summit, Mr Obama also outlined plans to give emerging economies a greater say in the global economy.

The G20 will effectively replace the G8 group of developed economies.

Global leaders also announced a deal to shift the balance of voting in the International Monetary Fund (IMF) towards growing nations such as China at the summit the US city if Pittsburgh.

‘Reckless few’

“We have taken bold and concerted action to forge a new framework for strong, sustainable and balanced growth,” said US President Barack Obama.

“We have agreed tough new financial regulations to ensure that the reckless few can no longer be allowed to put the global financial system at risk.”

He said that leading nations would now be allowed to assess each others’ economic policies.

Mr Obama added that the leaders had agreed rules to ensure that executive pay would be linked to long term financial performance.

Many have criticised excessive bonuses as encouraging the kind of short term risk-taking that contributed to the financial crisis.

Despite Mr Obama’s declaration, the G20 fell short of agreeing specific rules on the capital reserves that banks need to hold.

“We commit to developing by end-2010 internationally agreed rules to improve both the quantity and quality of bank capital and to discourage excessive [borrowing],” a statement from the G20 leaders said following the summit.

It added that the rules will be phased in once financial conditions improve and recovery is “assured”.

The leaders also fell short of agreeing a cap on bonuses, agreeing instead that bonus payments should not be guaranteed for many years, should be deferred in part, and should not exceed a percentage of the bank’s revenue.

Researchers used fMRI technology to try to pull images out of peoples’ brains.