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LOS ANGELES, California (LEO) -- Michael Jackson's father told CNN's Larry King Monday night that he never beat his son or made any mistakes in raising him. Joe Jackson also said the rumor that he wanted to take the singer's children on tour as the Jackson 3 was "a bunch of jive."
Jackson repeated his suspicion that foul play was involved in his son's death last month, but he conceded he did not know what happened. He said he had been blocked from seeing or talking to his son in the days before his death.
There were indications in the interview with Jackson, who was in Las Vegas, that he was not being included in all of the family's activities in recent weeks.
When King asked about the findings of the private autopsy -- which daughter LaToya Jackson last week said she's seen -- Joe Jackson answered "Well, they have not showed it to me, Larry. I'll put it like that."
He also said he did not know where his son's body has been kept since the memorial service.
"You'd have to ask somebody that knows," he said. "I don't know."
Jackson denied that he was legally separated from Katherine Jackson -- his wife of 60 years -- although he did say he spends most of his time in Las Vegas. His wife lives in the family home in Encino, California.
He denied a report that he had agreed to sign a document saying he would not be involved in helping raise Michael Jackson's three children as a way to help his wife retain custody of them.
"I've never said I was going to sign any papers to that effect," he said.
Debbie Rowe, Michael Jackson's ex-wife and mother of his two oldest children, has not said yet whether she will challenge Katherine Jackson for custody.
Joe Jackson appeared careful to avoid any hints that he might encourage the children to enter show business, saying "they have to be what they are, kids, at the moment."
"I can't get into that right now, Larry, because, I mean, I just can't," he said.King asked him to respond to a media report quoting an unnamed family source that said Joe Jackson, who turned his sons into the Jackson 5, had approached Michael Jackson's children about touring next year as the Jackson 3.
"Not true. That's a bunch of jive. That's a bunch of -- I wish I could say what I should say. That's a bunch of bull."
Asked about stories that he was abusive to his son as a child, Jackson said "Oh, that's a bunch of bull S. That's a bunch of bull S."
"You never physically harmed him?" King asked.
"Never. Never have. And I -- and I raised him just like you would raise your kids, you know? But harm Michael, for what? I have no reason. That's my son. I loved him and I still love him," Jackson said. Watch Joe Jackson deny abusing Michael »
He said he made no mistakes in raising his children.
"Michael was raised properly," he said. "He didn't run the streets like most of those other kids that was in his neighborhood."
While denying any child abuse, Joe Jackson's explanation did leave the question of spanking:
"The media keep hollering about saying that I beat Michael. That's not true. You know what this beat started -- beat started in the slavery days. Where they used to beat the slaves and then they used to torture them. That's where this beating started. These slave masters, and that's where that come from. But, hey, there's a lot of people in America, Larry, a lot of people in America spank their kids, you know? They say they don't, they're lying. They're lying. Now, Michael was never beaten by me, I've never beaten at all."
Joe Jackson said he was not surprised or hurt to learn Michael left him out of his will.
"That's the way he wanted it," he said. "And it's not going to hurt me that I was left out of his will. But it happened."
The will, written in 2002, places all of Jackson's assets into a family trust that benefits his mother, the three children and various charities.
Joe Jackson showed frustration at being cut out of his son's life in his last days.
"Larry, I'm going to cut through the chase on this. I could never get to him. I tried all I could and I could never get to him because he -- I was barred away from him by securities and all that type of thing. I could not get to him," he said.
He then repeated his suspicion that foul play was involved in his son's death.
"If a doctor's there that couldn't bring you back -- and this doctor, he ran away. They had to look for him three days to find him. So what do you think there that's happened? To me, that's foul play."Dr. Conrad Murray, who had been hired to attend to Jackson, was with the singer when he died on June 25. There were reports initially that Murray had disappeared after his unsuccessful efforts to resuscitate Jackson. His lawyer denied he was ever in hiding.
The Los Angeles County Coroner's office has not concluded if foul play was involved in the singer's death. A spokesman for the coroner said the results should be made public in the next two weeks.
NEW DELHI (LEO)--: US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Sunday said that strategic partnership is required between India and US on issues like climate change.Addressing a joint press conference, Hillary Clinton said that she expects Pakistan to take strong action against terrorism. After winning over Mumbai with her charm, Clinton arrived in New Delhi on Sunday afternoon for talks with Indian government leaders to launch what she called a third phase in the India-US strategic partnership. She was received at the airport by India's Ambassador to the US Meera Shankar and Gayatri Kumar, joint secretary in charge of the Americas in the external affairs ministry. A slew of agreements, including pacts on an end-use monitoring agreement that will spur high-end arms sales between them and another pact on space launches, are expected to be signed on Monday. India is also likely to announce two sites for US nuclear reactors during Clinton's visit. Soon after her arrival, Clinton headed to Gurgaon to visit ITC Green Centre Building that showcases environment-friendly practices in India. The political business will start with Clinton's call on the ruling United Progressive Alliance (UPA) chairperson and Congress president Sonia Gandhi in the evening. Before political talks on Monday, Clinton goes to Delhi University - a trip aimed at giving the US' chief diplomat an insight into the thinking of young India. Over 90,000 Indian students study in the US. Clinton will call on Prime Minister Manmohan Singh Monday afternoon and discuss with him a host of bilateral, regional and global issues.
BEIJING, China (LEO) -- A group of British children and teachers quarantined for nearly a week in China because of swine flu fears were allowed to leave their hotel Tuesday, Britain's Foreign Office said. A spokesman could not confirm the number of children and teachers released from quarantine, but they were among a group of 111 that was sequestered in a Beijing hotel six days ago. The students and teachers came from various schools in Britain and were all traveling to China together as members of the same British school association, the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust. Twelve children were hospitalized and diagnosed with the H1N1 virus, commonly known as swine flu. One child is in the hospital awaiting test results to confirm the virus, the Foreign Office said. The group released from quarantine Tuesday will now be moved to a different hotel, the Foreign Office said. The second group is due to be released from quarantine Wednesday, the Foreign Office said. Olivia Bishop, one of the teachers on the trip, said Chinese authorities pulled three students aside as soon as they landed at the airport because they had high temperatures. Two tested positive for mild symptoms of the virus, she said, and the rest of the group was able to continue with planned sightseeing. "When we got back to the campus that evening, we were about to have our dinner and we were told to go back to a classroom and wait, and then we were taken to the hotel to be quarantined," Bishop told Sky News.
KABUL (LEO)--: A suicide bomber killed at least five and injured eight others in an attack on a police post at one of Afghanistan's main border crossings to Pakistan on Sunday, the Interior Ministry said. It said there were other casualties in the attack, which comes amid the worst violence in Afghanistan since Taliban militants were driven from Kabul in 2001. The bomber struck a border control gate on the Afghan side of the frontier at Torkham, the main crossing on a highway that links the capitals of Afghanistan and Pakistan, both of which are fighting growing insurgencies by Taliban militants. A suicide bomber dressed as a woman killed two people at the Torkham crossing on June 30.The Afghan security sealed the Pak-Afghan border after the blast.
WASHINGTON (LEO)--: The United States this week marks the 40th anniversary of the historic first moon walk, with President Barack Obama kicking off events by meeting at the White House Monday with the crew of the Apollo 11 mission.
The Apollo 11 crew became the first to accomplish the dream of ages and walk on the surface of the moon -- an endeavor now remembered at a time when future US dominance in space has become far less certain.
"That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind," said astronaut Neil Armstrong as he stepped down from the lunar lander on July 20, 1969, as an estimated 500 million people on Earth crowded round televisions and radios.
Washington's "Newseum" news museum on Monday will simulcast a discussion -- "The Apollo Legacy: The Moon and Beyond" -- to science centers across the United States.
In addition to the White House reception, a host of events planned included a news conference in Washington Monday with astronauts from the Apollo program.
Celebrations will be held from the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Florida, where the Apollo 11 mission blasted off, to mission control at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas and at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum in the US capital.
The lunar landing was a huge morale booster to a country mired in the bloody Vietnam war and on edge because of the Cold War, ushering in a new sense of confidence and challenging concepts of science and religion.
But dreams that we might all be able to travel to the stars some day have been rudely brought down to earth.
Now, US space agency NASA's ambitious plans to put US astronauts back on the moon by 2020 to establish manned lunar bases for further space exploration to Mars under the Constellation project are increasingly in doubt.
KABUL, Afghanistan (LEO) -- The U.S. military bombed about 300 tons of poppy seeds in a dusty field in southern Afghanistan Tuesday in a dramatic show of force designed to break up the Taliban's connection to heroin.The air strike occurred mid-day in Helmand province and was observed by LEO's Ivan Watson, who is embedded with the U.S. Marines operating in that province.
The military dropped a series of 1,000-pound bombs from planes on the mounds of poppy seeds and then followed with strikes from helicopters.
Tony Wayne, with the U.S. State Department, said the strikes on poppy seeds, that can be used to make opium and heroin, is part of a strategy shift for the military to stop the Taliban and other insurgents from profiting from drugs.
"There is a nexus that needs to be broken between the insurgents and the drug traffickers," Wayne said. "Also, it is part of winning the hearts and minds of the population because in some cases they are intimidated into growing poppies."
In a bid to encourage Afghan farmers to swap out their poppy plants for wheat crops the U.S. Agency for International Development has been offering them seeds, fertilizers and improved irrigation.
Observers have noticed a significant decline in the opium trade in Afghanistan, with the number of poppy-free provinces increasing from 13 in 2007 to 18 in 2008, according to a U.N. report released last year.
Opium cultivation in the country, which has 34 provinces, dropped by about 20 percent in a year, the U.N. reported in August.
"It's a challenge to deliver assistance in a war zone -- you can hear fighter jets flying above us right now," said Rory Donohoe, a USAID development officer.
"At the end of the day, what we found is successful is that we work in areas that we can work," he told CNN in a recent interview in Helmand province.
"We come to places like this demonstration farm where Afghans can come here to a safe environment, get training, pick up seeds and fertilizer, then go back to districts of their own." Many of Afghanistan's northern and eastern provinces have already benefited from USAID alternative farming programs, which have doled out more than $22 million to nearly 210,000 Afghans to build or repair 435 miles (700 kilometers) of roads and some 2,050 miles (3,300 kilometers) of irrigation and drainage canals.
Giving Afghan farmers improved access to markets and improved irrigation is successfully weaning them away from poppy production, according to officials at USAID.
Over the years, opium and heroin -- both derivatives of the poppy -- have served as a major source of revenue for the insurgency, most notably the Taliban movement that once ruled Afghanistan."If you can just help the people of Afghanistan in this way, the fighting will go away," said Abdul Qadir, a farmer in Lashkar Gah.
"The Taliban and other enemies of the country will also disappear."
NEW DELHI (LEO)--: Marking its entry into an elite club, India will launch its first indigenous nuclear-powered submarine at Vishakapatnam seaport for trial on July 26. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh will launch the submarine at the Vishakapatnam port in the presence of top Defence and Navy officials, Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y S Rajasekhara Reddy told reporters here today.
Code-named Advanced Technology Vessel (ATV), India has been quite secretive about its nuclear submarine project.
To be christened INS Arihant (destroyer of enemies), the nuclear submarine is among the five in the class already approved by the government to create a strong nuclear submarine fleet.
The sea trial of the 7,000-tonne submarine will be conducted in the Bay of Bengal off Vishakapatnam, where the vessel was constructed.
Once inducted, India will join the high league comprising US, Russia, France and China, which have capabilities to develop nuclear submarines.
