NEWS ARCHIVE

L.A. Times: Michael Jackson dead at 50 Newspaper reports pop star wasn’t breathing when ambulance arrived BREAKING NEWS msnbc.com staff and news service reports The Los Angeles Times reports that Michael Jackson has died at age 50 after being rushed to UCLA Medical Center. Los Angeles Fire Department Capt. Steve Ruda told the newspaper that Jackson was not breathing when paramedics arrived at his home and CPR was performed. TMZ.com reported that he may have suffered cardiac arrest. E! News reports online that Jackson's father, Joe Jackson, said, "I am in Las Vegas but, yes, people in Los Angeles called me and are with Michael and tell me he was taken to the hospital. His mother is on her way to the hospital now to check in on him. I am not sure what's wrong. I am waiting to hear back from them." Jackson, 50, was preparing for a comeback bid with a series of London concerts scheduled to begin in July. Jackson was born on August 29, 1958, in Gary, Indiana, the seventh of nine children. Five Jackson boys — Jackie, Tito, Jermaine, Marlon and Michael — first performed together at a talent show when Michael was 6. They walked off with first prize and went on to become a best-selling band, The Jackson Five, and then The Jackson 5. Jackson made his first solo album in 1972, and released “Thriller” in 1982, which became a smash hit that yielded seven top-10 singles. The album sold 21 million copies in the United States and at least 27 million worldwide. The next year, he unveiled his signature “moonwalk” dance move while performing “Billie Jean” during an NBC special. In 1994, Jackson married Elvis Presley’s only child, Lisa Marie, but the marriage ended in divorce in 1996. Jackson married Debbie Rowe the same year and had two children, before splitting in 1999. The couple never lived together. Jackson has three children named Prince Michael I, Paris Michael and Prince Michael II, known for his brief public appearance when his father held him over the railing of a hotel balcony, causing widespread criticism.

‘MEET "FREEWAY" RICKY ROSS THE TRUE BOSS OF BOSSES WAS RELEASED FROM PRISON MAY 4TH, 2009 The real Ricky Ross oversaw a Los Angeles based multi-state drug operation in the early 1980's, which earned upwards of $2 million dollars per day at its height. After L.A.P.D. set up a sting operation to bring him down (The Freeway Taskforce), Ricky finally turned himself in, weeks after a rogue police officer attempted to set him up and murder him in an alley. Ricky was sentenced to prison and released in 1996. After 6 months, his former cocaine distributor, who was working for the CIA (unbeknownst to Ricky), asked Ricky for a favor—it turned out to be a set up, and in 1996, Ricky Ross was sentenced to life in prison for orchestrating the purchase of over 100 kilos of cocaine from an undercover federal agent. Ross' sentence was later reduced through appeals and after a series of explosive articles by the late Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Gary Webb. Webb wrote a series titled "Dark Alliance" for the San Jose Mercury News, which exposed the C.I.A.'s role in importing cocaine into black communities to fund Sandinistas in El Salvador, as part of the Iran-Contra scandal. That series turned into the best-selling book, "Dark Alliance," that blew the lid off of the alleged CIA complicity in the importation of cocaine into the US, creating the exceptionally profitable, and damaging, crack cocaine epidemic spread through many inner city neighborhoods. Congressional Hearings, in the late-90s, found the book's facts to be true. As Ricky Ross' story reads like a page-turning novel or a blockbuster film, it has inspired rappers to name themselves after him, and even retell his stories as their own exploits, gaining international success. Although a pawn in a bigger scheme, Ricky realized that the damage done to inner city neighborhoods was unacceptable. He has devoted himself to making a difference in his community by teaching financial literacy to urban youth and teaching legal ways to financially empower themselves. When Ricky first went to prison, he was illiterate—the educational system in South Central L.A. had failed him, even though he went on to become a multi-millionaire savvy at numerous legitimate businesses, and a tennis pro. Reading a book a week during his lengthy incarceration has since made Ricky wise beyond his years. Ricky oversaw an empire that reached numerous states and that is rumored to have brought in millions of dollars a day at its height. His plan is to return to society and accomplish that again, but this time through legal means. Upon Ricky Ross' release, he is focusing on: • a book and a film (currently seeking deals for both), • a new record label in conjunction with industry legend Wendy Day, • a Foundation to help innercity youth at risk, • a reality TV show,

Animation tricks create modern 'Star Trek' Enterprise
by Daniel Terdiman - MSNBC
SAN FRANCISCO--For Paul Kavanagh, the animation supervisor on the new "Star Trek" movie, one technical element of the film was particularly challenging. During live-action filming, director J.J. Abrams had done something unusual: In a bid to incorporate a shaky, handheld effect, Abrams would frequently sit behind the camera and literally tap on the back of it with his fingers. But "Star Trek" is jam-packed with computer graphics, and for Kavanagh, it was imperative to find a way to replicate the effect of that finger tapping, even in the purely digital sequences. Not to do so, he said, would have created a visual inconsistency that threatened to disrupt the audience's experience. Back at Industrial Light & Magic, where Kavanagh works, he considered several ways to solve the problem. He talked to the people in ILM's motion-capture department, who showed him a number of 3D mo-cap cameras and techniques, but he felt those were too time-consuming and expensive. Still, the mo-cap folks had another technology that was both simple and cheap: an orientation sensor that could be plugged into a computer with a simple USB connection and used to record motion. So Kavanagh and his animation team figured out that if they tapped on a desk while filming scenes with CG cameras--on-screen camera viewers that incorporate realistic lenses--and layered the motion from the orientation sensors underneath, they could get the same effect as Abrams got with live-action. "J.J. did come down to visit us, and he loved it," Kavanagh recalled. "He definitely wanted the same kind of handheld look, but (what we did) was a big surprise for him. He loved that the look carried across the shots." As you might imagine, "Star Trek" is a feast of effects and animation. According to ILM's Roger Guyett, the film's visual effects supervisor, it has a full hour of visual effects in all. "Every aspect of (the effects has) to be planned and thought through," Guyett said. "It's easy to underestimate the amount of work that goes into creating" an entire world. Yet Abrams wanted a very tactile feel to the movie, Guyett said, and that meant filming as much as possible and adding in visual effects, rather than relying entirely on CG. "It was closer to the model of the original 'Star Wars' movie"--building actual sets that audiences can react to--"not filling in all the blanks (with CG) later on." For example, when considering how to create a shuttle hangar, Abrams decided he wanted an actual set, rather than crafting it digitally. That meant finding a suitable space and then lighting it to match the look and feel of the rest of the film. One benefit of that, Guyett said, is that it helped the actors to have a real set to work on, because they had to imagine less. "You've got actual wind blowing in your face," he said, rather than having to act like there's wind. For Guyett and his team, another big challenge was figuring out how to handle a massive amount of destruction in the film. For example, he said, they had to bring photo-realism to the way two colliding spaceships would fall apart. But the physics involved in something like that happening in space are far different than they would be inside the Earth's atmosphere. Similarly, the team needed to figure out how to realistically show what the explosion from a missile hitting the Enterprise would look like. "The rules of physics aren't the same" in outer space, Guyett said. "Explosions behave in a different way." Making the physics of an explosion in space look right was no easy task. But Guyett said one of the biggest advantages of working at ILM is that the company is rife with "geniuses" who he can consult with on just about any kind of scientific conundrum. "You can e-mail a guy," Guyett said, "and say, 'When a ship explodes in space, what actually happens?'" Then, because of ILM's latest tools--which accurately model the way gravity, or the lack of it, would affect an explosion in space--the filmmakers can find a way to make it look as close as possible to what the in-house science experts say it should. Guyett explained that ILM's computers allow teams like his to simulate happenings like a nuclear explosion on film and not have it be prohibitively expensive. Just four or five years ago, he said, such a thing wouldn't have been possible. As an example, he said that creating a crash sequence in "Men in Black" had been very expensive because it involved breaking up a costly model. On top of that, they'd had only one chance at getting the shot. But back then, he added, doing it in CG wouldn't have worked because the technology didn't yet exist to get the physics right. Another challenge, Guyett said, was finding a way to update iconic "Star Trek" elements for a 2009 film without upsetting hard-core Trekkies. For example, he said that he and Abrams had labored endlessly to try to create a transporter effect. "It's a very iconic thing in the 'Star Trek' world," Guyett said. "It's a sound that everyone knows." One problem they had to solve was that the transporter ended up looking different on each of the different sets were used in the film. "So we'd just have to adjust it (each time)," Guyett said. "The seemingly smaller challenges can take the longest to figure out." In animating the new "Star Trek" film, animation supervisor Paul Kavanagh crafted a unique hybrid team of animators interested in camera work and camera department people interested in animation. Each member of the group would be given responsibility for working on individual shots. (Credit: Industrial Light & Magic) For animation supervisor Kavanagh, working on "Star Trek" presented the chance to do something he'd never done before: create a single working group of animators interested in camera work and people from the camera department interested in animation, and let individuals take responsibility for individual shots. "We haven't tried that before at ILM," Kavanagh said. He explained that for his eventual team, "Star Trek" was start-to-finish crunch time. They had to work on 860 shots in less than six months, and sometimes Abrams would toss in wild cards by deciding to change the story during sequences, and ask the animation department to do their own pre-visualization, something the director is usually in charge of. In the past, it would have taken too much time, but because Kavanagh had created his hybrid working group, they were up to the task. "The benefits that came from it is that we came up with new camera techniques for all-CG shots," he said. One of Kavanagh's favorite sequences is one in which Captain Kirk is banished to an ice planet and ends up in a battle with a beast known as a polarilla. Crafted in CG and meant to be a hybrid of a polar bear and a gorilla, the polarilla was the animation team's responsibility, and Kavanagh said it was up to them to find a way to both breathe life into the creature and give it character. He said they did a number of animation tests on the polarilla, trying to find the best creatures to base it on from a series of reference sources, including the BBC's Motion Gallery, YouTube, and visits to the San Francisco Zoo. In the end, they decided it would run like a polar bear, but have the rear quarters and hanging knuckles of a gorilla. It would also feature the weight of a grizzly bear. In the sequence, however, they had to animate another creature, known as Big Red, a lobster/crab hybrid that jumps up through the ice to challenge the polarilla for the chance to attack Kirk. Big Red "was fantastically fun to animate," Kavanagh said of the beast, which has 120 eyes in the back of its head. As the chase sequence evolves, he recalled, they had to figure out how Big Red would reach out to grab Kirk's leg, as spelled out in the script. But because the creature's mouth was "so long," the animation team felt it didn't work to have it grab Kirk with its arm. "We thought, what if its tongue is what grabs Kirk's leg?" Kavanagh said. "We had to figure out how that creatively looks. And that's really the fun part of the job." They decided to have it slip and slide, Kavanagh said, but no so much "that it looks comical. It seems that in the end, that was a challenge that both Guyett's visual effects team and Kavanagh's hybrid animation team had to tackle. But in updating "Star Trek" for 2009, will true Trekkies recognize the latest iteration of the franchise? Judging by the mostly enthusiastic reviews, the answer seems to be yes. But Guyett's less interested in reviews than whether he did his job. "Oh yeah," he said. "There are nods to the history of the series, what has happened and what will happen....But we just made it contemporary."

Green technologies to watch
by Martin LaMonica
From a technology perspective, things have changed a lot since the first Earth Days of the 1970s.
After barely moving for decades, there's been a surge in innovation in energy the past five years, fueled both by society's growing interest in clean energy and by the technology revolutions in other industries, like IT and biotech. That has expanded the definition of clean energy from solar and wind to many other areas.
"We are in a new era of energy innovation," declared Daniel Yergin last week at a forum on clean-energy policy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Yergin is someone who should know. As the author of "The Prize," a book about the history of the oil industry, and co-founder of Cambridge Energy Research Associates, he advises CEOs of giant oil and gas firms on energy strategy. Like many people in green tech, he's not a typical 1970s-era tree hugger but a hard-boiled business man who sees technology change driven by economic, environmental, and national security reasons.
Innovation "runs across all sectors and it has a very strong climate change focus," Yergin said. "Clearly, one of the areas of major innovation is the nexus of transportation, smart grid, and renewable and alternative" energy.
Which technologies specifically have a good shot at making the biggest impact? As part of our Earth Day 2009 coverage, we try to handicap technologies that bear watching.

The list: Utility-scale solar. Despite all the press around solar energy, its contribution to national electricity generation is barely a blip. But after a multi-decade hiatus, utility-scale solar power is back on the agenda, led in the U.S. by sun-blessed California's renewable energy mandates.
Over the past five years, several start-ups have designed concentrating solar thermal systems that generate heat by focusing the sun's light to make steam. The steam then turns a traditional turbine to make electricity. Desert areas like the Southwest region of the U.S. are tailor-made for this technology. eSolar demonstration plant
After racing forward for the last few years, concentrating solar upstarts have had to hit the brakes or change plans because of the cost and complexity--from environmental permitting, building transmission lines and the like--of these projects.
eSolar and BrightSource Energy stand out for having announced programs to move ahead with their solar tower technologies. Other relevant technologies in utility-scale solar are flat solar panels mounted on racks that follow the sun and concentrating photovoltaics from companies like Cool Earth Solar and SolFocus.
Energy storage. If solar was the technology that venture capitalists loved in 2007, last year and this year it's energy storage. For investors and entrepreneurs who like a tough problem, they picked a good area.
Why are electric vehicles so expensive? The batteries. What will transform wind and solar power from variable to reliable sources? Storage. How do we make our power-hungry electronic gadgets last all day? You get the picture.
There are a dizzying number of technologies to store electrical energy but they just can't seem to be too cheap, light, or environmentally benign.
The breakthrough for electric vehicles has roots in consumer electronics where lithium ion batteries have become the standard. U.S. companies on the forefront of making lithium ion batteries for cars and other portable electronics, like power tools, are Ener1 and A123 Systems, which signed a deal to supply Chrysler earlier this month.
Companies to watch in electric vehicles are, once again, high-profile Tesla Motors, Fisker Automotive, which will release its plug-in electric later this year, and Bright Automotive, a company founded by the former head of General Motors' EV1 program.
Meanwhile, a handful of progressive utilities are quietly dipping their toes into grid storage, installing one or two megawatt banks of batteries the size of tractor trailers or a small building. Although the lithium ion battery makers tend to get most of the attention, this is an area where alternative chemistries, such as zinc, or even stationary fuel cells are creeping in.
Efficiency. Ask nearly any clean-energy expert about the best way to lower greenhouse gas emissions in the most economical way and they'll say efficiency. An investment in efficiency, whether it's your home or your data center, will typically be the quickest payback when it comes to energy.
From a technology perspective, efficiency takes many forms, from Ford's EcoBoost to deliver better mileage on gasoline engines to LED lighting. For the power grid, efficiency means smart-grid technologies that help utilities better match the supply of electricity with demand and give homeowners ways to cut their monthly bills.
Although the grid will get a major upgrade from the stimulus plan, it's still unclear how many utilities can successfully make the financial case for investing in smart-grid technologies or how much consumers are willing to pay for home energy monitoring.
# Carbon capture and storage. Even if there were massive uptake of efficiency technologies and renewable energy in the next 10 years, the world's economy would still rely heavily on fossil fuels.
During a speech at last week's MIT forum on clean-energy policy, John Holdren, the director of the president's Office of Science and Technology Policy, said carbon capture and sequestration is a technology that deserves more research as a way to mitigate climate change.
Right now, though, technology for pumping large amounts of carbon dioxide underground is still not commercial. There are some companies, including GreatPoint Energy and Tenaska Energy, devising ways to make cleaner-burning natural gas from coal and to store carbon dioxide from that process underground.
The Department of Energy's budget--which has not yet been passed--calls for $3.4 billion in research for "low-carbon coal technologies" to study whether it can be done safely and economically.
Disappointments and a reality check Looking back at our coverage of Earth Day 2008, perhaps the biggest disappointment, economically and environmentally, was the biofuels area. Because of fluctuating commodity prices, corn ethanol providers got clobbered last year with at least two declaring bankruptcy.
Meanwhile, cellulosic ethanol made from wood chips or prairie grasses hasn't yet been done at commercial scale as some in the industry had hoped. It's still a goal worth pursuing because cellulosic ethanol has a better environmental profile than corn ethanol, but the economic turmoil has slowed progress.
The great hope--and perhaps the sleeper--for the biofuels industry remains the lowly algae, although even the most optimistic say that it will be three years before it can be produced at large scale.
Another disappointment on my list is roof-mounted small wind turbines for homes. It's not that the technology doesn't work, but two studies in the U.K. and Massachusetts have shown that the available wind on people's homes is typically below manufacturers' minimum requirements.
Finally, water technologies attract very little investment even though awareness of water problems continues to rise, fed by high-profile droughts in California and Australia.
Sum it all up and it's clear there's a flowering of innovation in energy and environmental products, from people's homes to businesses. At the same time, we shouldn't fool ourselves: technology alone won't magically create a low-carbon economy and more sustainable lifestyles.
A healthy green-tech industry requires a healthy financial system and supportive policies. Many people are aiming for technology breakthroughs and, no doubt, there will be surprises along the way. But given the scope of the problem, it's clear the road to a greener economy will be long, expensive, and will need a different set of rules.

‘Frumpy’ singer Boyle leaves some uneasy
LONDON - A middle aged Scottish spinster with untamed hair and a plain-spoken manner has captivated millions of music lovers and confounded celebrity watchers with her rise to fame after appearing on a British TV talent show.
Susan Boyle, at 47, became one of the world’s hottest celebrities virtually overnight after her rendition of “I Dreamed a Dream” on “Britain’s Got Talent” this month.
She has appeared on Larry King Live in the United States and in countless newspaper and internet articles. The clip of her song has been viewed around 50 million times on Web site YouTube.
But while most people see her story as a fairytale, some say it casts an unflattering light on the public and its preconceived notions about beauty and fame.
They argue that the reason Boyle, who lives alone with her cat, became the instant star she has was because she did not look or behave like a “typical” celebrity.
“Sadly it all Boyles down to image” said Miranda Sawyer in a commentary piece for the Daily Mirror tabloid.
“No woman gets to perform publicly unless she looks like Mariah Carey. If you’re a female singer, you are required by showbiz law to appear sexy at all times.”
Tanya Gold, writing in the Guardian broadsheet, asked: “Is Susan Boyle ugly? Or are we?
“By raising this Susan up, we will forgive ourselves for grinding every other Susan into the dust. It will be a very partial and poisoned redemption. Because Britain’s Got Malice.”
Some descriptions of Boyle underlined media prejudices about beauty and age, critics said, with Boyle referred to variously as “frumpy,” “dowdy,” with “several double chins” and, in Britain’s Daily Mail, as a “hairy angel.”
There has also been lively debate about what Boyle should do to build on her success — stay as she is or have a makeover.
Apologies, concerns A few celebrity watchers have rushed to confess that they, like the “Britain’s Got Talent” audience on the night, had expected Boyle to founder because of the way she looked.
“She pierced my defenses,” said Lisa Schwarzbaum of U.S. publication Entertainment Weekly. “She reordered the measure of beauty. And I had no idea until tears sprang how desperately I need that corrective from time to time.”
Boyle’s success bears similarities to Paul Potts, a tenor who appeared on the same show in 2007 and confounded expectations with his rendition of opera aria “Nessun Dorma.”
His performance spread quickly via Youtube and Potts went on to record a multi-million-selling album “One Chance.”
Music critics wonder whether such instant success is justified, or even helpful.
“How can we expect young people to take the surer path and train for years in drama schools and music conservatoires when there’s this short-cut ... approach to stardom on offer?” said the Telegraph’s Rupert Christiansen in his blog.
But many experts and members of the public believe that Boyle’s story should be seen as good news, not bad.
Marc French of Ugly, a “character model” agency, said the media had created an image of what beauty should be, but attitudes were changing.
“There is a media thing that you should look a certain way and be a certain weight, but if it does give people like Boyle a chance, then why not?” he told Reuters.
“Definitely the market is more daring, a little bit more happy to have a change of look, and more open-minded. I think everyone is getting more comfortable in themselves.”
As for Boyle, she appears unfazed by the sudden attention.
“Haven’t seen YouTube or any of that, but I understand it’s quite immense,” she told reporters at her home last week when asked about the millions of viewers on the Web site.
“Just take baby steps at the moment,” she added, describing her approach to fame. “Keep my feet on the ground.””

Obama's virtual town hall takes legalize-pot detour by Declan McCullagh As any major Web site can attest, any online voting begs to be influenced by special interests. CNBC yanked a 2007 presidential poll after enthusiastic Ron Paul supporters boosted their candidate to 75 percent, and the FreeRepublic.com crowd recently flooded a Web vote about stem cell funding. On Thursday, WhiteHouse.gov became the latest Web site to experience this kind of flood as part of an online town hall -- and this time, it was marijuana legalization advocates who voted to push their questions to the top of the charts. By the time President Obama's town hall began, questions about legalizing pot ranked at the top of the "green jobs," "financial stability," "jobs," and "budget" sections (and came in a close second place in the health care section too). Sample question: "What are your plans for the failing, 'War on Drugs', that's sucking money from tax payers and putting non-violent people in prison longer than the violent criminals?" White House aides didn't choose any of those questions to present to the president on the nearby screens, but Obama did acknowledge that the topic was a popular one. He said online voters wanted to know "whether legalizing marijuana would improve the economy and job creation," and joked that "I don't know what this says about the online audience." But the president -- whose administration has said it would effectively end raids on distributors of medical marijuana in California -- said he would not support changing federal drug law that makes even possession of weed a crime. "No, I don't think this is a good strategy to grow our economy," Obama said, to applause from the audience. The White House said that 92,927 people submitted 104,126 questions and cast a total of 3,606,824 votes. Earlier in the week, some drug-related blogs had encouraged supporters to flood the virtual polls and vote for the marijuana-related questions through the version of Google Moderator that the White House chose for the town hall project. (Google uses the application internally, including for company-wide meetings.) A Marijuana.com discussion thread says: "Vote for the top marijuana related questions." NORMAL said: "Please take a moment right now to log on the WhiteHouse.gov/OpenForQuestions and vote for the questions above, as well as others pertaining to the need to regulate cannabis. Let the President know that millions of American voters believe that the time has come to tax and regulate marijuana." Obama's brief remarks on the topic demonstrated a weakness of the online town hall format: it doesn't allow followup questions, which journalists used during the president's press conference earlier this week to good effect. If that were possible, drug war foes would likely have had something else to say.

'Sexiest Swimsuit Model' Joanna Krupa Inspired by Pope John Paul II's Views on Nudity By Hollie McKay - FOX NEWS It should come as no surprise that Joanna Krupa is comfortable removing her clothes. The Polish-born beauty is one of the most Googled gals on the Internet, has been named the "Sexiest Swimsuit Model in the World" by Playboy, and graced the cover of almost every men’s magazine on the planet, from Maxim to Esquire to GQ. But did you know the first Polish pope was involved in her frequent disrobing? "I think worrying about going topless in a photo shoot or film is really ridiculous," Krupa told FOXNews.com in an exclusive interview. "And the fact is Pope John Paul said, since we were born naked, it is art, and it's just showing a beautiful body that God created." Amen. "I was born in Europe, and Europeans have a more casual, natural way of dealing with nudity," Krupa adds. "Interestingly enough, these days, you see nudity and toplessness in almost every critically acclaimed movie, and whenever I pick up a French Vogue, I see bare breasts, and French Vogue still sets the standards." And even though Krupa is in an industry where so many sleep their way to-the-top, she says she has never once sacrificed her moral integrity to land a job. "I can tell you that I am very proud that everything I have achieved to date has happened due to the hard work of my team and myself," she said. "I was never tempted to give in because I have always been in committed relationships, and take the word 'committed' very seriously." (FOR PICS AND MORE, CLICK HERE...)

Osbournes head back to TV with variety show © 2009 The Associated Press ‘We’re a family that’s a little bit irreverent and edgy,’ says Sharon Osbourne BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. - The Osbourne family has a six-episode shot at remaking the TV variety show in its image. Sharon Osbourne says they’re more than ready for the challenge. “Osbournes Reloaded,” which brings Osbourne, her heavy-metal husband Ozzy and offspring Kelly and Jack back together on TV, debuts on Fox in a cushy Tuesday slot after “American Idol.” “We can do this differently because, firstly, we’re a family,” Sharon Osbourne says. “Secondly, we’re a family that’s a little bit irreverent and edgy. That kind of makes it more spontaneous ... because you never know what any of us is going to do.” And she slyly observes in a masterful bit of understatement, “We don’t take well to structure.” (Neither does Fox: “Osbournes Reloaded” is debuting at 9:20 p.m. EDT, offbeat timing intended to keep viewers of top-rated “Idol” onboard. Not coincidentally, both shows are from the same producer, FremantleMedia North America.) The Osbournes pulled back the curtain on their messily entertaining family life on MTV’s “The Osbournes,” the genre-making series that inspired others with various levels of fame to shed their privacy. Too many, Sharon Osbourne contends during an interview. As far as she’s concerned, her clan did it first and did it best. She believes that the variety format will benefit equally from the Osbourne touch, although she carefully notes that what they’ve created is for families with older children — viewing by tender young things is not advised. From her description and a preview of the show, there’s a fair amount of bleeped expletives and raunchy humor. The format’s mix includes comedy sketches, pranks on unsuspecting studio audience members and music. One ongoing bit, “Littlest Osbournes,” dresses up two British child actors as Sharon and Ozzy and puts them in adult situations with language to match — although Sharon Osbourne vows that the children are uttering milder versions of what they appear to be spewing. Each Osbourne family member contributes something unique, says the proud matriarch who is also a producer and manager, and has appeared on “America’s Got Talent” and “Rock of Love Charm School.” She has no qualms acknowledging that the family rode to fame on Ozzy’s rocker coattails but is adamant that her children deserve the spotlight. (They’ve faced difficulties along the way: Kelly and Jack have battled substance abuse, as has father Ozzy.) “I’m really proud of the way my kids have turned out,” Sharon Osbourne says. “It’s very hard coming from a show business family where the mom and dad are established and so much is expected of your kids. “My kids are very talented,” she says, flashing a determined smile. “My daughter’s not there because she’s got big boobs and done a sex tape. My son’s not there because he’s a freeloader. They’re there because they deserve to have their own show. They can hold it up.”