Revealed: The dinner with a Microsoft employee that irritated Steve Jobs so much he created the iPad

Apple co-founder Steve Jobs and Microsoft's Bill Gates locked horns on countless occasions with the former famously slating the latter for 'ripping off his ideas'.
But it seems Apple owes an enormous debt of gratitude to Gates' firm - because the iconic iPad would never have been created had a Microsoft employee not boasted to Jobs over dinner that they had a revolutionary tablet in production.
'This dinner was like the tenth time he talked to me about it, and I was so sick of it that I came home and said, "F**k this, let's show him what a tablet can really be",' Jobs said.

His anger drove him to create the seven-inch touchscreen iPad - launched in April 2010 and now in its second incarnation, which has sold a combined total of 39.8 million units.
The true inspiration behind the iPad is one of many extraordinary revelations contained in Walter Isaacson's authorised biography 'Steve Jobs', published yesterday.
The biographer, who interviewed Jobs 40 times during his final battle with cancer, also had access to the inventor's friends and family.

The hotly-anticipated book, predicted to become an instant best-seller, reveals how Jobs had a 'problematic psychological attitude' to food.
He would stick to strange diets where he would only eat cereal, carrots or 'starchless vegetables'. Sometimes he would only eat Apples, a quirk that is said to have inspired his company's name.
Elizabeth Holmes, a friend and early Apple employee, is quoted in the book as saying: 'Steve would be starving when he arrived, and he would then stuff himself. Then he would go and purge. For years I thought he was bulimic.'

On his fight with pancreatic cancer, diagnosed in 2004, Jobs for months tried alternative therapies that may have cost him his long-term health. It was a decision, Isaacson wrote, that Jobs came to realise was wrong.
According to the biography, Jobs had a 'very slow growing' type of pancreatic cancer 'that can actually be cured,' but still opted not to get the surgery until nine months had gone by and it may have been too late.
Instead, he tried a vegan diet, acupuncture, herbal remedies and other treatments he found online, and even consulted a psychic.
He also was influenced by a doctor who ran a clinic that advised juice fasts, bowel cleansings and other unproven approaches, the book says, before finally having surgery in July 2004.
The rapid advance of the cancer caused Mr Jobs to undergo an operation known as a 'Whipple procedure' in which he had his pancreas and duodenum removed.

According to Isaacson, Jobs was one of 20 people in the world to have all the genes of his cancer tumour and his normal DNA sequenced. The price tag at the time was $100,000.Isaacon added of his interviews with Jobs: 'On some nights he would stare at the floor and ignore all of the dishes set out on the long kitchen table.
'When others were halfway through their meal he would abruptly get up and leave, saying nothing. It was stressful for his family. They watched him lose 40lb during the spring of 2008.'
On his 'arch-nemesis' Bill Gates, father-of-four Jobs said: 'He'd be a broader guy if he had dropped acid once or gone off to an ashram when he was younger.'
He later said: 'Bill is basically unimaginative and has never invented anything, which is why I think he's more comfortable now in philanthropy than technology. He just shamelessly ripped off other people's ideas.'
The book recounts a meeting between the pair, in November 1983, where Gates revealed his firm was developing a new operating system with a graphic interface.
A furious Jobs said to him: 'I trusted you, and now you're stealing from us'. To which Gates replied: 'Well, Steve... I think it's more like we both had this rich neighbour named Xerox and I broke into his house to steal the TV set and found out you had already stolen it.'
The book makes clear that, some 30 years later, Jobs was still angry about the incident, saying: 'They just ripped us off completely, because Gates has no shame.'
The biography also reveals that the computer visionary offered to design political ads for President Barack Obama's re-election campaign, despite being highly critical of the administration's policies.

Jobs, notorious for his fiery temper and stubborn nature, also refused to meet the president in the autumn of 2010 saying he would not meet him unless Obama personally asked him.When they did eventually meet, Jobs told Obama: 'You're headed for a one-term presidency.' He insisted the administration needed to be more business-friendly and criticised the country's education system saying it was 'crippled by union work rules'.
The by-then frail Apple chief was photographed having dinner with the president and other Silicon Valley technology leaders including Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg at a dinner in California.
The president joined 12 leaders from technology companies to discuss ways to work together to invest in American innovation and promote private sector job growth.
The book also details how Steve Jobs was often bullied in school and stopped going to church at the age of 13.
When he saw starving children on the cover of Life magazine, he asked his Sunday school pastor whether God knew what would happen to them. Jobs never went back to church, though he did study Zen Buddhism later.
Isaacson said Jobs used to think there was a 50-50 chance God existed, but his cancer diagnosis made him think more about the possibility.
Jobs, who quit as Apple CEO six weeks before his death, was also against conspicuous consumption, claiming Apple employees turned into 'bizarro people' when they were made rich by their stock.
The book also reveals how Jobs pledged to use his 'last dying breath' to destroy rival Google's Android because he believed it was based on stolen iPhone technology.
He branded it 'grand theft Android' and promised to spend all his company's money to wreck them. He  vowed 'thermonuclear war' and said that he would not accept any compensation because all he wanted was the company ruined.
He said: 'I will spend my last dying breath if I need to, and I will spend every penny of Apple's $40 billion in the bank, to right this wrong.
'I'm going to destroy Android, because it's a stolen product. I'm willing to go thermonuclear war on this.'
The rant in the book provides insight into the unravelling of Jobs' relationship with Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google and an Apple board member from 2006 to 2009.

In Tripoli, Libya's Interim Leader Says He Is Quitting

Two months after rebel fighters stormed into Tripoli and drove Muammar Gaddafi from power, the man effectively running the country in his role as temporary prime minister warned on Wednesday night that Libya could turn to chaos unless the war ended soon. Mahmoud Jibril, a U.S.-educated economist who helped persuade NATO members to launch their Libya campaign last March, also announced in an interview with TIME that he was quitting — potentially leaving Libya in a perilous state of limbo.

Jibril, who heads the executive board of the rebels' National Transitional Council, did not say exactly when he would resign, but hinted that it could be as soon as Thursday, when a televised meeting of his group would detail what it had accomplished since Gaddafi's ouster, he said. In a grim assessment of Libya's current state, Jibril suggested that as the war dragged on, he had found governing the country was increasingly difficult. "We have moved into a political struggle with no boundaries," Jibril said, looking glum, rather than a man rejoicing liberation. "The political struggle requires finances, organization, arms and ideologies," he said. "I am afraid I don't have any of this." (See photos of the fight for Gaddafi's hometown.)

His warning underscores just how much Libya is now in limbo — and just how dangerous that might be. The exhilarating sense of victory, which gripped the world's attention when rebel columns rolled into Tripoli on Aug. 20, has largely dissipated. In its place is a sense of being in suspended animation, as men in battle fatigues move through Tripoli — a city of two million people — in pickup trucks topped with machine guns. The breezy Mediterranean harbor is all-but dormant, and those few ships which are in the dock are frozen in place. Cranes sit suspended over half-built construction sites, including one for a sprawling InterContinental hotel off the former Green Square (now called Martyrs Square) which has been frozen since the revolution began in February. And Tripoli's international airport remains closed. "Shoulder-fired missiles have gone AWOL, and all it takes is one of them to attack," says Sami Zaptia, a business consultant who recently helped form a Tripoli organization called the National Support Group, to pressure rebel leaders into forming democratic institutions. "There is very little business happening."

The country's paralysis, at least around Tripoli, is in part because Gaddafi and his powerful son, Saif al-Islam, are still on the run, with no idea among rebel leaders where they are. And although it has been only two months since Gaddafi's 42-year rule imploded, many assumed that by now Libya's war would long be over and a transitional government would be in place, especially since the eight-month revolution seemed to unfold at surprising speed. Instead, rebel fighters have been ground down for weeks in a protracted battle in Sirt, Gaddafi's home town 230 miles east along the coast, as they try to crush the dictatorship's last armed loyalists. (See a video on the youth in Libya beyond Gaddafi.)

Throughout Wednesday, Tripoli's old whitewashed mosques blared out prayers from the minarets, calling on Allah to protect the fighters on the front line. Yet in the city itself, the unity which appeared to hold through months of the revolution, has seriously frayed, as rival brigades lay claim to different territories around the capital, and as rebel fighters sharpen their allegiances to local commanders.

Jibril's words on Wednesday evening made it clear that Libya needed more than the prayers blasting out of the mosques, for the country to unite around a new democracy. He warned that the longer the fighting lasted, so the possibility increased for Libya turning "from a national struggle to chaos," and becoming a battleground for "all the foreign powers which have their own agendas towards Libya." Rebel leaders have said that once Sirt falls, they will declare the war over and announce a temporary government. The delay involves concrete complications, including the fact that governments cannot easily hand over billions of dollars of Gaddafi's money, which are frozen in foreign bank accounts, so long as there is no Libyan government to administer the money.

With the potential for the brigades turning into armed factions, Jibril said one urgent priority was to form a national army. He told the public meeting Wednesday night that the thousands of rebel fighters — most of whom joined the revolution with no military training — would be offered the chance to join the army, or to join the Interior Ministry, which oversees the police. A third option would be to form Libyan security companies, which would help guard companies and oil facilities — an alternative to the kind of foreign private contractors, which became a prominent feature of Iraq after Saddam Hussein's regime collapsed in 2003. That, Jibril said, "will facilitate many things in this country." Even if he may not be running it.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2097333,00.html#ixzz1bIgrqgjB

'Solving eurozone crisis is a long way off': Warning leads global stock markets to tumble

Stock markets around the world slammed into reverse yesterday after Germany warned that a solution to the debt crisis in the Eurozone was a long way off.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel warned the deadlock might not be broken until next year – dashing hopes of a comprehensive rescue plan emerging this weekend.
It came as a leading forecaster in London said the crisis in the single currency bloc will plunge Britain back into recession.
‘There is a high chance of recession,’ said Jonathan Loynes, chief European economist at Capital Economics. ‘However, a more rapid escalation of the eurozone crisis would raise the risk of another full-blown slump like that seen in 2008 and 2009.’
The FTSE 100 index closed down 29.66 points at 5436.70 – a fall of 0.54 per cent – having powered above 5500 earlier in the day.
The German stock market fell 1.81 per cent in Frankfurt and Paris was down 1.61 per cent while shares also took a hammering in New York.
The sell-off came after German officials said European leaders will not fix the region’s debt woes at this weekend’s summit in Brussels.
It was seen as a ‘reality check’ after the G20 said a ‘comprehensive’ rescue plan must be delivered by the end of talks on Sunday night.
‘Dreams building up that this package will mean everything will be solved and over by Monday cannot be fulfilled,’ said German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s chief spokesman Steffen Seibert. He added that the search for a solution ‘surely extends well into next year’.
German finance minister Wolfgang Schauble also said it was unrealistic to expect a definitive solution to the debt crisis at this weekend’s summit.
The comments are unlikely to have pleased an increasingly frustrated George Osborne ahead of last night’s dinner at 11 Downing Street with his German counterpart.
Mr Osborne has set a deadline of the G20 summit in Cannes early next month for a plan to be agreed.
‘The countdown to Cannes continues,’ said the UK Chancellor. ‘The biggest boost to growth across the world – and for Britain – would be a resolution to the crisis in the Eurozone.
‘Maintaining the momentum towards that will be the focus of my discussion with my international counterparts.’
But in a major blow to Mr Osborne ahead of his meeting with Mr Schauble, Capital Economics said the crisis in the Eurozone ‘is likely to have severe adverse effects on the UK economy’ and forecast economic expansion of 0.8 per cent this year followed by zero growth in 2012.

LAW CHANGE TO SLAP ROAD SIGNS ON YOUR HOME

OAD signs could be attached to -private homes without the owners’ consent under controversial Government plans unveiled yesterday.
Highways authorities would get the power to effectively demand that properties become “display boards” to reduce street clutter.
Transport minister Norman Baker hailed the shake-up of rules governing road signs as “the most far-reaching in 40 years”.
But motoring groups warned of a likely public backlash.
Professor Stephen Glaister, director of the RAC Foundation, said: “We regard our homes as our castles but this report suggests they could be used as display boards.
“Ministers must be careful before they decide to extend limited powers already available in some parts of London and risk alienating the -public.”
The AA said: “There can be too many poles carrying road signs and in London the street names on buildings set a precedent.
OAD signs could be attached to -private homes without the owners’ consent under controversial Government plans unveiled yesterday.
Highways authorities would get the power to effectively demand that properties become “display boards” to reduce street clutter.
Transport minister Norman Baker hailed the shake-up of rules governing road signs as “the most far-reaching in 40 years”.
But motoring groups warned of a likely public backlash.
Professor Stephen Glaister, director of the RAC Foundation, said: “We regard our homes as our castles but this report suggests they could be used as display boards.
“Ministers must be careful before they decide to extend limited powers already available in some parts of London and risk alienating the -public.”
The AA said: “There can be too many poles carrying road signs and in London the street names on buildings set a precedent.
“The London Local Authorities and Transport for London (No 2) Bill is currently proceeding through the -legislative process. It will provide powers for local authorities in London to place traffic signs on property without the consent of the property holder, subject to proper controls and checks, to reduce the requirement for poles to support signs.
“The Government will give consideration to introducing these powers nationally subject to the outcome of this London legislation.”
Other ideas in the review include a new sign to warn lorry drivers against being guided into narrow lanes by their sat-nav systems.
Also, road sign lighting could be dimmed “to reduce costs and carbon emissions”. It could also become -easier for councils to introduce 20mph limits.
Mr Baker said: “This is the most far-reaching review of traffic signs in 40 years. We are cutting pointless bureaucracy, giving councils more freedoms, and updating our suite of signs for the modern era.”

STRICTLY COME DANCING 2011: THE END OF ROAD FOR EDWINA CURRIE, THE ‘BENDY-BUS’

AND so to business. After all the faux-flirting and the faffing about came the foxtrot and it proved to be the undoing of Edwina Currie.
The former Tory minister-turned novelist became the first celebrity to be voted off Strictly Come Dancing last night after the public chose to save Nancy Dell’Olio instead.
The judges declared Edwina’s first ballroom dance with partner Vincent Simone contained too much fox and not enough trot, which must have come as a bitter blow to her as she has played up her revitalised sexiness so much that she sometimes sounded like one of those dodgy chat lines men phone up when they feel, er, lonely.
On and on she went – about how much she fancies Vincent, how she loves all the touching and how dancing has pepped up her sex life. Give Edwina an innocent word and she’ll give you a single entendre.
Clearly she believed she was flying the flag for the far from past-it older woman but unfortunately, it all sounded rather desperate. And as for all that lascivious eye-rolling and pouting, it was far too reminiscent of Les Dawson as Cosmo Smallpiece to be anything other than unseemly.
Nor did it translate into her dancing. Last week she flashed her knickers at the end of her cha-cha and this week Bruno Tonioli said she looked “like a bendy-bus negotiating a tight corner”. More importantly, the persona she chose to adopt did not play well with the public. Edwina’s dismissal from the series proved yet again (not that we should need reminding after Miss Widdecombe’s bravura stint last year) that up to a point – certainly well beyond the half way mark – how well a contestant does on Strictly is not only to do with how well they dance.
Attitude is key. In other words, they have to like you. On that basis, Audley Harrison was in the bottom two while roly-poly Russell Grant is already the darling of the series.
It was also no surprise that Edwina and Nancy fell out of favour this week, what with the smuttiness of the former and the “I’m too good for this” hauteur of the latter.
Nancy, partnered with Anton du Beke, is a terrible dancer but what gave her the edge is that we’re still intrigued by her. Who IS she exactly and why is she there? Whereas with Edwina, the mystery went long ago.
Talking of attitude, some of the male contestants are so very endearing in their eagerness to please. Robbie Savage said he felt “worthless” after the judges caned his cha-cha last week, and his eyes welled up in gratitude when the judges praised his foxtrot. This is football’s hardman but he’s reduced to near tears by a couple of queeny guys and a girl! Brilliant.

JESSICA BROWN FINDLAY IS THE DOWNTON ABBEY GIRL WHO LOVES TO SHOCK

IN DOWNTON Abbey her character of Lady Sybil is so genteel that she has to be taught how to make a cup of tea. In her latest film however Jessica Brown Findlay is more likely to cause a bit of a storm in that teacup.
In a role that could scarcely be further removed from the one that has brought her fame and recognition on Sunday evenings she will be seen naked and also having sex with a man old enough to be her father in the new British-made film Albatross, which opens next week. At one point, when her character is asked to prove her age before she can buy cigarettes, she lifts up her T-shirt under which she’s wearing nothing else and asks: “Is that good enough?” It comes as something of a shock when all you’ve seen her in previously are ankle-length Edwardian frocks.

“I don’t mind giving everyone a shock – including myself,” says Brown Findlay, in the slightly plummy tones which have become familiar to millions of TV viewers. "In Downton, if Lady Sybil was exposed to having sex before marriage, she would be ruined.

“But in Albatross my character turns it in to an advantage. She knows every fact there is to know and loves to shock. I have to admit it gives me a thrill to be able to deliver someone who is such a contrast.”
Jessica, 22, has already seen one career crash as a ballerina thanks to an ankle injury and another blossom, as a painter of fine arts. She’s bypassed drama school to emerge as one of the names and faces to watch.

The prestigious British Academy of Film and Television Arts invited her as a guest at the Hollywood reception attended by Prince William and Kate Middleton straight after their marriage. Since both Jessica and Kate are Berkshire girls they might have had something to say to each other. “The abiding memory is being in a room, waiting with other actors, all of whom can’t believe they’re there,” she says.

“I know that acting is a mad way to earn a living and so it seems does everyone else. It is the same when filming Downton Abbey, with much laughter among the serious work.”
One of the funniest, apparently, is actor Jim Carter, who plays po-faced butler Carson. “He’s had such a good career and is so relaxed about work and life,” she says.

“He has that wonderful way of going in and out of character in a moment. At one point he can be telling a funny story and then he has to act a scene. He transforms himself in an instant.”

Dame Maggie Smith, as the formidable Violet, Dowager Countess of Grantham, evidently enjoys every moment meanwhile. “She is very dry, very witty and loves delivering her put-down lines,” says Jessica.

“What is reassuring for me is that all the very experienced cast like Hugh Bonneville, (Earl of Grantham), Penelope Wilton (Isobel Crawley) and Elizabeth McGovern (Cora, Countess of Grantham) have so much energy and enthusiasm. What really comes across is a feeling of enjoyment in the script and the setting and the characters we get to play.”

Like the rest of the cast, Jessica is stunned by the scale of Downton’s success, with an audience which at one point hit 13 million. “It’s a total shock to us all, whatever anyone says,” she insists. “We thought it might do well. To be watched by so many and have a second series so eagerly awaited, is incredible.”

She also has her own theories of why the series is such a hit. “Key areas of life don’t change,” she says. “We gossip about the same thing as they gossiped about in those days – falling in love, jealousy, anger, scandalous events.
“The only difference is that most of us would probably have hated to live then as opposed to now. It is easy to look back at those days as wonderful, but they were very hard indeed for 95 per cent of the population.

“My own character would have had a very privileged life with every little thing taken care of. But how much fun would that really have been – shut away in a large country house, changing for dinner every night and never truly having independence?”

In Albatross, Jessica (who lives with her artist boyfriend, Thomas Campbell) plays a young woman who takes a job as a cleaner for her friend’s family, and soon catches the eye of the father, a best-selling author.

It seems a far cry from when Jessica was 18 and saw her hopes for the career she had originally set
her heart on dashed. That was when she was told her days as a ballerina were over. “It’s the only thing I ever wanted to do from the age of about three,” she says.

“Unfortunately I had an ankle problem and underwent three operations. The last one went wrong and I woke up after the operation with a doctor looking at me, giving me the news that it was messed up.”

She had left home to be a sixth form boarder at Tring Park School, Hertfordshire, which specialises in performing arts, in the hope of achieving her ambition.

“Work would start at seven in the morning and not finish until 6pm,” she says. “But I did not mind any of it because that is what I wanted to do with my life. When it was taken away from me in an instant I just felt numb.”
She was saved by a hospital visit by her art teacher.   

“She said I should apply for an art course instead. I just didn’t want to know – my head was still reeling from the bad news. “But my teacher said: ‘You have talent. If you don’t apply, I will apply and forge your signature on the application form.’”

Soon after Jessica was accepted by one of the top colleges, Central St Martins, London to study fine arts painting.
She finished her art degree but surprised even herself by making a living as an actor. “It all started with a couple of meetings with the director Tim Burton, who was directing Alice In Wonderland, and was looking for Alice,” she says.

“I was down to the last three but did not make it. From that I got an agent and he started sending me scripts. It’s all in the early stages at the moment but after what went wrong for me I am willing to embrace anything and everything.”

WILLIAM HAGUE PLEDGES ACTION TO CUT BACK EU POWER WHEN ‘TIME IS RIGHT’

But he claimed that an immediate referendum on leaving the European Union would bring no benefit.
Thousands of Daily Express readers have backed our crusade for a referendum on quitting the EU. And London Mayor Boris Johnson said, on Tuesday, that such a vote would “not be a bad idea”.
Mr Hague yesterday insisted in a TV interview that there would be “moments in the future when we can do things about repatriating power from Brussels”, but said pulling out of Europe would do nothing to isolate the UK from the eurozone crisis.
He said: “All the uncertainty of having a referendum would probably do further damage to economic confidence. It would not help jobs and businesses in this country.”
Mr Hague told the Tory conference that the Government’s approach to the EU, focused on trade and deregulation and getting the budget under control, was “in tune with the instincts of the British people”.
He was applauded as he accused Labour of “signing away rights of this country to the EU while neglecting what they were morally and politically obliged to do, to consult the people of this country”.
He said Britain must help the eurozone “quench the flames’” of its euro debt crisis to protect Britain’s own interests.

3 women give jurors a glimpse into Murray's personal life

One gave birth to his son, another caught his eye in a Las Vegas nightclub and the third flirted with him in a Houston bar. Together the women who took the stand at the trial of Michael Jackson's personal physician Tuesday gave jurors a glimpse into Conrad Murray as a man, and not as a doctor.

Summoned by prosecutors to verify phone records from the last day of the pop star's life, the women hinted at a side of Murray that jurors had not previously seen — the married man in his mid-50s pursuing much younger women.

Prosecutors suggested Murray was preoccupied with his love interests when he should have been focused on Jackson, whom he was treating with the powerful anesthetic propofol.

Full coverage: The Conrad Murray trial

On the morning of June 25, 2009, Murray texted a Las Vegas dancer, screened a call from a former girlfriend in Los Angeles and was talking with a Houston waitress when prosecutors say he realized that Jackson had stopped breathing.

"I started telling him about my day, and that's when I realized he was no longer on the phone," the waitress, Sade Anding, recalled. "I was just talking, and the next thing, I said 'Hello, hello,' and then I didn't hear anything."

Later in the back of an ambulance, still insisting Jackson's life might be saved, Murray phoned a Santa Monica actress with whom he was living and had an infant son.

"I remember him telling me that he was on the way to the hospital in the ambulance with Mr. Jackson and for me not to be alarmed," Nicole Alvarez said.

Prosecutors wanted jurors to hear a lot more unflattering evidence about Murray's relationships, suggesting that his wooing of exotic dancers and cocktail waitresses with huge tips and mentions of his connections to Jackson showed a "pattern" of indiscretion.

Superior Court Judge Michael Pastor barred most of that testimony as prejudicial, but Anding, Alvarez and a third woman who testified were permitted to say that they met Murray in bars or clubs and that he pursued them.

"From that first meeting with Conrad Murray, did he give you his telephone number?" Deputy Dist. Atty. Deborah Brazil asked Michelle Bella, the Las Vegas dancer.

"Yes," she replied.

Responding mostly to yes or no questions, the women did not detail the nature of their relationships with Murray, who has been married for decades to a medical school classmate. Brazil did ask Bella about how freely the doctor discussed his role as Jackson's personal physician.

"Did he leave that type of information on a voice mail on your cell on June 16, 2009?"

"Yes," Bella replied.

Alvarez said the doctor had told her as early as 2008 that he was caring for the singer, and even arranged as a surprise for her to meet the singer.

"I was speechless when I met him," she recalled.

Alvarez told jurors that beginning in April 2009, Murray began spending nights at Jackson's mansion. She said she never asked what treatment he was providing the singer or opened the many packages Murray received from a Las Vegas pharmacy.

The pharmacist who shipped those packages testified that Murray ordered 255 vials of propofol and other medications in the three months before Jackson's death.

Tim Lopez, the proprietor of Applied Pharmacy Services, said Murray led him to believe he planned to use the anesthetic at a Los Angeles clinic he owned. In fact, Murray had no practice in California and Jackson was his only patient.

In a day of testimony about Murray's personal life, there was one bright spot for the defense: a longtime administrative assistant who traded calls with Murray the morning Jackson died. On cross-examination, Stacey Ruggles described the needy patients the doctor cared for at a Houston charity clinic he set up in honor of his late father.

"Most of them were indigent, on fixed incomes, and were unable to afford a physician," Ruggles said. "From what I could see, there was a very minimal amount of income that came in from that office during that time."

"Because of the individuals that he chose to see?" Ed Chernoff, an attorney for Murray, asked.

"Yes, sir," she replied.