Honduras interim president to take leave for vote

TEGUCIGALPA, Honduras — Honduras' interim president announced Thursday he will step down temporarily to allow voters to concentrate on the upcoming presidential elections.

Roberto Micheletti said he will step aside ahead of the Nov. 29 election until at least Dec. 2, when Congress is scheduled to vote on whether to reinstate ousted President Manuel Zelaya.

Micheletti did not say who would be in charge of the government during his absence.

"My purpose with this measure is for the attention of all Hondurans to concentrate on the electoral process and not on the political crisis," Micheletti said in a message broadcast on national television.

He said he would immediately return to the presidency should threats to "order and security arise."

Micheletti was named president by Congress after Zelaya was rousted from his bed by soldiers and flown to Costa Rica on June 28.

Zelaya, who has been holed up at the Brazilian Embassy since slipping back into the country on Sept. 21, called Micheletti's announcement "an easy maneuver ... to deceive fools."

Zelaya again warned that he would not return to the presidency if Congress votes to restore him after the elections, saying doing so would legitimize the coup.

"It's illegal and violates the rights of the voters because it tries to hide a coup d'etat," Zelaya said.

Both Zelaya and Micheletti signed an agreement brokered by U.S. diplomats last month. However, the two sides are now at odds over whether the pact is being fulfilled.

The accord calls for formation of a national unity government, but does not require Zelaya's restoration to office, leaving that decision up to Congress.

Zelaya declared the pact a failure two weeks ago when Micheletti announced the formation of a unity government before any vote by Congress.

Sands looks to restart Macau casino work next year

HONG KONG — U.S. casino operator Las Vegas Sands Corp. plans to resume work in January on its multibillion-dollar gambling resorts in Macau after suspending construction last year amid a massive funding crunch, the company said Sunday.

This week Sands will seek to raise more than $3.3 billion from an initial public offering of shares in its casino businesses in the southern Chinese enclave, the world's largest casino market.

About $500 million will be used to restart construction on the projects, executives said. The company plans to hire as many as 12,000 workers after 11,000 jobs were cut as a result of the suspension.

The projects, including casinos and Shangri-La and Sheraton hotels, were stalled last year as the company grappled with a cash shortage, brought on by the financial crisis and Sands' massive debt load, that threatened its agreements with creditors.

Sands' latest casino resorts are part of Chairman Sheldon Adelson's quest to turn a section of Macau known as the Cotai Strip into a Chinese version of the Las Vegas Strip with a mix of gambling, conventions, shopping, entertainment and other draws.

"We expect that Macau will evolve into the same type of business model that the integrated resorts on the Las Vegas Strip have evolved into," Adelson said in a video conference with reporters in Hong Kong.

Sands hopes to open the first phase of the project, including two hotel towers and casino space at a cost of $2 billion, by June 2011. Ultimately, the company aspires to build still more casinos and hotels on two additional plots of land in the Cotai area to bring the total number of hotel rooms to 20,000.

Adelson repeated his goal of luring a wider variety of visitors to Macau, which relies overwhelmingly on day-trippers and high-stakes gamblers for profits, whereas Las Vegas earns a larger portion from non-gambling activities like shows and shopping.

Despite its attempts to diversify, Sands' Macau business is still heavily dependent on gambling. The company — which currently runs two resorts, the Sands Macao and the popular Venetian — derives some 80 percent of its revenues from VIP and mass-market gambling, the company said. Its Macau profits before interest, tax and other adjustments were forecast to rise from $686 million in 2008 to $803 million this year, as the city's gambling industry rebounds sharply with the help of a stronger Chinese economy.

Sands' new shares are expected to begin trading on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on Nov. 30, with the share price to be determined Nov. 21, according to the IPO's terms.

It will mark the second Hong Kong IPO from an American casino operator. Shares in the Macau resorts of billionaire Steve Wynn debuted last month after a $1.63 billion IPO.

Suicide bomber attacks military convoy near Kabul

KABUL — The Taliban claimed responsibility for a suicide bombing Friday that wounded six people near the Afghan capital, while Britain's prime minister suggested 5,000 more NATO troops could be deployed to the troubled country.

NATO said the suicide bombing occurred at 8 a.m. (0330 GMT) on the Jalalabad road, which is used extensively by international forces and frequently attacked. In August, another Taliban suicide bomber targeted a NATO convoy there killing at least eight people.

NATO said reports on Friday's attack indicated Afghan civilians, NATO service members and civilian contractors had been wounded. No NATO members were killed.

Taliban spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid sent The Associated Press a message saying the bombing was carried out by a Taliban suicide car bomber targeting an international military convoy.

Abdul Ghafar Sayed Zada, chief of criminal investigation for Kabul police, said three civilians and three foreigners were wounded.

At the scene Nabi, a taxi driver, said he was driving down the road when he heard a "big bang."

"Everything went dark," said Nabi, who like many Afghans uses one name. "I just managed to take myself out of the area. I don't know what happened then, but the attack was on the foreigners."

Lt. Col. Todd Vician, a spokesman for NATO, said the bombing was "another attack by insurgents that injured the people of Afghanistan and our personnel who are partnering with the Afghan security forces to bring better development, governance and security to Afghanistan."

"This attack will not deter us from continuing our important mission," he said.

NATO's top commander in Afghanistan, U.S. Gen. Stanley McChrystal, has asked for an extra 40,000 troops to be sent to Afghanistan to bolster the 71,000 already here.

But President Barack Obama has not yet made a decision on sending more troops — a delay that has found an echo in Europe, where coalition leaders in NATO are weighing whether to send help or bow to public demands for a speedy exit.

NATO Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen said on Thursday that allied nations have privately pledged more help, but he stopped short of saying that countries would send more troops.

On Friday, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said he could secure commitments for 5,000 more NATO forces in Afghanistan.

Speaking during an interview with the BBC, Brown said Washington and London need the 43 other nations involved in the International Security Assistance Force to step up to help share the burden.

"I think we can probably get another 5,000 forces into Afghanistan," he said.

With 9,000 troops in the country, Britain is the second largest contributor to the international coalition behind the United States. But the war is increasingly unpopular at home. Some 232 British soldiers have died in Afghanistan since 2001. Families and military commanders have blamed deaths on a lack of equipment, and there has been growing criticism that Brown has failed to show tangible benefits of the mission.

In his interview, Brown launched an impassioned defense of the controversial military campaign, acknowledging that Britain needed to "adjust our approach" amid rising casualties.

Germany announced Friday that it would send more than 100 extra troops to Afghanistan in January.

Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg said during a visit to his country's troops in Afghanistan that the quick-reaction force soldiers would be deployed in the northern province of Kunduz, where most of Germany's 4,365 troops are stationed.

Thirty-six German soldiers have been killed so far in the mission to Afghanistan, and support in Germany for the war is also low.

Separately, a land mine exploded near a police station in Logar province, south of Kabul, killing a member of the Afghan National Police and wounding an Afghan National Army officer Friday, provincial police chief Mustafa Mosseini said.

Associated Press writer Amir Shah in Kabul contributed to this report.

Rona profit, revenue fall but home improvement retailer sees signs of recovery

MONTREAL — Home improvement retailer Rona Inc. (TSX:RON) is set to launch new expansion plans amid initial signs of a recovery from the ill effects of the recession.

Although sales and profits slipped in the third-quarter, the Quebec-based company is optimistic about the future after experiencing consecutive monthly improvements that continued in October.

"In the last few months, we have felt the first signs of a recovery," CEO Robert Dutton said Tuesday in a conference call.

Improvement was most pronounced in Ontario and Western Canada, although building lumber and materials sales remained weak as a result of depressed housing starts.

Rona's profits fell 6.5 per cent during the quarter despite cost-reduction efforts.

Net income decreased to $49.1 million or 38 cents per diluted share, from $52.5 million or 45 cents per share a year earlier.

Excluding unusual items, it earned $53.3 million or 41 cents per share, down from $58.9 million or 50 cents per share.

The results were slightly below expectations. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters had forecast adjusted EPS of 40 cents on $1.355 billion of sales.

Rona's revenues slipped by about $60 million to $1.32 billion in its most recent quarter. That's down from $1.38 billion a year earlier.

The 4.4 per cent decrease in sales was largely due to a 5.3 per cent decline in same-store sales at locations open at least a year and a 1.6 per cent drop in distribution sector sales.

Rona said the decreases primarily resulted from lower housing starts in recent quarters and lagging consumer confidence despite some recent improvement. Poor weather was also a factor in the sale of seasonal products at the beginning of the quarter.

More than 80 per cent of the same-store sales decline was due to lower sales of forest products, building materials and seasonal items, Rona said.

Paint, lighting fixtures, hardware, kitchen and installation services posted very good sales, reflecting the desire of consumers to spend on smaller renovation projects.

Irene Nattel of RBC Capital Markets said while management is doing a good job of controlling costs, its gross margins declined modestly because of the liquidations of seasonal products and challenges in gaining additional savings.

The federal government announced in January, as part of its stimulus budget, that home improvements costing from $1,000 to $10,000 will be eligible for a 15 per cent income tax deduction, capped at $1,350, until Feb. 1, 2010.

Rona expects to secure up to $100 million in sales resulting from federal and Quebec home renovation tax credits after more than 13,000 Canadians have signed up for a company discount associated with the programs.

Dutton said Tuesday that the company is encouraged enough by the first signs of recovery to begin the second phase of a three-year growth strategy that it began last year.

New initiatives to be launched this month include a new concept for an interior design and paint store.

The specialized stores will appeal to contractors, interior designers and consumers who prefer to shop in smaller boutiques, especially in Ontario and Western Canada.

The stores will first open in Quebec and Rona hopes to add nearly 100 locations within five to 15 years. Some may be located inside existing hardware stores.

On the Toronto Stock Exchange, Rona shares increased 16 cents at $15.95 in afternoon trading.

Sources: Obama near decision on Afghanistan troops

WASHINGTON — President Barack Obama is nearing a decision to add tens of thousands more forces to Afghanistan, though likely not quite the 40,000 sought by his top general there, as Pentagon planners work to ready bases and provide equipment the troops would need in a country with scant resources.

The White House emphasized Monday that the president hasn't made a decision yet about troop levels or other aspects of the revised U.S. strategy in Afghanistan.

Administration officials told The Associated Press on Monday the deployment would most likely begin in January with a mission to stiffen the defense of 10 key cities and towns. An Army brigade that had been training for deployment to Iraq that month may be the vanguard. The brigade, based at Fort Drum in upstate New York, has been told it will not go to Iraq as planned but has been given no new mission yet.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said the president would meet again on Wednesday with key members of his foreign policy and military team but was unlikely to announce final plans for Afghanistan until late this month, when he returns from an extended diplomatic trip to Asia.

Gibbs said the Pentagon is "working on additional recommendations" to present to Obama and that Obama has made no decision on troop numbers, or even on what the ratio should be between combat troops and trainers.

Military officials said Obama will have choices that include a phased addition of up to 40,000 forces over some six months or more next year, based on security conditions and the decisions of NATO allies.

Several officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because the decision has not been made also said Obama's announcement will be much broader than the mathematics of troop numbers, which have dominated the U.S. debate.

Officials said a substantial increase in troops is all but inevitable, but the precise number is less important than the message that an expansion and refocus of U.S. commitment in Afghanistan would send.

It soon will be three months since Afghan commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal reported to Obama that the U.S. mission was headed for failure without the addition of about 40,000 troops.

The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because final plans have not been disclosed, dubbed the likely troop increase as "McChrystal Light" because it would fall short of his request. They also said addition small infusions of troops could be dispatched next spring and summer.

The more gradual buildup, the officials said, would allow time to construct needed housing and add equipment needed for transporting the expanded force.

Besides being sent to cities and towns, the new forces would be stationed to protect important roads and other key infrastructure.

Part of the debate leading to Obama's decision has been whether to move toward a more robust counterinsurgency strategy by attempting to retake territory from the Taliban insurgency and holding that turf while Americans work to rebuild and improve services for the population.

By using the new troops to protect cities and towns, the administration appears to be moving toward a middle ground that would deny Taliban advances on urban districts with the intention of shoring up support for the government of President Hamid Karzai.

That in turn would allow the fight against the Taliban then to expand to remoter regions.

"Reports that President Obama has made a decision about Afghanistan are absolutely false," said the president's national security adviser, James Jones. "He has not received final options for his consideration, he has not reviewed those options with his national security team, and he has not made any decisions about resources. Any reports to the contrary are completely untrue and come from uninformed sources."

As he makes his decision, Obama told ABC News that he's been "asking not only Gen. McChrystal but all of our commanders who are familiar with the situation, as well as our civilian folks on the ground, a lot of questions that, until they're answered, may -- may create a situation in which we resource something based on faulty premises."

He said he wanted to make sure "that if we are sending additional troops that the prospects of a functioning Afghan government are enhanced, that the prospects of al-Qaida being able to attack the U.S. homeland are reduced."

With winter coming to Afghanistan's towering mountains, fighting could taper off as movement becomes difficult along the border with Pakistan. The Taliban has used the winter lull to resupply and regroup in years past, and the U.S. and a NATO-led alliance of countries fighting in Afghanistan are planning how to best place reinforcements for heavy fighting in the spring.

Obama has said the United States wants to leave behind an Afghan government that can control the Taliban insurgency on its own and prevent the militants from again hosting al-Qaida. Osama bin Laden and his top aides are believed to have fled into the rugged Pakistan border area where they have been hiding since the U.S. drove the Taliban from power in late 2001.

AP White House Correspondent Jennifer Loven contributed to this report.

Canadian, American writers win French literary prizes

PARIS — Haitian-born Canadian writer Dany Laferriere and American novelist Dave Eggers on Wednesday were awarded France's Medicis literary prize celebrating original writing.

Laferriere won the Medicis for "L'enigme du retour" (The Enigma of Return), a fictionalised account of the 56-year-old author's soul-wrenching return to his native Haiti to attend his father's funeral.

Born in Port-au-Prince but now living in Montreal and Miami, Laferriere has explored the themes of identity and exile in some 20 novels over the past 25 years.

His first work "Comment faire l'amour avec un negre sans se fatiguer", (How to Make Love to a Negro Without Getting Tired" in 1985 was a hit, translated in several languages and turned into a movie in 1989.

The jury unanimously chose Eggers as this year's recipient of the prize for best foreign novel for his 2006 work "What is the What: The Autobiography of Valentino Achak Deng", based on the life story of a Sudanese refugee.

The book traces Achak Deng's quiet life in south Sudan before that country's civil war, his 13 years of nightmare spent in Ethiopian and Kenyan refugee camps and finally his resettlement in the United States.

Boston-born Eggers, 39, has written for the online magazine Salon.com and is the author of more than a dozen novels, works of nonfiction and humorous books.

The Medicis prize capped France's literary awards week.

On Monday, 42-year-old writer Marie NDiaye won the Goncourt prize, France's most prestigious literary award, for "Trois Femmes Puissantes" (Three Powerful Women).

Grieving relative says dead miners' bodies frozen by icy subterranean water

LEBEL-SUR-QUEVILLON, Que. — A grieving relative says three dead miners drowned in such frigid water that their bodies were frozen blocks of ice by the time they were recovered.

After a frenzied rescue effort, their bodies were found three days after they were were trapped when the northern Quebec mine flooded Friday. Rescue workers had frantically pumped water from hundreds of metres below the ground in the hope of finding the men alive.

But Pietro Bollini said Tuesday there's no way the three men - including his brother, Domenico - could have survived for very long.

He said rescue workers did their best but that the water was so cold the men must have died within minutes.

"Submerged in water like that? Forget it. They were blocks of ice," Bollini said in an interview in Lebel-sur-Quevillon, a town near the mine.

"When they took them out yesterday, they were frozen from head to toe. . . Fifteen minutes in there, and you're dead."

Marc Guay, Bruno Goulet and Bollini were doing repair work in the mine for Metanor Resources when it flooded. Two of them worked for Metanor while Guay was an employee of mining contractor Montali.

Bollini's father, Italo, moved to Quebec from Italy in 1957 and was a miner for 30 years. He said the worst injury he ever suffered was a broken foot.

"I was luckier than him (Domenico)," he said after travelling to the scene of the tragedy.

"It was an accident that wasn't meant to happen. Something went wrong somewhere. I don't know what. I wasn't there."

Domenico had been a miner for 21 years.

Metanor issued a statement Tuesday expressing its deep sadness over the tragedy and promised its full support to grieving families and authorities now conducting an investigation.

"The circumstances of the accident are presently unknown," Metanor said. "The company is working closely with the authorities."

Provincial police and Quebec's workers' safety commission are both investigating.

Police are trying to determine whether criminal negligence may have played a role in the tragedy.

The victims were making repairs in the mine when the accident occurred. The mine is not currently operating and the men travelled down an elevator shaft to a level that would not normally have been flooded.

When workers above ground lost contact with the men, they brought the elevator lift back to the surface. It was empty.

But because its overhead hatch was open, they were hopeful the men might have escaped and swum to an air pocket.

In their rescue effort, crews pumped water from 500 metres below the Earth's surface. Before discovering the bodies all they found was equipment - like helmets and a lantern.

The incident appeared to rattle investors in Metanor, who initially sent the junior gold miner's stock plunging 21.6 per cent in the first day of trading after the accident - but much of the loss was recovered in trading Tuesday.

Landscapes, ideas blossom on Berlin Wall death strip

HOHEN NEUENDORF, Germany — The mines and dogs and barbed wire are gone, as are the border guards with orders to shoot to kill, the so-called death strip and, of course, the Berlin Wall itself.

What remains are bitter memories, a handful of watchtowers, a vast green oasis rimming the capital, and dreams of using it in a creative way that still preserves its tragic history.

Dutch landscape architect Joyce van den Berg has set herself such a task, saying secret gardens, art installations and recreational spaces could flourish in what she calls a "trauma landscape".

The death strip or No Man's Land straddled the 155-kilometre-long (96-mile-long) border drawn around the free island of West Berlin by communist East Germany to keep its citizens prisoners of their own country.

Anyone caught in the buffer zone on either side of the Berlin Wall, or the inner-German border running between East and West Germany, risked being shot.

At least 136 would-be escapees were killed and after the Berlin Wall fell 20 years ago this November, Germans were keen to erase all traces of the despised barrier.

Nature has run wild in reclaiming the "Sperrgebiet" (Prohibited Area), which is up to 2.5 kilometres wide in some sections.

The result is a rich habitat that has nearly swallowed an extraordinary landscape, with unique plants and countless rabbits, foxes and deer reclaiming what was once theirs.

"In 20 years there will be nothing left of the bizarre landscape created by the Wall," Van den Berg said on a recent cycle tour of the strip, most of which still belongs to the German state.

"Twenty years on, the landscape is blooming and the butterflies are back."

Van den Berg began the project by documenting the entire Sperrgebiet on long bike rides with the help of maps collected by a former Stasi officer and archived aerial photographs.

She sees her work as a race against time, and her ideas range from the fanciful to the highly promising.

The route where soldiers patrolled is now a smooth bike path beloved by cyclists and history buffs. The group enters a clearing and comes upon natural dunes that have begun to develop again from the region's famously sandy soil.

The border patrols smoothed the sand with machines each day so they could observe any suspicious footprints of anyone trying to escape, and soaked the ground with pesticides so no undergrowth would block their view.

Van den Berg says a little tilling could allow "mega-dunes" to develop and attract volleyball and sand surfing enthusiasts, and bring badly needed tourism income to an economically depressed region.

"Oranienburg in particular could benefit if this area became a recreation centre," she said, referring to a city just north of Berlin best known as the home of the Nazi concentration camp Sachsenhausen, now a memorial.

Van den Berg says she would like to keep alive the memory of escape tunnels dug to help spirit people from east to west, tracing their course with spotlights.

Checkpoints such as Dreilinden on Berlin's southern flank could also be revived as makeshifts hotel steeped in history, she says.

During the Cold War, West German trucks often spent hours parked until they were inspected and granted permission for transit into West Berlin.

Van den Berg suggests furnishing East German trucks for lodging, for example, after a bike tour of the Sperrgebiet. Others could serve as restaurants serving East German delicacies.

The tour continues past one of five of the original 302 watchtowers still remaining. Van den Berg would like to see old foundations used as wind-protected gardening plots.

One such watchtower is now used by the German Youth Forestry club, which has taken it over to teach about conservation and the region's painful history.

The group has erected a memorial to four teenagers shot dead in the 1960s and 1970s in foiled attempts to dash over the Wall to freedom.

Marian Przybilla, who volunteers with the club, said it took over the tower in May 1990, just two months after East German soldiers abandoned the site and five months before the two Germanys united.

"At that time, the joy over the fall of the Wall and the desire for free movement here meant that everyone wanted to remove the traces as soon as possible," he said. "Now we are trying to win back important parts of our history that were lost."

Although many of her ideas will never see the light of day, Van den Berg has a few powerful supporters.

Outgoing Environment Minister Sigmar Gabriel has called for the entire former death strip between the former two Germanys to become a nature preserve.

But some tour participants from the east said the ride roused bitter memories.

"I have no regrets that they tore down almost all of the Wall, the barbed wire and the watchtowers," said Hannah Rohst, a 33-year-old architecture student from Niederschoenhausen in east Berlin.

"There was plenty I had no desire ever to see again, and so much we wanted to forget."

Internet turns 40 with birthday party

LOS ANGELES — Technology and media stars, pundits, and entrepreneurs joined the Internet's father on Thursday to celebrate the 40th anniversary of his culture-changing child.

"It's the 40th year since the infant Internet first spoke," said University of California, Los Angeles, professor Leonard Kleinrock, who headed the team that first linked computers online in 1969.

Kleinrock led an anniversary event at the UCLA campus that blended reminiscence of the Internet's past with debate about its future.

"There is going to be an ongoing controversy about where we have been and where we are going," said Arianna Huffington, co-founder of the popular news and blog website that bears her name.

"It is not just about the Internet; it is about our times. We are going to need desperately to tap into the better angels of our nature and make our lives not just about ourselves but about our communities and our world."

Huffington was on hand to discuss the power the Internet gives to grass roots organizers on a panel with Kleinrock and Social Brain Foundation director Isaac Mao.

"The Internet is a democratizing element; everyone has an equivalent voice," Kleinrock said. "There is no way back at this point. We can't turn it off. The Internet Age is here."

Kleinrock never imagined Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube that day 40 years ago when his team gave birth to what is now taken for granted as the Internet.

"The net is penetrating every aspect of our lives," Kleinrock said to a room of about 200 people and an equal number watching online.

"As a teenager the Internet is behaving badly, the dark side has emerged. The question is when it grows into a young adult will it get over this period of misbehaving?"

Kleinrock referred to spam emails, online scams and malicious software spread by crooks as an unexpected dark side of the Internet.

On October 29, 1969 Kleinrock led a team that got a computer at UCLA to "talk" to one at a research institute.

"It feels to me like the alumni meeting of the framers of the US Constitution," Electronic Frontier Foundation co-founder John Perry Barlow said as he addressed the gathering.

"There are a lot of people in this room who are honest to god uncles and aunts of the Internet. What you did is conceivably the most important technological event since the capture of fire."

Barlow, whose nonprofit legal organization fights for online freedom, maintained that Internet access is on the verge of becoming an inalienable human right.

Kleinrock was driven by a certainty that computers were destined to speak to each other and that the resulting network should be as simple to use as telephones.

US telecom colossus AT&T ran lines connecting the computers for ARPANET, a project backed with money from a research arm of the US military.

A key to getting computers to exchange data was breaking digitized information into packets fired between on-demand with no wasting of time, according to Kleinrock.

Engineers began typing "LOG" to log into the distant computer, which crashed after getting the "O."

"So, the first message was 'Lo' as in 'Lo and behold'," Kleinrock recounted. "We couldn't have a better, more succinct first message."

Kleinrock's team logged in on the second try, sending digital data packets between computers on the ARPANET because funding came from the US Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) established in 1958.

ARPANET grew into what is known today as the Internet.

Kleinrock, 75, sees the Internet spreading into everything.

"The next step is to move it into the real world," Kleinrock said. "The Internet will be present everywhere. I will walk into a room and it will know I am there. It will talk back to me."

Director of Michael Jackson film 'This Is It' talks about late pop singer

TORONTO — With "This Is It," the feature film chronicling the final months of Michael Jackson's life as he prepared for a series of comeback concerts, director Kenny Ortega appears primed for the biggest hit of his life.

Yet it's a film he did not want to make.

"I expected to be in London, watching Michael open and hanging out with him and joining him in India when he took the tour there and making movies with him in the future," the U.S. director and choreographer told The Canadian Press during a promotional stop in Toronto.

"Suddenly, I was helping his family with a memorial, and trying to put all the pieces together."

"This Is It" opens in select cities with midnight screenings late Tuesday before expanding to wide release on Wednesday for a two-week run.

The film covers Jackson's rehearsals for a planned set of 50 sold-out shows at London's O2 Arena, which were to begin last July 8.

Ortega, who also directed Jackson's "Dangerous" and "HIStory" world tours in the 1990s, was at the helm of these shows too. And he firmly believed Jackson would succeed in his comeback bid.

"He was sounding great, and dancing great, and having a really fun time," Ortega said.

"It appeared to us that he was destined to triumph. And we were all excited about that for him. We wanted that for him.

"And you know, we were all shattered when he didn't show up."

Jackson died at his rented Los Angeles mansion June 25 after his personal physician, Dr. Conrad Murray, administered the anesthetic propofol and two other sedatives to get the chronic insomniac to sleep, court documents state.

Ortega said he had no idea about the struggles Jackson was enduring, nor the substances he was using to help him sleep.

"I wasn't aware of any of what has been suggested became his demise," Ortega said. "Michael had been put through a lot in his life and I know he suffered from it and I know it had its damaging effect on him, crippling. All of us saw that. We watched it. They put it all over the news.

"But at this stage of his life, Michael was focused on getting back out there and being in front of the fans, and sharing this with his kids. He was invigorated, he had a purpose, and this was nourishing.

"It was his idea to do it, and his invitation that put us all there. Michael Jackson at 50 years old was in charge and was doing what he wanted to do."

And he was also documenting all of it. Following Jackson's death, Sony plunked down US$60 million for the rights to the 120 hours of footage culled from Jackson's rehearsal sessions.

They needed a director to bring it all together, and Ortega seemed a logical choice. But he hesitated.

"I just didn't feel that I was emotionally capable of going through it," said Ortega, who also directed the star-studded L.A. memorial that was held in Jackson's honour and broadcast around the world.

"My first reaction was no, I can't, I won't be objective. I can't, I'm going through too much, it hurts too much, I'm too close, it's too soon. ... But then, in the end, it was going to be made, and if I wasn't going to do it, who was going to do it?

"It just became my responsibility, for better or for worse. I had to step up to the plate, as we have to sometimes in life."

That meant pulling together a feature film in a matter of months to meet Sony's deadline. Ortega admits the time constraints were trying - he says he and his team worked seven days a week, up to 15 hours a day - but ultimately says he had enough time to make the film he wanted.

He says the response so far from the select few who have seen it - members of Jackson's family, close friends and some industry people - has been positive.

But a group of Jackson fans online have already launched a protest against the film, condemning it as an inaccurate depiction of Jackson's last days.

A statement at This-Is-Not-It.com accuses filmmakers of glossing over the severity of Jackson's condition in the film. The fan group behind the protest also alleges that those involved with the tour knew that Jackson was not fit for the shows, but pressed ahead anyway.

Ortega did acknowledge that some fans might avoid the film.

"I realized not everybody wanted this, but there were thousands of fans calling for it, expecting it and really demanding it," he said. "(They believed) that it was their right as his fans to know what this last theatrical work was about."

And, for his part, Ortega certainly speaks highly of his friend.

"He was a kind soul, a generous human being - open-minded, inspired, fun, funny, you know," he said. "He was fair. Unguarded, when he trusted you. Man, he laughed as hard and as loud and as deeply as anyone I've ever known. Like Peter Pan. It really was like that. It was guttural.

"I saw him fall out of a chair and kick his feet and bang his fist into the floor sometimes, he laughed so hard. He loved practical jokes, he loved disguising his voice and messing with you and making you try to figure out what weirdo you were on the phone talking to. He was real. ...

"I guess the big thing for me, what I loved, Michael had such a love for what it was that he did. He was born in a trunk, he had been doing it since he was a baby, but he never lost the love of it. He loved what he did, and he was as good at it as anybody. So the combination of those two things is kind of unbeatable, isn't it?"