Funeral | featured news

Opponents of the late Margaret Thatcher are taking a kind of musical revenge on the former prime minister, pushing the song "Ding Dong! The Witch is Dead" up the British charts in a posthumous protest over her polarizing policies.

Roger Ebert was rarely at a loss for words, even when cancer robbed him of his voice. And neither were fans and admirers who gathered at Holy Name Cathedral this morning in rainy Chicago to pay their respects to the prodigious film critic, 70, who died on Thursday after losing his life to the disease he once conquered.

Foreign dignitaries and Venezuelans continued their extended goodbye to Hugo Chávez on Friday as the government began a stately funeral that seemed designed to showcase Mr. Chávez’s appeal to the powerless and the powerful.

More than 200 strangers attended a British veteran's funeral after a church minister put out a plea on Facebook, fearing he would be buried without mourners, according to reports.

Every year in America, 2.5 million people die. In 2011, the last year for which numbers are available, 42 percent were cremated, according to the funeral directors association. That's double the rate of just 15 years ago.

Dogs have long been recognized as man’s best friend, and we have no problem opening up our wallets to let our furry friends know just how much we love them. Americans spend $53 billion annually on our animal friends, lavishing them with the best squeaker toys money can buy, fashionable collars, comfy beds and even gourmet treats from bakeries catering solely to four-legged customers. And when our pets have departed this mortal coil, we're willing to dig deep one last time to pay for an appropriate sendoff.

LL Cool J, Russell Simmons, 50 Cent and Grandmaster Flash are among the mourners at the Manhattan funeral of hip-hop mogul Chris Lighty.

A motorcyclist was struck and killed by a fire truck in Brooklyn, New York, while he was on his way to a memorial for another biker killed in a crash one year ago.

Hundreds of mourners remembered Rodney King, a symbol of racial tension in Los Angeles and catalyst for sweeping law-enforcement reforms after his 1991 beating by police officers, as a figure of national healing at a public memorial before his burial on Saturday.

Many of the biggest names in entertainment gathered Saturday to say celebrate and bid farewell to singer Whitney Houston in the church in Newark, N.J., where the late singer, who died on Feb. 11, started her singing career.