Nation Briefly 7/2

Jackson memorial not at Neverland

LOS ANGELES (AP) - A public memorial for Michael Jackson is in the works but won't be held at the late pop star's Neverland Ranch, a Jackson family spokesman said Wednesday.

No further details were provided in the statement issued Wednesday by family spokesman Ken Sunshine. An announcement on the plans was expected soon.

Meanwhile, Michael Jackson's 7-year-old will was filed in a Los Angeles court, giving his entire estate to a family trust while making his mother the guardian of his children and cutting out his former wife Debbie Rowe.

Court documents estimated the current value of his estate at more than $500 million.

It names his mother, Katherine Jackson, 79, as a beneficiary of the trust and the guardian of Jackson's children, who also are named as beneficiaries of the trust.

Obesity rates still rising in 23 states

WASHINGTON (AP) - Mississippi's still king of cellulite, but an ominous tide is rolling toward the Medicare doctors in neighboring Alabama: obese baby boomers.

It's time for the nation's annual obesity rankings and, outside of fairly lean Colorado, there's little good news. In 31 states, more than one in four adults are obese, says a new report from the Trust for America's Health and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

And obesity rates among adults rose in 23 states over the past year, and no state experienced a significant decline.

"The obesity epidemic clearly goes beyond being an individual problem," said Jeff Levi, executive director of the Trust, a nonprofit public health group.

It's a national crisis that "calls for a national strategy to combat obesity," added Robert Wood Johnson vice president Dr. James Marks. "The crest of the wave of obesity is still to crash."

While the nation has long been bracing for a surge in Medicare as the boomers start turning 65, the new report makes clear that fat, not just age, will fuel much of those bills. In every state, the rate of obesity is higher among 55- to 64-year-olds - the oldest boomers - than among today's 65-and-beyond.