[1]A US judge on Wednesday gave temporary guardianship of late singer Michael Jackson’s three children to his nephew TJ amid a bitter public dispute over the whereabouts of the family’s matriarch.
Katherine Jackson, the late singer’s mother, had custody of Paris, Prince Michael and Blanket, but Judge Mitchell Beckloff suspended that arrangement because she had left the family home in Los Angeles.
The family has been embroiled in legal and financial disputes since the pop star’s sudden death in June 2009 from an overdose of Propofol, a powerful anesthetic. The matriarch’s whereabouts were uncertain for days, with one member of the family reporting her missing — but the singer’s brother Jermaine insisting she was resting in Arizona.
“I want to reassure everyone ... that Mother is fine but is resting up in AZ on the orders of a doctor, not us,” Jermaine Jackson tweeted. Randy Jackson, another of the singer’s brothers, on ABC’s Good Morning America on Wednesday repeated that Katherine had left Los Angeles on her doctor’s orders.
Her doctor “wanted her to go somewhere where she couldn’t be on the phone, and just cut off from the outside world for a few days,” he said.
Katherine Jackson herself has now said she is “good and fine” and on her way home to California, according to excerpts of an interview with ABC News released by the network ahead of its broadcast later on Wednesday. However, her absence has sparked a flurry of angry Twitter messages from Jackson’s 14-year-old daughter, Paris.
On Sunday, she wrote: “Yes, my grandmother is missing. I haven’t spoken with her in a week I want her home now.” And then on Tuesday: “9 days and counting... So help me god I will make whoever did this pay.”
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[1] http://archive.asianage.com/newsmjpg-309-0