Death of baby decapitated during birth at Georgia hospital ruled a homicide
The death of a baby who was decapitated during delivery has been ruled a homicide by a medical examiner’s office in the US state of Georgia.
The parents, Jessica Ross and Treveon Isaiah Taylor Sr, sued the hospital and the doctor who delivered their baby boy, named Treveon Taylor Jr, in July last year.
Both have denied any wrongdoing.
The Clayton County Medical Examiner’s Office found the immediate cause of the baby’s death was a broken neck and human action was to blame, it said in a news release shared by the couple’s legal team.
The boy’s death directly resulted from a fracture of cervical vertebrae in the spine, it said.
The finding appears to confirm allegations made by the boy’s parents in a lawsuit against Southern Regional Medical Centre in Riverdale, Georgia.
They claim that Dr Tracey St Julian delayed a surgical procedure and failed to seek help quickly when the baby became stuck during delivery.
Instead, the parents said that she applied excessive force to the baby’s head and neck.
“This is something that is clearly contraindicated,” their lawyer Roderick Edmond, who is also a physician, told reporters at a news conference on Wednesday.
“No credible, no reasonably competent obstetrician should ever do this.”
About three hours passed before Ms Ross was taken for a caesarean section, according to the couple’s lawsuit filed last August, by which time a foetal monitor had stopped registering a heartbeat.
The C- section removed the baby’s legs and body, but the head was delivered vaginally, according to Mr Edmond.
Jessica Ross in tears during the news conference. Pic: Ben Gray/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP
Lawyers for Dr St Julian said they reject the finding that the baby’s injury happened before death.
“Although tragic, that rare outcome has been reported in the medical literature and can happen in the absence of any wrongdoing by the physician, which is the case here,” they said.
One of the lawyers, Scott Bailey, said in a court filing in September that the doctor used “every manoeuvre a reasonable obstetrician would have employed” to deliver the baby when his shoulder became trapped.
He also asserted that the trauma to the baby’s head and neck occurred after death, in the process of attempting to deliver the foetus by caesarean and save Ms Ross’s life.
The court filing accused the couple’s legal team of making “salaciously false public statements” to the contrary.
The hospital where the baby was delivered has also said the baby died in the uterus.
It denied any negligence in a court filing in November, and spokesperson Melinda Fulks said she couldn’t comment on Wednesday because of the lawsuit.
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Clayton County police are investigating, with the possibility of referring the case to prosecutors, the medical examiner’s office said last month.
Major Frank Thomas said on Wednesday the case was still under investigation, adding the police department will not comment on details of active cases.
Dozens of websites, banks and apps are being affected by a major internet outage.
The problem, which started on Monday morning, appears to be related to an issue at Amazon Web Services (AWS).
As of 9.20am, there were more than 2,000 reports of the Amazon Web Services outage in the US alone, according to Downdetector, which monitors issues and outages in real-time.
On its service status page, the company said it was seeing “increased error rates” and delays with “multiple AWS services”.
Here’s what we know so far.
Pic: PA
Pic: PA
Pic: PA
What has been affected?
Multiple banks, the HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) website, mobile phone networks and video-chatting platform Zoom are among the websites having technical issues.
All Amazon products – including Prime Video and Amazon Music – have also been affected, as well as the main Amazon website.
Here’s a full list of what has been affected by the internet outage, according to Downdetector:
• Snapchat
• Ring
• Roblox
• Amazon Web Services
• Life360
• My Fitness Pal
• Amazon
• Xero
• Signal
• Canva
• Fortnite
• Blink Security
• Zoom
• HMRC
• Clash Royale
• Clash Of Clans
• Asana
• Wordle
• Slack
• Smartsheet
• Epic Games Store
• Duolingo
• Amazon Alexa
• Jira
• Vodafone
• Tidal
• Coinbase
• Atlassian
• IMDB
• Amazon Prime Video
• Pokemon Go
• BT
• Peloton
• EE
• Ancestry
• Square
• Playstation Network
• Eventbrite
• Amazon Music
• Sky
• Flickr
• Hay Day
• Rocket League
• Perplexity AI
• Dead By Daylight
• Bank Of Scotland
• Lloyds Bank
• Halifax
What has AWS said?
AWS confirmed it was suffering from “increased error rates and latencies” for multiple services.
In a statement on its website, the company said: “We are actively engaged and working to both mitigate the issue and understand root cause,” an update on its website says.
“We will provide an update in 45 minutes, or sooner if we have additional information to share.”
The company is posting regular updates on the situation and said its engineers were “immediately engaged” as soon as they spotted the issue.
Concentrated in the US
ThousandEyes, a website that tracks the performance of local and wide area networks, servers and applications, shows many of the outages appear to be concentrated in the US.
A large portion is focused in Virginia, which is widely considered as the global capital for data centres.
Has something like this happened before?
US
Donald Trump mocks ‘No Kings’ protests with AI video of himself dropping brown sludge on protesters from jet
Donald Trump has responded to so-called “No Kings” rallies with an AI video of himself in a fighter jet, pouring brown sludge over protesters.
Millions of people were expected to take part in the demonstrations this weekend – the second such gathering after an initial nationwide day of protest in June coinciding with the US president’s birthday.
The term “No Kings” reflects the belief by some that Mr Trump is behaving like a “king” and some in his administration are depicting him as a monarch.
A protester in costume as Donald Trump presents the president as a prisoner in chains in Seattle. Pic: AP
One of the rallies in New York. Pic: Reuters
On Sunday, the president shared the AI video on his social media platform, Truth Social.
In the clip, an AI-generated version of Mr Trump is wearing a crown and sitting in a jet with “King Trump” written across it, to the soundtrack of Kenny Loggins’ Danger Zone, from the film Top Gun.
The jet then drops thick brown sludge on to AI-generated protesters.
Supporters say the marches are a patriotic defence of free speech, while critics are calling them anti-American.
A large inflatable effigy of Mr Trump in Chicago. Pic: Reuters
This protest took place in Washington DC. Pic: AP
Mr Trump’s Republican Party has dismissed the demonstrations as “Hate America” rallies.
Many of the events featured marching bands, huge banners and signs, as well as effigies of the president and demonstrators wearing inflatable costumes.
Thousands gathered along the waterfront in Portland, Oregon. Pic: AP
Protesters at the Wyoming State Capitol got creative with their signs. Pic: Wyoming Tribune Eagle/AP
The protests follow Mr Trump’s return to the White House and come against the backdrop of a government shutdown which has closed federal programmes and services.
There has also been criticism of what some see as an aggressive executive, confronting Congress and the courts, in ways that protest organisers believe are a slide toward authoritarianism.
This event in San Francisco was among thousands taking place across the US. Pic: Reuters
A ‘No Kings’ sign, outside City Hall in Los Angeles. Pic: Reuters
So far, the atmosphere at most of the protests appears to have been largely energetic and upbeat, with protesters calling for accountability and protections for civil liberties.
Organisers said events would be peaceful – a direct response to Republican and Trump administration claims that the protests could be unsafe.
Two survivors of a US airstrike, targeting what Donald Trump has described as a “drug-carrying submarine” in the Caribbean, have been repatriated to their home countries.
The US president posted footage of Thursday’s operation, part of a recent military campaign targeting boats transporting drugs to America.
“It was my great honor to destroy a very large DRUG-CARRYING SUBMARINE that was navigating towards the United States on a well known narcotrafficking transit route,” Mr Trump wrote on Truth Social.
“US intelligence confirmed this vessel was loaded up with mostly Fentanyl, and other illegal narcotics,” he added.
The US military staged a helicopter rescue for the survivors on Thursday after the strike on their semi-submersible
vessel, suspected of trafficking illegal narcotics. They were then transported to a US Navy warship.
Two other crew members on board were killed.
The semi-submersible vessel was struck by US forces on Thursday, leaving two dead and two survivors. Pic: @realDonaldTrump/Truth Social
President Trump confirmed the survivors would be returned to their home countries of Colombia and Ecuador “for detention and prosecution”. Both countries subsequently confirmed they had been handed over.
“America will not tolerate narcoterrorists trafficking illegal drugs, by land or by sea,” he added.
On Saturday, Colombian President Gustavo Petro posted on X: “We have received the Colombian detained on the narco submarine, we are happy he is alive and he will be processed according to the law.”
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Trump sends CIA into Venezuela and threatens land attack
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The Trump administration has said previous strikes in the Caribbean have killed 27 people, raising concerns among some about the legality of the military operations.
The strikes also come against the backdrop of a US military buildup in the Caribbean that includes guided missile destroyers, F-35 fighter jets, a nuclear submarine and around 6,500 troops as the US president escalates a standoff with the Venezuelan government.
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Venezuelan president: ‘We don’t want a war’
On Wednesday, Mr Trump disclosed he had authorised the CIA to conduct covert operations inside Venezuela, adding to speculation in Caracas that the US is attempting to topple Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro.
Mr Maduro has denied any connection to drug smuggling and claimed the US boat strikes are a pretext for regime change, and violations of sovereignty and international law.
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