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1.An 11-month-old baby has died after being left in a hot car by his grandparents and an aunt, each of whom thought the other had taken him inside and put him down for a nap.
Reports out of the US state of Georgia say that the boy, Jaxon Taylor, who had not yet turned one, had gone to church with his grandparents and his aunt, while his Mum, who is an emergency room nurse, was sleeping between night shifts.
“According to police, she woke up two hours later and asked about her son.
“They look at each other, and at that point she runs towards the car and finds the child strapped in a car seat,” said Walker County Sheriff Steve Wilson.
Jaxon had been in the car for two hours. Temperatures climbed into the 30s.
Jaxon’s mother tried to revive him with cold water and CPR but he was pronounced dead at the hospital.
“There was a lack of communication [with] the three adults,” Walker County Sheriff Steve Wilson told CNN.
“They assumed that one of the others had brought in the child and laid him down. They didn’t communicate who would get the child.”
Jaxon is the 19th child to die in a hot car in the US so far this year.
2.It sounds like a mystery from a crime novel but French detectives have finally charged one of two identical twins, who have identical DNA, with a series of violent rapes.
AFP reports that police in Marseille, France, were stumped after DNA linked to a serial rapist led them to identical twins, Yoan and Elvin Gomis, both of whom denied any involvement in the crimes.
“The brothers—who shared an apartment, a car, and even a Facebook profile—both denied the series of 2012 and 2013 attacks on women ranging in age from 22 to 76,” the report says.
Both brothers were jailed while police tried to work out what to do. Now they have been able to build a case against Yoan because he has a speech impediment that some of the victims were able to identify.
“Yesterday, Yoan pleaded guilty to all seven counts of rape, attempted rape, and sexual aggression, apologising for having lied for so long,” the report says.
In what may be the most bizarre aspect of the strange case, Yoan’s lawyer says Elvin “absolutely does not hold it against him. It is all part of the mystery of twins”.
3.Parents who became convinced that their baby had been swapped at birth have been reunited with their biological son.
The parents, both of whom are devout Christians, also announced that they had decided to call their baby Moses – who is now four months old – because he was “lost but is now found”.
The Weekly reported on the couple yesterday: the father, Richard, is British-born, and the mother, Mercedes, is from El Salvador, and they met when both were working as Christian missionaries. Although they now live in Texas, they decided to return to El Salvador so Mercedes could give birth to their son in her home country.
Mercedes said the child she gave birth to had been noticeably pink; the child she was given to take home had darker skin and Mercedes was convinced that he was not hers. A DNA test proved it.
The couple feared that their actual son may have been sold to people traffickers but the Sydney Morning Herald reports that it was a mix-up in the nursery which resulted in two couples taking home the wrong babies.
“Late on Monday, the country’s Attorney General’s Office said it had located the couple’s real son after calling the parents of four other boys born on the same day at the same hospital in for DNA testing,” the Herald says.
“Attorney general Luis Martinez said the babies of two couples had been accidentally mixed up.
“We have returned the babies to their legitimate parents. We hope that this has not happened on other occasions,” he said.
“We understand the painful drama of these two families. We are talking about two children who were swapped.”
Mercedes had been raising the dark-skinned child as Jacob, but she will call her biological son Moses. It isn’t yet clear what if any contact she will be allowed to have with Jacob and vice versa. Each couple cared for the other’s baby for a little more than four months.
4.Pope Francis has moved to make divorce and re-marriage quicker and easier for Catholics.
The news comes hot on the heels of last week’s Papal direction on abortion, in which Pope Francis declared that Catholic women who have terminated a pregnancy will be able to seek forgiveness from any priest during a special Holy year next year.
Now the New York Times reports that that the Pontiff wants to make Catholic divorce more like Anglican divorce.
The Times says the change comes after complaints that Catholic divorce and annulment is too “cumbersome, complicated and expensive”.
“Under the new rules, the process will be much faster for cases in which a couple is not contesting the annulment,” the Times says.
“Such cases had required two separate judgments from a diocesan tribunal. Now, the process, overseen by local bishops, will require only one judgment.
“Moreover, the new rules require that the hearing process be held within 30 days of application, eliminating a longer waiting period.”
The move is the latest in a series of reforms by Francis as he seeks to make the church more “responsive” to the real needs of lay Catholics.
As it stands, if you’ve been divorced and remarried, you can’t receive Holy Communion in the Catholic Church unless you’ve received an annulment.
Besides proving himself flexible on some ancient teachings, the Pope is also big on Twitter where he has seven million followers. He Tweets things like: “A Christian who is too attached to riches has lost his way.”
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