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7NEWS
2 days ago
- 7NEWS
Jury awards millions to parents of decapitated baby whose autopsy was shared on social media
A jury in the US state of Georgia has awarded $US2.25 million in damages to the parents of a baby who was decapitated during delivery and whose autopsy was posted on social media without his parents' consent. The parents, Treveon Taylor and Jessica Ross, will receive $US2 million in compensatory damages and an additional $US250,000 in punitive damages against the pathologist who posted the video, Dr. Jackson Gates, and Medical Diagnostic Choices in Atlanta. The parents sued Gates in September 2023 for alleged invasion of privacy, fraud and intentional infliction of emotional distress. 'While we are pleased that a jury punished Dr. Jackson Gates for his reprehensible behaviour, nothing can ease the pain that the parents, Jessica Ross and Treveon Isaiah Taylor, Sr., have experienced in losing their baby boy in such a horrific way,' attorneys for the family said in a statement this week. Gates did not immediately respond to an NBC News request for comment. The baby was deceased at the time of his delivery on July 10, 2023, the lawsuit stated. On July 12, Ross contracted Gates to conduct an autopsy for $2,500. Ross and Taylor did not permit Gates to share images of the autopsy, through the contract or verbally, according to the lawsuit. Gates uploaded multiple videos to his Instagram account that month showing 'in graphic and grisly detail a postmortem examination of the decapitated, severed head of Baby Isaiah,' as well as the baby's body, the suit stated. At the time, Gates' social media account showed a history of posting photos and videos of other autopsies. That account has been taken down, but he has at least one other account on YouTube. 'After the decapitation of their baby, Gates poured salt into the couple's already deep wounds when he betrayed them,' the family's attorneys said. Gates told NBC News in March 2024, after he was initially found liable in the case, that he had not violated the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) due to a clause that allows physicians to inform the public when there are safety concerns in health care. 'I have not violated HIPAA, it is not required by a physician to get consent to report a crime or some sort of health issue to the public,' Gates said at the time. 'I've been doing this for 15 years, publishing my autopsy cases to explain to the public the victimization of those persons who have died.' The parents sent a cease-and-desist letter in August 2023 for the videos of their child to be immediately removed; they filed a lawsuit against Gates the following month. Ross and Taylor also sued the facility where the delivery took place, Southern Regional Medical Centre, and obstetrician Dr. Tracey St. Julian — who is a member of a private practice and not the hospital — for 'ridiculously excessive force' used during the delivery of their son. The baby did not properly descend during labour, likely due to shoulder dystocia, a condition that occurs when a baby's shoulder is caught behind the mother's pubic bone, according to the lawsuit against the medical providers. St. Julian tried to deliver the baby vaginally using different methods, including excessive traction resulting in decapitation, skull and facial bone fractures and other injuries, the suit states. Ross asked for a Cesarean section 'while the baby was viable,' the parents' attorney Roderick Edmond said at a news conference in 2023, and instead was told to keep pushing for three hours. The baby was ultimately delivered through an emergency C section, which the lawsuit alleges St. Julian failed to perform in a 'timely and proper manner' and resulted in the child's death. Southern Regional Medical Centre denied the 'allegations of wrongdoing' at the time and said in a statement. 'This unfortunate infant death occurred in utero prior to the delivery and decapitation,' they said. In February 2024, the Clayton County Medical Examiner's Office ruled the baby's death a homicide caused by 'actions of another person,' stating his death resulted from a fracture of cervical vertebrae in the spine. St. Julian's practice and lawyers did not immediately respond to a request for comment, nor did Southern Regional Medical Centre.
AU Financial Review
15-06-2025
- Business
- AU Financial Review
Is Google facing its own Kodak moment with the rise of AI?
The Google search engine has become such a ubiquitous part of life that it's difficult to imagine the possibility that one day it could just vanish. Yet, that is what financial markets are doing – pondering an artificial intelligence-powered future of search in which Google is left behind. Sure, the search engine's parent Alphabet has a market capitalisation that, at $US2 trillion ($3.3 trillion), exceeds the entire Australian sharemarket. But the value of Google could and would be larger were it not for growing anxiety that AI is going to totally upend the way we find things on the internet, and how businesses pay platforms like Google for customers.
The Star
12-06-2025
- Business
- The Star
Earthquake worsens Myanmar's economic decline, World Bank says
FILE PHOTO: A woman carries a bag of produce on her head at the Da Nyin Gone vegetable wholesale market in Yangon on September 19, 2023. The earthquake could increase the national poverty rate by 2.8 percentage points, pushing more households into poverty, the World Bank predicts. - AFP YANGON: Myanmar's beleaguered economy is expected to contract by 2.5 per cent in the 2025/26 fiscal year largely due to the devastating impact of a powerful earthquake in late March, the World Bank said in a report on Thursday (June 12). The World Bank said direct damages to property and infrastructure from the 7.7 magnitude quake were estimated at US$11 billion, or 14 per cent of the nation's gross domestic product, estimating that economic output would be about US2 billion lower than it otherwise would have been because of the quake. The quake affected more than 17 million people, with nine million severely impacted, the World Bank said. The death toll has topped 3,700, according to Myanmar's ruling junta. "The earthquake caused significant loss of life and displacement, while exacerbating already difficult economic conditions, further testing the resilience of Myanmar's people," Melinda Good, Division Director for Thailand and Myanmar, said in a statement. "Recovery efforts are essential to help the most vulnerable populations." A junta spokesman did not respond to a call from Reuters seeking comment on the report. In December, the World Bank had projected Myanmar's economy would shrink one per cent in the 2024/25 fiscal year that ended in March due to the severe flooding in the country. Myanmar has been in turmoil since the military seized power in a coup in February 2021, sparking a civil war. There have been international efforts to stall the conflict, but rebels have accused the junta of breaching a ceasefire called to allow relief efforts to reach earthquake-affected areas. The hardest-hit regions of Mandalay and Naypyidaw were expected to lose up to one-third of their production between April and September before a partial recovery in the second half of the fiscal year, the World Bank said. The earthquake could increase the national poverty rate by 2.8 percentage points, pushing more households into poverty, the report stated. A survey before the quake estimated the poverty rate at 31 per cent in 2024. "Myanmar's compounding crises have put household coping mechanisms under severe stress," said Kim Edwards, Senior Economist and Programme Leader for Thailand and Myanmar. - Reuters
The Age
09-06-2025
- Business
- The Age
Trump v Musk is the final battle before a catastrophe
Who needs reality TV when there's the psychodrama of Donald Trump's White House to keep us all entertained? As plot lines go, the falling out between Trump and Elon Musk was perhaps about as predictable as they come, but the sheer venom, speed and combustibility of the divorce has nevertheless proved utterly captivating. Even the best of Hollywood scriptwriters would have struggled to do better. The stench of betrayal hangs heavy in the air, a veritable revenger's tragedy of a drama. Beneath it all, however, lies a rather more serious matter than the sight of two of the world's richest and most powerful men breaking up and exchanging insults. And it's one that afflicts nearly all major high-income economies. Slowly but surely – and at varying speeds – they are all going bust. Yet few of them seem even capable of recognising it, let alone doing anything to correct it. None more so than the United States, where the Congressional Budget Office last week estimated that Trump's 'one big, beautiful bill' would add a further $US2.4 trillion ($3.7 million) to the national debt by 2034. Loading Let's not take sides, but Musk was absolutely right when he described the bill as 'a disgusting abomination'. It taxes far too little, and it spends far too much. It is hard to imagine a more reckless piece of make-believe. Musk had backed Trump not just out of self-interest – more government contracts, protection of the electric vehicle mandate, personal aggrandisement and so on – but because he genuinely believed he could help stop the US from bankrupting itself. This has proved a monumental conceit. The $US2 trillion of savings in federal spending he initially promised has turned out to be at most $US200 billion, and probably substantially less once double accounting and wishful thinking is factored in.
Sydney Morning Herald
06-06-2025
- Business
- Sydney Morning Herald
Musk used X to boost Trump. Now he's wielding it against him
Thursday's online drama underscored that while Musk's stewardship of X made it into a powerful tool for his allies and the conservative movement, he feels free to wrench it in whatever new direction he pleases. When he acquired Twitter, Musk drove some users and advertisers away from the platform by putting his personal views ahead of business concerns, loosening speech rules and reinstating accounts banned for harassment or spreading misinformation. His fight with Trump proved again that he is willing to risk an exodus of users – this time from the right – by using the platform as a bully pulpit. Trump commands an actual military, but Musk oversees the larger digital horde. He has 220 million X followers, while Trump has 100 million on X and another 10 million on Truth Social, where he has lately become more prolific than he ever was on Twitter. Musk also controls X's moderation policies and its algorithm, both of which he has used at times to boost his own reach and silence his critics. Musk's power to direct attention on X has helped drive the emergence of an ecosystem of pseudonymous conservative political and tech influencers. Many have built followings in the millions on X by praising Musk, denigrating his rivals and trumpeting his agenda. They've been rewarded with amplification from Musk and a cut of X's ad revenue. All those advantages were arrayed in Trump's favour after Musk endorsed his candidacy on X less than an hour after Trump survived an attempted assassination in July. Musk donned a MAGA hat in his profile image, held an hours-long live audio event on X with Trump and posted fake AI-generated images of Democratic candidate Kamala Harris in communist regalia. On more than one occasion, pro-Harris accounts found themselves throttled or temporarily suspended, leading some Democrats to cry foul. As Musk's 'DOGE', or Department of Government Efficiency, swept through Washington in February at Trump's behest, X became a digital command centre of the new administration. Musk used it to amplify claims of waste and corruption, some of them unfounded, at the agencies and programs he targeted for elimination. He baited critics with memes of himself as the Godfather and polled his followers on what DOGE should cut next. Now it's Trump that Musk is trolling, after ending his government service a long way short of his stated goal of cutting $US2 trillion in federal spending. He sent warning shots on Tuesday, calling Trump's massive tax and immigration bill – the president's top domestic priority – a 'disgusting abomination'. The conflict escalated in a hurry on Thursday after Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that his 'great relationship' with Musk might be over. Over the following hours, Musk accused Trump and other Republican leaders of betraying their principles and approvingly reposted criticisms of them from other accounts. That can have ripple effects across X as users vie to craft posts that will win a reply or amplification from Musk that can boost their own followings. At one point, Musk posted a poll asking his 220 million followers if it was time to 'create a new political party in America that actually represents the 80 per cent in the middle'. Six hours into the 24-hour poll, the votes leaned heavily toward 'Yes'. Traffic to X surely spiked on Thursday as political and tech insiders became glued to the conflict and citizens were left to wonder what it meant for the world's richest person to be at war with its most politically powerful. How the feud will affect Musk's influence and business empire is less certain. Loading Tesla and SpaceX, his most valuable companies, depend heavily on government regulation and contracts, making them vulnerable to attacks by Trump and his administration. Tesla stock fell on Thursday as investors appeared to fear retribution. Public spats between influencers are great for engagement on social platforms. But if the acrimony continues, Musk may have to reckon again with an exodus of users repelled by his politics. His embrace of Trump sent liberals scurrying to Meta's Threads and upstart Bluesky. His split with the president could give Trump an opening to lure more conservatives to Truth Social. On Thursday, some X influencers appeared to have calculated they had better prospects by sticking with Musk. An account called DogeDesigner with 41 million followers posted that Musk 'sacrificed a lot for Trump' and deserved better treatment. Just last week, Musk had sent it a heart emoji for a post promoting his alliance with the president. Another account called Shibetoshi Nakamoto mused, 'can i finally say that trump's tariffs are super stupid'. In a battle between Musk and Trump, 'My money's on Elon,' conservative commentator Ian Miles Cheong wrote, adding that 'Trump should be impeached and [US vice president] J.D. Vance should replace him.'
