A French woman discovered her 42-year-old son had been buried in the same cemetery where she was attending her brother’s funeral, after she had tried to invite him to the ceremony, a newspaper said on Friday.
The family were leaving the cemetery near Lille, about 220km north of Paris, on Wednesday when one of them noticed a temporary wooden gravestone bearing the son’s name and date of birth in an area reserved for poor people.
In two or three seconds, everybody started to scream, the man’s father, Elie Langlet, told La Voix du Nord newspaper.
“Josiane [the mother] collapsed. She buries her brother and finds her kid in a grave near him. It’s unthinkable,” he said.
The local council confirmed the father of one, Olivier, had died on July 5 from natural causes.
Josiane Vermeersch said she had tried to invite her son to his uncle’s funeral a few days before but to no avail, and had thought he was ignoring her after a row.
“Someone hasn’t done their job,” she told news channel I-Tele.
“I demand explanations,” Vermeersch said, adding it was unbelievable in a time of modern technology that nobody had attempted to contact the family.
Citing the funeral parlor that buried the man, the newspaper said it was not uncommon for families not to be informed if there is no immediate contact address.
Under French law a burial must take place within six days of a death.
The team behind the long-awaited Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile yesterday published their first images, revealing breathtaking views of star-forming regions as well as distant galaxies. More than two decades in the making, the giant US-funded telescope sits perched at the summit of Cerro Pachon in central Chile, where dark skies and dry air provide ideal conditions for observing the cosmos. One of the debut images is a composite of 678 exposures taken over just seven hours, capturing the Trifid Nebula and the Lagoon Nebula — both several thousand light-years from Earth — glowing in vivid pinks against orange-red backdrops. The new image
Canada and the EU on Monday signed a defense and security pact as the transatlantic partners seek to better confront Russia, with worries over Washington’s reliability under US President Donald Trump. The deal was announced after a summit in Brussels between Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Antonio Costa. “While NATO remains the cornerstone of our collective defense, this partnership will allow us to strengthen our preparedness ... to invest more and to invest smarter,” Costa told a news conference. “It opens new opportunities for companies on both sides of the
ESPIONAGE: The British government’s decision on the proposed embassy hinges on the security of underground data cables, a former diplomat has said A US intervention over China’s proposed new embassy in London has thrown a potential resolution “up in the air,” campaigners have said, amid concerns over the site’s proximity to a sensitive hub of critical communication cables. The furor over a new “super-embassy” on the edge of London’s financial district was reignited last week when the White House said it was “deeply concerned” over potential Chinese access to “the sensitive communications of one of our closest allies.” The Dutch parliament has also raised concerns about Beijing’s ideal location of Royal Mint Court, on the edge of the City of London, which has so
OVERHAUL: The move would likely mark the end to Voice of America, which was founded in 1942 to counter Nazi propaganda and operated in nearly 50 languages The parent agency of Voice of America (VOA) on Friday said it had issued termination notices to more than 639 more staff, completing an 85 percent decrease in personnel since March and effectively spelling the end of a broadcasting network founded to counter Nazi propaganda. US Agency for Global Media (USAGM) senior advisor Kari Lake said the staff reduction meant 1,400 positions had been eliminated as part of US President Donald Trump’s agenda to cut staffing at the agency to a statutory minimum. “Reduction in Force Termination Notices were sent to 639 employees at USAGM and Voice of America, part of a
RSS