Atlanta

Father denies role in child’s circumcision

An Ethiopian immigrant accused of circumcising his daughter with a pair of scissors when she was 2 years old denied the charge Wednesday and said he was being framed by his ex-wife.

Khalid Adem, 28, said he believed his ex-wife or someone associated with her injured the girl to ensure that he wouldn’t see his daughter during a custody dispute.

“I am challenging them to take a lie-detector test with me and let the truth be known,” Adem said.

Adem was indicted this week on charges of cruelty to children and battery. Police said a doctor discovered a scar on the girl’s genitals in 2001. The child, now 4, is in her mother’s custody, and Adem does not have visitation rights.

Mississippi

Autopsies released on slain family

The father of a family found slain in the Mississippi woods was shot to death, and his wife and their 4-year-old son were strangled, according to autopsy results released Wednesday.

The findings were made public only hours after relatives of the Hargon family arranged Friday funerals for the three who disappeared from their rural home on Valentine’s Day.

The bodies of Michael Hargon, his wife, Rebecca, and their 4-year-old son, James Patrick, were found Tuesday night in a wooded area. The discovery occurred shortly after Michael’s cousin, Earnest Lee Hargon, was charged with capital murder.

Michael Hargon, 27, suffered a fatal bullet wound to the head, said Warren Strain, a spokesman for the Mississippi Highway Patrol.

Police are not yet sure where Rebecca Hargon and her son died.

Atlanta

Flag-fatigued voters keep current banner

Georgia officials hope their flag flap is finished now that voters overwhelmingly approved a banner that nods to the state’s Confederate history without embracing the divisive rebel “X.”

In a statewide referendum Tuesday, voters overwhelmingly chose to keep the red, white and blue banner adopted last year by the Legislature. About three of every four voters chose that flag over a blue flag selected in 2001 to replace the 1956 banner that was dominated by the Confederate battle emblem.

The 1956 flag, which blacks vehemently oppose, was replaced in 2001 by then-Gov. Roy Barnes. The replacement, which included the 1956 flag in miniature with four other flags, caused so much outrage that it helped Perdue oust Barnes in 2002.

Maryland

Conjoined twins born at Naval Medical Center

Rare, conjoined twins were delivered last week at the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda. The girls, who are joined at the abdomen, were described as stable and healthy in the two days after their birth Feb. 26.

At the parents’ request, the hospital has not released further information on their condition, a spokesman said.

The two girls were delivered by Caesarean section at 34 weeks of gestational age, about six weeks short of full term.

The girls’ livers and diaphragms are fused. They also share a pericardium, the saclike structure encasing the heart, although their hearts are separate. The current plan is to separate them in about three months at a children’s hospital that has not yet been chosen, according to the hospital spokesman.