The Better Baby

Found at CBC News, Canada. The baby has been placed in the care of the Lac La Ronge Indian Child and Family Services agency. He was taken to Victoria Hospital after being discovered … more

And here is yet another one of these bizarre day-to-day real-life (baby) episodes: French news agency AFP reports of an 11-month old Chicago baby named “Bubba” Ludwig that is already a fully paid up member of America’s firearms fraternity, with a 12-gauge Beretta shotgun and a gun permit to his name. No kidding!
The shotgun was a gift from his grandfather who bought the rifle as an heirloom for his grandson when the infant was just two weeks old. The gun permit came courtesy of the Illinois state authorities last month.
Even in a country with fervent gun advocates, news of an infant owning a gun has made headlines in US newspapers.
The toddler’s father, also named Howard Ludwig, applied for a Firearm Owner’s Identification Card for his son, never imagining that he would actually get one.

“I filled in the form, saying he was two feet, three inches, 20 pounds, and I included a photo of him,” said Ludwig, who is a columnist for the Daily Southtown, a suburban Chicago newspaper.

The 30-year-old also had his son “sign” the application form, by putting a pen in his hand and letting him write a squiggle on the paper.

“I was expecting to get a letter back telling me I was an idiot. So when I got his FOID card (permit) back I was shocked. I couldn’t believe it.”

In Illinois, all firearms owners must apply for a permit, or FOID, in order to legally own a firearm or ammunition but there are no age restrictions on applicants, although anyone under 21 has to get the written consent of a parent or legal guardian, according to the Illinois State Police website.

For now, the shotgun is under lock and key at the home of Howard Ludwig senior. Grandpa Ludwig plans to keep the shotgun under wraps until “Bubba” or Howard David Ludwig gets to be a teenager, at which point he plans to take the boy out trap hunting, family members said.

And here is another one of these bizarre news reports: Accoring to The Peninsula Qatar a Texan teenage father has been indicted on charges he burned his 2-month-old daughter in a hotel microwave oven, a prosecutor said yesterday.Joshua Mauldin, 19, who was visiting Galveston, Texas, from Arkansas with family members, was indicted by a grand jury on one charge of felony injury to a child, said Assistant District Attorney Xochitl Vandiver. The charge carries a prison sentence of five to 99 years, Vandiver said. Mauldin was being held in the county jail in Galveston, on $250,000 bond, a jail spokesman said.
The baby girl was hospitalised with burns on her face and one hand, according to television and newspaper reports. �Her injuries are pretty significant,� said Vandiver, who prosecutes child-abuse charges. She called the case, �unusual and horrific. I�ve never seen anything like it.
Mauldin initially told police the baby was burned when he stumbled and spilled hot water on her, according to the Houston Chronicle. Later, he said he placed the baby into the microwave oven because he was under stress, the newspaper said.

According to today’s British newspaper The Guardian, a young couple suspected of leaving their baby in the baggage hold of a motorbike while they gambled was arrested Thursday after the boy’s dead body was found in a gutter, police and media reports said.

The arrest of Motoki Tamiya and his wife, Mika, both 21, comes amid public outcry about the treatment of children after a separate case in which a preschooler was abandoned by his father at an anonymous drop box meant for unwanted infants.

“We could say that we are witnessing the deterioration of Japanese society,” ruling party lawmaker Tsuneo Suzuki told parliament, referring to recent cases of child abandonment.

“We must stem this appalling destruction of family and community morals,” he said.

The 1-year-old boy is believed to have suffocated while shut in the motorbike’s storage compartment as his parents played pachinko, media reports said. Pachinko is a popular Japanese game similar to pinball.

After discovering the baby was dead, the couple is suspected of dumping the body off a remote road in the mountains of western Japan earlier this year, local police official Seiho Yasui said. The couple was arrested on suspicion of illegally dumping the body.

The body was found in April, but appeared to have been dumped months earlier. Police identified the baby Wednesday after DNA tests linked him to his mother, Yasui said.

She had told welfare workers in January she felt she could not raise the baby and wished to give him up, according to news reports.

On Tuesday, authorities said a 3-year-old had been left at a baby drop box at a hospital in southern Japan.

The drop box was created after a series of cases in which newborns were left in parks and supermarkets, triggering public outrage and government warnings against abandoning babies.