This entry is a departure from my regular focus. But where it does connect is the usual focus on media. I normally wouldn't have paid these news stories much attention but for the amount of reportage in the span of a couple of weeks. Dead babies on CNN, dead babies on BBC.

In recent weeks several stories, from France to Germany, emerged of gruesome discoveries of dead babies throughout Europe. On CNN today, over 350 stillborn babies and fetuses kept illegally in a hospital morgue were discovered at the Saint-Vincent-de-Paul Hospital in Southern Paris. Yesterday's BBC news reports in the Brieskow-Finkenheerd, a small German town on the Polish border, nine new-born babies were found buried in a garden. The babies, born between 1988-2004 (nearly a generation), were found buried in flower pots. I have always felt a disgusting unease about the saccharine lettuce and sunflower babies photography of Anne Gedes, I now have a reason.

July 18: In Worchetershire, England, a six month baby was discovered entombed in a concrete block after 15 years. The baby was alive when entombed. "A post-mortem examination showed the baby had suffered a fractured skull, bruising to the abdomen and may have also been sexually abused".

May 3: "Following the arrest at her home in the Gurnos earlier today, and a subsequent search of the property, officers discovered what they believed to be the remains of two further infants, which were enclosed in bags in the attic."

The finds come after other recent grim discoveries in Germany, says the Associated Press. Last week, a dead baby girl was found in a public toilet in Magdeburg and a young boy was discovered on a recycling company's conveyer belt in Guetersloh. A walker in Lower Saxony found a dead baby in a plastic bag in June. The authorities in Austria are holding the parents of at least three of four children whose bodies were found in a freezer and concrete-filled buckets at their home.

More reading:
•  Hundreds of stillborn babies found
•  Dead babies find shocks Germany
•  Entombed baby unlawfully killed
•  Babies in freezer shock