A notable baby was the victim of a shameless thief last week in San Francisco, and city officials are warning that such crimes are almost certain to occur again. The well known infant's diaper bag had been innocently left unattended at the city's Hall of Justice when the baby's foster mother forgot to the crucial personal item while going through the security line.

The baby, known only as "Baby Nash," is famous because two police officers saved his life with CPR, and also they "drove him to the hospital themselves," which was a selfless sacrifice that saved the baby's life. Earlier, the baby's biological mother had abandoned him somewhere.

According to the latest tally on Google News, there are 2,803 current media reports involving stolen Baby Jesuses from nativity scenes. This represents a [made up percentage] increase in nativity infant thefts over 2011, which had held the previous record with [made up number] documented desecrations of Christmas scenes. Many are wondering just how low we can go, as a species. If children and other pranksters think it's "okay" to lift a plastic baby with a hole in its bottom for a colored light bulb, then what else might people do, given the chance?

"It is one thing, I guess, to steal even the shepherd or a king," said [...]

Let's hear it for the 33-year-old Red Hook chick who, at noon on August 25th, "was approached by a strange man who immediately pointed a black revolver at her head. The victim threw her iced coffee in the face of the assailant, tossed her cell phone and bag on the ground, then fled, police said." WORK. (For the record, that is NOT how you are supposed to react to a "strange man" with a gun, in fact quite the opposite, but sure feels good, don't it?)

When are we going to do something about the scourge of white-on-white crime?

"The FBI now thinks the robber, who in one holdup had an oxygen tank with a tube to his nose, may be a younger man wearing a mask and gloves. After the latest of his 16 heists, he sprinted away." —Ugh, and he was showing such commitment to the role. What a disappointment during awards season.

Very little happens in Brooklyn Heights. During Truman Capote’s years here, his friends would enquire, “But what do you do over there?” It was a fair question—and an eternal one. Mine wonder the same thing. One pleasure of America’s first suburb is that it is, to an extent unusual in an ever-churning city, impervious to change—economically, structurally, but also in a more fundamental sense: The question, Did anything happen in the Heights today? can almost always be answered with Not much. The news is blessedly mundane: Either a pet is missing or the street’s been sullied by a fallen tree or pothole.

If the Heights seems like a [...]

In the wake of the devastation of last week's weather—178 tornadoes in two days! Hundreds dead, many missing—states from Tennessee to Alabama to Texas are beset with looters, we hear. Seven in Ohio! Three in St. Louis! Two in North Carolina! Maybe 20 all told in Alabama! Literally, perhaps three dozens of people have been arrested for looting in the past week.

(Can we have a sidebar? "In Alabama, businesses are prohibited after disasters from increasing the price of items for sale or rent by 25 percent or more above the average price charged in the same area within the last 30 [...]

If you're one of the 20 million people who live in Southern California, you may well be locked in a closet right now, waiting for this Angry Hulk ex-LAPD guy to burst in and kill you. Christopher Dorner, the fired cop and Navy reservist, is blamed for the murder of three people and the wounding of another three people so far. He's currently on the loose in an area roughly defined by Nevada, Arizona, Mexico and California's Pacific coast. So keep an eye on everything! If you see a huge angry guy in a pickup truck, that might be Dorner … or it might be basically anyone you see [...]

"A Senate proposal touted as protecting Americans' e-mail privacy has been quietly rewritten, giving government agencies more surveillance power than they possess under current law. [Senator Pat] Leahy's rewritten bill would allow more than 22 agencies—including the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Federal Communications Commission—to access Americans' e-mail, Google Docs files, Facebook wall posts, and Twitter direct messages without a search warrant." —Maybe we're all better off without the Senate protecting our Internet privacy. UPDATE: Tech industry people get angry, Leahy kills the warrantless part, for now.

"NYPD statistics show 292 biking accidents occurred in the city in the first seven months of this year—65 in Central Park alone," says today's Daily News shocking cover story. Did you know that bicyclists are literally exceeding the speed limit in Central Park by 4 and 5 miles per hour???

That's 41 bike accidents a month in New York City! Gosh, and to think, only 293 bicyclists are run down by cars each month in the City! Only 148,571 cars are involved in accidents in New York City each year, killing 270 people a year! And only 24,673 pedestrians are injured by cars in the City a year. [...]

“Wardell ‘Poochie’ Fouse was paid to kill Biggie. At the time, he was a 36-year old member of the Mob Piru Bloods. According to several Death Row insiders and FBI informants, Poochie was a down-for-the-cause, hardcore gang member. Confidential sources from the Death Row entourage, the Mob Pirus, and [Suge’s girlfriend, identified in Kading's book by the alias "Theresa Swann"], said Poochie had done shootings for Suge in the past. Reggie Wright Jr.—who was the head of Death Row security—said Suge and Poochie’s relationship was different than other members of the gang. They had a very secretive and exclusive relationship. [Suge’s girlfriend] and Poochie agreed to terms. He received [...]

"The letter on my desk was from a family, a husband and wife. They had written to me after reading a short news article I’d done about a 26-year-old convicted child molester who had been arrested that week and charged with raping a 14-year-old girl. The girl was their daughter. She had been raped by the man two months earlier but had been locked away in juvenile detention for more than a month—longer than her attacker had been in custody." —Here's what is probably the most upsetting story you'll ever hear.

"It is a new crime phenomenon targeting people who may not have ordinarily been victims of crime and who are vulnerable victims. And we are not dealing with petty criminals." —Patric Byrne, of the European Union's law enforcement agency, discusses the recent rash of rhino horns being stolen from museums.