A Mississippi public school caught handcuffing its students for misdemeanors as minor as violating the dress code has been banned from using the ‘abusive’ punishment. Capital City Alternatives school in Jackson was found to be regularly chaining children to railings and poles, sometimes for up to four consecutive school days. But a district judge has now outlawed the extreme disciplining technique, labeling it tantamount to abuse.

WARREN, MI–A woman who is nine months pregnant was abducted, set on fire and shot. The 22-year-old and her unborn baby were expected to live after the horrific ordeal on Saturday morning. The unknown attacker apparently told the woman that the abduction was linked to her pregnancy. The child’s father witnessed the attack, but did not call 911 – and police suggested the man did not want another baby.

A couple who kept their 11-year-old son a virtual prisoner in a former coal bunker were each jailed for two years yesterday. The boy’s mother and stepfather padlocked him into the 6ft by 4ft ‘cell’ every night for a year, forcing him to sleep on a soiled mattress and use a potty. When police were alerted they found the slightly-built boy asleep in the rubbish-strewn room with no heating or washing facilities, a bare light-bulb and concrete walls and floor.

The livid white-haired Syrian?s question to the U.N. blue helmet was rhetorical. He didn?t expect a real answer, not to that question. “Did the infant carry an RPG?” he asked angrily, gesturing wildly, his hands clad in red rubber gloves. He had washed the bodies of nine slain children already, one of whom was not even a year old, he told the U.N. observer. He wanted to know why. That question he actually wanted answered. The observer appeared overwhelmed.

OXNARD, CA — A man has been arrested for allegedly sexually assaulting a child inside a Walmart store in Oxnard. Police were called to the Walmart Supercenter Store at 2001 N. Rose Avenue in Oxnard around 8 p.m. on Friday. A child told officers that he had been in the electronics area of the store when Gonzalez approached him and sexually assaulted him. The incident was captured on the store’s surveillance cameras.

An apparent murder-suicide rocked a Kansas town Friday. Four people are dead from gunshot wounds in Blue Spring, including two girls aged two and four years old. According to the Kansas City Star, the mother of the children discovered them and her boyfriend dead at the scene.

This week, a Boise Idaho television news team released startlingly frank recordings of prison telephone conversations in which a mother who helped murder her 8 year old son gloated about how much fun she was having in prison. Serving a 25 year sentence without the possibility of parole, the mother showed no remorse about her role in the murder, as she discussed with someone named “Jess” how much “fun” she was having in prison.

A woman was arrested on Sunday for stabbing her one-year-old daughter to death in Kagiso on the West Rand, police said. Warrant Officer Solomon Sibiya said police arrested the 19-year-old mother around 3am on Sunday at her house in Kagiso. “The little girl was found with five stab wounds to the chest. The child was still breathing when police arrived.”

One of WA’s most notorious paedophiles was secretly preying on boys at Fairbridge Farm School more than a decade before his first arrest on sexual abuse charges, a victim has revealed. Robert Ernest Excell, who attained notoriety for spending 37 years in WA prisons after a string of sex crimes against children as young as seven, can now be shown to have begun a lifetime of child rape earlier than ever suspected. Revelations about his unpunished, early crimes against young children have emerged along with evidence Excell was himself a victim of sexual abuse at Fairbridge.

WELLINGTON: A global network that used social networking sites such as Facebook to distribute child pornography has been smashed after a tip-off from New Zealand authorities, officials said Tuesday. Investigators caught 55 people in 20 countries who were distributing child sexual abuse pictures and rescued 12 abused children, some of them babies, officials said.

Summer vacation may mean an increase in abuse as students spend more time at home. Child abuse instances increase for both The Bridge and CASA during the summer months, sometimes they nearly double. The Bridge Children’s Advocacy Center and CASA say there are many stresses adding to the increase in abuse. “Sometimes mom and dad are having to pay for food when normally they would have been getting lunches and breakfast at school. Kids may be at home by themselves now because parents still have to work, even when school is out and they may not have the funds to send them to camp or to school,” said Lara Escobar with CASA.

IRELAND–A new report by the Dublin Archdiocese reveals one in every 14 priests has been the subject of child abuse allegations. The shocking figure, reported on wwww.thejournal.ie, relates to official statistics going back over 70 years. The archdiocese report also states that the figure continues to rise with fresh allegations ongoing. Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin has been outspoken in cleaning up the mess in his own archdiocese and speaking out strongly.

A one-year-old boy who was reported missing in Covington, Kentucky, on Friday was discovered murdered in Cincinnati, and police say they have arrested the victim’s aunt. According to authorities, 26-year-old Marquita Burch has been charged with abuse of a corpse and tampering with evidence in connection with the William Cunningham’s death.

West Virginia State Police announced on Saturday that they had discovered four bodies in a wooded area believed to be those of a missing man, his girlfriend and his two young children. Police said the bodies were found about a mile from where Steven Hendrix’s missing 2003 Chevy Venture van was discovered on Friday night near Carl, in Nicholas County. Police suspected foul play based on the vehicle’s condition.