Hundreds of babies are dying needlessly in England every year because their mothers smoke, drink, use drugs, or are obese, a new study suggests. Researchers from UCL Great Ormond Street Institute of Child Health compared death rates of under-5s to those in Sweden, a country with similar levels of economic development and healthcare. They found that deaths occur one and half times more often in England, equating to 600 extra deaths a year.

Circumcision should be made illegal, an expert argues. Dr Niall McCrae, a mental health lecturer at King's College London, claims it should be considered in the same regard as female genital mutilation. FGM, widely dubbed 'barbaric', has been illegal in the UK for more than 30 years, unlike circumcision, which also involves 'shearing off parts of genital organs'. However, he says public figures are too scared to call for a ban on circumcision because of its links to Jewish and Muslim cultures.

A man in Pakistan has been jailed for seven years for child pornography offences - the first conviction of its kind in the country's history. Sadat Amin was found guilty by a court in Sarghoda, a small city in the Punjab province, according to the district police chief Suhail Chaudhry. During the trial, he reportedly confessed to luring children in to produce porn videos, according to prosecutors.

A Florida man has been sentenced to 330 years in prison after being convicted on child pornography charges, for taking sex tourism trips to the Philippines, making videos of his sexual encounters with children as young as 6, and posting them online. David Paul Lynch was tried and found guilty late last year after an investigation by the FBI's Fort Myers Child Exploitation Task Force, Sarasota police, U.S. customs agents and international authorities.

A Youngstown, Ohio couple whose toddler died from a drug overdose was sentenced to prison Friday. Joshua Essad, 32, and Sara Loth, 31, pleaded guilty of reckless homicide and child endangerment Friday, for the death of their 16-month old child. According to Youngstown police, the child died from exposure to the drug carfentanil in July. Carfentanil is around 100 times more potent than fentanyl and 5,000 times more powerful than heroin.

A mother is facing charges after her 7-year-old son showed up to school high on cocaine. The little boy will be okay, according to Urbana Police. On Monday, the boy showed up to school tired, sleepy and somewhat unresponsive, WDTN reported. That's when school staff knew something was wrong. "You got to be thankful for the good staff members and good teachers," Cash told WDTN. "That see that stuff right away and try and get the kid help."

The Internet Watch Foundation says it is finding more images of child sexual abuse online than ever before, according to its annual report. It found over 78,000 website addresses containing child sexual abuse in 2017, up from more than 57,000 in 2016. The charity actively seeks and removes these images from the net as well as responding to reports it receives from the public. It said it had also processed over 80,000 reports of confirmed abuse.

Child marriage among Syrian refugee children, primarily girls, is on the rise, according to data from Jordan's court system. The percentage of child brides in Syrian marriages in Jordan rose from 15 percent in 2014 to 36 percent this year. Poverty is the primary reason driving families to marry off their daughters, as life for many refugees who have fled the conflict in Syria becomes increasingly difficult.

Toronto police announced on Thursday that law enforcement agencies in Canada, United States and the United Kingdom have made a total of 153 arrests in connection with an international child sexual abuse investigation, which also resulted in the rescue of a dozen children. Police said during a press conference in Toronto that the National Crime Agency in the United Kingdom first started the investigation in 2014 when they were looking into an online group allegedly involved in the sexual abuse of children.

The child's mother, Milissa Davis, captured the discussion after formulating a plan to place a recording device in her son's book sack after he became aggressive and wet the bed. The child is 12-years-old and severely autistic.

Evidence from vigilantes known as “paedophile hunters” was used to charge suspects in England and Wales on at least 150 occasions last year, it has been reported. There has been a sevenfold increase in the use of such evidence from 2015, figures obtained by the BBC under freedom of information laws suggest. Two-thirds of the 43 police forces in England and Wales provided data, which showed that in 2017 almost half of the cases against people charged with meeting a child after sexual grooming used evidence from the groups.

The Vatican arrested a diplomat Saturday who was recalled from his Washington, D.C., post last year while under investigation for possessing child pornography in the United States and Canada. A statement from the Vatican identified the accused man as Msgr. Carlo Alberto Capella, a high-ranking priest in the Vatican's diplomatic corps. He was arrested after a warrant was issued by the Vatican's chief magistrate at the conclusion of an investigation, according to the statement.

A Sydney naturopath has been sentenced to seven months in prison for her role in starving an infant in 2015, after a judge slammed her extreme diet advice that almost killed the eight-month-old. Marilyn Pauline Bodnar was sentenced to a maximum of 14 months' jail but will be eligible for parole on November 4. The 62-year-old pleaded guilty to an accessory charge of causing danger of death to a child, when she advised the boy's mother to adhere to a strict diet of raw vegetables, fruit, and seeds.

A Pine Ridge Reservation woman accused of beating her 2-year-old son to death after he wet his bed has reached a plea deal with prosecutors. The Rapid City Journal reports 30-year-old Katrina Shangreaux, of Porcupine, is to plead guilty to second-degree murder in the death of 2-year-old Kylen Shangreaux in July 2016. She says in court documents she'd been drinking alcohol and taking pain medication.

Ohio police say they arrested 33-year-old Jason Bittner after his 3-month-old baby girl was taken to a local hospital with brain injuries and 28 fractured ribs in different stages of healing. He's accused of abusing his daughter because she was fussy and he wanted a son.

Everything you need to know about the former Judge turned Anti Corruption Anti Pedophile Activist can be found here http://oplithchild1.blogspot.ca/2012/05/neringa-venckiene-for-president.html In the video is her fifteen-year-old son Karolis speaking from his heart about the details of this case, backed up by the blog. There are other links in the original video to the White House Petition as well as the Go Fund Me for her defence fund.

An Oregon woman accused of drugging kids at her day care so she could go to the tanning bed and work out, was sentenced to to 21 years and four months in prison on Friday. January Neatherlin was sentenced Friday after pleading guilty in February to 11 counts of first-degree criminal mistreatment and one count of third-degree assault,The Oregonian reported.

The number of girls getting married in India has nearly halved in a decade, leading to a global decline in child marriage, the United Nations children's agency (UNICEF) says. UNICEF said 25 million child marriages were prevented worldwide in the last decade, with the largest reduction seen in south Asia — where India was at the forefront.

The parents of a North Carolina girl who was missing for years before her father led them to her skeletal remains in 2016 will be charged with murder, reports CBS affiliate WBTV. A grand jury on Monday indicted Sandy and Casey Parsons on charges of first-degree murder, felony child abuse, felony concealment of death and felony obstruction of justice in the death of their daughter Erica, the station reports.

When Ogden police Officer Sitka Hrabal went into Miller Costello and Brenda Emile’s Grant Avenue home in July, she couldn’t believe what she saw. In the middle of a bare living room, a little girl lay dead on the beige carpet, swaddled in a pink blanket. “I was told she was 3,” the officer testified Friday. “She didn’t look 3 to me. She looked like a Holocaust victim.”