Children

Apple Inc. has announced it will replace its handgun emoji with a less-threatening green and orange water pistol in the upcoming release of iOS 10, its new iPhone and iPad operating system. Apple is also adding more gender-diverse emojis.

Children in Flint, Michigan can now visit the Sloan Museum for “Water Works” classes that teach them how to filter their drinking water. The museum is also compiling notes from the community on the lead-contaminated water crisis for future reflection.

Over 10,500 children, mostly from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras, crossed the US border in October and November, an increase of 106 percent from the same time in 2014. Now Congress is being asked to set aside $400 million more for relief programs.

Birthdates and photos of 200,000 kids are just the beginning of what a hacker captured from VTech, a maker of educational electronics for children. The theft of passwords, emails and addresses of 4,833,678 parents makes this the fourth largest breach yet.

Children under four shoot either someone else or themselves more than you might expect. While no official statistics are available, there have been at least 43 such news stories so far this year, averaging one a week.

The "police use-of-force" expert who wrote one of two reports that deemed the fatal police shooting of 12-year-old Tamir Rice in November was "reasonable" was also instrumental in clearing Colorado officers in the fatal shooting of a 17-year-old girl.

Trick became treat for parents in a small Connecticut town Monday. Their outrage pressured Milford Public Schools to overturn a ban on Halloween celebrations during official school hours that had just been announced Monday morning.

A 5-month-old girl who was shot in the chest on Thursday has died, according to police in Cleveland, Ohio. The death of Aavielle Wakefield marks the third fatal shooting incident involving children on Cleveland's east side in the last month.

A police dispatcher who sent cops to a playground where a 12-year-old boy was later fatally shot by police has resigned. The dispatcher failed to tell the officers that the 911 caller who reported the boy thought, correctly, that he was holding a toy gun.