The Anglo-Australian mining company Rio Tinto agreed to pay a US$15 million penalty to settle with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) the accusation that it had paid $10.5 million to a friend of former Guinean President Alpha Condé to retain globally important iron ore rights.

The settlement agreement with the U.S. stock exchange regulator said that in 2011, Rio hired a “close friend of a former senior Guinean government official” to help it keep hold of blocks 3 and 4 of the Simandou mountain range, considered to hold some of the world’s largest iron ore reserves.

Blocks 1 and 2 had been canceled by a previous regime in 2008, and controversially granted to Beny Steinmetz Group Resources.

The SEC found that the consultant in the middle of the scandal paid $200,000 to buy T-shirts for Condé’s re-election campaign, soon after receiving his first payment from Rio Tinto.

While the settlement anonymises individuals connected to the bribery, leaked emails reveal that the unnamed “senior government official” is President Condé, and the anonymous “French investment banker” is François Polge de Combret, a friend of Condé from his student days in Paris.

Child Adoption is the legal process by which a child or minor is made a a part of a family he is not biologically connected to.

It should be noted that child adoption is different from Child fostering, which is the process of a child being placed under the care of a caregiver or guardian (known as a ” foster parent”) licensed to do so by the state .

This article will be looking at child adoption as it currently exists under Nigerian Law, with a focus on the topics of :-

– The legal framework governing child adoption in Nigeria.

– Who is qualified to be adopted in Nigeria.

Discrimination laws have been at the heart of the conflict between faith-based adoption agencies and local government bureaucracies for years. Faith-based agencies argue for the right to operate according to their beliefs, even if it means adopting only to heterosexual couples. Local governments are responsible for ensuring that the agencies they partner with abide by local discrimination laws.

In a surprising settlement regarding this very issue, New York state officials have agreed to pay $250,000 in attorneys' fees and costs after attempting for years to shutter New Hope Family Services' doors. New Hope's supposed offense? Operating in accordance with its religious beliefs.

While this is a positive outcome, it’s unfortunate that the city targeted New Hope for several years, forcing the organization to participate in time-consuming and costly litigation, via Alliance Defending Freedom, to defend itself for doing something that was well within its First Amendment purview.

Two rulings predated the settlement. One ruling in 2020 temporarily ruled in favor of the faith-based adoption provider. Another ruling in 2022 prohibited the state of New York from enforcing state law "insofar as it would compel New Hope to process applications from, or place children for adoption with, same-sex couples or unmarried cohabitating couples, and insofar as it would prevent New Hope from referring such couples to other agencies."

New Hope is a nonprofit adoption agency and pregnancy center that helps new mothers. While adoptive parents do pay fees, the organization operates without government funding and through private funding from churches, donors, and private grants. For four years, the New York Office of Children and Family Services agency threatened to shut it down, despite the fact that it received no state funding, because New Hope would only place children with a married mother and father, based on orthodox religious beliefs.

Following VG's revelations about illegal adoption, Minister for Children and Families Kjersti Toppe (Sp) is now inviting adoptees to a meeting. - I want to bring to light what has happened, she says.

VG has told the story of Camilla Austbø (37) who was illegally adopted to Norway.

Camilla was three years old when she was abducted from her own home in Ecuador, sold, and adopted to an unsuspecting couple in Skien.

VG has also told the story of Simon and several other adoptees from Ecuador. All came to Norway via a lawyer who was accused of buying and selling children for adoption.

Now Minister for Children and Families Kjersti Toppe wants to meet them.

Urteil im Prozess

Pforzheimer CDU-Stadträtin Oana Krichbaum diffamiert: Freiheitsstrafe für Angeklagte

Die Pforzheimer Stadträtin Oana Krichbaum wurde in den sozialen Medien und in Mails mehrfach des illegalen Kinderhandels bezichtigt. Nun erhielt die Angeklagte eine Freiheitsstrafe.

Gunther und Oana Krichbaum als Delegierte beim Bundesparteitag der CDU in Hannover

Nebenkläger: Oana und Gunter Krichbaum sahen sich auf Facebook bösen Behauptungen ausgesetzt. Foto: Oana Krichbaum

A woman from the Enz district was sentenced to six months imprisonment without probation by the Foreign Chamber of the Karlsruhe Regional Court on Wednesday for defamation.

The woman was accused of repeatedly calling Oana Krichbaum, the wife of MP Gunther Krichbaum (CDU), both of whom acted as joint plaintiffs, as a child trafficker on Facebook. With the verdict, a story that has been smoldering for years comes to an end – at least for the time being.

4,000 pages of court files have accumulated in the process

In 2019, after five days of hearings, the district court sentenced the woman to six months probation. Both the defendants' defense and the public prosecutor's office had appealed against this. The process, which has now come to an end, dragged on for eleven days of negotiations, during which a mountain of files of around 4,000 pages had accumulated.

In his detailed reasoning, Judge Stefan Bien emphasized that the previously unconvicted defendant could not be dealt with by a suspended sentence. This is shown by the fact that she did not accept the 2019 judgment and then continued her activities. According to Bien, several disciplinary decisions in civil proceedings could not have slowed the woman down. "Only detention will stop them," the judge said.

Pforzheim/Enzkreis. Outbursts of anger by the accused, tears and threats of suicide: In the appeal process for defamation, which Oana Krichbaum - wife of the CDU member of the Bundestag Gunther Krichbaum - met, emotions regularly boiled up. Now the die has been cast: the jury chaired by judge Stefan Bien sentenced a 50-year-old from the Enzkreis district to seven months in prison for defamation in three cases and defamation against people in political life.

According to Bien, one month is already considered to have been executed due to a delay in the proceedings. The subject of the indictment were four posts on Facebook in which the accused allegedly described Oana Krichbaum as a "child trafficker". Three of these posts have now resulted in a conviction.

The 50-year-old repeatedly referred to media reports from which she had information about Oana Krichbaum's alleged involvement in child trafficking. Attorney Hubert Gorka even spoke of the "biggest attack on press freedom since the Spiegel affair" in the event of a conviction. Because: His client only referred to the press releases.

Shot over the target

For Judge Bien, the tables have turned in this regard. "Freedom of expression is essential for the democracy in which we live." But what is decisive is that the accused clearly overshot the mark. For example, Oana Krichbaum is not mentioned in any of the questionable articles that talk about illegal adoptions.

Adoption STAR, the largest adoption agency in WNY, fired employees organizing a union. The fallout has impacted some families trying to adopt.

The complicated process of adopting a child was upended last year after Western New York’s largest adoption agency lost a third of its staff, an exodus triggered by what one labor attorney called the worst case of union busting she has seen.

Adoption STAR, founded in 2000 in Amherst, fired four staff members last April who were attempting to organize a union. The firings resulted in an exodus of the agency’s staff — 13 out of approximately three dozen employees. The departures included the agency’s executive director — who left a month after the firings — and an associate director.

The firings hollowed out some departments, including the one that handles adoptions of older children in foster care.

The departures rocked the agency, former employees said, causing some clients — including expectant parents and families looking to adopt — to feel left in the dark, cut off from communication with case workers and social workers.

Guatemala has been home to great writers whose works have left an immemorial mark on Literature.

From poetry to novels, these women have demonstrated their talent and commitment in the history of writing, according to Editorial Piedrasanta.

The writers selected by the editorial are part of the " Women's Day " campaign , which aims to commemorate Guatemalan women writers and their great contribution to literature.

These are just some of the most outstanding Guatemalan writers selected by Editorial Piedrasanta:

Mariela SR Coline Fanon

Dozens of national and European NGOs have sent an open letter to the European Commission, saying that Romanian legislation only "formally" reflects European directives regarding the protection of children who have been victims of sexual crimes. The NGOs are demanding that the infringement procedure be activated.

The letter from the 35 NGOs is addressed to the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, the Vice President for Democracy and Demography, Dubravka Suica, the Commissioner for Justice, Didier Reynders, and the Commissioner for Equality, Helena Dali.

The Center for Advocacy and Human Rights, which is among the signatories, says that the situation of children who are victims of sexual crimes "has not significantly improved after the adoption of EU legislation, despite constant international pressure." It argues that national legislation "formally reflects European directives, but is largely unenforceable," and "is formulated in unclear terms, which allows for the perpetuation of practices that lead to the re-victimization of children," according to Digi24.

The letter calls on the Commission to analyze the compliance of Romanian legislation with the EU Directive on victims' rights and the Directive on combating human trafficking and to initiate a dialogue with Romanian authorities to improve the country’s adoption of these directives.

The NGOs also signal the following situations that "impede children victims of sexual crimes' access to justice and indicate inadequate transposition" of European directives: the victim child is questioned in the presence of the defendant; the child’s interview is not video recorded; the child has to participate in repeated interviews; the child is questioned without access to legal representation; the child's identity is not adequately protected throughout the process; the duration of criminal procedures in cases involving a victim child is unreasonable; the victim children's legal aid lawyers change during the criminal proceedings; forced early marriages are not investigated and sanctioned as a form of exploitation.