In the state cabinet meeting on Friday, five major proposals related to various holidays of the Finance Department were approved.

By Narendra Sethi

DEHRADUN: The Uttarakhand government will provide 180 days of child adoption leave for the first time to a single male government employee if he adopts only a male child under one-year of age. The state finance department claims Uttarakhand is the first state in the country to take such a decision.

Speaking to this newspaper, Finance Minister Premchand Agarwal said, “Since the right to equality has now come to every field, the government has decided to give 6 months of adoption leave to single male employees as well, taking a more flexible approach to adopting a child and considering the practicality.”

Friday’s decision also includes daily wage women employees, who will also get entitled for the childcare leave. In the state cabinet meeting on Friday, five major proposals related to various holidays of the Finance Department were approved.According to the decision taken in the cabinet, “A single male employee of the state government will also get child adoption leave. For them, this holiday will be for 180 days.”

The Halle-Vilvoorde court has been investigating the murder of a 68-year-old woman from Steenokkerzeel in Flemish Brabant for two months. The facts date from the night of July 11 to 12, but are only now coming to light. The woman, Brigitte Vanaudenraeren, was found lifeless in her home along the Tervuursesteenweg. It soon became apparent that there was more going on. “It is a case of parricide,” prosecutor's office spokesman Gilles Blondeau confirmed on Monday.

Council chamber

The woman's home is directly opposite the police station. Just after the events last summer, we hear from a good source, Thalia D., the 35-year-old adoptive daughter, was arrested. This after indications that she had done “something” to her adoptive mother.

“In the interest of the investigation, no further communication about the case can be made at this time,” it said. The suspect, according to our information from El Salvador, appeared last week before the council chamber in Brussels, which decided to extend her detention for at least a month. Thalia D.'s lawyer declined to comment on Monday. There appears to be no discussion in investigative circles about the perpetrator. In the meantime, the investigation into the facts continues. The motive for the parricide remains a mystery for now. (cds/cvh/phu)

Two Danes from Thy thought they knew who they were, but some words on an old cassette tape changed everything.

The cassette tape was hidden for decades in a box in Thy.

It's a Sony tape with space for 45 minutes on each side, and on the B-side someone has written in pen on the yellowed sticker.

- Sophie, Sep. 77, it says.

She is 49 years old, and it is her bright child's voice that is heard singing and talking on the tape recordings.

The Allahabad High Court has observed that a person below the age of 18 cannot be in a live-in relationship and this would be an act not only immoral but also illegal.

A bench of Justices Vivek Kumar Birla and Justice Rajendra Kumar made the observation in a recent judgment dismissing a petition filed by Ali Abbas, a 17-year-old boy, and his live-in partner Saloni Yadav, 19.

Bench observation

"There are several conditions for a live-in relation to be treated as a relation in nature of marriage and in any case, a person has to be major (above the age of 18 years), although he may not be of marriageable age (21 years). Hence, a child cannot have a live-in relationship and this would be an act not only immoral but also illegal," the bench observed.

"An accused who is below 18 years of age cannot seek protection on the ground of having a live-in relationship with a major girl and thus, he cannot seek quashing of the criminal prosecution against him as his/her activity is not permissible in law and is thus illegal," the bench added.

MEA’s statement came as opposition MPs stepped up campaign for return of child to India, who has been taken from parents due to allegations of abuse 

Amidst calls by the opposition for the government to take up the case of Baby Ariha Shah, the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) on Thursday said that it had summoned the German Ambassador over the 2-year-old child’s situation in foster care in Germany.

The disclosure came a day after Ariha’s mother Dhara Shah met with Members of Parliament to appeal for help, and at the very least for India to press for Ariha to be transferred to a foster home in India, where she can be raised as an Indian and amidst her own Jain community.

‘Cultural rights infringed’

“At a minimum we believe this child’s cultural rights and rights as an Indian are being infringed upon by her being placed in German foster care,” External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Arindam Bagchi told reporters, adding that the 2021 case was being accorded “high priority”. 

Sarah Ineichen had not expected these consequences: Five years ago she went public with her story and told how she was brought to Switzerland from Sri Lanka and adopted here as a baby under questionable circumstances.

From then on nothing was the same again. Her phone kept ringing. Dozens of those affected came forward, and soon there were hundreds. And everyone reported a similar experience. Sarah Ineichen just wanted to clarify the question of where her own roots are.

For her, the birth of her own children was a decisive factor: "That's when I realized: It can't be that a mother voluntarily gives her child away without leaving a mark on her," says Sarah Ineichen. “The pain of being separated from my mother and the need to find her consumed me completely.”

Looking for her mother

She was only able to trace her origins once she had put down roots herself with her family. And so in 2017, full of hope, she traveled to Sri Lanka with the information on her birth certificate from 1981. 

But the longed-for meeting with her mother did not happen. She did find the woman who was listed as the mother on the birth certificate. But as it later turned out, she was an acting mother; a woman who had been bought to play mother to the authorities and give her consent to the adoption.

With reference to the documentary on TV2 'The secret in the shadow archive' about adoptions from South Korea, we must herewith make a short comment.

As we have previously expressed, the board of Adoption & Society fully supports the adoptees' desire to have certainty. It is absolutely crucial for all parties that the information provided in an adoption case can be trusted. 

The South Korean authorities, like the Danish authorities, have already launched an investigation into a large number of cases from the 70s and 80s. We eagerly await the conclusions of this, as it is essential for many adoptees and their families to find out whether the grounds for release in the cases have been truthful. 

Unfortunately, we have previously seen in connection with this type of investigation that the parties concerned are left without sufficient help from the authorities. All concerned parties, i.e. biological family/foster family, adoptive family and not least, of course, the adopted themselves, must be offered the necessary assistance and advice to handle both the emotional issues and the concrete, practical questions they/we face. This applies both before, during and after the conclusions are presented.

After viewing part 2 of the documentary, we will make a more in-depth statement in relation to this necessary support as well as the possibility of an impartial investigation. 

The Karnataka High Court has said that a son, born in 'Batil' marriage (void-ab-initio) under Mohammadan Law, is illegitimate and does not possess any right of succession under the law. A single judge bench of Justice V Srishananda allowed the appeal filed by one Nabisab Agnnamani (original plaintiff) and set aside the order of the first appellate court which granted half share of...

As we move into a new Democratic administration, ending family separation inflicted by the so-called child welfare system should be a top priority. Specifically, the Biden administration should refuse to sanction the federal government’s endorsement of arbitrary timelines that permanently tear families apart. That means repealing the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997. 

ASFA was developed at a time when our country was hysterical about “crack babies” and resentful of their poor, mostly Black, parents. Media coverage focused on these selfish, drug-addicted parents who were giving birth to permanently damaged infants. As a result, many children were spending years in foster care with little pressure on systems to reunify them with parents or find them an adoptive home. 

The law ties federal child welfare funding to a requirement that, with a few exceptions, states move to terminate the rights of parents whose children have been in foster care for 15 of the past 22 months. After that period, the children become eligible for adoption. 

The COVID-19 pandemic has shone a light on the arbitrary and unfair nature of this timeline and which parents are most unlikely to meet it. Parents who are unable to visit with their children or participate in services recommended by CPS in furtherance of reunification during the pandemic are unsure whether their parental rights will be terminated. Even in normal times, for incarcerated parents whose ability to visit with their children or access services is out of their control, this timeline is usually out of reach.  

This is true regardless of whether the crime for which the parents are incarcerated had anything to do with the children. Many parents are held pre-trial because of their inability to pay cash bail before entering jails, which are even less likely to have services than prisons. Similarly, for many parents who are struggling with addiction — where relapse is often a part of recovery — this timeline is simply unrealistic. 

Ted and Maxine Holt were married in Columbia on April 28, 1962, at The Kingdom Hall of Jehovah’s Witnesses. The couple moved back to Massachusetts in 1963 to be close to family and then moved back to Columbia in 1979.

Mr. Holt worked at The Tennessee Knitting Mills, Arduini Manufacturing and delivered newspapers for The Daily Herald until 2002 at age 80.

Mrs. Holt was a homemaker, but she was also was employed by Kay’s Dress Shop, owned by Kay and Ray Adams, and AA Auto Insurance. They are both devoted, active members of the Kingdom Hall of Jehovah’s Witnesses in Columbia.

The couple’s three children, Ms. DeeAnn Johnson of Madison, Ms. Trish Maskew of Silver Springs, Md., and Mrs. Rachel (Dan) Bovee of Columbia hosted an anniversary celebration in their honor at Christy’s Café on 6th Street in Columbia on Saturday, April 28.

Present at the occasion in addition to their daughters were their grandchildren, Patrick Maskew, Meghan Maskew of Silver Springs, Md., and Nicholas Bovee of Columbia; Maxine’s sisters, Madeline Richards of Eliot, Maine, and Ruth Foisy of York, Maine; Maxine’s niece, Jennifer DeForest of Marlborough, Mass.; and Ted’s niece Mrs. Dottie (Larry) King of Columbia.