From disseminating Edward Snowden’s damning NSA leaks to becoming a leading critic of far-right Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, American journalist Glenn Greenwald and his husband, Brazilian Congressman David Miranda, are no strangers to controversy. Nor are they rattled by its attendant fiery chain reactions: It was, after all, a spilled drink in the sands of Ipanema that sparked a rapid relationship and, eventually, a long, arduous battle for the future of Brazil.

Here, the couple reflect on parenting, politics, and personal measures they’ve had to take at the precipice of the country’s bitter political divide.

ON THEIR FIRST MEETING AND FAMILY

David Miranda: We met on Ipanema beach, in front of Farme de Amoedo street, where I was playing footvolley. I kicked a ball straight into Glenn’s drink and spilled it, so I went up to him and apologized. We both took a good look at each other. It was love at first sight. And here we are together, stronger than ever, after 17 years.

Glenn Greenwald: I was going through a midlife crisis and I wanted to figure out my life. So, I rented an apartment for seven weeks in Rio, and I met David on the first day. When you go to Rio, you’re not looking for marriage — you’re not really looking for anything other than some fun. But love often happens when you are not looking for it, and right from the beginning I felt he was the one for me. That feeling has grown every day, right up to this day.

Ukraine is one of the few countries that tolerate surrogacy on its soil. In recent years, many foreigners, often through agencies, have resorted to it, even when this practice is tolerated in their own country, because the prices there are attractive. The number of GPAs is estimated to be between 2000 and 2500 per year. Precariousness and economic difficulties have led many Ukrainian women to submit to this form of reproductive exploitation. The health crisis, then the war, have brought to light the inextricable injustices and difficulties that this practice induces. The contract signed by the surrogate, in effect, gives the Agency and sponsors complete control over her life and body. The surrogate mother no longer belongs to herself. In addition, the tragic population displacements and the interruption of the administrative services of the Birth Registration Office have shattered the framework in which these GPAs operated on Ukrainian soil. The legal resources used by the sponsors to bring their surrogacy project to fruition are thus undermined and force them to find other ways to obtain the baby that was the subject of the contract.

In France, it is estimated that two babies are born each week in Ukraine for French customers. Investigations, including that carried out by Le Figaro , revealed that Ukrainian surrogate mothers had been repatriated to France. Like Katarina, for example, who arrived in March, came without her children, two girls aged ten and three, who had to stay with their grandmother. Two “GPA babies” have already been born, one in the Lyon region and the other in Vendée.

But this practice is prohibited on our soil. To circumvent this, French clients who bring their surrogate mother to France then have her “give birth under X”, the man who provided his gametes for conception proceeds to recognize the child, then his or her spouse subsequently initiates an application for adoption.

The Juristes pour l'Enfance association has just filed a complaint against X for incitement to child abandonment. Indeed, “the sponsors of surrogacy are guilty of the offense of incitement to child abandonment, punishable by law [i] . The offense being committed in France, it is subject to French law and the French judge has jurisdiction. These people must therefore be prosecuted”.

Furthermore, Juristes pour l'Enfance stresses that childbirth under X is thus diverted from its purpose and used to allow the sponsors of surrogacy to achieve their ends: namely to obtain a child "without mother", a child whose maternal line is deliberately left blank. There is therefore a clear fraud against the law.

I will first comment on where we are today in terms of inter-country adoption (ICA) practice at the global level, then consider our experience of the outcomes of a suspension of ICAs, and finally ? in all modesty as an outsider ? offer some thoughts on what the path forward for Korea might be.

On the global level, where are we today?

The 1993 Hague Convention on Inter-country Adoption (HC 93) has been useful in confronting certain problems associated with ICA ? and indeed in reducing unwarranted recourse to ICA ? but it has by no means eliminated all those problems. This is demonstrated by the fact, for example, that expert groups at The Hague are still working on ways to prevent and address illegal adoptions and to tighten financial standards.

HC 93 certainly constitutes a landmark in ongoing efforts to formalize, harmonize and regulate more strictly the processes in ICA, including financial aspects, but it fails to tackle certain essential issues.

This is because HC93 is grounded in a system whose key features are the same as when the first adoptions took place from Korea in the 1950s, initially instigated by what were known as "humanitarian" concerns. ICA is still carried out through mediation by non-state actors ? private entities or agencies ? where prospective adopters pay for the "privilege" of caring for a child. That system is fundamentally flawed but has not been seriously questioned until very recently.

Mother Teresa was canonised for her work with the poor, but a compelling new series claims there was a MUCH darker side to the nun... and asks: Was she a saint or sinner?

Sky documentary claims Mother Teresa covered up the worst excesses of church

Doctor Jack Preger worked with her charity, and was shocked by what he saw

Woman who worked with her for two years says she was 'schizophrenic' because she thought 'being poor like Jesus was good'

She was able to stop wars, befriend presidents, build a global empire of orphanages and have sick prisoners released from prison. Yet Mother Teresa also covered up for the worst excesses of the Catholic church and seemed more attracted to poverty and pain than actually helping people escape it.

The drama surrounding the adoption of the stateless Ukrainian orphan Bridget has come to an end. The six-year-old from Zaporizhzhia has now been able to leave the country after her American adoptive parents braved the war to come get her.

They are sitting in the Pink Flamingo, a diner with red upholstered seats and walls plastered with photos of cars from the 1950s. A married couple from Maryland is sitting across from a six-year-old girl and a woman with red hair. The girl and the woman are from Zaporizhzhia, some 450 kilometers east of Kyiv.

The man from Maryland is trying to teach the girl a bit of English. He picks up the saltshaker and says: "Salt. Salt." The girl grabs for the shaker and says in Russian: "Give it to me."

The man grabs the bottle of ketchup. Ketchup is called ketchup everywhere. The girl says: "Ketchup."

The man says: "Yeah, bud."

SINGAPORE - The four-year-old girl was abused by her stepfather and later ostracised by both her parents, but her mother refused to let her be adopted by another family.

The girl had been placed in the care of foster parents to remove her from her abusive stepfather. When she finally went home, the physical abuse stopped but the couple began to shun her and favour the two children from their new marriage.

Ms Ng Kwai Sim, centre head of Heart@Fei Yue, a child protection specialist centre, said they asked the mother to place the child for adoption for her safety and psychological well-being.

"The birth mother rejected the option (of adoption) for fear that she would be seen by her family and friends as a lousy mother," Ms Ng said.

"The lack of a stable home environment and a secure caregiver often result in a child feeling rejected. Many of these children have difficulty forming trusting relationships with others," she added.

In what the judge described as a "historic" case, a woman has been found guilty of sexual assault after poking holes in her partner's condoms without his knowledge or consent.

A court in western Germany found a woman guilty of sexual assault and handed her a six-month suspended sentence for purposefully damaging her partner's condoms, German media reported.

In handing down the ruling, the judge said the unusual case was one for Germany's legal history books — representing an instance of criminal "stealthing," but this time carried out by a woman.

What happened in the case?

The ruling was handed down at a regional court in the western German city of Bielefeld, local newspaper Neue Westfälische and the mass-circulation Bild newspaper reported on Wednesday.

The boy dropped the log as he finished another lap, earning five seconds of rest as he made his way through the yard “carrying wood.”

He fought his way through mud and slush left over from a late-season storm that had dumped nearly a foot of snow on his tiny eastern Wisconsin town. Each step was a struggle.

Five minutes of trudging. Then 10. Fifteen.

Every five minutes or so, he fell as he labored along a trail that ran a little longer than a football field. Sometimes he landed on his back, causing the wood he was carrying, a 44½-pound tree trunk weighing almost as much as he did, to force the breath from his chest.

Twenty minutes. Twenty-five. Thirty.

Sumi Kasiyo (48) was almost six when she was adopted. For years she was angry with her biological mother, who had given up her and her sister. Yet she sought her out in 2014. “I hoped she had missed me. But she asked if she could have my jewelry and the clothes I was wearing.”

Adopted

“I used to always watch Spoorloos. I especially liked the stories of adoptees who were reunited with their biological family after so many years. Because I was adopted from Indonesia myself, I felt very sorry for them. At the same time, it was also confronting, because I knew that a reunion with my own biological mother would never take place. I didn't need to see her anymore. Why would I? When I was five, she had handed over me and my sister, Suyatmi, three years her senior, promising to pick us up later.

I waited for her for weeks. Even when my sister and I were in the Netherlands, I missed my mother terribly. But no matter how much I cried, she didn't come for us. I felt pushed aside. It led to many fits of anger and a severe identity crisis. Why didn't my mother want me? And who was I really: Sumiatin, the name my parents gave me when I was born? Or Petra, the name I went by since my adoption?

As young as I was, I was determined to forget about my birth mother. But after my sister tracked down our mother in Indonesia in 2005, it started to gnaw at me: I wanted to go back to my homeland and see my mother. Maybe I finally got the answers I've longed for. Well, things went a little differently…”

There are claims that thousands of disabled Ukrainian children have been forgotten and abandoned in institutions that can’t look after them.

The human rights organisation, Disability Rights International, has carried out an investigation and found children with severe disabilities tied to beds in overrun children’s homes unable to cope.

The BBC has been given exclusive access to an institution in western Ukraine, where disabled children from the east have been left by their carers who fled to neighbouring countries.

Reporting by Dan Johnson

Filmed by Jonathan Dunstan