GREENVILLE, S.C. (FOX Carolina) - A former Food Network contestant who was convicted of killing her foster daughter will not get a new trial, according to the South Carolina Court of Appeals.

Ariel Robinson was found guilty of homicide by child abuse in the death of 3-year-old Victoria “Tori” Rose Smith.

Victoria Rose Smith

Tori was beaten severely with a belt, causing her to suffer internal bleeding. She died at Robinson’s home on Sellwood Circle in Simpsonville in January 2021.

The first parents of Trui's adopted daughter were left in the dark for 14 years: 'Terrible!'

Trui Vandewalle has no regrets, but would not choose international adoption again.

Trui Vandewalle has no regrets, but would not choose international adoption again. — © Fred Debrock

Sweater Vandewalle is the adoptive mother of a daughter from Ethiopia. She did not wait for the Flemish government, but went in search of her daughter's roots herself. 'They made her believe that she was completely alone. That is completely untrue.'

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Adoptionstrekanten | David Kildendal Nielsen posted 19 December 2023

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Surrogacy is prohibited in Germany. Nevertheless, the Higher Regional Court of Frankfurt am Main allowed a German couple to adopt a stepchild born abroad to a surrogate mother.

The Higher Regional Court (OLG) of Frankfurt am Main has ruled that the stepchild adoption of a child born abroad to a surrogate mother is possible despite the ban on surrogacy in Germany (decision of December 14, 2023, case number 2 UF 33/23). With this ruling, a German couple can proceed with the corresponding stepchild adoption.

The background to the case was the German couple's previously unfulfilled desire to have children. They had contacted a Ukrainian fertility clinic to arrange a surrogacy. With the help of an egg donation, a pregnancy was subsequently induced in a Ukrainian woman.

At the beginning of 2020, the husband had already acknowledged paternity of the child born to the surrogate mother in Ukraine. In the summer of 2020, the German couple took in the child, and now the wife wanted to adopt the child to legally secure her position.

Growing up without worries. That is what this year's De Warmste Week is all about. A theme that is close to Hinda Bluekens (35)'s heart. She spent the first years of her life in an institution. Together with Danira Boukhriss Terkessidis (33) she looks back on that missed start in a two-part documentary.

“I really don’t find it easy to share this,” says Hinda Bluekens halfway through the first episode of Start gemist . She is sitting at the table with Danira Boukhriss Terkessidis and leafing through a thick folder containing photos and reports that document the first four years of her life. A period that she was forced to spend in a ckg, a centre for childcare and family support as it is called in full. “Even the fact that you are even touching that folder, I find intense,” she confesses to Danira.

“Sharing the contents of that folder with an outsider affected me much more than I had anticipated,” she says a few months after that fateful day of shooting. “The whole story that is described in it is not new to me. I have carried it with me for more than thirty years. But when you show that folder to someone who does not know that past and who asks questions that you have never thought about, you start to look at everything in it in a different way. Photos that you have seen a hundred times suddenly take on a different meaning. That released quite a few emotions.”

These unexpected emotions did not cause any doubt about the plan to share her past not only with Danira but also with the television viewers of Flanders. Hinda, who is known on Instagram as Hinda House, has worked as a journalist, columnist and video reporter for Flair , De Standaard and Gazet van Antwerpen in recent years and has written for the VTM GO series Only Friends in the past year , had been thinking about doing something about that past for some time. “I just didn't really know what that 'something' should be. Did I want to write about it? Should it be a television project? Or maybe a podcast?”

The entrance to the Shri Shraddhanand Anathalaya Ashram orphanage in Nagpur, as seen in 1996 (left, photographed by my mum) and 2012, when she, my sister and I recently visited (right, photographed by me).

“So, you want to get her married?”

The air outside the orphanage hung still, hot and dry around the yellow cement buildings. It was the kind of heat that makes your skin sizzle and ache for a cloud burst, or perhaps any clouds at all. 106°.

When I sat down to write about the search for my long-lost birth mother I had no idea that I would be opening a door into the lives of so many other people who had hauntingly similar experiences.

Ever since the Daily Mail serialised my book, Finding Margaret: Solving The Mystery Of My Birth Mother, two months ago, I have been overwhelmed with ­heartfelt letters, emails and telephone calls. People from all over the world have wanted to share their own stories.

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Andrew Pierce with his birth mother Margaret who he tracked down at the age of 48 

There has never been, nor will there ever be, anything quite so special as the love between the mother and a son, so the proverb goes.

But this fundamental bond has been tested in a landmark legal battle in London where a surrogate mother had to fight her child's same-sex parents through the courts to see him regularly, MailOnline can reveal today.

• Yasika Fernando, from London, only discovered she was adopted at the age of 18
• With the help of Long Lost Family team, she found her Sri Lankan birth mother
• They reunited via video call two years ago but haven't spoken to each other since
• Yasika told tonight's Long Lost Family: What Happened Next that her birth mother is keeping her existence a 'secret' from other relatives due to 'shame'

A woman who was given up by her Sri Lankan birth mother when she was just three months old before finally being reunited with her on Long Lost Family has told how they haven't spoken since.

London-based Yasika Fernando met her biological mother - who didn't want to appear on camera - via video call after she travelled to Sri Lanka to find her.

Following a traumatic birth, Ruth Appleby wanted nothing more than to cradle her baby daughter in her arms.

Named Rebecca, she had been whisked away following Ruth’s Caesarean section, and whenever the then 29-year-old asked nurses when she could see her, the reply was always ‘soon’.

It was left to her husband Howard to tell Ruth the devastating news that it would never happen: Rebecca had, inexplicably, died within hours of being born.

As the obstetrician later explained, it was like a ‘bad lottery’.