An Ethiopian-born New Zealand citizen has been refused permission to adopt her sister's four teenage children and bring them to Wellington for a better life.

The woman was misguided as to what was in the children's best interests, a High Court judge said.

The woman, 39, who cannot be identified for legal reasons, sent money to help support the children whose parents have not been heard from since about 2013.

The children were aged 19, 18, 16 and 15 years. The woman said she would continue to send money for their care.

They wanted to come to New Zealand but also wanted other family members to come too, including the aunt who looked after them since birth.

SP Member of Parliament Nine Kooiman and SP MEP Dennis de Jong want clarification about the report that the European Commission is trying to gain more power over the heads of adopted children. A quality Romanian newspaper revealed today that the European Commission has pressured researchers to conclude that there is a need for a European Adoption Agency when the underlying research does not support that conclusion. Kooiman: 'We are all aware of the desire for more resources and more power from the European Commission, but I would find it terrible that the problems surrounding adoption would be used for that. Adopted children in particular deserve extra protection and care. '

Adoption scandals in the past have prompted Romania to stop intercountry adoptions. Attempts would now be made to force Romania to reopen its borders to adoptions. Rumors about establishing a European adoption policy have been around for some time. Kooiman: 'I recently asked a number of critical questions about this, but they have not yet been answered. But today's revelation goes even further than what I suspected. ”

The SP is not in favor of stimulating intercountry adoptions at a European level, because the starting point must be that children can grow up in their original environment as much as possible. Adoption from abroad is also a vulnerable process. Kooiman: 'If it is true that the European Commission is manipulating research results, we have a problem. Not only because it is unacceptable that studies are being adapted so that Europe can take more power. But mainly because these are vulnerable children. The best interests of the child must come first, not the interests of the European Commission. '

Kooiman has put written questions to the State Secretary of Foreign Affairs and the State Secretary of Justice, who deal with adoption. Dennis de Jong has asked the Commission for clarification.

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Reunited the commission in conflict of interest. No solidarity with the families who reported the alleged irregularities of the Milanese institution

The government friend of the regime that killed Giulio Regeni and reached an agreement with the gangs that traffick immigrants in Libya, is now putting its image on children adopted abroad. The Prime Minister, Paolo Gentiloni, chaired the Commission for intercountry adoptions , the supervisory authority of which the premier is president , on Tuesday 12 September . This is the first meeting since Palazzo Chigi appointed magistrate Laura Laera as vice-president of the CAI on 9 May.

Alongside Gentiloni and the vice-president Laera was present, although not entitled, the general secretary of the Prime Minister, Paolo Aquilanti. Commissioner Francesco Bianchini , representative of the "Forum of family associations" was absent: at the time of his appointment, Bianchini's organization was at the center of complaints to the judiciary and to Palazzo Chigi due to the conflict of interest due to the participation, in its management, of "Aibi - Amici dei Bambini" , the Milanese organization authorized by the government for international adoptions. Several rules obviously prohibit controlled entities from sitting in the controlling authority.

Precisely for this reason the outgoing vice-president, the magistrate Silvia Della Monica , had not met the commission and had repeatedly denounced the "Aibi-Forum" conflict to the government and Parliament. Aibi is among other things the association accused of not having reported serious irregularities in the adoption of children in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Thirty parents, involved by the Milanese institution and recipients without their knowledge of the alleged trafficking of minors, asked Gentiloni not to meet the commission for the "continuing illegality situation". The only response they received was the news of the absence of Commissioner Bianchini published on the institutional website of the CAI: a detail that does not resolve the conflict of interest since, according to theAibi continues to be present in the supervisory authority through the Forum. To prohibit it is even a decree of the Prime Minister (article 1 DPCM 13 March 2015 signed by Graziano Delrio).

The Prime Minister, his secretary general and the vice-president-magistrate Laera, on the other hand, also wanted to bring together the commissioners to publicly accuse the magistrateDella Monica of irregularities. «As for the previous management of the former vice president», Paolo Gentiloni and Laura Laera wrote in the final press release, «ample documentation was provided to all the commissioners attesting to numerous irregularities. Among other things, it was noted, in several cases, the mismatch between the protocol numbers assigned to the documents and the documents themselves, as well as the absence of numerous attachments despite the presence of the relative protocol number ". No word for the investigative work that the magistrate Della Monica has carried out and which has also touched state apparatus, including the Foreign Ministry, just when Gentiloni was minister. No solidarity with dozens of families than with as much courage and trust in institutions they denounced the irregularities of Aibi.

Tana-Julie Bichon woke up at home in Paris, when a message popped up on her phone saying 'We have found your mother.'

The sender was Nguyen Giang, a hospitality student living in Paris, who had learned three days earlier that Tana had been adopted as a baby by a French couple in Vietnam in 1996.

After listening to her story, Giang quickly posted Tana’s information, including her old photos and her Vietnamese mother’s name and address, on a Facebook group.

She wrote on behalf of Tana: "I just want more information about my family so I can go to Vietnam and visit my hometown. If you have information about my mother, my sister, or whether my home address still exists, please let me know."

Fifteen minutes later a Vietnamese woman contacted Giang.

"The first question anybody asks my child is: 'Tumhaare papa kahaan hain?' (Where is your father?). It is a normal question. But I tell them she does not have a father."

As a society, we have evolved a lot over the years. But, there still exist some constructs. The concept of family and parenthood, for instance, is still viewed from the prism of old-school understanding. There has to be mother and a father, who together, will then raise a child. But, what about those who are raised by a single parent? And if there is no co-parent in the picture at all?

There are many stories of people opting to adopt children and raise them as their own. They do it with or without their families, regardless of their marital status. And Supriya Deverkonda’s story is one of them. The 40-something Gurugram-based analytics expert, who works at a multinational company shares her motherhood journey with Express Parenting.

“My decision to become a mother and adopt a child was not a spontaneous one. My parents were always supportive, and they never had an issue with it. My mother did mention marriage. She asked me if I could marry someone first, and I said okay. In 2012, I had waited enough and did not find any compatible partner. That is when I decided to go ahead for adoption,” she tells us.

Deverkonda then went ahead and registered under the old Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA) system. Since 2017, the system has changed a bit and everything has become more centralised and digital.

Chinese internet giants, including Tencent and Q&A platform Zhihu vowed to investigate and shut down chatrooms and messages on baby trafficking through illegal adoptions after widespread anger emerged over online platforms that help child trafficking. The move comes after a foster father was accused of raping his adopted daughter.

An 18-year-old girl has accused her adoptive father Bao Yuming, a lawyer, of sexually abusing her since she was 14 when Bao illegally adopted her through an online platform.

Media reports have revealed that online adoption has been a gray industry that thrives on social media platforms, including Tencent QQ, and Zhihu, spawning an industrial chain with services ranging from baby adoption to household registration.

Zhihu was reported to be full of illegal messages and posts, with some even listing prices starting at 100,000 yuan. The internet company responded on Monday and said they have since cleared all illegal child trafficking advertising and permanently closed accounts that were connected to such services.

Tencent announced on Tuesday it would increase security efforts against crimes involving illegal online child adoption.

MADURAI: A new-born baby girl was handed over to child welfare

committee (CWC) on Tuesday as parents, who already have three children

could not afford to take care of her.

The couple hailing from a village near Elumalai are farmhands. The baby

was born at Elumalai government hospital.

Tens of thousands of people who have been adopted from Sri Lanka to other countries are awaiting answers if their adoption was carried out legally and ethically. It has been more than two and a half years since the Sri Lankan Minister of Health acknowledged that irregularities had been committed regarding foreign adoptions. The investigation into the alleged illegal adoptions does not even seem to have begun in Sri Lanka, writes Daniel Cidrelius.

A legal process should be initiated at transnational level to prosecute those who have traded with people in adoption contexts, whether for financial gain or in connection with individuals' desire to start a family. Adopted persons can never be rehabilitated until those responsible have been held accountable.

However, this may encounter problems as the adoptions from, for example, Sri Lanka to Sweden took place in the past, which is why in a legal context it may have taken too long to bring charges. It can also be argued that laws in the context of adoption were not drafted during the beginning of the intensive adoption activity and that laws over the years have been changed to counteract the irregularities. Trafficking in human beings in all its forms, however, has been banned since the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade.

Many adoptions can be the subject of criminal acts

Politicians, government officials, adoptive parents, adoptees and people in general know, of course, that trafficking in children for adoption is a crime and can be seen as part of a cross-border organized crime. Of course, not all adoptions that have taken place over the years have been part of an organized trade. But many adoptions can be the subject of criminal acts. Therefore, it is important that the adoptions from other countries to Sweden are investigated. Thus, adoptees can get an answer as to whether their particular adoption was carried out in a legal and ethical manner.

In the fall of 1985, I flew from Boston to Lima, Peru, to adopt a four-month-old child. some 18 years earlier I had given birth to my first child. During the last 10 of those years, I had struggled to give birth again, combating an infertility problem that had resulted, as is often the case, from use of a contraceptive device during the intervening years. I had been married when I produced my first child, but my husband and I divorced when my son was just a few years old. Years later I decided I wanted more children, regardless of whether I was married. But I found that I was unable to conceive.

I subjected myself to every form of medical treatment that offered any possibility of success. I had operations to diagnose my problem, I took fertility drugs and charted my menstrual cycles and my temperature, and I had sexual intercourse according to the prescribed schedule. I had surgery to remove scar tissue from my fallopian tubes. And I went through in vitro fertilization (IVF) repeatedly in programs in three different states. As a single person in my early forties, I was officially excluded from every IVF program in the country that I learned about. Almost all had a maximum age of 40, and all limited their services to married couples. But I was determined. I begged my way into programs that were willing to consider bending their age rules, and I presented myself as married, with the help of a loyal and loving friend who was willing to play the part of husband. Unaccustomed to a life of fraud, I spent much of my IVF existence terrified that I would be discovered.

Then I got lucky. I ran out of money. IVF treatment was excluded from health insurance coverage during this period, and I had cursed my fate and timing, as it seemed likely that the exclusion would eventually be eliminated. I had been paying the going price, $5,000 for a full treatment cycle, and had about run through what savings I had.

I woke one morning in March 1985--I learned later that it was the month, and for all I know the very day, my son-to-be was born--and lay in bed thinking that I didn't want to spend all my remaining money on IVF. I would need it if I was to adopt. And I didn't want to spend any more time and energy or any more of my life on the fertility pursuit. I wanted a child, and I wanted to move on. I called my IVF program that day and said I would not go forward with another treatment cycle.

I was one of the fortunate infertility patients, because I did move on to adoption and to parenting. Treatment enables only a limited number of the infertile to conceive and bear children, and it prevents many from ever considering adoption as a form of parenting. I now look back in amazement at the person I was, traversing the country from one IVF program to another in search of an infertility fix. I am bemused at my shifting notions of "natural" and of "choice." It had seemed natural to pursue biologic parenting, even when the pursuit led me into the high-tech world of IVF where the doctors and lab technicians took over the business of conception, "harvesting" the eggs they had cultivated in the patient's body and inseminating them in glass dishes. It also had seemed that I was making choices when I decided to move on to new stages of treatment. Indeed, I had felt thrilled with the sense that I was pushing against the social and biologic constraints that prevented a single woman with damaged fallopian tubes from giving birth. Now I look back and see a woman driven by the forces that had told her since birth that she should go forth and multiply, that her ability to bear a child was central to her meaning as a human being, and that "real" parenting involved raising that biologically linked child.

"Dumping babies is forbidden," the sign created by Eric Mejicano reads. The Venezuelan artist posted the signs on walls across Venezuela after a newborn was found in the rubbish near his apartment block in the capital, Caracas.

Mejicano says that he launched the campaign to alert people to the fact that in Venezuela "something is becoming common which should never be considered normal".

The country's economy is in freefall and one in three Venezuelans is struggling to put enough food on the table to meet minimum nutrition requirements, according to a study by the UN World Food Programme.

With contraceptives hard to come by and beyond the financial means of many, unwanted pregnancies are common. Strict abortion laws which only allow for terminations in cases when the mother's life is in danger further limit women's choices.

Venezuela crisis in 300 words