In November 2021, Swara took everyone by surprise with her announcement of adopting a child.

Bollywood actress Swara Bhasker on Tuesday announced that she is expecting her first child with politician-husband Fahad Ahmad. The Nil Battey Sannata star shared the news on Twitter and revealed that the baby is due in October. That being said, the news raises questions on whether Swara will still pursue adoption for which she had applied in 2021.

In November 2021, Swara took everyone by surprise with her announcement of adopting a child. She even got herself registered as a 'Prospective Adoptive Parent' (PAP) with the Central Adoption Resource Authority (CARA).

When The Free Press Journal had asked Bhasker to elaborate on the same, she said, “It's at a very early stage right now because the waiting period for this process is quite long. Perhaps, that is needed, because I think that the state and (CARA), are extremely careful to make sure that the orphaned children are being given to adoptive parents, who will take care of them, and who will be parents and in the truest sense of the word, and who will love them and keep them safe.”

“I don't know how many years it will take for me to actually be assigned a child, it's a random lottery system, you cannot choose if a child is allotted to you. So, in that sense, the whole method by which adoption takes place is quite impartial and fair,” she added.

Toronto couple Isrene Shao and Tommy Mui planned to start a family right away when they got married in 2019 but began having issues conceiving.

“We went to see a fertility doctor and at that point she’s said, ‘Let’s do a pap test.’ I had recently done a Pap test three years prior and it was all clean,” said Shao. “That’s when she did the pap test, and it came out as cancer.”

“That’s how we found it and the scary part was I had no symptoms,” Shao added.

The diagnosis came in 2021. It was revealed that Shao had Stage 3 cervical cancer. She underwent chemo, had to remove her cervix and ovaries. She is now cancer-free but can no longer conceive.

“The first thing we did it is looking to adoption because we still want to be parents through adoption, so we looked into Toronto. We actually also looked into international because the chance of getting an infant in Toronto is very slim,” explained Mui.

The Salvation Army is increasingly doing more in the field of sustainability. Buildings are becoming greener , waste is better processed and with special tools we try to better manage and reduce our energy consumption . Employees are also increasingly concerned with sustainability. Three of them talk about how they contribute in their own lives.

Ineke van Buren

"I now work in relief work at the Salvation Army, but in 1985 I studied the Environment in Wageningen. So in addition to relief work, I think the environment is important anyway. I haven't eaten meat since I was seventeen and, for example, travel by train as much as possible In addition, I buy my clothing second-hand and if I buy something new, I ensure that it is made sustainably.

Making sustainable choices is sometimes expensive or inconvenient. For example, the train is more expensive than the plane and sustainable cleaning products are also more expensive than non-sustainable products. But can it also cost us something? You have to leave other things behind.

What you need to see clearly is the difference between being sustainable and looking after the little ones. You now see that many organizations and companies are taking a step towards a sustainable future, but this is driven by financial incentives. The financial incentive helps, but it is better to take a step back and see what really helps."

The Chhattisgarh police on Monday arrested a woman for brutally thrashing two girls at a private adoption centre in Kanker district after a CCTV video of the incident went viral on social media, officials said.

The Kanker district administration has suspended the licence of the NGO that runs the adoption centre, following the incident. The district programme officer of the state Woman and Child Development (WCD) department was also suspended for negligence, officials said.

“Seema Dwivedi, superintendent of Visheshkrit Dattak Grahan Agency (Specialised Adoption Agency), run by Pratigya Vikas Sanstha, was seen thrashing the children in the video,” said director WCD, Divya Umesh Mishra. HT can’t verify the authenticity of the video.

Mishra said that a complaint was submitted by the district administration on Saturday and an inspection was carried out on Sunday.

As per the inspection report, seen by HT, Dwivedi admitted that the video clip belonged to the same centre and it happened around a year ago.

Courtney Deacon Lalotra of Brick took a trip to India more than a decade ago when she was 23 years old. It was supposed to last a month. Instead she moved there to help orphaned children.

The group she founded, One Life to Love, is a home for abandoned and orphaned kids with special needs.

She is back home, but not for long. Deacon Lalotra will host a fundraiser in New Jersey Thursday.

“This event could not come at a better time. The impact of One Life to Love’s work is far-reaching, as these rescued children become future leaders of their communities and countries,” she said. “With your help, together we can make a difference and create a brighter future for all.”

NJ Advance Media first met Deacon Lalotra of Brick in 2019 when Gov. Phil Murphy made a trade mission to the country.

A 5-year-old boy whose skull was fractured when his mother's live-in boyfriend struck him with a mop handle, breaking it in half, has been beaten, neglected, and tortured repeatedly, the Volusia Sheriff's Office revealed on Saturday.

Investigators discovered video surveillance from inside the DeLand-area home revealing the child once had his hands tied behind his back for more than 19 hours. Doctors examining him found, in addition to the skull fracture, 46 visible injuries as well as internal injuries, Volusia Sheriff's spokesman Andrew Gant said in a news release.

There were three children in the home, including an 8-year-old girl and a 9-year-old boy.

"The torture these kids endured is hard to imagine. The good news is they're in safe hands now, and their scumbag abusers will have to answer for what they did," Sheriff Mike Chitwood wrote in a Facebook post Saturday.

At least 19 children and young adults were abused in several ways in an SOS Kinderdorpen in Suriname fore more than 30 years. In a report, the research firm Verinorm speaks of sexual, emotional, physical, and financial abuse. This includes rape, neglect, beating, and whipping.

The study was commissioned by SOS Kinderdorpen following reports of violence and sexual abuse in Children's Villages in 2021. For the study, Verinorm analyzed documents and conducted 35 interviews, including with victims and former staff. It emerged that the abuse took place from the founding of the Children's Village in 1972 until its closure in 2006.

Among others, five managers, almost half of the responsible managers, were allegedly guilty of abuse. According to the report, this "creates the impression that the abuse by managers was structural in nature”. One of the managers was sentenced by the court to 3,5 years in prison for sexually abusing a 12-year-old girl.

At the SOS Children's Village, investigators said, there was "too little supervision, monitoring and enforcement," and indications of abuse were "not taken seriously enough" by the humanitarian organization.

On February 01, 2023,a Polish-Swedish seminar was held at the Institute of Justice. The subject of the seminar was legal regulations and practice concerning intercountry adoptions of Polish citizens to Sweden. The Swedish delegation was presided by Professor Anna Singer, the Dean of the Faculty of Law at the Uppsala University, also appointed as Inquiry Chair by the Swedish government, Ministry of Health and Social Affairs to investigate the issue of intercountry adoptions.

The Swedish delegation, apart from Professor Singer, comprised of other members of the Committee in the person of: Tina Nilsson, Pernilla Krusberg and Anders Tordai. The Polish party was represented by the employees of the Institute of Justice: professor Marcin Wielec, the Director of IWS, professor Paweł Sobczyk, the Deputy Director of IWS, employees of the Family Law Section of IWS: professor Elżbieta Holewińska-Łapińska, Dr. Maciej Domański, Dr. Jerzy Słyk, professor Piotr Mostowik, the Head of the Fundamental Rights Section of IWS, and Dr. Bartłomiej Oręziak, the Coordinator of the Center for Strategic Analysis of IWS.

In addition, the seminar was attended by: professor Piotr Fiedorczyk, the Faculty of Law of the University of Białystok and dr hab. Bogusław Lackoroński, the Faculty of Law and Administration of the Warsaw University. In the course of the seminar Professor Elżbieta Holewińska-Łapińska presented Polish regulations on intercountry adoption procedures and practice in the light of file research conducted at the Institute of Justice.

What started as a complaint from the Leithgöb family about the slow progress on their criminal case against the accused, and following the PPU’s involvement, culminated in the police identifying dozens more victims of the alleged scam.

Van den Berg is alleged to have offered services as an adoption social worker, where she would charge prospective adoptive parents, many incapable of having children, for various services in the process to adopt a child. It is alleged that the accused did this, when in fact there was no child to adopt or a child had been offered to the hopeful parents, despite the biological mother not giving consent for adoption. Her alleged offences date back to 2014.

When the PPU took on the case, the police were only investigating a charge of fraud. In a letter in May last year, Adv. Gerrie Nel, head of the PPU, advised the investigating officer on the serious nature of the alleged offences. “We are concerned that more babies have been sold under similar circumstances that the complainant had to endure. The prevalence of such conduct does raise serious consideration that the suspect’s alleged behaviour could be likened to and fall within the ambit of trafficking.

“Furthermore, the suspect seems to be continuing with her devious manipulation because of the vulnerability of childless people. Decisive investigation and action by the South African Police Service (SAPS) and the National Prosecuting Authority are essential to deal with, what seems to be, a serial fraudster or trafficker of babies,” said Nel.

 

PPU spokesperson, Barry Bateman says Van den Berg preyed on the vulnerability of men and women who yearned to be called mom and dad. “It is alleged that the prospective parents’ were shown pictures of a child they hoped and prayed they would one day adopt, meanwhile the same child was promised to another couple, who were shown the same pictures, and who eventually adopted that child.”

Abstract

Background

Illegal adoption, which mainly includes child trafficking and informal adoption, has long been a prevalent social issue in China. However, the processes and patterns of illegal adoption are not well understood due to the scarcity of data.

Objective

The findings are expected to provide insightful clues for the government and the public to better understand the two categories of illegal adoption.