Recently, the apex court issued a notice in a matter seeking simplification of the adoption process in India. The current laws pertaining to adoption make it difficult for couples or individuals to adopt orphans and provide them a better life.

The Supreme Court last month issued a notice in a matter seeking simplification of the adoption process in India. A bench, comprising Justices DY Chandrachud and Surya Kant, heard the petition in which the counsel for the petitioner highlighted the ground reality with respect to the adoption process in India and the kind of impact it has had on the country over a period of time.

The petition and the apex court’s notice was long overdue. Laws pertaining to the adoption process in the country has definitely made it difficult for couples or individuals trying to adopt orphans and provide them a better life. This despite the fact that the treatment and facilities for orphans is woeful and open to abuse and mistreatment.

The Juvenile Justice (Care and Protection of Children) Act, 2015, Section 2(42), defines an orphan as a child:

(i) Who is without biological or adoptive parents or legal guardian; or

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 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."

To support the viability of intercountry adoption as an option for permanency for children in Finland, the Office of Children’s Issues and the U.S. Embassy in Helsinki sought information from the Finnish Central Authority regarding its legal requirements for the authorization of adoption service providers (ASP), pursuant to Article 12 of the Hague Adoption Convention (Convention).

Finland ratified the Convention on March 27, 1997, and it entered into force on July 1, 1997.

Finnish law requires U.S. ASPs be authorized by the Finnish Adoption Board.

ASPs with questions about the information below or about pursuing authorization in Finland should contact the Finnish Adoption Board, National Supervisory Authority for Welfare and Health (Valvira), P.O. BOX 43, FI-00521, Helsinki, Finland

Phone: +358 295 209 111

Susanne Sahlgren has been adopted from Greenland, but people's prejudices made Susanne distance herself from her origins. Until she received a letter from her biological sister.

- Where are you from?

Or worse:

- Do you drink?

55-year-old Susanne Sahlgren has no figures on how many times she has been asked those questions.

GRAND RAPIDS, MI – The attorney for a couple whose adopted 3-year-old son is at the center of a legal fight told state Supreme Court justices that the family is the only one he knows.

Attorney Liisa Speaker said that the boy, who is nearly 4, must stay with his adoptive parents. They have the same rights as any biological parents, she said.

“They are his family,” she said.

The court is reviewing an appeals court finding that birth father Peter Kruithoff’s parental rights were wrongly terminated – potentially giving him a chance at obtaining custody.

Justice Richard Bernstein said: “This is a very difficult case.”

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

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…”

At 9 months old, baby Getahun was described as happy, active, and laidback. He had been adopted the month before from Ethiopia, by Kyle Wohlers and Matthew Willis, a couple living in western Washington state.

“He enjoys looking at brightly colored objects and just watching what is going on around him,” wrote a caseworker with Bethany Christian Services in an adoption follow-up report in 2010.

Now 13 years old, Getahun, identified here by his middle name to protect his identity, was small. At 16 pounds, he was in the 1st percentile for weight when he arrived in the U.S. His weight fluctuated over the years, but remained low by American standards.

Getahun’s adoptive parents initially attributed his low weight to malnourishment as an infant in Ethiopia. Later, they cited an unspecified eating disorder borne from neglect he’d experienced prior to being adopted.

That explanation didn’t sit right with people in their small community on Lopez Island, who reported noticing that Getahun and his adoptive parents did not connect with each other. Was Getahun's state the result of long-term trauma from being an orphan, they wondered, or was something else going on?

Scandal at Foster Parents Netherlands

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