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'NOT 100% SURE' Angelina Jolie’s pal claims ‘orphan’ son Maddox’s biological parents ‘may not have both been dead’ before 2002 adoption

ANGELINA Jolie’s pal claimed her “orphan” son Maddox’s biological parents “may not have been dead” before his 2002 adoption.

Sarath Mounh, a former aid worker that helped the actress adopt her oldest son, said he isn’t “100% sure” if Maddox’s parents were alive at the time of his adoption.

Angelina's pal said claimed 'orphan' son Maddox’s biological parents 'may not have been dead' before his adoption

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RANCHI: The officers and active service personnel of the Railway Protection Force (RPF) will adopt children who have lost their parents due to Covid-19.

Earlier this month, IG Railway Board (HQ) Sumati Shandilya wrote to the general managers of all railway zones and intimated about a new adoption programme under code name “Reach Out, Secure and Rehabilitate”. The programme is aimed at preventing the orphaned and vulnerable children from being drawn into the cauldron of human trafficking, Shandilya wrote.

Accordingly, the RPF officials at Ranchi railway division of the South Eastern Railways are gearing up for the programme. Under the programme, each officer or serving personnel will be assigned to look after one child and oversee their upkeep, academics and other requirements.

Speaking to TOI, RPF’s commandant of Ranchi railway division Prashant Yadav said: “We will be on the lookout for such children. As and when they are found, they will be brought and given shelter in local shelter homes through local NGOs. They will be lodged by the NGOs and their studies and other expenses will be taken care of by the Indian Railways.”

One officer or serving RPF personnel will be assigned to a child. The personnel will be in constant touch with the child, pay a weekly visit and even offer mental support and provide counselling. Special training module is being drafted for the RPF personnel.

Pakhi Kumari was 2 years old and abandoned by her parents. She was raised at the Specialised Adoption Institute in Muzaffarpur district of Bihar, as per The New Indian Express.

A childless couple from West Bengal, Reena and Sudipta Pal, adopted her on June 10.

Then a childless couple from USA went to Madhubani to adopt a 2-year-old abandoned girl, Kavya.

They did so in front of a magistrate.

The trend that is visible is that more girls are being preferred over boys.

In many regions of Uganda, Kugatta means ‘bringing together’. If you are new to this website and our work, a big part of what we do is to help bring together families that have been separated by intercountry adoption. One of the main reasons I started this organization was because of my own experience with intercountry adoption. Our family adopted from Uganda only to realize a year and a half later that “our” daughter had been unlawfully separated from her loving family in order to fulfil our application to adopt. That experience propelled me to dig deeper and ensure this wasn’t happening to other Ugandan families. Those investigations and research proved that our experience was in fact the norm and not the exception. Kugatta has met one Ugandan family after another, all with similar stories. Families who were seeking temporary help are only offered help through intercountry adoption. These families do not fully understanding adoption to mean anything more than “help” or “sponsorship” and they unknowingly signed away their parental rights.

A statistic that really stands out for me is that 4 out of 5 children in orphanages in countries like Uganda HAVE FAMILIES. Usually the first question I get after sharing that statistic is, “Why are families placing their children in orphanages if they want to parent them?” Well, in countries like Uganda where the government infrastructure is developing and there is little to no welfare system in place, families often look to local orphanages when they have fallen on hard times. Just like we in America look to social services for help when we are going through difficult times, orphanages promise to provide three meals a day, access to education, medical treatments, and to amenities like electricity and programs to receive school supplies and other such much needed items. The most influential reason for placing a child in an orphanage is the promise of a good education. Education in Uganda is very costly, and there is no free primary education. Just like most parents, we all want the best education for our children. So in essence most of these parents are doing what they believe is best for their children. Also, parents are promised access to their children and that they can come home at any time.

Mamma H with her eldest daughter

Meet Mama H (pictured above with her eldest daughter). This Ugandan mother reached out to Kugatta to help her find her son who was adopted to America. While in most cases when we search for children and find the adoptive families they are very open and receptive to the injustices that have incurred, some aren’t. In fact, in some instances they want nothing to do with any of it. As overwhelming and tragic as that is, Kugatta honours their decision, even when we don’t agree. When this happens we continue to work with and empower the vulnerable family member who was left behind. We provide a platform for their experiences to be heard and shared so we can all learn and grow from their experience and hopefully prevent things like this from ever happening again.

Here is an interview Gladys did with with Ugandan mother whom we will refer to as Mama H. She unknowingly signed away her parental rights. She is sharing her experience for two reasons: to ensure others will learn from her experience and loss; so hopefully her son will one day see and hear her story and know he was loved and searched for, from the moment he left her side.

Federal Environment Minister Sussan Ley has argued in an appeal against a landmark court ruling that she does not have a duty of care to protect Australian children from climate harm caused by the potential expansion of a coal mine.

The minister’s appeal also says the primary judge, Justice Mordecai Bromberg, erred in his findings about global temperature rise. During the Federal Court case, the scientific evidence on temperature rise was not contested by the government.

A partially successful class action was brought by eight Australian teenagers against the Environment Minister to challenge a proposal by Whitehaven Coal to extend its Vickery coal mine, near Boggabri in NSW.

The teenagers argued the mine expansion would endanger their future because climate hazards would cause them injury, ill health and economic losses, and in his judgment Justice Bromberg agreed. He said 1 million Australian children would be hospitalised at least once in their life for heat stress and the Great Barrier Reef would die along with the east coast’s eucalyptus forests should climate change not be halted.

While the court dismissed the teenagers’ application in May to prevent the minister approving the coal mine extension, it found Ms Ley owed a duty of care to Australia’s young people.

A BENTHAM woman who was forced by her parents to give her newborn baby boy up for adoption, has found him 66 years later, happy and well and living in Australia.

Issy Carr, 86, of Lowther Hill Farm, said her tale was one of heartache which has turned into a miracle thanks to her niece Angela Bowskill and relative Janet Staveley.

Issy said she was only 20 and very naive when she found out she was pregnant, but her parents, Margaret and Roy Staveley forced her to give the baby away.

“I had him at Homesteads Nursing Home, in Melling, on June 13, 1955. I loved him straight away and called him George, but Nurse Eccles, a lovely nurse, said she had been told I was not to see or hold him. He was rushed away and I never saw him again.

“My mother told me I would soon forget about him but I never did and tried many times to find out where he had gone but failed. I never forgave my parents, whatever their reason was,” she said.

A couple of days ago, a childless couple from the US reached Madhubani and adopted a 2-year-old abandoned girl, Kavya, in the presence of the district magistrate.

PATNA: Abandoned by her parents, two-year-old Pakhi Kumari was brought up at the Specialised Adoption Institute in Muzaffarpur district of Bihar.

She was adopted by a childless couple from West Bengal, Reena and Sudipta Pal, on June 10. A couple of days ago, a childless couple from the US reached Madhubani and adopted a 2-year-old abandoned girl, Kavya, in the presence of the district magistrate.

These adoptions show a trend: more and more childless couples prefer a girl child from the state’s various Specialized Adoption Agencies (SSAs), run by the Social Welfare Department or NGOs.

The adoption of male children, abandoned by their biological parents in Bihar, has also increased in recent years. Recently, a couple arrived from Italy and adopted a male child from Muzaffarpur-based SAA.

1.5 million children lost a caregiver during pandemic, including thousands in the UK

An estimated 1.5 million children worldwide under the age of 18 have lost a parent, grandparent or caregiver due to Covid-19, according to a global study.

Of those, more than 1 million experienced the death of one or both parents during the first 14 months of the pandemic, leading to what one researcher called “the hidden pandemic of orphanhood”.

Another half a million experienced the death of a grandparent or caregiver living in their own home, according to a study published in the Lancet.

Researchers extrapolated Covid-19 mortality data and national fertility statistics for 21 countries to produce the global estimates.

In Cambodia, Holt’s social work team has helped to develop three care alternatives for children growing up in institutional care — kinship care, foster care and, for the first time, a formal, ethical system of domestic adoption. In March 2021, the first child in Cambodia joined her adoptive family via this new process.

In May 2020, early in the COVID pandemic, a baby girl was born in a hospital in Cambodia. She was small — weighing just over 5 pounds — but her eyes were dark and lovely and shining with light.

A bright new life had just begun.

But for her mom, this was not a day of celebration. As she looked in the eyes of her newborn daughter, she faced a heartbreaking decision.

Unmarried, and separated from the baby’s father, she feared her family’s reaction if she came home with a child. In many communities in Cambodia, the stigma of single motherhood remains alive and well — shaming women for having a child outside of marriage. This newborn girl’s mom had managed to keep her pregnancy a secret from her family. And on the day her daughter was born, she decided to relinquish her parental rights.