Australia yesterday said it was simplifying the process of adopting children from overseas, setting up a single body to manage applications, while working on new arrangements with the US, Poland and Vietnam.
Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott said a new “one-stop shop” — the Intercountry Adoption Support Service — will have staff advocating on behalf of prospective families and dealing with local state authorities and partner countries.
Australia has one of the lowest levels of intercountry adoption in the world, according to a government report last year.
“For too long adoption has been in the too hard basket, for too long it has been too hard to adopt and for too long this has been a policy no-go zone,” the Australian leader said in a statement.
“It shouldn’t be that way because adoption is all about giving children a better life,” Abbot added.
The new service — which could start as soon as April — will also seek to reduce the length of time parents have to wait to adopt children, currently an average of five years.
The announcement came just a week after a baby boy at the center of an international debate about surrogacy was granted Australian citizenship.
Baby Gammy was reportedly abandoned in Thailand by a Perth couple who went home with just his healthy sister.
While commercial surrogacy is illegal in Australia, growing numbers of people are traveling to countries such as India and Thailand to engage women to carry their babies.
Adoption levels have fallen to a record low in Australia, Abbott said, with just 317 domestic and international adoptions finalized between July 1, 2013, and June 30 last year, 9 percent lower than the previous year and 76 percent down from 25 years ago.
Australia has intercountry arrangements with 14 countries, and the government said it was establishing new adoption programs with the US, Poland and Vietnam, and working on schemes with four other countries.
The four countries were not named by the government, but the Sunday Telegraph said they were Latvia, Kenya, Bulgaria and Cambodia.
Republican US lawmakers on Friday criticized US President Joe Biden’s administration after sanctioned Chinese telecoms equipment giant Huawei unveiled a laptop this week powered by an Intel artificial intelligence (AI) chip. The US placed Huawei on a trade restriction list in 2019 for contravening Iran sanctions, part of a broader effort to hobble Beijing’s technological advances. Placement on the list means the company’s suppliers have to seek a special, difficult-to-obtain license before shipping to it. One such license, issued by then-US president Donald Trump’s administration, has allowed Intel to ship central processors to Huawei for use in laptops since 2020. China hardliners
A top Vietnamese property tycoon was on Thursday sentenced to death in one of the biggest corruption cases in history, with an estimated US$27 billion in damages. A panel of three hand-picked jurors and two judges rejected all defense arguments by Truong My Lan, chair of major developer Van Thinh Phat, who was found guilty of swindling cash from Saigon Commercial Bank (SCB) over a decade. “The defendant’s actions ... eroded people’s trust in the leadership of the [Communist] Party and state,” read the verdict at the trial in Ho Chi Minh City. After the five-week trial, 85 others were also sentenced on
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
RAMPAGE: A Palestinian man was left dead after dozens of Israeli settlers searching for a missing 14-year-old boy stormed a village in the Israeli-occupied West Bank US President Joe Biden on Friday said he expected Iran to attack Israel “sooner, rather than later” and warned Tehran not to proceed. Asked by reporters about his message to Iran, Biden simply said: “Don’t,” underscoring Washington’s commitment to defend Israel. “We are devoted to the defense of Israel. We will support Israel. We will help defend Israel and Iran will not succeed,” he said. Biden said he would not divulge secure information, but said his expectation was that an attack could come “sooner, rather than later.” Israel braced on Friday for an attack by Iran or its proxies as warnings grew of