What are the odds of this: Two positive stories about Russian adoption appearing in the mainstream press on the same day, which just happens to be Mother's Day? I just about fell off my chair this morning when I opened my Google Alerts. I had been reading a very dreamlike sequence in Anna Karenina last night and, looking at the news alerts at 6 in the morning, I had to make sure I wasn't still dreaming.

But it gets even better:... more

A bit of news on the adoption front, but not the big news on accreditation that we all want to see.

As expected, Robert and Brenda Matthey were sentenced to four years in a New Jersey state prison for causing the death of the child they adopted from Russia, Viktor Alexander Matthey, in December 1999. The couple had pleaded guilty to reckless manslaughter on April 12 and dropped all outstanding appeals. But, given the time they have already served... more

No news on the accreditation front yet, but some news that may affect your adoption travels to Russia. Kommersant and the Moscow Times are reporting that its Transportation Ministry is going to be going with same kind of liquids and gels restrictions that we now face for domestic travel in the United States. Russia has been enforcing the so-called 3-1-1 rule for travel between Russia and the U.S. and Canada since October 2006; the new decree would extend... more

The week began with the death of Boris Yeltsin, the man who set adoption upon the path on which it now finds itself in Russia. Yeltsin, Russia's first democratically elected president, was buried on Wednesday; former U.S. President Bill Clinton attended.

One day later, Russia's current president (and Yeltsin's chosen successor), Vladimir Putin, gave Russia's equivalent of a state of the... more

Let's start with the weirdest news first this week: Russia wants to build a tunnel to Alaska.

According to a report by Bloomberg, the tunnel would be the world's longest and would run under the Bering Strait. Why build a tunnel that far off the beaten path? To create a quicker way to move oil, natural gas and electricity from Siberia to the U.S. The report says the tunnel would take 10 to 15 years to complete.

Next in line, Boris... more

Adoption from Russia made the headlines this week and most of them were wrong. I'm going to come back to this issue later today, but for now, please know that Russia has not "curtailed" or "halted" adoption, or "suspended" foreign adoption groups.

One headline that wasn't: "Couple... more

A lot of western companies announced investments in Russia this week, and there was one more bit of bad news on the adoption front: According to the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, accreditations of all U.S. adoption agencies operating in Russia have expired.

Cisco announced on Tuesday that it is looking for opportunities to invest some venture capital in... more

I build most on my Friday news recap from mainstream media sources, in and out of Russia. But the Internet has opened news-gathering and opinion-offering to a wide range of other voices. Here are some interesting ones that I have discovered recently. This is not an endorsement, but merely an acknowledgement that reporting on Russia--and indeed any topic--now comes in many forms.

"La Russophobe" wears its opposition to President Vladimir Putin pretty openly, complete with a countdown counter to the end of his term. There are lots of links to other opposition blogs on the right side of the page.

"Scraps... more

The bidding for part of the failed Russian energy company Yukos went pretty much as expected on Tuesday. Rosneft, an energy company that is controlled by the Russian government, won with a lowball offer of $7.6 billion after the only other bidder, a joint venture that included Britain's BP, dropped out after just four minutes. One surprising... more

Did they or didn't they? The week began with a story, sourced to European and U.S. officials, that Russia was withdrawing its experts from an Iranian nuclear reactor site. The Iranians had been slow to pay the Russians for their work, but the reported move came against a background of growing international pressure on Iran to drop its nuclear plans. But no sooner was the first story out than, perhaps predictably, the Iranian... more