Sign up for a Google alert on Fetal Alcohol Syndrome and you get a lot of junk e-mail. FAS seems to be a favorite term for spam bloggers, of which there are many. So many, in fact, that many times I delete the alert on FAS without even reading it.

But when I do, I run the risk of missing key information for parents of children adopted from Russia, because of their concern about FAS in that country. If I had hit the delete key too fast this week I would have missed the research behind the... more

An international team of doctors has developed a way to use three-dimensional laser images to diagnose fetal alcohol syndrome.

The doctors used the lasers to take just six images of a child suspected of having FAS--two from the front and two from either side. That gave them digital images that could then be measured objectively by a computer program the researchers established to look for differences between a control group that did not have FAS and the child being measured.

Any parent who has adopted from Russia or who is thinking of adopting from Russia... more

One bit of adoption news this week, though not the accreditation news we are all waiting to see. A former office manager and bookkeeper for the Florence Crittenton League Adoption Agency is facing federal mail fraud and tax evasion charges after allegedly stealing more than $600,000 from the agency. The Lowell, Mass.-based agency, which handled adoptions in Russia, Guatemala and China, said in a statement that the theft was uncovered in April 2006 and that it "in no way, shape or form" affected any adoptions... more

Two employees at Children's Hope International have been found to have forged documents in connection with adoptions in Russia.

The story was first reported by Missouri television station KSDK on Tuesday evening. Children's Hope, which handles adoptions in almost every state in the U.S. through its 16 regional offices, posted this statement from its executive director, Dwyatt Gantt, about the forgeries... more

Today, I want to circle back to a point I made very briefly in the post on our trip to the Smithsonian: Explaining to the children that you have adopted from Russia that the United States and Russia have not always been the best of friends. (Apologies to my non-U.S. readers, but some of what I am going to say here will also be applicable to your countries.)

Don't worry, I'm not going to launch into some long dissertation about U.S.-Russian relations. There are folks who do that for a living, and... more

Like many adoptive parents, I worry from time to time whether the poor pre-natal care and early nutrition that my kids received in Russia might have affected their brain development. I worry about whether impaired brain development might hamper their performance in school and restrict them in later life.

Maybe now I can stop worrying so much.

Today's New York Times carried a front page story about two astounding... more

I am famously clueless about soap operas. When I went to college, I had so little understanding of their stars that, when I heard the girls in my dorms talking about "Nancy", "Kimberly" and "Jennifer", I thought they were talking about members of their families. I can remember telling my parents what terrible lives and families these girls had until I figured it out.

But I learned enough about the basic plot lines that semester to know that there is almost always one big love, and a character who sacrifices everything for it. So I was not at all surprised to read a... more

I'm pretty dogged about keeping my kids connected with the culture of their birth country, Russia. We plant and cook Russian food, read Russian stories and follow the occasional Russian celebrity. But sometimes, immersing yourself in Russian culture also means looking beyond the Earth, which is how we wound up at the Smithsonian Institution's National Air and Space Museum... more

It turns out that last week's reports of a deal between Germany's Lufthansa airlines and Russian transportation authorities to move the carrier's cargo operations to Siberia is not a done deal. According to Reuters, German officials are saying on Friday that Lufthansa's flyover rights have been extended to February while Russians and Germans work out a longer-term agreement. Just one big catch: The Russian side told Reuters they were only studying the proposal.

Maybe a sigh of relief at Ford... more

A hope chest, by its dictionary definition, is a box in which unmarried women store things they will need once they get married. George Steiner isn't an unmarried woman but he does have a really big hope chest with a lot of good inside for orphans in Russia and Africa.

Steiner is the founder of Children's Hope Chest. He had been working with the International Bible Society and in 1993 visited a Russian orphanage for the first time. In 1995, Children's Hope Chest began operating summer camps for orphans in Russia. In 1998, it opened... more