Apologies. A host of reasons--personal, professional and most of all technical--kept me from getting this news to you as fast as I should have: There has been a new round of accreditations issued in Russia. The accreditations apparently were signed on November 22 or 23, but word of them did not get out until last week.

The list includes nine agencies, four of which are American, and the rest from Belgium, Canada, Israel and Italy. That was somewhat disappointing news to those of us who have been waiting for a large group of American agency re-accreditations. But given the time that has passed since the last accreditations and the intervening shakeup in the Russian government, any forward movement on the licensing of adoption agencies to operate in Russia is good news.

The agencies accredited from the United States are The Alliance For Children in Wellesley, Mass., Happy Families International Center of Cold Spring, N.Y., Life Adoption Services of Tustin, Calif., and Wide Horizons for Children of Waltham, Mass.

The other agencies are VZW Adoptiedinst HORIZON of Belgium, Canada-based Adoption Horizons Inc. and Tzivos Hashem, Atid Haieladim of Israel and Italy's Nuova Associazione Di Genitori Insieme Per l'Adozione, an agency also known by its acronym, NADIA.

I have gotten into the habit this year of checking the Web site of the Russian Ministry of Education when I sign on to my computer in the morning. But a funny thing happened recently: I began to get an error message when I tried to enter the listing of 2007 decrees.

For about two weeks, I had convinced myself there was something afoot in Russia to clamp down on the flow of information about adoption. It is possible to know the country of origin of a Web site visitor by detecting the Internet Protocol address of his or her computer connection. And possible, therefore to block visitors from particular corners of the world. When I was traveling in Russia for my last adoption, I could not access my computer at work because my then employer had blocked IP addresses from Russia.

So I asked a few friends around the U.S. to see if they could get on the MoE's site--nope. A friend in London couldn't either, which, when I was in full conspiracy mode, didn't seem all that surprising either because U.K.-Russian relations have been terrible of late.

And then, this morning, the MoE's 2007 registry was back. Go figure.

Image credit: Rachel Montiel, Morguefile.com