RUSSIA
2 U.S. adoptions proceed
After weeks of anxiety plodding through the opaque Russian legal system, two U.S. women have custody of their adopted Russian children and are preparing to take them home to start a new life together. Jeana Bonner of South Jordan, Utah, and Rebecca Preece from Nampa, Idaho, on Saturday talked about the expenses, the confusion and emotional swings they’ve gone through since arriving in Moscow in mid-January, expecting to quickly leave with their children, both of whom have Down syndrome. Bonner and Preece and their husbands had spent about a year, including multiple trips to Russia, trying to arrange for the adoption of the 5-year-old girl and 4½-year-old boy. By late 2012, the adoptions had received court approval and they thought all they had to do was wait out the 30-day period in which such rulings can be challenged. But in those 30 days, a ban on Americans adopting Russian children sped through parliament and into law.
GERMANY
Education minister quits
Education and Research Minister Annette Schavan resigned Saturday after a university decided to withdraw her doctorate, finding that she plagiarized parts of her thesis — an embarrassment for Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government as it prepares for elections later this year.
ISRAEL
Palestinian camp cleared
Israeli troops on Saturday drove some 100 Palestinian activists out of an illegal tent camp they had set up near the city of Hebron in the southern West Bank, the military said. Saturday’s operation marked the fifth time in the past month Israeli forces broke up a Palestinian encampment.
PERU
Floodwaters inundate city
Record rain in Arequipa caused serious flooding that authorities said killed at least six people and inundated hundreds of homes in the country’s second-largest city. Nearly inches of rain fell on the southern city during a seven-hour period that began Friday afternoon.
Compiled from wire reports.
