I was pretty happy back on June 7. All signs pointed to bill 2562 NOT becoming law. Ukrainian adoption laws would stay the same. Single men and woman could adopt. +45 adoptive parents could adopt without restriction.

jpandersen correctly cautioned that President Yushchenko had 10 days to sign or veto the bill. Today (June 12) is the 10th day.

The news continues to be good. forUm listed 18 laws that the President signed. The adoption law wasn't signed.

I haven't been told the bill was vetoed. But I received information from an Ukrainian adoption faciliator that I greatly trust. This bill won't become law. But remember this is just one man's opinion.

The SDAPRC is still limiting single men and women to children who are 7 years or older (based on their current family law which gives priority to married families). But singles are still adopting. And older adoptive parents are adopting children.

Another spot of good news is the Verkhovna Rada has accepted 51 deputies' resignations. This means the Rada (Ukrainian Parliament) is that much closer to finally dissolving.

Parliament Speaker Alexander Moroz is puzzled about 50 of the resignation letters. They are identical with the same grammar errors. He just wants to check with the deputies and make sure they are really resigning because they used a form letter.

So the political fighting over the balance of power between the Ukrainian President and Parliament is slowly moving toward the next step; elections for parliament deputies. I will be closely watching to see what happens. Will corruption and death threats be excluding from these elections?

It is a happy day for me because so far this political fight has been mostly peaceful. It was a war of words with marching, singing and yelling.

Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) recently released the First Global Peace Index. There is some uncertainty about this index and how useful it is. I don't know what I really think about this yet.

EUI used 24 different factors that were measured in 2000 to 2005 to create their peace index. These factors included size of prison population, murder rates, military budget, weapon control laws, corruption, etc... In other words it was trying to measure violence rates not war.

Norway is the most peaceful country in the world. Ukraine was 80th on the index. The United States is 96th.

As always you can post a comment or send me an email at adoptukraineblog@adoptionmail.com.