Adoptions

In the parlor below the deck of her houseboat docked on the Potomac, a youngish woman--blond and dressed in white--recounts the dream and nightmare of her search for her long-hidden legend-filled past. Among the framed old photographs decorating the wood-paneled room, there is only one that really matters to Jett Williams: a black-and-white picture of a handsome young man in a cowboy hat with a dreamy expression on his face. It is no ordinary face, no ordinary family photograph.

In ground-breaking action, the Los Angeles Unified school board voted Tuesday to ban suspensions of defiant students, directing officials to use alternative disciplinary practices instead. The packed board room erupted in cheers after the 5-2 vote to approve the proposal, which made L.A. Unified the first school district in the state to ban defiance as grounds for suspension. The action comes amid mounting national concern that removing students from school is imperiling their academic achievement and disproportionately harming minority students, particularly African Americans.

My name is Haley. I was adopted in 1995. I now live in America. I enjoy singing and playing the violin and hanging out with my friends. I have a good life, but I would like to find my biological family. Just minutes after Jeannie Butler and her adopted daughter, Haley, tacked a Chinese-language poster with this message to a wall in the Yangtze River village where she had been abandoned, a woman emerged from a restaurant next door and did a double-take. The woman stared hard at Haley, 14, then at the baby photo on the poster.

Two families, both loving and stable, are vying to adopt a 4-year-old girl with strawberry blond hair and large blue eyes. One is certain to be broken-hearted. The tug of war began in May 2011, when Los Angeles County child protection authorities took the girl away from her drug-addicted mother and placed her in a foster home. Five weeks later, her paternal grandparents found out and moved to get her back. But the Los Angeles Department of Children and Family Services sat on the couple's paperwork for nearly a year, according to a claim they have filed against the county.

A man who says that he is the adopted son of the late Rev. James Cleveland wants to lay claim to a share of the fortune left behind when the Grammy-winning singer known as the "King of Gospel" died in February. Andre M. Cleveland of Northridge, a rhythm and blues record producer, asserted at a news conference Tuesday that he is entitled to half of the Cleveland estate, estimated at $6 million.

Nobody knows her birth name. Zintkala Nuni, the Lakota call her. Lost Bird. Today, she is lost no more. A century after the infant was discovered alive, lying beneath her mother's body on the killing fields of Wounded Knee, her remains have been brought home. In a traditional ceremony, Lost Bird was interred Thursday, near the mass grave where 200 slain Native Americans, including her mother, were unceremoniously buried Jan. 3, 1891.

When television producer Sibyl Gardner adopted a baby girl in China in 2003, the official story was that the infant had been abandoned on the steps of the salt works in the city of Guangchang, where a worker found the day-old child and took her to a social welfare institution. But after reading with "utter horror" the latest revelations of child trafficking in China in the Los Angeles Times, Gardner found herself contemplating a trip to back to Jiangxi province to investigate how Zoë, now 7, came up for adoption.

It seemed almost a miracle--three young men, strangers who had grown up in separate families, discovering by accident that they were identical triplets. The public devoured their inspiring story as it made headlines around the country in 1980. The three, who had grown up in the New York area, appeared on "Good Morning America," "Today," "Donahue" and "Geraldo Rivera." A movie was in the works.

People have an intrinsic right to know their ancestry - at least Reuben Pannor thought so. A Los Angeles social worker and trailblazer for the open-adoption movement, Pannor co-wrote "The Adoption Triangle," a 1978 book that served as the movement's bellwether. His work paved the way for a paradigm shift in adoption culture. Before his published argument, the idea that a birth parent would maintain any contact with a child given up for adoption was almost unheard of. Experts feared that including an active role for birth parents would inevitably damage the bond between adoptive parents and child.

Russia has frozen all adoptions to the United States, the Foreign Ministry announced Thursday as national outrage simmered over a towheaded 7-year-old boy sent alone on a plane back to Moscow by his adoptive mother. A U.S. delegation is due in Moscow within days to discuss the crisis. Russia is pressing the United States to sign an agreement that would more carefully screen would-be parents and monitor the families after their return to the United States, Foreign Ministry officials have said.

BOSTON - During their decade in the United States, the two brothers suspected in the Boston Marathon bombings had acquired many of the preoccupations of young American men - cars, sports, social media. But Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, whose family fled Russia's troubled Caucasus region, showed signs of alienation from the country that had embraced them as refugees. "I don't have a single American friend, I don't understand them," Tamerlan said, as reported in an online photo essay that shows him training for a boxing competition that he hoped would lead to a place on the U.S. Olympic team and naturalized citizenship.

WASHINGTON - The Supreme Court was asked Tuesday to decide who should raise a 3 1/2-year-old girl who was given up by her single mother: the South Carolina couple who adopted her at birth or her biological father, who invoked his rights as a Cherokee Indian to claim his child. The justices spent part of the morning as family court judges, and they did not envy those who must decide such emotionally trying disputes every day. "Domestic relations pose the hardest problems for judges," said Justice Anthony M. Kennedy.

A puppy that was tied to railroad tracks in a gruesome attempt to get rid of it is now up for adoption with Riverside County Animal Services. The 10-month-old poodle-terrier mix, named “Banjo” for old train traffic signals, was rescued last week by a train engineer who saw the fluffy pup tied to the tracks ahead of him. The engineer noticed a man walking away from something left on the Mecca-area tracks about 5 p.m. April 2, Riverside County...

In the absence of statewide regulations for hydraulic fracturing, Southern California air-quality officials have enacted their own reporting rules for the controversial extraction process driving the country's oil and gas boom. On Friday, the governing board of the South Coast Air Quality Management District adopted a rule that requires oil companies to notify the air agency 10 days to 24 hours before beginning drilling operations, including "fracking," which involves injecting large volumes of chemical-laced water and sand deep into the ground to break apart rock and release oil. That notice, including the location of the well, will then be posted on the agency's website . Under the new rule, companies are also required to disclose all the chemicals they use, a provision that sparked opposition from oil industry trade groups and Halliburton, one of the world's largest oil field service companies and a pioneer of hydraulic fracturing.

After a year in the Burbank Animal Shelter, the Labrador-pit bull mix that taught utility workers how not to get bitten has finally found a new home. Hazel was given up by her owner last March after the dog reportedly didn't allow utility workers in her backyard. But officials said her friendly nature made her the perfect participant for bite prevention training sessions with Burbank Water and Power workers, helping to educate them about how to approach dogs while in the field.

A man and a woman who allegedly forced a 14-year-old runaway to walk the streets near Knott's Berry Farm as a prostitute have been charged under a recently approved law that toughens penalties for human trafficking. Under the new law, Chuncey Tarae Garcia, 33, could face life in prison if convicted of human trafficking of a minor by force or fear. He and Cierra Melissa Robinson, 27, Garcia's alleged accomplice, are in the first wave of people in California and the first in Orange County to be charged with human trafficking since the state's adoption of Proposition 35. Garcia is accused of being a pimp and teaming with Robinson, who prosecutors say worked for him as his highest-ranking prostitute.

MOSCOW -- Russian President Vladimir Putin left little room for maneuvering Thursday when he suggested he was likely to sign the so-called Dima Yakovlev law, which would ban adoptions of Russian children by Americans. The measure, which includes other sanctions against the United States, is intended as a response to an American law passed by Congress and signed by President Obama earlier this month. The Sergei Magnitsky Act denies visas to Russian officials involved in the prosecution and death of a Russian lawyer and whistleblower who called attention to alleged official corruption.

The father fell to his knees, weeping. The mother quietly buried her face in her hands. The 17-year-old boy stood upright and motionless -- whether out of shock or stoicism, no one knew. Christian Norris, who had just returned to China for the first time since he was adopted by an American eight years ago, didn't know what to think. The interpreter stood quietly on the sidelines waiting for what seemed an eternity, the only sounds were the sobs and the clicking of cameras that filled the room.

In response to a jump in requests for temporary film permits, Camarillo officials have passed a 45-day moratorium on adult film production in the city. The ordinance, approved Wednesday, gives the city time to study the potential effects of pornographic film production and determine whether to impose regulations. The city received several calls last week inquiring about temporary film permits and asking whether Camarillo had a condom ordinance, Assistant City Atty. Don Davis said.

Just before my 7th birthday, a police car rolled up alongside me as I was running an early morning errand for my mother. An officer leaned out the window and asked if my name was Andy. He then asked me to get into the car, and we drove the short distance back to the squalid motel where my mother and I were staying. Leaving me in the car, the officer jumped out to join a woman who was arguing on the sidewalk with my screaming mother. By then, my mother and I had been evicted from a string of apartments.