A Utah woman has been charged with murdering a toddler adopted from Russia. According to The Salt Lake Tribune, Kimberly Emelyantsev was charged with one count of first-degree murder in the March 7 death of a 14-month-old boy named Nikolai. Citing police and court records, the newspaper said an autopsy found the child had died from a skull fracture caused by blunt-force trauma. 

Both the woman and her husband, whom the newspaper named as Fyodor Emelyantsev, were also charged with child abuse for allegedly starving a second child they adopted from Russia, a four-year-old boy. According to the newspaper, the child had been admitted to a Salt Lake hospital three times since he was adopted in December, each time suffering from malnutrition and dehydration. The younger child was adopted in February.  

But the Emelyantsev case appears to have a twist that none of the previous cases of adopted Russian children murdered by American parents have had: Fyodor Emelyantsev is a Russian citizen. The Emelyantsevs are described in the report as having three biological children, one of whom has Down's syndrome, as did both of the children adopted from Russia. There is a court hearing on the case scheduled for March 18. 

On Thursday, legislators in the New Jersey state Assembly approved a family leave bill, that would cover new parents in domestic or inter-country adoptions. The bill gives New Jersey workers six weeks of paid leave at two-thirds of their salary, with a cap at $524 a week. Funds for the leave would come from a new employee payroll deduction, which would amount to $33 a year for the highest paid employees. But the measure has still not cleared all obstacles. According to The New York Times, the bill must go back to the state Senate, which narrowly approved an earlier version two weeks ago. The repeat vote is needed because language was inserted in the Assembly version at the recommendation of the state's attorney general to prevent small business owners--who are not required to give returning workers their jobs back--from lawsuits. The Senate vote is expected on Monday.

A task force set up by South Carolina Gov. Mark Sanford has suggested ways to improve foster care and adoption in the state. According to a report in The Times and Democrat, the task force wants a birth father registry to speed the termination of parental rights, a better process for notifying necessary parties of an adoption hearing and stepped up efforts to recruit foster and adoptive parents. According to the newspaper, there are about 1,600 children eligible for adoption in South Carolina, and it now takes about four years to finalize an in-state adoption. The paper says the state's goal is to slash that to two years. 

Image: Clarita at Morguefile.com