Watchdog

Russia's child rights ombudsman says American citizens continue to adopt Russian children despite a ban.

Pavel Astakhov said on February 10 that he intends to ask the Supreme Court to look into lower courts' rulings that he said had allowed U.S. citizens to adopt Russian children despite the Dima Yakovlev law.

The law, signed by President Vladimir Putin in December 2012, bars Americans from adopting Russian children.

It was adopted in retaliation to a U.S. law imposing asset freezes and visa bans on Russians accused by the United States of human rights abuses, including those believed involved in the death of a whistleblowing Russian lawyer Sergei Magnitsky in a Moscow jail in 2009.

Astakhov said that in some cases, people with dual U.S. and Russian citizenship have adopted Russian children, wihich he said violates the law.

Based on reporting by TASS and Interfax

ASTANA -- Police in Kazakhstan have detained an activist after he staged a protest to express solidarity with the embattled Adam Bol (Be a Human) magazine.

Meiram Duisenov unfolded a poster reading "Adam Bol! in front of presidential palace in Astana on February 6.

Police stopped Duisenov from putting the poster into a mailbox located next to the building and took him away.

In December, a court in Kazakhstan’s largest city, Almaty, shut down Adam Bol, saying it was "propagating war."

That ruling came weeks after the magazine published an interview with opposition activist Aidos Sadyqov, who lives in exile in Ukraine.

In the interview, Sadyqov criticized Russia for its involvement in the conflict in Ukraine.

The magazine’s chief editor, Gulzhan Erghalieva, ended an 18-day hunger strike on February 5.