'Mom' Loses Russian Girl Weeks From Adoption

After a roller coaster week, Kendra Skaggs sat down to vent on her blog. She had used that space to document her 13 month journey of adopting a young girl named Polina from Russia. But now, with that dream just weeks away from fulfillment, she described her frustration, fear and anger as she watched it being snatched away.

"I have no control. I'm on the other side of the world and I can't hold and comfort my daughter as I wait to hear if we will forever be separated," she wrote in a passionate entry

Her writing seemed to speak for hundreds of American parents whose hopes of adopting a Russian orphan were dashed today when Russian President Vladimir Putin signed into law a controversial ban on adoptions to the United States. The move is part of Russia's retaliation for a set of human rights sanctions passed by the U.S. Congress and signed by President Obama earlier this month. Critics, including the U.S. State Department, say the adoption ban is playing politics with the lives of children.

Russia is the third most popular country for Americans to adopt from, but in recent years the issue has become a political football in Russia. Americans have adopted over 60,000 Russian children since the fall of the Soviet Union, but Russian officials have seized on the cases of 19 children who died after being adopted by Americans.

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In 2010, a 7-year-old adopted boy named Artyom was put on a plane back to Russia alone by his adoptive mother from Tennessee with little more than a note saying she did not want him anymore. The case touched off a wave of fury in Russia and adoptions to the United States were nearly halted.

The Many Adventures of Vladimir Putin

Just a week ago Kendra and her husband visited Polina at her orphanage outside Moscow. The bubbly 5-year-old suffers from spina bifida, a condition that has left her numb from the waist down and unable to walk. They showed Polina photos of her new bedroom and told her about her new family. They played together, hugged each other, and promised to see each other soon when they returned in January to bring her home to Arkansas.

The adoption ban legislation, meanwhile, had just been introduced by Russian lawmakers. Kendra had hoped their case, which was nearly completed, would sneak in under the wire. She held out hope again after a Moscow court approved her adoption on Monday. All that was needed was a 30 day waiting period before they could bring Polina home.

It appears even that was too late. The law goes into effect on Jan. 1, but Russian officials have said even cases of 52 children who are within weeks of traveling to the United States are now frozen. Authorities have pledged to find new homes for them in Russia.

For the Skaggs family, it is agonizing to be so close to bringing her home, yet so far. Kendra fears Polina will think she was abandoned again.

"It's the fear of what she is going to think, that we forgot her," she said in an interview with ABC News.

"She's out there and I can't take care of her," she said, crying softly. "I can't help her. I can't tell her I love her. So it's really hard."

She also worries what will happen to Polina in Russia, a country with scarce accommodations for the handicapped.

"Russia really isn't set up for people with disabilities. You can't get into the metro even to get around because it's just levels and levels of stairs that you have to go up and down and there's no handicapped access to the buildings," Kendra said.

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Syria opposition leader rejects Moscow invitation

ALEPPO PROVINCE, Syria/BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syria's opposition leader has rejected an invitation from Russia for peace talks, dealing another blow to international hopes that diplomacy can be resurrected to end a 21-month civil war.

Russia, President Bashar al-Assad's main international protector, said on Friday it had sent an invitation for a visit to Moaz Alkhatib, whose six-week-old National Coalition opposition group has been recognized by most Western and Arab states as the legitimate voice of the Syrian people.

But in an interview on Al Jazeera television, Alkhatib said he had already ruled out such a trip and wanted an apology from Moscow for its support for Assad.

"We have clearly said we will not go to Moscow. We could meet in an Arab country if there was a clear agenda," he said.

"Now we also want an apology from (Russian Foreign Minister Sergei) Lavrov because all this time he said that the people will decide their destiny, without foreign intervention. Russia is intervening and meanwhile all these massacres of the Syrian people have happened, treated as if they were a picnic."

"If we don't represent the Syrian people, why do they invite us?" Alkhatib said. "And if we do represent the Syrian people why doesn't Russia respond and issue a clear condemnation of the barbarity of the regime and make a clear call for Assad to step down? This is the basic condition for any negotiations."

With the rebels advancing steadily over the second half of 2012, diplomats have been searching for months for signs that Moscow's willingness to protect Assad is faltering.

So far Russia has stuck to its position that rebels must negotiate with Assad's government, which has ruled since his father seized power in a coup 42 years ago.

"I think a realistic and detailed assessment of the situation inside Syria will prompt reasonable opposition members to seek ways to start a political dialogue," Lavrov said on Friday.

That was immediately dismissed by the opposition: "The coalition is ready for political talks with anyone ... but it will not negotiate with the Assad regime," spokesman Walid al-Bunni told Reuters. "Everything can happen after the Assad regime and all its foundations have gone. After that we can sit down with all Syrians to set out the future."

BRAHIMI TO MOSCOW

Russia says it is behind the efforts of U.N. mediator Lakhdar Brahimi, fresh from a five-day trip to Damascus where he met Assad. Brahimi, due in Moscow for talks on Saturday, is touting a months-old peace plan for a transitional government.

That U.N. plan was long seen as a dead letter, foundering from the outset over the question of whether the transitional body would include Assad or his allies. Brahimi's predecessor, Kofi Annan, quit in frustration shortly after negotiating it.

But with rebels having seized control of large sections of the country in recent months, Russia and the United States have been working with Brahimi to resurrect the plan as the only internationally recognized diplomatic negotiating track.

Russia's Middle East envoy, Deputy Foreign Minister Mikhail Bogdanov, who announced the invitation to Alkhatib, said further talks were scheduled between the "three B's" - himself, Brahimi and U.S. Undersecretary of State William Burns.

Speaking in Damascus on Thursday, Brahimi called for a transitional government with "all the powers of the state", a phrase interpreted by the opposition as potentially signaling tolerance of Assad remaining in some ceremonial role.

But such a plan is anathema to the surging rebels, who now believe they can drive Assad out with a military victory, despite long being outgunned by his forces.

"We do not agree at all with Brahimi's initiative. We do not agree with anything Brahimi says," Colonel Abdel-Jabbar Oqaidi, who heads the rebels' military council in Aleppo province, told reporters at his headquarters there.

Oqaidi said the rebels want Assad and his allies tried in Syria for crimes. Assad himself says he will stay on and fight to the death if necessary.

In the rebel-held town of Kafranbel, demonstrators held up cartoons showing Brahimi speaking to a news conference with toilet bowls in front of him, in place of microphones. Banners denounced the U.N. envoy with obscenities in English.

DIPLOMATS IMPOTENT

Diplomacy has largely been irrelevant to the conflict so far, with Western states ruling out military intervention like the NATO bombing that helped topple Libya's Muammar Gaddafi last year, and Russia and China blocking U.N. action against Assad.

Meanwhile, the fighting has grown fiercer and more sectarian, with rebels mainly from the Sunni Muslim majority battling Assad's government and allied militia dominated by his Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam.

Still, Western diplomats have repeatedly touted signs of a change in policy from Russia, which they hope could prove decisive, much as Moscow's withdrawal of support for Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic heralded his downfall a decade ago.

Bogdanov said earlier this month that Assad's forces were losing ground and rebels might win the war, but Russia has since rowed back, with Lavrov last week reiterating Moscow's position that neither side could win through force.

Still, some Moscow-based analysts see the Kremlin coming to accept it must adapt to the possibility of rebel victory.

"As the situation changes on the battlefield, more incentives emerge for seeking a way to stop the military action and move to a phase of political regulation," said Dmitry Trenin, director of the Carnegie Moscow Center.

Meanwhile, on the ground the bloodshed that has killed some 44,000 people continues unabated. According to the pro-opposition Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a monitoring group based in Britain, 150 people were killed on Thursday, a typical toll as fighting has escalated in recent months.

Government war planes bombarded the town of Assal al-Ward in the Qalamoun district of Damascus province for the first time, killing one person and wounding dozens, the observatory said.

In Aleppo, Syria's northern commercial hub, clashes took place between rebel fighters and army forces around an air force intelligence building in the Zahra quarter, a neighborhood that has been surrounded by rebels for weeks.

(Additional reporting by Omar Fahmy in Cairo, Dominic Evans in Beirut and Steve Gutterman and Alissa de Carbonnel in Moscow; Writing by Peter Graff; Editing by Giles Elgood)

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Italy's Monti to lead centrist coalition in February polls

ROME: Italy's caretaker Prime Minister Mario Monti said Friday that he will contest February elections at the head of a centrist coalition, driving a wedge between centre-left and centre-right parties.

"I agree to assume the role of head of the coalition, and I will commit myself to guaranteeing the success of this operation," Monti said after meeting for four hours with representatives of centrist groups and civic organisations.

Monti, 69, announced a week ago that he would step down after 13 months at the head of an unelected team of technocrats that was appointed to steer Italy out of a financial crisis that could have had dire consequences for the entire 17-nation eurozone.

Technically, as an Italian senator for life, the former European commissioner cannot himself run for office, but is in a position to be renamed prime minister if a party or coalition he supports wins the vote on February 24-25.

Monti is seen as a recourse to prevent scandal-tainted former premier Silvio Berlusconi from returning to power and undoing hard-won reforms.

The "Monti Agenda" proposes to cut public funds for political parties and parliamentary groups, and also includes measures to make more room for women and environmental issues.

Monti could bar the route for Berlusconi, who is running for the premiership for the sixth time in 18 years, but who is now isolated on the right side of the political spectrum with support from anti-tax and anti-euro factions.

Analysts had expected Pier Luigi Bersani of the centre-left Democratic Party to be named prime minister, and to then appoint Monti as a "super economy minister".

Berlusconi, who is appealing an October conviction for tax fraud and is currently on trial for having sex with an underage prostitute, has made proposals including the abolition of a new property tax that Monti has called "very dangerous and illusory".

A Monti-backed reform coalition is likely to steal votes from both Bersani and Berlusconi, who has virulently lambasted Monti's pro-Europe austerity policies.

Monti has been endorsed by European leaders, the markets and the Roman Catholic Church.

But while Monti's bold reforms have received wide praise from investors and rescued Italy from the brink of bankruptcy, they are increasingly unpopular among Italians who have been on the receiving end.

Monti's approval rating has plunged from more than 60 percent as he took office to around 30 percent in recent weeks.

And he has come under fire for appearing to make no effort to reach out to voters.

The economy is still stuck in a recession, unemployment is at record highs and consumption has fallen this year at its fastest rate since World War II.

Monti was installed by parliament at the head of an unelected, technocratic government when Berlusconi was forced to step down last year in a storm of sex scandals, market panic and infighting within his own party.

With his professorial demeanour, sober lifestyle and dry English wit, Monti could not have been more different from the larger-than-life Berlusconi.

-AFP/ac

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Sharad Pawar's word of advice to President Pranab Mukherjee's son

MUMBAI: Union agriculture minister and NCP chief Sharad Pawar has a "word of advice" for former cabinet colleague and President Pranab Mukherjee's son, Jangipur Congress MP Abhijeet, as well as other politicians who seem to have taken umbrage at the spontaneous protests against crime against women.

Without naming Abhijeet, Pawar said, "When situation becomes intolerable, citizens come on road to register their protest. The public outrage is natural." The statement to this effect was made by Pawar at the inauguration of the party's renovated office here on Friday, a day after Abhijit made a controversial remark on the Delhi gangrape protest, calling the agitators "pretty pretty women, highly dented and painted".

The NCP patriarch's statement assumes significance in the backdrop of controversial remarks made made by Congress MP Abhijeet.

The Congress MP on Thursday had created a storm when he questioned the intent of the protestors in Delhi and called them publicity seeking 'dented and painted women'. After a country wide outburst the President's son had to finally apologise as his own family members took offence to remark made against the women fraternity. While the Congress wanted people to 'forgive' and 'forget' it was clear that the UPA's own ally was not willing to forgive Abhijeet for his remark.

The NCP chief seems to be unhappy with the overall situation of the nation. "The present unrest in the country is worrisome," said Pawar. who is a senior ally of the ruling UPA government in the Centre.

Taking cognizance of the public outrage in Delhi, Pawar advised his partymen, especially ministers in the DF government in the state, to take "aggressive steps" to ensure women's safety and also to deal with other issues related to them. He also reminded his party rank and file members that they had a social responsibilities and that politics was not restricted to mere votes.

Supporting state home minister R R Patil's recommendation to the Centre to implement strict punishment for those involved in crimes against women, Pawar said, "The Union government should take ahead such proposals to curb assault on women." The Delhi rape victim will recover, but we are worried about the girl's future."

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Kenya hospital imprisons new mothers with no money

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — The director of the Pumwani Maternity Hospital, located in a hardscrabble neighborhood of downtown Nairobi, freely acknowledges what he's accused of: detaining mothers who can't pay their bills. Lazarus Omondi says it's the only way he can keep his medical center running.

Two mothers who live in a mud-wall and tin-roof slum a short walk from the maternity hospital, which is affiliated with the Nairobi City Council, told The Associated Press that Pumwani wouldn't let them leave after delivering their babies. The bills the mothers couldn't afford were $60 and $160. Guards would beat mothers with sticks who tried to leave without paying, one of the women said.

Now, a New York-based group has filed a lawsuit on the women's behalf in hopes of forcing Pumwani to stop the practice, a practice Omondi is candid about.

"We hold you and squeeze you until we get what we can get. We must be self-sufficient," Omondi said in an interview in his hospital office. "The hospital must get money to pay electricity, to pay water. We must pay our doctors and our workers."

"They stay there until they pay. They must pay," he said of the 350 mothers who give birth each week on average. "If you don't pay the hospital will collapse."

The Center for Reproductive Rights, which filed the suit this month in the High Court of Kenya, says detaining women for not paying is illegal. Pumwani is associated with the Nairobi City Council, one reason it might be able to get away with such practices, and the patients are among Nairobi's poorest with hardly anyone to stand up for them.

Maimouna Awuor was an impoverished mother of four when she was to give birth to her fifth in October 2010. Like many who live in Nairobi's slums, Awuor performs odd jobs in the hopes of earning enough money to feed her kids that day. Awuor, who is named in the lawsuit, says she had saved $12 and hoped to go to a lower-cost clinic but was turned away and sent to Pumwani. After giving birth, she couldn't pay the $60 bill, and was held with what she believes was about 60 other women and their infants.

"We were sleeping three to a bed, sometimes four," she said. "They abuse you, they call you names," she said of the hospital staff.

She said saw some women tried to flee but they were beaten by the guards and turned back. While her husband worked at a faraway refugee camp, Awuor's 9-year-old daughter took care of her siblings. A friend helped feed them, she said, while the children stayed in the family's 50-square-foot shack, where rent is $18 a month. She says she was released after 20 days after Nairobi's mayor paid her bill. Politicians in Kenya in general are expected to give out money and get a budget to do so.

A second mother named in the lawsuit, Margaret Anyoso, says she was locked up in Pumwani for six days in 2010 because she could not pay her $160 bill. Her pregnancy was complicated by a punctured bladder and heavy bleeding.

"I did not see my child until the sixth day after the surgery. The hospital staff were keeping her away from me and it was only when I caused a scene that they brought her to me," said Anyoso, a vegetable seller and a single mother with five children who makes $5 on a good day.

Anyoso said she didn't have clothes for her child so she wrapped her in a blood-stained blouse. She was released after relatives paid the bill.

One woman says she was detained for nine months and was released only after going on a hunger strike. The Center for Reproductive Rights says other hospitals also detain non-paying patients.

Judy Okal, the acting Africa director for the Center for Reproductive Rights, said her group filed the lawsuit so all Kenyan women, regardless of socio-economic status, are able to receive health care without fear of imprisonment. The hospital, the attorney general, the City Council of Nairobi and two government ministries are named in the suit.

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Associated Press reporter Tom Odula contributed to this report.

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At Cliff's Edge, Reid Decries Boehner's 'Dictatorship'

With only five days left before the federal government goes over the fiscal cliff, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid shattered any pretense of cooperation with Republicans in a scathing speech that targeted House Republicans and particularly Speaker John Boehner.

Reid, D-Nev., spoke on the floor of the Senate as President Obama returned to Washington early from an Hawaiian vacation in what appears to be a dwindling hope for a deal on taxes and spending cuts before the Jan. 1 deadline that will trigger tax increases and sharp spending cuts.

The House of Representatives will meet for legislative business Sunday evening, leaving the door cracked open ever so slightly to the possibility of a last-minute agreement to avert the looming fiscal cliff.

But on a conference call with Republican House members Thursday afternoon, Boehner kept to the Republican hard line that if the Senate wants a deal it should amend bills already passed by the House.

Earlier in the day, Reid said the Republicans should accept a bill passed by Democratic led Senate, and there was no indication either side was willing to compromise.

Boehner, however, has not returned to the Capitol quite yet.

Related: What the average American should know about capital gains and the fiscal cliff.

Scott J. Ferrell/Congressional Quarterly/Getty Images

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"We are here in Washington working while the members of the House of Representatives are out watching movies and watching their kids play soccer and basketball and doing all kinds of things. They should be here," Reid said. "I can't imagine their consciences."

House Republicans have balked at a White House deal to raise taxes on couples earning more than $250,000 and even rejected Boehner's proposal that would limit the tax increases to people earning more than $1 million.

"It's obvious what's going on," Reid said while referring to Boehner. "He's waiting until Jan. 3 to get reelected to speaker because he has so many people over there that won't follow what he wants. John Boehner seems to care more about keeping his speakership than keeping the nation on a firm financial footing."

Related: Starbucks enters fiscal cliff fray.

Reid said the House is "being operated with a dictatorship of the speaker" and suggested today that the Republicans should agree to accept the original Senate bill pass in July. Reid's comments, however, made it clear he did not expect that to happen.

"It looks like" the nation will go over the fiscal cliff in just five days, he declared.

"It's not too late for the speaker to take up the Senate-passed bill, but that time is even winding down," Reid said. "So I say to the speaker, take the escape hatch that we've left you. Put the economic fate of the nation ahead of your own fate as Speaker of the House."

Boehner's spokesman Michael Steel reacted to Reid's tirade in an email, writing, "Senator Reid should talk less and legislate more. The House has already passed legislation to avoid the entire fiscal cliff. Senate Democrats have not."

Boehner has said it is now up to the Senate to come up with a deal.

Obama, who landed in Washington late this morning, made a round of calls over the last 24 hours to Reid, Boehner, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.

Related: Obama pushes fiscal cliff resolution.

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Russia's Putin signals he will sign U.S. adoption ban

MOSCOW (Reuters) - President Vladimir Putin signaled on Thursday he would sign into law a bill barring Americans from adopting Russian children and sought to forestall criticism of the move by promising measures to better care for his country's orphans.

In televised comments, Putin tried to appeal to people's patriotism by suggesting that strong and responsible countries should take care of their own and lent his support to a bill that has further strained U.S.-Russia relations.

"There are probably many places in the world where living standards are higher than ours. So what, are we going to send all our children there? Maybe we should move there ourselves?" he said, with sarcasm.

Parliament gave its final approval on Wednesday to the bill, which would also introduce other measures in retaliation for new U.S. legislation which is designed to punish Russians accused of human rights violations.

For it to become law Putin needs to sign it.

"So far I see no reason not to sign it, although I have to review the final text and weigh everything," Putin said at a meeting of federal and regional officials that was shown live on the state's 24-hour news channel.

"I intend to sign not only the law ... but also a presidential decree that will modify the support mechanisms for orphaned children ... especially those who are in a difficult situation, by that I mean in poor health," Putin said.

Critics of the bill say the Russian authorities are playing political games with the lives of children, while the U.S. State Department repeated its "deep concern" over the measure.

"Since 1992 American families have welcomed more than 60,000 Russian children into their homes, and it is misguided to link the fate of children to unrelated political considerations," State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell said in a statement.

Ventrell added that the United States was troubled by provisions in the bill that would restrict the ability of Russian civil society organizations to work with U.S. partners.

Children in Russia's crowded and troubled orphanage system - particularly those with serious illnesses or disabilities - will have less of a chance of finding homes, and of even surviving, if it becomes law, child rights advocates say.

They point to people like Jessica Long, who was given up shortly after birth by her parents in Siberia but was raised by adoptive parents in the United States and became a Paralympic swimming champion.

However, the Russian authorities point to the deaths of 19 Russian-born children adopted by American parents in the past decade, and lawmakers named the bill after a boy who died of heat stroke in Virginia after his adoptive father left him locked in a car for hours.

Putin reiterated Russian complaints that U.S. courts have been too lenient on parents in such cases, saying Russia has inadequate access to Russian-born children in the United States despite a bilateral agreement that entered into force on November 1.

NATIONAL IDENTITY

But Putin, who began a new six-year term in May and has searched for ways to unite the country during 13 years in power, suggested there were deeper motives for such a ban.

"For centuries, neither spiritual nor state leaders sent anyone abroad," he said, indicating he was not speaking specifically about Russia but about many societies.

"They always fight for their national identities - they gather themselves together in a fist, they fight for their language, culture," he said.

The bid to ban American adoptions plays on sensitivity in Russia about adoptions by foreigners, which skyrocketed as the social safety net unraveled with the 1991 Soviet collapse.

Families from the United States adopt more Russian children than those of any other country.

Putin had earlier described the Russian bill as an emotional but appropriate response to the Magnitsky Act, legislation signed by President Barack Obama this month as part of a law granting Russia "permanent normal trade relations" (PNTR) status.

The U.S. law imposes visa bans and asset freezes on Russians accused of human rights violations, including those linked to the death in a Moscow jail of Sergei Magnitsky, an anti-graft lawyer, in 2009.

The Russian bill would impose similar measures against Americans accused of violating the rights of Russian abroad and outlaw some U.S.-funded non-governmental groups.

(Reporting By Alexei Anishchuk; additional reporting by Andrew Quinn in Washington; Writing by Alissa de Carbonnel and Steve Gutterman; Editing by Andrew Osborn and Doina Chiacu)

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Football: Forest hire former Villa boss McLeish

LONDON: Nottingham Forest's Kuwaiti owners appointed former Aston Villa boss Alex McLeish as their new manager on Thursday just 24 hours after sacking Sean O'Driscoll.

Forest chairman Fawaz Al Hasawi insisted he wanted a manager with Premier League experience when he made the surprise decision to dismiss O'Driscoll following the Championship team's 4-2 win over Leeds on Wednesday.

And Al Hasawi swiftly followed through on that commitment by hiring McLeish, who has previously led Birmingham to promotion from the second tier but was sacked by Villa at the end of last season after just one year in charge.

"I'm delighted to welcome Alex to our club and look forward to working with him," Al Hasawi told Forest's website.

"Alex took Birmingham to promotion from the Championship and has great experience of working in the Premier League.

"He's hungry for more success and I believe he's the man who can help us fulfil our ambition of making it to the Premier League."

McLeish will begin work at the City Ground on Friday before taking charge of Saturday's home league clash against promotion-chasing Crystal Palace.

But the 53-year-old's reputation for producing teams that play dour football makes his appointment something of a gamble for Forest, who had also been linked with former Chelsea manager Roberto Di Matteo and ex-Manchester United midfielder Roy Keane.

Villa only narrowly avoided relegation last season, finishing two points above the bottom three, and McLeish endured a difficult relationship with the club's fans.

It is over 30 years since two-time European champions Forest were a dominant force in English football under legendary boss Brian Clough, but Al Hasawi and co-owner Abdulaziz Al Hasawi believe they can restore the club to its former glory.

And McLeish, who led Rangers to two Scottish league titles, will be expected to deliver promotion in his first season at Forest, who are currently eighth in the Championship.

The former Scotland coach insists he is revitalised after eight months out of the game following his Villa exit and can't wait to get started on his new challenge.

"I'm really looking forward to working with Nottingham Forest," he said.

"I've had time away from the game and now feel refreshed and ready to go.

"The fact that a club of Forest's magnitude has offered me a job excites me greatly, it's a wonderful opportunity.

"I can't wait to get started and I'm looking forward to meeting the players, talking to them and taking my first training session."

-AFP/ac

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Nirbhaya first private citizen treated abroad at state expense

NEW DELHI: Nirbhaya has already set a record - she has become the first Indian private citizen to have been taken abroad for medical care at the expense of the state.

Asked if there has been any precedents, a senior Union minister and a former cabinet secretary said they were unable to recall any such previous instance. Government and political leaders, also army officers have been given this help, but not a private citizen, they said.

Former prime ministers Chandrashekhar and V P Singh had been treated abroad at government expense. Besides, veteran leader Jay Prakash Narayan was airlifted for treatment within the country (from Patna to Mumbai) at government's expense. Narayan was private individual as he did not hold any public post at that time, but was a national political figure.

About the decision to take the gang rape victim abroad, the home minister Sushilkumar Shinde said, "We are all aware of the critical condition of victim. Since the day of the incident, it has been our endeavour to provide her the best of medical care. Despite the best efforts of our doctors, the victim continued to be critical and her fluctuating health remained a big cause of concern to all of us. Therefore, when we were advised by a team of doctors that she may be shifted abroad for treatment, the government decided to meet all the costs thereof."

Updating her condition, he said, "Arrangements have been made for the family to accompany her as the treatment may stretch to many weeks." Shinde also said that the government had opted for Singapore considering her critical condition and the relatively short travel time.

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Kenya hospital imprisons new mothers with no money

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — The director of the Pumwani Maternity Hospital, located in a hardscrabble neighborhood of downtown Nairobi, freely acknowledges what he's accused of: detaining mothers who can't pay their bills. Lazarus Omondi says it's the only way he can keep his medical center running.

Two mothers who live in a mud-wall and tin-roof slum a short walk from the maternity hospital, which is affiliated with the Nairobi City Council, told The Associated Press that Pumwani wouldn't let them leave after delivering their babies. The bills the mothers couldn't afford were $60 and $160. Guards would beat mothers with sticks who tried to leave without paying, one of the women said.

Now, a New York-based group has filed a lawsuit on the women's behalf in hopes of forcing Pumwani to stop the practice, a practice Omondi is candid about.

"We hold you and squeeze you until we get what we can get. We must be self-sufficient," Omondi said in an interview in his hospital office. "The hospital must get money to pay electricity, to pay water. We must pay our doctors and our workers."

"They stay there until they pay. They must pay," he said of the 350 mothers who give birth each week on average. "If you don't pay the hospital will collapse."

The Center for Reproductive Rights, which filed the suit this month in the High Court of Kenya, says detaining women for not paying is illegal. Pumwani is associated with the Nairobi City Council, one reason it might be able to get away with such practices, and the patients are among Nairobi's poorest with hardly anyone to stand up for them.

Maimouna Awuor was an impoverished mother of four when she was to give birth to her fifth in October 2010. Like many who live in Nairobi's slums, Awuor performs odd jobs in the hopes of earning enough money to feed her kids that day. Awuor, who is named in the lawsuit, says she had saved $12 and hoped to go to a lower-cost clinic but was turned away and sent to Pumwani. After giving birth, she couldn't pay the $60 bill, and was held with what she believes was about 60 other women and their infants.

"We were sleeping three to a bed, sometimes four," she said. "They abuse you, they call you names," she said of the hospital staff.

She said saw some women tried to flee but they were beaten by the guards and turned back. While her husband worked at a faraway refugee camp, Awuor's 9-year-old daughter took care of her siblings. A friend helped feed them, she said, while the children stayed in the family's 50-square-foot shack, where rent is $18 a month. She says she was released after 20 days after Nairobi's mayor paid her bill. Politicians in Kenya in general are expected to give out money and get a budget to do so.

A second mother named in the lawsuit, Margaret Anyoso, says she was locked up in Pumwani for six days in 2010 because she could not pay her $160 bill. Her pregnancy was complicated by a punctured bladder and heavy bleeding.

"I did not see my child until the sixth day after the surgery. The hospital staff were keeping her away from me and it was only when I caused a scene that they brought her to me," said Anyoso, a vegetable seller and a single mother with five children who makes $5 on a good day.

Anyoso said she didn't have clothes for her child so she wrapped her in a blood-stained blouse. She was released after relatives paid the bill.

One woman says she was detained for nine months and was released only after going on a hunger strike. The Center for Reproductive Rights says other hospitals also detain non-paying patients.

Judy Okal, the acting Africa director for the Center for Reproductive Rights, said her group filed the lawsuit so all Kenyan women, regardless of socio-economic status, are able to receive health care without fear of imprisonment. The hospital, the attorney general, the City Council of Nairobi and two government ministries are named in the suit.

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Associated Press reporter Tom Odula contributed to this report.

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