Daily Briefing

Times News Services

Curtailing adoptions -- President Ion Iliescu today signed a law that sharply curtails Romania's freewheeling adoption procedures and halts all new adoptions until at least Sept. 1.

The law bars the adoption of children abandoned for less than six months, makes the sale of a baby a crime and puts all adoptions by foreigners under the control of the government's Adoptions Committee.

More than 5,000 Romanian children have been adopted by Westerners - including about 1,500 Americans - since the December 1989 anti-Communist revolution.