The good news starts at home today, right here at Adoption.com, as a story of teddy bears and waiting kids accounts for more than 1,100 of 50,000 of the cuddly friends made in "Build-a-Bear" workshops that Adoption.com obtained for local and international distribution. Hugs all around.

Christian music star and adoptee Mark Schultz has raised a quarter of a million dollars for orphans through his Across America bike tour.

What I really wanted to accomplish on this was to give kids who are awaiting adoption the same opportunities that I’ve had by being adopted. I want them to realize there is a purpose for their lives, and that God doesn’t make mistakes. There’s a specific purpose for them, and I want them to help them get into a home where they can develop, you know, whatever they were meant to do.

If you're in Missouri and considering adoption, there is now a new resource with help with the process ... a "Welcome Home" booklet that addresses topics from options to costs, domestic and international.

For a copy, click here and follow the link to the Consumer Protection page.

An increase in numbers of births to unwed mothers is the focus of this article, and although mention is made of the fact that more people are choosing not to marry, it still manages to intimate something lesser about single moms. There is some rebuttal, however, and some questioning of the data.

The statistics on unwed mothers may be somewhat deceptive, said Marie McCormick, a professor of maternal and child health at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston who wasn't involved in preparing the report.

"In California, they used to look at the birth certificate, and if the mother's last name and the father's last name were different, they declared the women unmarried,'' McCormick said yesterday in a telephone interview. Some women opt to keep their name after marriage, and might be falsely counted as unmarried, she said.

In what could be offensive, or just silly, the producers of an off-Broadway play in New York offered free tickets to anyone who could "demonstrate his or her chastity" ... yep, prove you're a virgin / get in free.
A hypnotist who claims to be a human lie detector apparently gave the final word.

And while we're on virgins ... what? ... here is an ugly, stomach-churning take on Madonna from Morressey, who for reasons unknown decided to rip into her during his concert in Norfolk, Virginia.

His words?

“I wouldn’t be surprised if she [Madonna] made that African boy into a coat and wore him … for 15 minutes, and then threw it away.”

Who is this guy? And how do we get him from ever saying anything like THAT again?