AUSTRALIAN COUPLE MURRAY AND KERRI HOLD THEIR ADOPTED THAI DAUGHTER FOR THE FIRST TIME IN BANGKOK,...

Australian father Murray House (L) from Tasmania is handed by his wife Kerri their newly-adopted Thai daughter Alin, two and 1/2, for the first time at the government-sponsored Phyathai Babies home in Bangkok July 16, 2002. The couple already have one adopted Thai son as well as a birth son of their own and are part of a wider network of foreign couples who are adopting thousands of Thai orphaned and abandoned children. According to the Social Welfare Department, who are responsible for the care of the country's orphans, over the past 23 years 60,000 Thai children have been adopted, 6,344 of those by foreigners, with thousands of more children still awaiting a new family of their own. REUTERS/Jason Reed JIR/PB