VIETNAM:Hollywood star Angelina Jolie arrived in Vietnam yesterday to adopt a boy from an orphanage in Ho Chi Minh City.
Two Vietnamese online newspapers published reports and photographs of Jolie (31) in a vehicle in the southern city after her arrival at the airport.
Jolie and partner, Brad Pitt, have one biological child and two adopted children. The Vietnamese boy, described by officials in the communist-run country as a healthy three-to four-year-old, would be the fourth child for the movie star family.
"All they need now is a signature from the vice-mayor of Ho Chi Minh City to give the final approval," said Vietnam's top adoption official, Vu Duc Long, who is director of the international adoption department.
Sources familiar with the Jolie case said she would attend a "giving and receiving" ceremony with Vietnamese officials today. The US consulate would issue the child a passport to travel to the US.
Jolie filed adoption papers in early March through an unidentified American agency, but without Pitt. Under Vietnamese law, an unmarried couple may not adopt a child, but single people may adopt.
In Vietnam, adoptions have been known to take as little as one month if background checks and issues of whether the adopting family can support a child are quickly resolved. However, the process can take six months or longer.
Mr Long said the child was from the Tam Binh orphanage in the city of eight million people, Vietnam's largest urban area.
VNExpress online newspaper quoted orphanage director Nguyen Van Trung as saying the boy was healthy and liked soccer. The child had been abandoned at a local hospital and was admitted to the orphanage in 2003, he added.
Jolie and Pitt visited Ho Chi Minh City last November and met children at the orphanage.
They have one biological child, Shiloh Nouvel, who was born last year, and two adopted children - son Maddox from Cambodia and daughter Zahara from Ethiopia.
Jolie and Pitt have said they have no plans to marry but are committed to raising their children together. They are currently working together on the film about the killing of a US journalist by Pakistani militants. - ( Reuters )