Hollywood
actor Angelina Jolie flew into Ethiopia today to pick up an
orphaned Ethiopian infant she has adopted to join her family along
with her three-year-old Cambodian son, officials said.
Jolie and her rumoured paramour, heart-throb Brad Pitt, arrived in
the Ethiopian capital after the actress secured the necessary
approval to adopt the baby girl last week, an official involved in
the process said.
"They are here, they arrived today," the official told AFP on
condition of anonymity.
"Angelina
has come to collect the baby."
The official could not say exactly when Jolie and Pitt would
collect the child or when they might leave Ethiopia but earlier,
two officials confirmed that the adoption had been approved by
Ethiopian authorities.
Dr Bulti Gutema, the chief of the children and family affairs
department at Ethiopia's social affairs ministry and Hadosh
Halefom, an official with the adoption agency concerned, said Jolie
had been accepted as an adoptive mother.
Both said Jolie had completed the necessary paperwork last week
when she and Pitt, who travelled to Ethiopia in April to visit
HIV/AIDS projects, visited Addis Ababa.
"We in the ministry had no idea who Angelina Jolie was when
we granted the adoption permit," said Bult.
"The
documents indicated that her marital status was divorced and she
was the only person who signed them."
The adoption was first reported by the online edition of the US
celebrity magazine People which said the child was an AIDS orphan
and quoted Jolie as saying she and son Maddox were "very happy to
have a new addition to our family".
The 30-year-old Jolie told the magazine that her new daughter's
name is Zahara Marley Jolie.