New York, Mar 24: It seems that everyone is not as lucky as Hollywood beauty Angelina Jolie, whether it is about being the sexiest woman in Hollywood or having Brad Pitt as a lover, or even adopting kids.
Band-Aid heiress Casey Johnson, who claims to be in the process of adopting a baby girl from Kazakhstan, is still sad she wasn't able to adopt a baby from Cambodia, as Angelina Jolie did. "I went to Cambodia almost two years ago [and] fell in love with this little girl, a 21/2-year-old named Lavissa," Johnson, was quoted by the New York Post, as saying.
But then she got the bad news that an adoption wasn't possible because of tight new adoption laws."I was devastated because I had bonded for three weeks with this child. I was buying her clothes in Cambodia. I was videoing her. I was doing everything," she added .
In 2001, Jolie adopted her first child, Maddox, from Cambodia with then-husband Billy Bob Thornton, but the Third World nation later cut off adoptions by foreigners amid accusations by child-welfare advocates of corrupt, babies-for-cash scams.
Johnson says she finally cheered up when her godmother, Diandra Douglas, the ex-wife of Michael Douglas, adopted a baby girl from Kazakhstan. "She's the most beautiful baby I've ever seen. She's blond-haired, blue-eyed, looks just like Diandra, and I thought, 'Oh, my gosh! This is what I'm going to do.' " Johnson says that when her own adoption goes through, she plans to name her baby Ava Monroe after her idol Marilyn Monroe.
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Saturday, March 24, 2007
Band Aid heiress bemoans failed Jolie-like Cambodian adoption attempt
Japan to help Cambodia develop power project with 22 mln USD loan
PHNOM PENH, March 24 (Xinhua) -- Japan will provide some 22 million U.S. dollars of low-interest loan for Cambodia to implement the Greater Mekong Power Network Development Project, local media said on Saturday.
Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation Hor Namhong and Japanese Ambassador Fumiaki Takahashi signed the exchange of notes here on Friday in presence of Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen.
According to the notes, the Japan Bank of International Cooperation (JBIC) will offer the loan at an annual interest rate of 0.01 percent with a payment period of 40 years.
The loan will serve the construction of two power transmission cables between Sihanoukville and Kampot, improvement of the kingdom's electricity equipment, construction of power transmission network among Phnom Penh and its neighboring provinces and some other projects. .
So far, the Japanese government has provided some 132,519,000 U.S. dollars of loans for the Cambodian government, according to a press release from the Japanese Embassy. .
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