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Malawi kid to have Madonna mom?

American pop star Madonna is due back in Malawi next week for what is expected to be a final court ruling on whether she can adopt a child from the southern African country, airport officials said on Tuesday.

A senior official at Lilongwe International Airport said her jet was cleared for landing from April 8 and she was expected around that time.

In February, Malawian Information Minister Patricia Kaliati praised Madonna's efforts to rally support for orphans in the impoverished country and said it would be wrong for the government to deny the pop star's adoption of a child there.

Madonna is in the process of adopting a Malawian boy, David Banda.

She began adoption proceedings in 2006 after meeting the boy in a local orphanage. The toddler is living with Madonna and her film director husband Guy Ritchie in London.

The adoption has been controversial, with critics accusing the government of skirting laws that ban non-residents from adopting children in Malawi, which has been badly hit by the AIDS epidemic and is one of the poorest in the world.

There are an estimated 1 million orphans in the country, many of whom are infected with the HIV virus. Malawi's government is amending its adoption laws.

Digital-only sequel to Juno soundtrack

Two months after the soundtrack to the pregnant-teen comedy Juno hit No 1 on the US album charts, a second volume is being prepared for digital-only release.

Juno B-Sides: Almost Adopted Songs, a 15-track collection boasting a ditty performed by star Ellen Page, will debut exclusively through iTunes for a suggested list price of $9.99 on April 8, distributor Rhino Records said.

The album will be available through all digital service providers on May 13. There are currently no plans for a physical release.

"None of these songs made the movie, but they are all essential members of the Junoverse," the film's director, Jason Reitman, writes in the liner notes.

Olympia, Washington-based singer/songwriter Kimya Dawson, whose music was prominently featured in the film and the first soundtrack, is back with a pair, including a cover of All I Want Is You, the wistful love tune performed over the film's opening credits.

The man behind that song, children's entertainer Barry Louis Polisar, also returns, as do Scottish band Belle and Sebastian and Buddy Holly.

Page performs Zub Zub, a song written by the film's Oscar-winning screenwriter, Diablo Cody, for a scene that was eventually cut for time. Page's character bemoans her fate with such lines as "he filled me with baby batter, then we ate some orange tic tacs after."

The original Juno soundtrack reached No 1 on the Billboard 200 in January, becoming the first chart-topper in archival specialist Rhino's 30-year history.

Nothing says I Love You like Pressly

Jaime Pressly has corralled a lead role in I Love You, Man, a comedy starring Paul Rudd and Rashida Jones.

Rudd plays a guy whose fiancee (Jones) is calling all her friends to be in the wedding. Realizing he has no friends, he starts to go on man-dates to find a best man; he finds one in Jason Segel. Pressly plays the best friend of the fiancee.

John Hamburg (Along Came Polly) wrote and is directing the DreamWorks project.

Pressly won an Emmy last year for her supporting turn on NBC's My Name Is Earl. She will publish her memoir, It's Not Necessarily Not the Truth, in May.

Agencies

(China Daily 04/03/2008 page18)