until Nov. 14 to submit comments on proposed rules for international adoptions. The deadline has been extended to Dec. 15.

The State Department is the lead agency on the regulations, which are designed to implement an international treaty known as the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption. So far, 48 nations have signed the treaty, which requires countries to create a central authority to supervise foreign adoptions, institute measures to guard against illegal baby selling and ensure that adoption agencies are accredited.

The regulations were proposed in September. The public can submit comments until today, after which the government will consider the regulations further before making them final.

Foreign adoptions by American parents are booming. The State Department processed more than 20,000 immigrant visas for orphans last year, up from 7,377 adecade earlier. Department officials were unable to provide the exact number of visas granted for orphans so far this year.

Adoption agents say adopting from overseas is increasingly popular because doing so at home is often more expensive and time-consuming. Moreover, domestic adoptions involve numerous restrictions, such as a 40-year age limit for prospective adoptive parents and requirements in some states that they be heterosexual and married.

Kevin Kreutner, 33, a marketing specialist from the Bay Area city of Pittsburg, and his wife, Sheila, are adopting a 6-month-old girl from Guatemala, currently in foster care there.

Among the reasons they chose the foreign route, he said, was their worry about the ability of American birth parents to reclaim a child within the first few months of an adoption. But the high