Madonna Takes On the Taliban

Madonna brought her eye-popping MDNA Tour to L.A.'s Staples Center on Wednesday night, where she dedicated a song to Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani child activist shot in the head and neck on Tuesday by a masked member of the Taliban.

Dressed in a leather skirt and black beret, the music icon took a break from the evening's theatrics to tell the sold-out crowd of 18,000 that it was time "to have our serious chat."

"This made me cry," Madonna said. "The 14-year-old schoolgirl who wote a blog about going to school. The Taliban stopped her bus and shot her. Do you realize how sick that is?"

"Support education! Support women!" she shouted, to the crowd's cheers of approval.

Yousafzai, one of the most outspoken and influential advocates for girls' rights to education in the Middle East, remains unconscious in a hospital since the shooting. Pakistani Taliban spokesman Ehsanullah Ehsan said of the assassination attempt, "Let this be a lesson," and pledged that the Taliban would try again to kill her should she survive her injuries.

-- ONTD

Nicholas Kristof also has an account of the Islamist assault on girls' education.

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You know you want Miley

(ONTD)

Pics

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Syria

Ah, the Syria situation is heating up...

_ _ _

MOSCOW — Escalating a confrontation with Russia, Turkey’s prime minister said Thursday that Russian military equipment and ammunition bound for Syria’s Defense Ministry had been confiscated from a Syrian civilian jetliner on a Moscow-to-Damascus flight, which was forced to land in Ankara on suspicion of illicitly carrying war material.

The accusation by the prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, which directly contradicted Russian denials, also further inflamed Turkey’s already difficult relationship with Syria, where a 19-month-old uprising against President Bashar al-Assad has expanded into a civil war that is threatening the stability of the Middle East.

-- ELLEN BARRY, ANNE BARNARD and SEBNEM ARSU at The New York Times

C-SPAN

Tuning into C-SPAN's online streaming of the vice-presidential debate tonight, I am pained to see Susan Swann grown old. But I guess it has been close to twenty years, since I watched C-SPAN more regularly when I returned home fresh from my law school failure.

That sense of my life just wasting away...

The Vice-Presidential Debate

The Vice-Presidential Debate is finished. Biden definitely corrected on Obama's passivity, making a point of calling Ryan out on all disputed points of reality, but Ryan was hardly shaken, and as far as I can see, it is too late. You cannot make up for the opportunity that Obama forfeited in his debate. No big news was made here tonight.

However, I think the remaining presidential debates - I think they have two - might be significant, that people may be interested to see if Obama will put in a different kind of performance and fight, and maybe some independents can be shifted yet. Liberals and Democrats better hope so. I think the Repulicans, with the repackaged Romney, are leading.

Miley

I see Miley is still writing on herself and turning her body into a newspaper.

(ONTD)

Britney Spears Today

God, what time does to us! It's terribly cruel.

(ONTD)