Pop star Madonna is urging her fans to dig deep to raise money to build a girls’ school in Malawi, the home country of her adopted son David.
The singer posted a message on her website saying the project was “very near and dear to my heart”.
She said she felt it was her mission to help “impoverished girls to reach their full potential”.
Madonna and her estranged husband, Guy Ritchie, adopted three-year-old David in 2006.
The adoption was made official in May 2008, just months before Madonna and Ritchie announced the end of their marriage after nearly eight years.
Speaking of the Raising Malawi Academy for Girls appeal, Madonna said: “There are very few girls in Africa in general who are encouraged or allowed to go to secondary school.
“So after spending a lot of time there I realised that one of the ways I could help was to build a girls’ school.”
She added: “Every donation counts towards helping impoverished girls to reach their full potential.”
More than half of the population of Malawi lives below the poverty line, and extreme weather – from drought to floods – puts its food supplies under constant threat.
There is also a high rate of HIV and Aids infection among the 13.9 million-strong population.

The actual announcement about Madonna and Guy Ritchie’s split may be yesterday’s news, but the obsession over the marriage’s demise is anything but—with no less than three mags making it their cover stories this week. And given some of the nastier details being reported, we can certainly understand why.
“She would taunt Guy, saying, ‘I should have married someone like me: strong, hot-blooded, intelligent, ambitious, spiritual,’ ” a source for Guy tells Us Weekly. “Their fights would often get heated. A few times Madonna slapped him or poked him.”
Well, Guy apparently didn’t take very kindly to such comments and is said to have had a few choice words of his own…
“Guy called her old, fat, ugly and wrinkled and said that she was stupid and couldn’t sing,” a friend from the Madonna camp reveals to Us.
Over at OK!, a source close to Guy thinks Madonna has “instructed her team to start a hate campaign” against her soon-to-be ex. (Although it’s probably safe to assume the pop icon had nothing to do with the report in the U.K.’s News of the World about Guy supposedly admitting that sex with her was like “cuddling up to a piece of gristle.”)

Pop singer Madonna is yet to reach a settlement in her divorce from film director husband Guy Ritchie, according to her publicist.
Newspaper reports had suggested the pair had reached a deal over how to share their vast fortune and custody of their children.
But in an e-mail to the Associated Press, Liz Rosenberg said a deal had not been finalised.
Guy Ritchie’s representatives declined to comment on the reports.
The couple, who announced the end of their eight-year marriage last Wednesday, is reportedly worth around £300m, with the majority earned by Madonna.
Guy Ritchie is estimated to bring £20m to the total fortune. They own homes in London, Wiltshire, Los Angeles and New York.
Madonna and Ritchie married in December 2000 at Skibo Castle in the Scottish Highlands and have two sons – seven-year-old Rocco and three-year-old David Banda, who was adopted from Malawi in 2006.
Madonna also has a daughter, 12-year-old Lourdes, from a previous relationship.

Set in South Carolina in 1964, the tale of Lily Owens, a 14-year-old girl who is haunted by the memory of her late mother. To escape her lonely life and troubled relationship with her father, Lily flees with Rosaleen, her caregiver and only friend, to a South Carolina town that holds the secret to her mother’s past. Taken in by the intelligent and independent Boatwright sisters, Lily finds solace in their mesmerizing world of beekeeping, honey and the Black Madonna.
Production Status: In Production/Awaiting Release
Logline: In 1960s South Carolina, a young white girl flees her hometown with her black surrogate mother and is taken in by an eccentric trio of beekeeping sisters who introduce the runaway to their secret world.
Genres: Drama and Adaptation
Running Time:     1 hr. 50 min.
Release Date: October 17th, 2008 (limited)
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for thematic material and some violence.
Distributors: Fox Searchlight Pictures
Production Co.:     Donners Company, Overbrook Entertainment, Dune Entertainment
Studios: Fox Searchlight Pictures
Filming Locations: Wilmington, North Carolina USA
Produced in: United States

Yesterday was a tough one for  Madonna, whose 7 ½-year marriage to Guy Ritchie was  announced to be headed for divorce court. But at last night’s concert in Boston, she kept tight-lipped about the whole ordeal.
The only time she came close to mentioning Ritchie was when she introduced “Miles Away,” when she commented that the song was dedicated to the “emotionally retarded.  You may know a few people like that.  God knows I do.”
Of the song, Madge recently explained, “So many people have to deal with long-distance relationships.  It’s not easy. You have to work hard to make it work.” But apparently it didn’t work.
Still, her fans are standing by her side through it all.  One concertgoer told press, “On the day she announces her divorce from a guy she really did love, all the die-hard fans are here to support her.  [We] love her no matter what.”

Rap star Pharrell Williams has made a surprise appearance with Madonna in a New York date on her world tour.
Williams, who co-produced and sang on Madonna’s Hard Candy album earlier this year, joined her on stage during her final song of the show – Give It 2 Me.
Madonna also continued her recent attacks on Republican vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin.
Playing a screeching note on her guitar, she said: “This is the sound of Sarah Palin thinking.”
After singing an a capella version of her 1989 hit Express Yourself, she told the crowd: “I’d like to express myself to Sarah Palin right now.”
She also threw condoms into the crowd at Madison Square Garden, saying that they promoted safe sex as they had a picture of Mrs Palin on them.
The anti-Republican barbs came a few days after Madonna told another concert audience: “Sarah Palin can’t come to my party. Sarah Palin can’t come to my show. It’s nothing personal.”
Throughout the tour, which started in Cardiff on 23 August, Madonna had stoked political controversy with one video segment which splices an image of Republican presidential nominee John McCain among those of Adolf Hitler, Robert Mugabe and scenes of destruction and starving children.
A spokesman for Mr McCain’s campaign has called Madonna’s actions “outrageous, unacceptable and crudely divisive all at the same time”.

With the initial buzz for his new film “RocknRolla” catapulting him back into the limelight, Guy Ritchie has a lot to be thankful for.  And last night he celebrated his 40th birthday in style, despite the fact that his wife  Madonna wasn’t there for most of it.
The “Snatch” filmmaker looked dapper in a striped oxford button-up shirt and trousers as he made his way into the PunchBowl pub in Mayfair along with Madge and daughter Lourdes Leon.
They hung out with high-profile guests like Sting’s wife Trudie Styler and David Gest up until around 10pm, before Madonna decided to call it a night and took the kids home.
But the party didn’t stop there- Guy continued his birthday antics until well into the morning, finally going home around 4am.  He was photographed making funny faces, and pub patrons sang him a variety of songs before all was said and done.

Madonna couldn’t be at the VMAs last night, so she did the next best thing—dedicated “Like a Virgin” to the pope while in Rome. Take that, purity ring dramz!

• Jessica Simpson was allowed to perform at the Grand Ole Opry Saturday night—she thanked the Opry by showing some serious boobage.

• A new Kanye West album could drop by the end of the year if he deems us all worthy.

• Another Amy Winehouse performance fails to impress fans. What are these people expecting?

• Everyone loves a naked Harry Potter.

• Awesome couldn’t-be-true-
but-it’s-so-much-fun story of the day: Lindsay wants to raise a baby with SamRo; sperm donor to be one of Linds’ ex-boyfriends.

It should come as no surprise that the queen of pop is again courting controversy. The first show of Madonna’s world tour made a foray into U.S. politics with a none-too-subtle dig at U.S. presidential hopeful John McCain Saturday night.
Images of destruction and global warming flashed on to a screen during a video interlude. Those were followed by pictures of Adolf Hitler, Zimbabwe’s authoritarian ruler Robert Mugabe — and McCain.
A later sequence showed slain Beatle John Lennon, climate activist Al Gore, Mahatma Gandhi and finally McCain’s democratic rival, Barack Obama.
Once the interlude was over, Madonna threw herself into a rave-inflected rendition of “Like a Prayer.” She finished off the concert with her thumping “Give it 2 Me” from her new album “Hard Candy.”

If we were a multi-million-selling pop legend like Madonna, we wouldn’t bother learning how to cook, either. We’d have hired help for that kind of stuff!
But Madge’s brother Christopher Ciccone, still riding out his 15 minutes of fame thanks to the publication of his tell-all Madge-slamming book Life With My Sister Madonna, had an awesome time telling Heat magazine how his famous sis is a klutz in the kitchen.
“Unless she’s taken cooking classes recently, the only thing she can make is Rice Krispie cakes,” he said, referring to the European version of Rice Bubbles cereal. “That’s the only thing she knows how to cook!”
Madonna hasn’t been talking to her dob-tastic brother since he published his notorious book, which claims, among many other things, that Guy Ritchie is a tosser.
So it wasn’t without a touch of smug-ness that Christopher said he wasn’t surprised that Madge and Guy’s marriage was rumoured to be on the rocks.
“Could you be married to someone who’s like Margaret Thatcher?” he quipped. Meow!