From: mosuniverse.com

Madonna’s been keepin’ a little hidden treasure to release just at the right time… And I guess that time would be tonight! Check out this Akon remix of her current single “Celebration“. I actually LOVE the additional vocals that Akon added to the song… He breathed fresh, new life into this fun and uplifting song while staying true to the “feel” of the original version.

UPDATE: Turns out David Guetta produced this remix!

Click here to check out the remix – it’s amazing!!

Thanks to cnathan for sharing!

BUCHAREST, Romania – Actor Ethan Hawke on Saturday praised Madonna for her boldness in speaking out against discrimination against Gypsies, words that provoked boos from thousands of fans at her concert in Romania.

Hawke, visiting Romania to help promote his mother’s charity supporting education for Gypsy children, placed the pop superstar alongside Bob Marley and John Lennon as part of a tradition of artists speaking out against racism.

“She transcended being a pop star,” he told reporters. “She drew international attention and shone the spotlight on a level of racism and the need for greater education,” Hawke said.

At an August concert in Bucharest on her “Sticky&Sweet” tour, Madonna called for an end to widespread discrimination against Eastern Europe’s Gypsies, also known as Roma. Thousands of fans responded by booing her.

“I don’t have an agenda, Madonna doesn’t have an agenda. We aren’t politicians,” Hawke said.

Hawke, 38, was to speak later Saturday at the Ovidiu Rom charity Halloween ball. He and his mother, Leslie Hawke, the charity’s president, were already dressed in costume: the actor in top hat and tails and his mother in a Japanese-style kimono, black wig and geisha-like makeup.

A pair of Madonna’s Christian Dior shoes with autographed skyscraper gold heels are to be raffled off at the ball, which is to be held in the giant palace of the late dictator Nicolae Ceausescu. Among the other prizes is a gold chain provided by actress Vanessa Redgrave.

Hawke has been coming to Romania to support his mother’s work since 2000, he said.

“I feel I can do something,” he told reporters, “instead of being part of the problem.”

Romania has the largest number of Roma in Europe, numbering officially half a million, but whose population is believed to be as high as 2 million. The European Union’s Fundamental Rights Agency has said Gypsies face “overt discrimination” in housing, health care and education.

Romania, home to the Dracula legend, may have influenced two-time Academy Award nominee Hawke’s latest movie, “Daybreakers,” in which he plays a researcher in the year 2019 facing a plague that has transformed the world’s population into vampires. The movie comes out in 2010.

Prince Vlad the Impaler, the Romanian warlord whose cruelty inspired Bram Stoker’s 1897 novel, “Dracula” has spawned dozens of Hollywood movies about vampires in the Transylvania region.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091031/ap_on_en_ot/eu_romania_ethan_hawke_2

LILONGWE, Malawi — Madonna has left Malawi after a nearly weeklong visit with her family, airport and charity officials said Saturday.

Officials said Madonna flew out of the southern African country on Friday. The 51-year-old celebrity arrived in the impoverished country on Sunday accompanied by her four children — daughters Lourdes and Mercy, and sons Rocco and David. Mercy and David were adopted from Malawi.

While in Malawi, she broke ground for her $15 million Raising Malawi Academy for Girls and visited the orphanage that cared for her son David before she adopted him.

Madonna’s Raising Malawi, a charity founded in 2006 when she first visited the country, helps feed, educate and provide medical care for some of Malawi’s orphans.

Malawi, a nation of 12 million, is one of the poorest countries in the world. About 500,000 children have lost a parent to AIDS.

Source:  http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2009/10/31/entertainment-af-malawi-madonna_7070783.html

Women have the potential to achieve whatever they desire in life, provided they are educated. But we find young girls deprived off even this basic necessacity in underdeveloped countries. On her visit to Malawi, Madonna realized the importance of all the facilities she had enjoyed as a child and the happiness she had derived from it.

On meeting the young girls there, she felt the dire need for a proper institution where these girls could be educated so that they could serve their people and their nation in future. She wanted to give them opportunities; she had the faith that if given a chance they can become successful leaders, doctors, scientists and lawyers in future. She believed in them.

It was this belief in them that she decided to build an Academy for the underprivileged girls in Malawi. The foundation stone for ‘The Raising Malawi Academy for Girls,’ was laid down in a small ceremony attended by her children, including her adopted children, 4 year old David and Mercy aged 3 years. The Academy which will supposedly cost $15m, will take around 2 years to be completed.

She always wanted to do something for the underprivileged girls. In her words, “I realized how much they deserve to be educated and so for me the best thing I could do was to build a school, a unique school that will create future female leaders, scientists, lawyers and doctors. If this school is successful it will be used as a model to replicate it in other countries.”

By this charitable institution, she aims to provide free accommodation, education, food, clothes and all the basic essentials of life, to all the underprivileged children and orphans of Malawi. The school which is on the outskirts of Lilongwe, their capital, will accommodate 500 girls from the 28 districts of southern Africa.

The Head of the institution will be Anjimile Mtila Oponyo, an academician from Malawi.

Her trip included a meeting with President Bingu wa Mutharika, and a visit to the orphanages supported by her.

Source: http://www.beviga.com/1538/madonnas-charity-underprivi/

MPHANDULA, Malawi — Madonna has promised electricity to a village in Malawi, the impoverished southern African country where she runs a charity organization and from which she has adopted two children.

Speaking in Mphandula, some 50 kilometers (30 miles) from Malawi’s capital, Lilongwe, the singer said Thursday: “I know you work in darkness. I will bring you electricity.”

Madonna’s Raising Malawi charity already has donated $500,000 for a child care center in the village that feeds and educates 3,000 orphaned children.

Madonna arrived in Malawi on Sunday accompanied by her four children. On Monday she broke ground for her $15-million Raising Malawi Academy for Girls.

About 500,000 children in this nation of 12 million have lost a parent to AIDS.

Source:  http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hNNReug171QM_2Y8sk1J8__6lt2QD9BKULV82

On Tuesday, along with his mother and siblings Lourdes, Rocco and Mercy, David Ciccone Ritchie made his first return visit to the Malawi orphanage where Madonna found him in 2006.

The high point of the family’s outing at the Home Child Care Center in Mchinji, Malawi: when David, 4, and his adoptive mother approached his original crib.

“It was an emotional moment,” the center’s director, Lucy Chipeta, tells Usmagazine.com, noting that the pop star, 51, wept. “David is too young to understand . . . but for us who remember the sickly tiny little baby of 2006, it was hard to hold back tears, including Madonna.”

“He is so boisterous! I can’t believe he is the same chap of 2006,” orphanage founder Thomson Chipeta told Us.

And Madonna’s celebrity — her Raising Malawi charity has helped fund the orphanage and five others in the country — was not lost on the kids, either.

“You are our god,” one young orphan told her. “Where could we have been without you?”

An onlooker noted that Madonna looked bemused by the comment but “seemed cool with it.”

Next, the uniformed children performed a traditional “warrior dance,” with David eventually gyrating to the beat as he watched alongside Madonna. Later, he and Mercy played with his old friends and he spoke a few words in Chichewa, the language spoken there. (Mercy, on the other hand, can no longer speak Chichewa. “She is pure American now,” an observer said.)

Later this week, Madonna plans to meet with Malawi President Bingu wa Mutharika — and with James Kamebewa, the biological father of Mercy.

“If this young man has a story Madonna wants to hear it. If Mr. Kambewa is the dad, then Madonna won’t shield him from Mercy,” a Raising Malawi source tells Us.

Malawi is one of the southern African countries greatly devastated with HIV/AIDS. At least 14 per cent of the 13.1 million population has HIV, the virus that can lead to AIDS. There are over 2 million orphans, half of them as a direct result of HIV/AIDS.

Source: http://www.usmagazine.com/celebritynews/news/madonna-and-david-20092810

A lot has changed for little David Banda and Mercy James since their days of living in Malawi.

Heading back there this week with their mother Madonna and siblings Lourdes and Rocco, those differences were made even more apparent.

Despite it being a matter of months since Mercy was adopted and left Africa for her new home with the pop star, she has really shot up in height.

And as she and her four-year-old brother David met with relatives in the republic this week there was one other noticeable transition.

As a result of her new English-speaking surroundings, Mercy has forgotten her native tongue.

But she will no doubt follow in the footsteps of David – adopted from the Mchinji orphanage in 2007 – who demonstrated the results of lessons in his original language.

The visit – during which Madonna broke ground at her charity’s new school for girls – included a tour of David’s former home.

And he and his mum were even shown the crib he used to sleep in, which must now seem a distant memory for the young boy.

Lucy Chipeta, a carer from the orphanage, was delighted to see the children. “I am happy to see David look so happy. Madonna’s a very good mother,” she said.

“I think she is more Malawian than American.”

Source:  http://www.hellomagazine.com/music/200910282298/madonna-malawi/david-banda/mercy-james/1/

This week, my family and I are in Malawi to attend the ground breaking ceremony for Raising Malawi Academy for Girls.

I am making a straightforward request.

I’m writing to urge you to join me in saving the lives of some of the world’s most vulnerable children. And I’m asking you to do it right away.
Raising Malawi, the organization I co-founded in 2006, is dedicated to ending the poverty and hardship endured by Malawi’s one million orphans. By donating to Raising Malawi, you can literally transform the future for an entire generation. To encourage your involvement, I’ve pledged $100,000 to match your contributions dollar-for-dollar.

Why Malawi?

Seven years ago I might have asked myself this very same question. Why not Afghanistan, or India? There are impoverished children, desperate for health care and education, everywhere in the world. Something about Malawi’s children connected with me and their hardships were too much for me to ignore. So I started learning more about Malawi, and, little by little, I began working with Malawians to improve their communities.

Visiting Malawi can be a very humbling experience. In the face of such overwhelming challenges, it’s easy to feel helpless. At the same time, it is impossible not to recognize how much we can do to improve the lives of vulnerable children. Right now, I am particularly concerned about Malawian girls whose lives are made even more difficult simply because of their gender.

In 2008 Raising Malawi announced the creation of an all-girls boarding school, the Raising Malawi Academy for Girls. Architects have drawn up plans. We’ve identified a plot of land. And some of Malawi’s poorest girls are eager for the opportunities that a comprehensive secondary education will bring them. But we’re still in need of additional funds to complete this project, and there’s no time to lose.

My own daughters will each have a solid secondary education. They have a family that assures them that they can be anything they want to be, that they are not limited in any way. I believe that the same should be true for girls in every part of the world, regardless of the circumstances of their birth. The girls of Malawi are bright and resourceful. They are eager to learn and grow. When I look at my girls and see them thriving, it is my greatest wish that the girls in Malawi will have the same chance for happiness.

This is where you come in.

Please join me in supporting the work of Raising Malawi. Every dollar we collect will make a huge difference in a child’s life. By matching your donation, dollar for dollar, I will personally ensure that your contribution has an even greater impact. That’s a promise.

This is my call to you: Give an opportunity to a child who would otherwise have none. Support the work of Raising Malawi.

Will you join me?

Please visit http://www.raisingmalawi.org/madonnamatch to contribute and learn more. 

Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/madonna/r … 37190.html