This morning, M.I.A. tweeted out writer Lynn Hirschberg’s phone number in response to a piece in this weekend’s Times Magazine. The tweet seemed to suggest that M.I.A. wasn’t much of a fan of the piece.

 What was Ms. Hirschberg’s reaction?

 “I find it kind of interesting that she would cast the spotlight on the story in any way, shape or form,” said Ms. Hirschberg. “I can’t say what she thinks of it. But it seems you would want it to go away.”

 What did she think of the tweet?

 “It’s a fairly unethical thing to do, but I don’t think it’s surprising,” she continued. “She’s a provocateur, and provocateurs want to be provocative.”

 She also said that she found it “infuriating and not surprising.”

 Ms. Hirschberg said she wouldn’t change her phone number.

 “The messages have mostly been from people trying to hook up with M.I.A.,” she said. “If she wants to get together with John at Bard next week, I have his number.”

 Some people have already drawn comparisons between the M.I.A piece and Ms. Hirschberg’s famous Vanity Fair takedown of Courtney Love from 1992. Any thoughts on that?

 “I don’t think the pieces have anything to do with each other,” she said. “I think M.I.A. is a completely different animal—she’s closer to Madonna than to Courtney.”

 And wait! Breaking! M.I.A. has tweeted again. This time, she tweeted, “NEWS IS AN OPINION! UNEDITED VERSION OF THE INTERVIEW WILL BE ON neetrecordings THIS MEMORIAL WEEKEND!!!”

 “I have no idea what she’s talking about,” said Ms. Hirschberg.

 The piece is Ms. Hirschberg’s last at The Times Magazine under her current contract. She’s becoming an editor-at-large at W.

 Follow John Koblin via RSS. ||||| Maya’s tirade, typical in the way it moved from the political to the personal and back again, was interrupted by a waiter, who offered her a variety of rolls. She chose the olive bread. Maya’s political fervor stems from her upbringing. Although she was born in London , her family moved back to Sri Lanka when she was 6 months old, to a country torn by fighting between the Tamil Hindu minority and the Sinhalese Buddhist majority. In the ’70s, her father, Arular, helped found the Tamil militant group EROS (Eelam Revolutionary Organization of Students), trained with the P.L.O. in Lebanon and spearheaded a movement to create an independent Tamil state in the north and east of the country. EROS was eventually overwhelmed by a stronger and more vicious militant group, the Tamil Tigers . In their struggle for political control, the Tigers not only went after government troops and Sinhalese civilians but also their own people, including Tamil women and children. “The Tigers ruled the people under them with an iron fist,” Ahilan Kadirgamar at Sri Lanka Democracy Forum told me. “They used mafialike tactics, and they would forcefully recruit child soldiers. Maya’s father was never with the Tigers. He stayed away.”

 In 1983, when she was 8, Maya, her mother and her two siblings moved to London. Her father stayed in Sri Lanka. Throughout her music career, which began in 2004, and especially around the time of the Grammys, Maya has used the spotlight to call attention to Tamil grievances. She named her first album “Arular,” after her father. Even though her father was not a Tiger, she also used tigers on her Web site and her album artwork and she favored tiger-striped clothing. This was not an accident. By the time her first album came out, the Tamil cause was mostly synonymous with the cause of the Tamil Tigers. Maya, committed to the cause, allied herself with the group despite its consistent use of terror tactics, which included systematic massacres of Sinhalese villagers. (In turn, government forces were known to retaliate against Tamil villages and were accused of supporting death squads.)

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 In the press, Maya was labeled a terrorist sympathizer by some; others charged her with being unsophisticated about the politics of Sri Lanka. “People in exile tend to be more nationalistic,” Kadirgamar said. “And Maya took a very simplistic explanation of the problems between Sri Lanka’s Sinhalese government and the Tamils. It’s very unfair when you condemn one side of this conflict. The Tigers were killing people, and the government was killing people. It was a brutal war, and M.I.A. had a role in putting the Tigers on the map. She doesn’t seem to know the complexity of what these groups do.”

 But many of her fans didn’t listen too closely to her lyrics, concentrating instead on the beat, the newness of the sound and her own multiculti, many-layered appeal. She was an instant indie darling (although “Arular” sold only 190,000 copies in the United States ). Her songs were creative and abrasive in an intoxicating way, and it didn’t hurt that Maya was absolutely great looking. She quickly became a style icon: like that of all great pop stars, her anger and spirit of revolution was mitigated by sex.

 “Maya had all the pieces of the puzzle,” Jimmy Iovine, chairman of Interscope Records, told me. “When I met her, I thought, Who wouldn’t want to sign her? Her politics didn’t matter to me. The whole game is about waiting for that moment to move popular culture. Maya can move the needle. I want to go where she’s going to take me.”

 Iovine may have instinctively realized that in fusing style, music and controversy, Maya evoked Madonna . While Madonna has always been more interested in writing melodious, catchy pop songs and less interested in niche hipster credibility than Maya, they share a gift for grand self-invention. Like Madonna, Maya is not a trained musician but instead a brilliant editor, able to pick and choose and bend the talents of others to fit her goals. They share an enormous appetite and a discerning eye for the intertwined worlds of fashion, art and music. “Madonna is the one,” Maya said. “Madonna did amazing songs. She had an amazing sense of style, without a stylist. And she was flawed, and sometimes she admitted it. I’ll fight the fight for Madonna. I think she should send me some chocolates or something to thank me.”

 Yet while Madonna stuck to sex and the Catholic church for her headlines, Maya is compelled by a violent separatist movement and the politics of resistance. Her allegiances have fueled her music and her rhetoric. In January 2009, while the civil war in Sri Lanka was raging, Maya repeatedly referred to the situation as a “genocide.” “I wasn’t trying to be like Bono,” Maya told me. “He’s not from Africa — I’m from there. I’m tired of pop stars who say, ‘Give peace a chance.’ I’d rather say, ‘Give war a chance.’ The whole point of going to the Grammys was to say, ‘Hey, 50,000 people are gonna die next month, and here’s your opportunity to help.’ And no one did.”

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 Her rhetoric rankles Sri Lankan experts and human rights organizations, who are engaged in the difficult task of helping to forge a viable model for national unity after decades of bitter fighting. “Maya is a talented artist,” Kadirgamar told me, echoing the sentiments of others, “but she only made the situation worse. What happened in Sri Lanka was not a genocide. To not be honest about that or the Tigers does more damage than good. When Maya does a polarizing interview, it doesn’t help the cause of justice.”

 Unity holds no allure for Maya — she thrives on conflict, real or imagined. “I kind of want to be an outsider,” she said, eating a truffle-flavored French fry. “I don’t want to make the same music, sing about the same stuff, talk about the same things. If that makes me a terrorist, then I’m a terrorist.”

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 AFTER BUYING THEIR home in Brentwood, Maya and Bronfman, whom she met in New York shortly after the breakup of his band, the Exit, decided to build a recording studio in the house. “It was very grown-up,” Maya recalled when we were in L.A. Bronfman, who is tall, soft-spoken and protective of his fiancée, now works with Global Thermostat, a technology company that is working on ways to remove carbon from the atmosphere, and is a founder of Green Owl, an environmentally conscious record label and sustainable-clothing line. “Everyone got so freaked out when they heard we bought the house,” Maya continued. “When we moved in, we imported all our English friends. Suddenly, everyone was living with us — eight people at once. For the first time, I had something called the comfort of your own house, and it turned into a commune: they all came for two days, and they never left. My producer, Blaqstarr, was living there. And then Cherry, who sings with me, was staying with us. And Rusko, who was also producing, was there all the time. My brother arrived. And in the end, we had three people to a room. We ended up buying a second house for everyone to live in.”

 In August 2009, they started recording Maya’s third album, which will be out in early July but still didn’t have a title when I saw her in March. “We’re one big, horrible family,” Rusko said when I called him in Los Angeles, where he moved permanently, to talk about making the record. Blaqstarr also moved to L.A. “We follow Maya,” he said. “Her studio was like a biodome connected to her house. I lived in the studio. Everybody was hanging out; there was only one kitchen, and we’d all meet up in the kitchen.”

 When Richard Russell, the head of XL Recordings, Maya’s British label, visited the house, he told her it reminded him of how the Rolling Stones recorded the classic album “Exile on Main St.” in a villa in the South of France in the ’70s. “I told Richard I felt so disconnected from the world I had known,” Maya recalled. “And he said, ‘The best music can come out of that.’ It was certainly different. I’d be writing lyrics upstairs, and Blaqstarr would be doodling downstairs, and I’d hear bass lines through the floorboards. I’d get inspired and leave the baby monitor on and go down to the studio. There is almost no cellphone reception at my house, and we couldn’t always find our land lines. It was easy to shut the outside world out. And I was making music for me again.”

 The album (“I’m thinking of naming the record Nano, because nano bombs are the hip thing”) is still dominated by political lyrics, but the music is more melodic. On several tracks, Maya even sings. “I had to try,” Maya said.

 Diplo said, “I made her sing.” He was a producer of her first album as well as “Paper Planes” and was also Maya’s boyfriend for several years. “Maya is a big pop star now, and pop stars sing,” he said. “For me, making this record wasn’t easy. In the past, we were a team. But Maya wanted to show us how much she didn’t need us. In the end, Maya is postmodern: she can’t really make music or art that well, but she’s better than anyone at putting crazy ideas into motion. She knows how to manipulate, how to withhold, how to get what she wants.”

 What Maya wants is nearly impossible to achieve: she wants to balance outrageous political statements with a luxe lifestyle; to be supersuccessful yet remain controversial; for style to merge with substance. “If you want to be huge, you have to give up a lot,” Michelle Jubelirer, Maya’s longtime lawyer, told me. “Maya vacillates between wanting to be huge and maintaining her artistic integrity. That’s her dilemma.”

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 On a crisp, sunny day in mid-April in London, Maya and her publicist, Jennie Boddy, were in a car being driven to the home of a Sri Lankan wedding photographer. Instead of doing standard publicity photos to promote her still nameless album, Maya had the idea of using a photographer she found in the phone book who worked, as many Sri Lankan photographers do, in an almost Bollywood style, by inserting a simple picture, in this case of Maya, into dozens of fantastic, almost surrealistic tableaus. A few days ago, Maya hatched this plan, which like most Maya plans was inventive, artistic and, in an unsettling way, combined the high with the low. “I’ve had my eye on some jewelry from Givenchy forever,” Maya told me, as we inched our way in bumper-to-bumper traffic. “It is millions of dollars’ worth of gold jewelry. To wear it for these pictures, Givenchy had to send a bodyguard. I liked the idea of a photographer shooting me in his council flat in all this gold, knowing that the jewelry requires a bodyguard.” She paused. She was wearing opaque brown stockings, very small, tan leather shorts that laced up the front, high-heeled ankle boots and a fluorescent yellow bra that periodically flashed through a loose, open-knit Phat Farm sweater topped by an oversize dark brown jacket. Maya’s nearly black hair was pulled into a bun on top of her head, her nails were colored in an elaborate checkerboard pattern and she had applied a dark indigo powder to her eyebrows. It was an exotic mix: her body was downtown and her face was uptown. “All of what I’m wearing is American,” Maya said. “If I was a terrorist, I wouldn’t be wearing American clothing.” She paused. This may have been a joke, but Maya rarely laughs. She speaks carefully, slowly, with a kind of deadpan delivery. Like a trained politician, she stays on message. It’s hard to know if she believes everything she says or if she knows that a loud noise will always attract a crowd.

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 Maya had flown to London nearly a month before and was living with Ikhyd at her mother’s apartment an hour outside the city. Initially, she came to see her mom and work on the album art and the first video, for the song “Born Free,” which is, strangely, not the first single. But she needed to renew her U.S. visa, and until her immigration lawyer could resolve the matter, Maya was stuck in London. “I want to be back in New York by May 3,” she said, staring out the window. “I’m invited to the Met Ball, and all my girlfriends say: ‘Oh, the Met Ball! I want to go to the Met Ball!’ ” The annual Met Ball for the Costume Institute is a yearly black-tie gala held at the Metropolitan Museum of Art . It is co-hosted by Anna Wintour , the editor of Vogue. “I’m going with Alexander Wang” — the fashion designer — “and I wanted to wear a dress made out of a torn-up American flag,” Maya added. Wang made a hand-crocheted, gold-metallic dress over a black leather bodice instead.

 Maya has a complicated relationship with America. When she was recording “Kala,” in 2007, her second album (named after her mother), her request for an artist’s visa was initially denied. (Maya maintains it was because of her song lyrics; the State Department is not obliged to give applicants a reason for denying them entry.) She had wanted to make a more classic hip-hop record in Baltimore , where Blaqstarr then lived, or with Timbaland in L.A. but instead, recorded it all over the world. She traveled to Liberia , India , Angola, Trinidad and Jamaica (“where they have the cutest boys”). “Kala” is layered with sounds like tribal beats, dance hall and the lush musical productions of Bollywood. One track, “ Bird Flu ,” combines 30 of India’s top drummers in a crazy rush of rhythm. Maya was finally granted a visa and recorded “Paper Planes” in New York, but came back to England so that two sets of twins from Brixton could sing the backing vocals. She felt this inclusion made a kind of political statement at a time when England was spending millions of pounds on weapons and war. However incoherent the reason, the chorus of “Paper Planes” is contagious. “I never thought the song was political,” Diplo told me. “Mostly, Maya was making fun of American rapper culture. ‘Paper Planes’ was making fun of being what American kids are into, of being ‘gangsta.’ ”

 She also recorded a song, “O Saya,” with A. R. Rahman , a composer and perhaps the most powerful producer in India, that ended up on the “Slumdog Millionaire” soundtrack. “O Saya” was nominated for an Academy Award, and in 2009, she was to perform on the awards show. “It was after Ikhyd was born,” Maya recalled, “and they told me they’d wheel in a bed and let me perform the song in bed.” She paused. She declined their offer when she found out that the televised song would be edited down to a minute. “It was too little time.”

 Maya rolled down her window and pointed. “That church saved my life,” she said, as we drove past a church in East London. “Christ Church! That’s the last time I got to be a high-school dropout: I should have been in school, and a youth worker at the church, who had been in prison, grabbed me and slammed me against the wall one day and said: ‘What is the matter with you? If you stay around here, you’ll end up living in one of these apartments with six babies before you’re 20.’ I used to be hanging about, getting into trouble. He changed my life.”

 After leaving Sri Lanka in 1983, her mother moved Maya and her brother and sister to Phipps Bridge Estate, a housing project, or council flat, in South London. It was rough. “We lived in a notoriously racist area called Mitcham,” Maya said. “It’s where all the skinheads lived. I was shot at for being a Tamil in Sri Lanka, and then, everyone was calling me a Paki in London, and I’m not even Pakistani. My mom sat me down and said, ‘When they call you that, tell them to sod off.’ ”

 When Maya arrived, she knew only two words in English, she says: “Michael” and “Jackson.” She learned English from the radio, television and newspapers. Her mother, Maya claims, got a job as a seamstress, hand-sewing on medals for the royal family. “She worked for the queen for 25 years,” Maya said, as the car finally emerged from traffic. “And now, they’ve taken my mom’s U.S. visa away. A 65-year-old woman is counted as a terrorist, and America supports that.”

 When she was a child, Maya sat under the table while her mother sewed and caught fabric scraps as they fell. “The first thing I made was a bra,” Maya said. “Two circles in pinky red, blue straps.” Her father remained in Sri Lanka (whenever they saw each other, he was introduced to Maya as her uncle, so that the children wouldn’t inadvertently reveal his identity). Maya claims that she has not seen him in years. Diplo told me a different story. “I met her dad in London with her,” he said. “He was very interested in sustainable living and was teaching in London. But he wasn’t a good father.” Whatever the truth is, Maya has gone from trumpeting her father’s revolutionary past in order to claim that lineage to playing down his politics to support a separate narrative. “He was with the Sri Lankan government,” she now maintained, when I saw her in Los Angeles. “He’s been with them for 20 years. They just made up the fact that he is a Tiger so they can talk crap about me.” (Her father could not be reached for comment.)

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 Maya has always been interested in having a political agenda, no matter how murky. In 1993, Maya applied to Central Saint Martin’s College of Art and Design in London; she had decided to become a filmmaker. “I never thought I’d go there,” she says now. “Someone mentioned it to me once — they’re like, ‘Oh, my god, there are so many good-looking people there.’ One day, I was standing outside of it, and I decided I needed to go there. I wanted to make documentaries about people who didn’t have a voice. I wanted to be the messenger.”

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 During her interview for the school, Maya says, she told the admissions officer that if he didn’t accept her application, she would become a prostitute or a crackhead or the best criminal in the world. “I said to him, ‘Don’t make me do it,’ ” she says now, smiling. “ ‘If you don’t let me in, there’s only one option: I become a hooker.’ He said, ‘That is emotional blackmail.’ It might have been, but I couldn’t stand that one person had that much power over my life, that if he said yes or no, it would change everything.”

 He eventually said yes; that in Maya he saw rebellion and that art colleges need rebellion, or at least that’s how she remembers the reaction. For four years, she concentrated on directing movies, but she was not patient enough for the form. “Film is not instant enough for the person I am,” she said. Maya switched to videos (which were faster), and her classmate, Justine Frischmann of the band Elastica, asked her, in 2000, to create the artwork and a video for the band’s second album, “The Menace.” Frischmann and Maya became roommates, and when the two went on vacation to a small island off Saint Vincent in the Caribbean , Maya began tinkering with Frischmann’s Roland MC-505 Groovebox. “I was bored,” Maya recalled. “And I saw the machine. I’m tone deaf and not very musical, but I like dancing, if that counts. I’ve got rhythm. Justine had disappeared for about six hours, and I waited and waited, and I finally thought, I’ll just make something. The second song I made was ‘Galang,’ and I didn’t plan on singing it myself. When we got back, I scouted girls to sing it, and I would tell them, ‘This is how you do it: “Galangalang a lang lang,” ’ and none of them could do it right. So I thought, I need to do it myself.”

 If she was reluctant, her nervousness didn’t last long: “Galang,” original and addictive, became her calling card. In 2003, she put “Galang” and two other songs on a 12-inch record. Diplo, whom she had not yet met, was hosting and working as a D.J. at parties in Philadelphia . He was given “Galang” by an editor from i-D magazine in London. He began playing the song and talking up Maya. “I was D.J.in g at a club called Fabric ,” he told me, “and when she walked in, I was playing ‘Galang.’ This was before she had a major record deal. She met me, and we started a relationship. Maya was into the whole terrorism gimmick at the time. It was all underground back then. In the beginning, she was trying to be different. She understood that no one was doing what she was doing.”

 Even though she had a record out, Maya had never performed. “In 2004, I went onstage for the first time,” she said. “They put a mike in my hand and pushed me out the door into the crowd. I did the three songs I had recorded and got out. It was the worst day of my life.” But it didn’t stop her: she has always been focused. “Maya’s got a lot of hustle,” Richard Russell said admiringly. Russell’s XL Recordings is a small but influential label in Britain that puts out an eclectic mix — Thom Yorke, the White Stripes , Devendra Banhart, Adele, the Horrors. The label’s office is located near Portobello Road in what feels like a cluttered house, the front door nearly undetectable beneath a woodcutlike painting by the artist Stanley Donwood that depicts London being swallowed by a tidal wave.

 “In 2003, Maya turned up here and said, ‘I heard you’ve been looking for me,’ ” Russell told me when I went to see him. “She decided that we were going to put out her music. And since Maya is able to will the universe and is an obvious force of nature, I found myself saying yes.”

 He was impressed by “Galang,” but he was still hesitant. “There was a lot of cynicism about Maya,” he said. “She wasn’t a musician, and she had no basic musical craft. The label’s ethic is music that’s quite serious, and we work with people where music is not a way to become famous. It’s everything they’re about and, with Maya, people couldn’t see beyond the fact that she wasn’t a musician. Now, as much as I respect musicians, nothing takes the place of ingenuity and inspiration and originality. If you’ve got that spark, something to say and you’re determined enough, it might be quite interesting.”

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 When Russell signed her, he imagined Maya as a kind of English answer to American hip-hop. Just as the Beatles and the Stones channeled American R & B, Russell said he felt that Maya would rework the sounds of rap music from the States. “England is good at being mongrel,” Russell said. “Maya is a mixture of black American culture, Sri Lankan culture, art, fashion. We mix it up well here and sell it back. As a country, we’ve always known how to do that. You see that in ‘Galang’: the different ethnicities, the art vibe, the Missy Elliot influence. Maya got it right and added to it.”

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 Until she signed with XL, Maya was working as a clerk in a store called Euphoria. “I was ringing up a sale when Richard called me to tell me he was going to put out my record,” Maya said, as the car pulled up to a housing project in East London. “I told him, ‘You need me!’ and he said, ‘I don’t need you, but I want you.’ ” She smiled. “That was the right answer.”

 RAVI THIAGARAJA, THE Sri Lankan photographer, answered the door of his flat and invited Maya in. Unlike most people, Maya is not tethered to her phone (“I have an iPhone ,” she told me, in her child-of-Godard mix of politics, paranoia and pop. “I like to be very close to the C.I.A. , F.B.I. and Sri Lankan government. I want to be completely reachable at all times”), but she’s never far from her acid yellow Mac laptop, which is inscribed with the M.I.A. logo. Her life is there: song lyrics, ideas for her Web site, the secret video she’s working on, photos of Ikhyd, unfinished artwork and more. As the photographer and his wife ushered us into the living room at the rear of the house, they wished Maya a happy Sri Lankan New Year. “I had no idea it was today,” she said, as she settled into a sofa and clicked open her laptop.

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 “Would you like some rice pudding?” the photographer asked. Maya explained to me that rice pudding is the traditional celebratory food for the Sri Lankan New Year. Maya said no, and the photographer went to get the pictures.

 He handed Maya a disc, and she slid it into her computer. There were dozens of shots, each featuring Maya dripping in gold. She was wearing seven or eight thick gold bracelets on each wrist, heavy earrings and what appeared to be ropes of gold attached at the throat like a tight gold turtleneck. “I wanted to look like an Iranian princess,” Maya said. In the photos, the rest of her outfit was casual: a black hoodie, black T-shirt and black leggings. In each shot, Maya was carefully placed in a scene, like a gold-clad visitor from another planet. In shot after shot, she was perched on different thrones, posing with dancers, encased in a bubble ascending to heaven. Three Mayas were disco-dancing together on a fluorescent Day-Glo floor, two Mayas were facing each other in a heart, multiple Mayas were covered in cascading roses. She was positioned in front of a pyramid, in a pyramid and above a pyramid. In most of the shots, Maya appeared to be a very wealthy deity.

 Although she was pleased, Maya, in her editing mode, wanted more options. “I love the car backdrop,” she said. “Do you have one with a yellow Porsche ?” Maya studied her computer screen. “This could be a possible album cover,” she said. “And I’d love a calendar, if you can make one. Twelve months of these pictures.”

 An hour passed, in which Maya reviewed dozens of other backdrop possibilities. When she’s working, her concentration is total. She rejected a palace shot as being too much like something the Sex Pistols did and nixed a nature scene with a picket fence. It was hard to imagine what the initial photo shoot was like: this flat was so humble and the Givenchy jewelry was so Midas that the contrast, while striking, also seemed a little unkind. And yet, the pictures were fascinating and memorable. Maya’s concept, though somewhat mocking (of both sides), was clever and original. She took an art form that is common in India and added her own flavor to it, which is, more or less, her gift as an artist.

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 “Are you the singer?” somebody said. A neighbor had come to use the photographer’s computer and saw Maya sitting on the couch, studying her photos. “Uh-huh,” Maya said, looking up. The neighbor seemed stunned. “What are you doing here?” he said. Maya smiled. “Why wouldn’t I be here?” she replied.

 THE FOLLOWING NIGHT, at 9 p.m., Maya was at the Alpha Centauri recording studio, sitting in front of a huge soundboard, her computer open on her lap, listening to two versions of “Born Free,” the track that begins her new album. The first “Born Free” was mixed very loud and emphasized the hard drum sample from the band Suicide that anchors the song, while the second version was quieter and more rhythmic, less rock and more rap. “I like the first cut,” said Courcy Magnus, a producer from Philadelphia, who along with his producing partner, Kyle Edwards (who is based in Atlanta ), had flown to London to work with Maya. Although her still-untitled record was, technically, finished, there wasn’t a song that popped out to Interscope, Maya’s American label, as a perfect single. They loved the record, but as Diplo told me, “Albums now are a hit song and 11 other songs that are attached to it.” The goal for Magnus and Edwards was to invent that hit.

 “I need a beat for this song,” Maya said. She played a short bit of music on her computer. It was a scrap of a song — classic and simple, almost pop. “Melody is not something I do,” Maya said. “I’m trying to do things I can’t do.” The producers nodded, eager to please. “Do you want more creative drums?” Edwards asked. “More percussion?” Maya said nothing. She stared for a second. “Jay-Z should have been on this beat, and he would have had an amazing hit,” she said finally. “I felt like I was doing something that belonged to Jay-Z.”

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 The producers played her tracks that didn’t have much to do with what Maya had played them. It was a beginning. “Producers are important,” Iovine had told me. “Every song starts with a beat and a sound and that usually comes from the producer. I run my company through record producers. I started out as a record producer. If I let myself go, that’s where the wind takes me. But the trick is — and Maya is amazing at this — to fuse the style of the producer with the artist. Maya is a great judge of what works: she knows how to get the best from her producers.”

 Each song is invented differently, but generally Maya likes to whittle her songs down from long jam sessions. “We recorded everything live at the house in L.A.,” Rusko, who produced half the album, including the first single, “XXXO” (which he worked on with Blaqstarr), told me. “We’d record 20-minute takes of Maya doing different vocals and 20 minutes of me doing different beats. On ‘XXXO,’ we tried all this stuff before we got the end result. Maya has ideas that can’t be physically done. She wants this sound or that sound — the tracks already exist in her head. In the end, she has a plan for everything.”

 Diplo wasn’t allowed to work at the house (“Her boyfriend really hates me,” he said), so Maya and he recorded “Tell Me Why,” perhaps the closest thing to a pop-radio song on the record, at Red Bull Studios in Santa Monica. “It was my birthday; I was on mushrooms,” he recalled. “It was a special atmosphere: I found the sample” — a patch of music lifted from a song by the Alabama Sacred Harp Singers — “and Maya actually whistled. I did 15 demos for her before she finally chose that track. Even if she hates my guts, she knows that we can do crazy stuff together. The sound on her records is unlike anyone else’s, and we all take that very seriously.”

 In London, the mood was different. Although she ended up working in the studio until 5 in the morning, Maya was concentrating on other aspects of the record — the top secret “Born Free” video was set to go viral in a week; she still had to do the artwork for the album; and she had to decide what to call the album. She didn’t seem particularly interested in creating a hit. “If we do another song, I want it to be something new,” she said. “And right now, my mind is on other things.

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 THE NEXT DAY, we were back in the car, on our way to East London to meet with Hermione de Paula, a design team that Maya wanted to hire to create some clothes for her to wear on tour this summer. “I am so tired of stylists,” Maya said. “They are ruining individual style. If Patti Smith was starting now or Debbie Harry , the stylists would try to dress them, to change them. Their style would be lost.” Maya, who was wearing jeans made out of denim that had been quilted into a tribal pattern and a loose crocheted top in red, wanted the Hermione de Paula girls to incorporate her ideas with their existing designs that she had seen on their Web site. “They have a jumpsuit that I like,” Maya said. “But instead of using their fabric, I want them to use a fabric that’s made from a document I found.” She took out her laptop and clicked on an official-looking typed letter that had been censored. Black bars erased certain words. “I’d like to turn this page into fabric,” she said. “I know someone who can do that. And then I want to take that fabric and make it into a jumpsuit. I’d like to turn censorship into fashion.”

 It doesn’t stop there: Maya would like to build a stage show around the idea of censorship. When a patron enters the club — “We could only do this in small places,” she acknowledged — every move would be limited. If you went to certain areas, alarms would go off and you might be asked to leave. “I want to be like the government,” Maya said. “It could be interesting.”

 The censorship tour is doubtful — Maya is currently booked into large outdoor arenas. She finds performing stressful. In June 2008, she announced at the Bonnaroo festival that her performance there would be her “last gig.” But the record business in 2010 demands touring to ensure record sales, as well as secondary revenue, mainly from T-shirt sales. “Maya has to perform live,” Iovine told me. “That’s the key to success today.” Her tour also gives her an opportunity to spread her antiestablishment/conspiracy-theory message. “I feel like art has a responsibility to make things visually interesting and stimulating,” Maya said now, as we waited, as always, stuck in traffic. “But, at the same time, I like questions. I can’t get a visa right now because of things I’ve said. And that’s wrong. If certain words are banned, then that has to be written up on every box of crayons or paints or on every pen. There needs to be a warning on everything I use to write with that says, ‘Do not write these words, or we will put you in jail.’ ” Maya paused. “And if that’s what America is, then the American people should know that.”

 She paused again. “America also has no sense of humor,” she continued. “There’s this show in England about kids who want to be terrorists. It’s brilliant! The kids are buying Ajax to make bombs and trying to think of new ways to do suicide bombings. It’s really, really cool.” She paused again. “Because I think that’s funny, I’ll probably be called a terrorist.” She sighed.

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 After nearly an hour of driving, we arrived at the designers’ studio. The two women, who were dressed alike in black, loose-fitting tops and platform boots, greeted Maya like a long-lost sister. Their studio was cramped, and two small dogs were happily jumping about near a rack of clothes. Maya’s eye immediately went to the jumpsuit. It was very fitted, with a high Peter Pan collar and cutouts that would reveal flesh on either side of the waist. The girls showed Maya one of their dresses, a slinky column in shades of gray. “No dresses,” she said flatly. “I want to invent an idea for this album, and that idea is based on a uniform. A jumpsuit is like a uniform.”

 Maya seemed to be going for a combination of sexy and militaristic. She showed the girls her fabric ideas on her computer, and they were amenable. “ Nike is the uniform for kids all over the world,” Maya said for no apparent reason. “And African design has been killed by Nike. Africans no longer want to wear their own designs.” The designers said they thought that was terrible. “The best sportswear is on Blackwater operatives,” Maya continued, referring to the agents who were clandestine guns for hire in Iraq . The designers nodded, but they clearly had no idea what she was talking about. “I want to have a uniform like theirs.”

 The oddity of using a garment linked to mercenaries to convey a very different message seemed to elude Maya. As we got ready to leave, she became surprisingly strict with the designers. You are part of my team, she seemed to be saying. And, as part of the team, you must live up to my vision. “I want everything on this album to be a collaboration,” Maya said. The women looked both proud and nervous. They were now recruited.

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 ROMAIN GAVRAS, THE director of the video for “Born Free,” arrived in London from Paris in April with the master version of the nine-minute minifilm. He was late, because of the ash cloud from Iceland that had engulfed Europe and closed down airports. Gavras had taken the train. All week, Maya was unusually secretive about the “Born Free” video — she would mime zipping her lips whenever anyone asked her about it. Although she showed the video to Richard Russell at XL (“People need to decide if they think it’s valid,” he told me when I asked him about it), she hadn’t sent it to Interscope, even though she planned to release the video in America in four days. “The Interscope lawyers will want to send the video to a censorship board,” she said now. Maya was sitting with Gavras, a tall, bearded man dressed completely in dark blue, from his knit ski hat to his jeans, in XL’s conference room. “I didn’t really approve the video,” she said jokingly. “He hijacked my song.”

 Maya met Gavras, who is the son of the politically charged filmmaker Costa-Gavras (his 1969 film “Z,” which won the Academy Award for best foreign film, was a kind of antifascist thriller designed to expose corrupt tactics within the Greek government of the early ’60’s), when she played Paris a few years ago. “He hit on my friend,” Maya recalled. Gavras is willfully notorious: in 2008, his video for the song “Stress,” by the band Justice, depicted a Parisian street gang who steal, destroy tourists’ cameras and beat up innocent bystanders. “For a few months, I was one of the most hated men in France,” Gavras said at the time. “It was fun. It was an amazing free promo,” he continued, adding that in France, “you can only get that much press if you have sex with children.”

 Gavras had asked Maya if he could shoot the video for “Paper Planes” on the Mexican border. “I didn’t understand the lyrics,” he said. “I thought it was about illegal immigration.” Maya was game, but Interscope vetoed his idea. “Interscope won,” Maya said. “I don’t want them to win this time.” She paused. “So, do you want to see it?”

 Unlike, say, her performance at the Grammys, which was a perfect fusion of spectacle (a nine-months-pregnant woman rapping in a see-through dress) with content (Maya’s fervor was linked to the music), the video for “Born Free” feels exploitative and hollow. Seemingly designed to be banned on YouTube , which it was instantly, the video is set in Los Angeles where a vague but apparently American militia forcibly search out red-headed men and one particularly beautiful red-headed child. The gingers, as Maya called them, using British slang, are taken to the desert, where they are beaten and killed. The first to die is the child, who is shot in the head. While “Born Free” is heard in the background throughout, the song is lost in the carnage. As a meditation on prejudice and senseless persecution, the video is, at best, politically naïve.

 “The video was more than fine with me,” Jimmy Iovine told me later that night. Despite Maya’s efforts, he had seen it. “I didn’t even have a blink.” A canny showman, Iovine knew that the video would get attention, that Maya would get her visa (which she did) and that all the noise was good for business. He has a long history of driving record sales with violent imagery: in the 1990s, Interscope was home to Death Row Records, where Snoop Dogg , Dr. Dre and Tupac Shakur made millions rapping about all things gangsta. Iovine also appreciates the outrageous: Interscope’s biggest artist is Lady Gaga , who has melded big-time theatricality with disco-based pop, a kind of love child of Elton John and Madonna.

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 “With our video, we were really copying ‘Telephone,’ ” Maya says now, referring to Gaga’s recent video with Beyoncé . “Both our videos are road movies. We kill people, and they kill people. They start out in a prison, and we start out in a squat, hunting people down.” Maya zipped her lips again. “I can’t talk about Gaga anymore,” she said. “All I’ll say is, it’s upsetting when babies say ga-ga now. It used to be innocent. Now, they’re calling her name.”

 Maya feels that Gaga is not original, that she mostly borrows from the Abba playbook, and she gets annoyed when Gaga is compared to Madonna. “You can’t really say that Gaga is culturally a change,” Maya said. “Madonna was truly unique.” Gavras nodded. “And Madonna was pretty,” he said. “ Pop stars should be pretty.” Maya flipped open her computer. “Do you want to see this amazing parody of ‘Telephone’?” she asked. “It’s brilliant!” Gavras stood behind Maya and watched. “This parody has three million hits,” Maya said. “That’s way more than I’ve ever had.”

 Downstairs at XL in a small recording studio, the producers Magnus and Edwards were working on Maya’s potential hit song, and the XL publicists wanted her to concentrate on her European press. She had finally decided on a title for the record, which was meant to be an artistic rendering of her name. “I need to figure out what to wear for a photo shoot for tomorrow,” Maya said. “I think we should go shopping.”

 Gavras and Maya left XL and headed for Portobello Road, a few blocks away. As Maya pointed out the sights (“ Stella McCartney owns that building”), she sorted through the racks of clothing that dozens of dealers had set up on the street. She didn’t want to go back to the studio. “I’m in the visual part of my brain now,” Maya said, as she held up an outsize yellow sweater. “The musical part of my brain is shut down.”

 While Gavras talked on the phone, Maya walked ahead. She passed a small shop that sold Indian clothing and pottery, most of it cheaply made. There were sparkly shawls and gauze tunics crowding the window. “I used to buy a lot here when I lived in London,” Maya said. She spotted a tiger costume, complete with whiskered hood, hanging next to an orange sari. “Look at that tiger!” Maya said. “I could wear that at the photo shoot tomorrow!” She paused and considered the implications of dressing up as a tiger. “It’s probably too much,” she said finally. “It might seem like I was making a joke.” ||||| Starting in 1996, Alexa Internet has been donating their crawl data to the Internet Archive. Flowing in every day, these data are added to the Wayback Machine after an embargo period.

Summary: – Maya Arulpragasam, aka MIA, must have really hated Lynn Hirschberg's piece about her in New York Times Magazine, because she's just plastered Hischberg's cell phone number on Twitter—pretending it's her own. “CALL ME IF YOU WANNA TALK TO ME ABOUT THE N Y T TRUTH ISSUE, ill b taking calls all day bitches ;),” the radical rapper wrote. Hirschberg seems to be taking it in stride. “It's a fairly unethical thing to do, but I don't think it's surprising. She's a provocateur, and provocateurs want to be provocative,” she told the New York Observer, adding that she doesn't plan to change her number. “The messages have mostly been from people trying to hook up with MIA. If she wants to get together with John at Bard next week, I have his number.”


Summary: – An animal welfare officer in Oregon is getting attention after her body-worn camera captured her rescuing a baby deer. The Eugene Police Department on Thursday made public a video and photo of Officer Shawni McLaughlin freeing a terrified fawn that got stuck in a backyard fence, the AP reports. In the video, McLaughlin wraps the fawn's head in a towel and lifts it from between two narrow fence posts as she gently talks to the deer. The fawn lies on the ground for a few seconds after being freed, apparently not aware it can walk. McLaughlin pets it before it springs up and runs away. An open sore can be seen on the fawn's left hip.


Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Reporting from close to Kobane, Paul Adams says fighting is "raging" on the Syrian side of the border

 Kurdish fighters are engaged in fierce gun battles with Islamic State (IS) in the Syrian border town of Kobane, as US-led coalition air strikes continue.

 In its latest report, the US Central Command said six air strikes had destroyed IS weaponry around Kobane.

 An official inside Kobane said the Kurdish forces were now pushing back the Islamic State fighters.

 Seizing Kobane would give the IS jihadists full control of a long stretch of the Syrian-Turkish border.

 This has been a primary route for foreign fighters getting into Syria, as well as allowing IS to traffic oil it has captured.

 Three weeks of fighting over Kobane has cost the lives of 400 people, and forced more than 160,000 Syrians to flee across the border to Turkey.

 At the scene: Paul Adams, BBC world affairs correspondent

 Image copyright Reuters Image caption Kurdish fighters have been emboldened by the latest coalition air strikes on Kobane

 The images are powerful enough, but the sound is sometimes overwhelming. At times today, it seemed the entire eastern side of Kobane was one vast street battle. It was relentless. Thick clouds of smoke drifted across the town as grenades exploded.

 And all day, another series of massive air strikes; each towering black cloud greeted with delighted cheering by Turkish Kurds who have come to watch, with mounting dread, the assault on their Syrian cousins across the fence.

 In groups large and small, they gather as close to the fence as they can get, shouting chants of defiance and solidarity. They are furious with Turkey for what they believe is Ankara's complicity in the rise of Islamic State.

 'Retreat'

 A senior official in Kobane, Idriss Nassan, told news agencies the IS militants had suffered "their biggest retreat since their entry into the city" and that many had been killed.

 "They are now outside the entrances of the city of Kobane. The shelling and bombardment was very effective and as a result of it, IS has been pushed from many positions."

 Image copyright AFP Image caption Armed men, believed to be Islamic State fighters, are seen in Kobane's streets

 Image copyright AFP Image caption Turkish armed forces patrol the border but have not crossed

 Image copyright EPA Image caption An image showing how close suspected IS militants (background) are to the Turkish forces

 Image copyright Getty Images Image caption More than 160,000 Syrians have fled three weeks of fighting in Kobane

 But he added: "Kobane is still in danger and the air strikes should intensify in order to remove the danger."

 The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights monitoring group also said that IS fighters had withdrawn from several areas they had earlier controlled.

 The BBC's Paul Adams, close to the border, says that at one point a suicide truck bomb driven by a lone jihadi detonated in flames - the Kurds said they managed to blow it up before it reached its target.

 'More savvy'

 US Secretary of State John Kerry said on Wednesday the US was "deeply concerned about the people of Kobane".

 But he said: "Horrific as it is to watch the violence, it is important to keep in mind the US strategic objective" - which, he added, was to deprive IS of command-and-control centres and the infrastructure to carry out attacks.

 Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Turkey's complicated relationship with the Kurds explained

 The chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen Martin Dempsey, told ABC News that IS was becoming "more savvy".

 "We have been striking when we can... They don't fly flags and move around in large convoys the way they did. They don't establish headquarters that are visible or identifiable."

 Pentagon spokesman Rear Adm John Kirby said the battle against IS was "going to be a long, difficult struggle not solved by military power alone" and that it was a reality that "other towns and villages - and perhaps Kobane - will be taken by IS".

 The US Central Command listed the damage done by six coalition air strikes south and south-west of Kobane over Tuesday and Wednesday.

 It said an armoured personnel carrier, four "armed vehicles" and two artillery pieces were destroyed.

 There were three further air strikes on IS in other parts of Syria and five in Iraq.

 Image copyright AFP Image caption Kurds have protested over Turkey's role, including here in Istanbul

 Turkey meanwhile remains under intense pressure to do more to help the Kurdish forces in Kobane.

 At least 19 people have reportedly been killed in Kurdish protests over Turkey's role.

 Kurds are angry that Turkey has prevented fighters crossing the border to fight IS in Kobane.

 Last week Turkey's parliament also authorised military action against the jihadists in Iraq and Syria, but so far no action has been taken.

 What are Turkey's demands and can they be met?

 To set up a buffer zone on the Turkish border inside Syria, enforced by a no-fly zone to ensure security and ease the refugee influx into Turkey - analysts say this is unlikely as it would require warplanes to disable the Syrian government's air defence system. John Kerry said on Wednesday a buffer zone would need "thorough examination"

 Air strikes to target the forces of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad - the US state department insists that air strikes are to remain focused on Islamic State alone

 Turkey's fear of a reignited Kurdish flame ||||| Story highlights A U.S.-led coalition conducts nine airstrikes in Syria; three in Iraq

 ISIS claims to down an Iraqi military helicopter

 Air campaign alone won't defeat ISIS, former British official tells CNN

 U.S. officials: Main goal is to go after leadership and infrastructure, not save cities

 U.S. airstrikes "are not going to save" the key Syrian city of Kobani from being overtaken by ISIS, said Pentagon spokesman Rear Adm. John Kirby.

 "I think we all should be steeling ourselves for that eventuality," he told reporters in a daily briefing Wednesday.

 "We are doing everything we can to halt" ISIS' progress against the town, but airstrikes alone cannot stop the Islamist militants, Kirby added.

 "We've been very honest about the limits of air power here. The ground forces that matter the most are indigenous ground forces, and we don't have a willing, capable, effective partner on the ground inside Syria right now -- it's just a fact," he said.

 The greater U.S. strategy, Kirby said, is to degrade ISIS' ability to sustain itself.

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 Several senior U.S. administration officials said Kobani will soon fall to ISIS, which calls itself the Islamic State.

 They downplayed the importance of it, saying the city is not a major U.S. concern.

 But a look at the city shows why it would mark an important strategic victory for the militants. ISIS would control a complete swath of land between its self-declared capital of Raqqa, Syria, and Turkey -- a stretch of more than 100 kilometers (62 miles).

 As Time.com put it, "If the ISIS militants take control of Kobani, they will have a huge strategic corridor along the Turkish border, linking with the terrorist group's positions in Aleppo to the west and Raqqa to the east."

 Staffan de Mistura, U.N. special envoy for Syria, warned of the horrors ISIS could carry out against the people of Kobani -- horrors it has carried out elsewhere. "The international community needs to defend them," he said. "The international community cannot sustain another city falling under ISIS."

 The terrorist group claimed it had downed at Iraqi army helicopter in Baiji. Photographs posted to an ISIS website show smoke and fire around an aircraft, which is then seen completely charred on the ground.

 A truck bomb driven by ISIS exploded near the center of Kobani. Two civilians and a fighter inside the city described it as huge. The target was a security forces building, they said.

 However, Kurdish official Idriss Nassan told CNN, the truck did not reach its intended target and detonated early.

 Coalition batters ISIS positions with airstrikes

 A U.S.-led coalition has been pounding ISIS positions in the region with airstrikes for a few weeks, conducting nine airstrikes in Syria and three in Iraq on Wednesday.

 In Syria, eight strikes near Kobani destroyed five ISIS armed vehicles, a supply depot, a command and control compound, a logistics compound, and eight occupied barracks, according to a statement from U.S. Central Command.

 "U.S. Central Command continues to monitor the situation in Kobani closely. Indications are that Kurdish militia there continue to control most of the city and are holding out against ISIL," it read.

 Overnight into Thursday, the Australian Air Task Group in the Middle East attacked its first target in Iraq: an ISIS facility.

 A former head of the British Armed Forces doubted the wisdom of coalition airstrikes -- alone.

 "The rules of war are well-written on this, and well-established. I've been saying it, others have been said it," retired Gen. David Richards told CNN's Christiane Amanpour.

 "Wars aren't ever going to be won from the air alone. They're a vital part of success, but don't expect a guy in an airplane to be able to seize and hold terrain," he said.

 At least 45 ISIS fighters have been killed in the strikes, though the number may be much higher, according to the London-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which gets information from sources on the ground.

 The most recent strikes, late Tuesday into Wednesday, included nine in Syria, the U.S. military said. Six were in the Kobani area and destroyed an ISIS armored personnel carrier, four armed vehicles and two artillery pieces, U.S. Central Command said. U.S. and coalition forces also conducted five airstrikes against ISIS in Iraq, the military said.

 The primary goal of the aerial campaign is not to save Syrian cities and towns, the U.S. officials said. Rather, the aim is to go after ISIS' senior leadership, oil refineries and other infrastructure that would curb the terror group's ability to operate -- particularly in Iraq.

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 Saving Iraq is a more strategic goal for several reasons, the officials said. First, the United States has a relationship with the Iraqi government. By contrast, the Obama administration wants Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to step down.

 Another reason: The United States has partners on the ground in Iraq, including Iraqi forces and Kurdish fighters known as Peshmerga.

 According to a senior military official, U.S. military advisers are now working with Iraqi troops at the brigade level, not just in the joint command centers in Irbil and Baghdad. The advisers are not in combat situations, but the move means they are less removed than before, said the source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

 "Our strikes continue alongside our partners. It remains a difficult mission. As I've indicated from the start, this is not something that is going to be solved overnight," President Barack Obama told reporters Wednesday.

 "We're confident that we will be able to continue to make progress in partnership with the Iraqi government, because ultimately it's going to be important for them to be able to, with our help, secure their own country, and to find the kind of political accommodations that are necessary for long-term prosperity," he said.

 Local fighters apparently made some headway Wednesday morning, when some ISIS militants in Kobani were pushed back to the city's perimeter, Kurdish official Idriss Nassan said.

 The battles have been bloody. More than 400 people have been killed in the fight for Kobani since mid-September, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. The opposition group said it has documented the deaths of 219 ISIS jihadists, 163 members of the Kurdish militia and 20 civilians.

 U.S. plan against ISIS: Iraq first, then Syria

 Map: Kobani (Ayn al-Arab) EXPAND IMAGE

 The United States' goal is to first beat back ISIS in Iraq, then eliminate some of its leadership and resources in Syria, the U.S. administration officials said.

 If all goes as planned, by the time officials turn their attention to Syria, some of the Syrian opposition will be trained well enough to tackle ISIS in earnest.

 Washington has been making efforts to arm and train moderate Syrian opposition forces who are locked in a fight against both ISIS and the al-Assad regime.

 Training Syrian rebels could take quite a long time.

 "It could take years, actually," retired Gen. John Allen said last week. "Expectations need to be managed."

 The United States also wants Turkey to do more, the officials said. The administration is urging Turkey to at least fire artillery at ISIS targets across the border.

 But the Turkish reluctance, the officials say, is wrapped up in the complex relationship with their own Kurds and the idea that they don't want to help any of the Kurds in any way.

 CNN iReporter Chelsea Smith sent photos, taken Tuesday night in Istanbul, showing clashes between police and protesters in the predominately Kurdish neighborhood of Tarlabasi.

 While outside the Parliament building in London on Wednesday, Kurdish activists protested for stronger action.

 "We want more airstrikes. We want a clear message. There is a humanity that's threatened and the massacre is about to happen, and we have to act very immediately and prompt, and intensify our attacks on them," said Rebar Hajo, a protester, and member of the Democratic Union Party (PYD) in Syria.

 Hundreds of strikes, millions of dollars

 The United States and its allies have made at least 271 airstrikes in Iraq and 116 in Syria.

 The cost? More than $62 million for just the munitions alone.

 The effect? Negligible, some say, particularly in Iraq.

 One by one, the cities have fallen to ISIS like dominoes: Hit, Albu Aytha, Kubaisya, Saqlawia and Sejal.

 And standing on the western outskirts of Baghdad, ISIS is now within sight.

 "That's DAIISH right over there," said Iraqi Brig. Gen. Ali Abdel Hussain Kazim, using the Arabic acronym for ISIS.

 The militants' proximity to the capital is cause for concern. If the terror group manages to infiltrate and launch attacks in Baghdad or its green zone, the results could be disastrous.

 Kazim said ISIS has not been able to move from eastern Anbar province to Baghdad. But another brigadier general said that's not even the biggest threat.

 The real danger to the Iraqi capital, Brig. Gen. Mohamed al-Askari said, is from ISIS sympathizers in the city.

 "They are a gang," he said. "They deploy among civilians. They disappear into the civilian population and camouflage themselves."

 READ: The group that could help beat ISIS

 READ: How ISIS makes $1 million a day ||||| A UN official warned of pending "humanitarian tragedies" and pleaded desperately with the world to intervene on behalf of Kurds trapped in a Syrian city near the Turkish border, as Islamic State fighters stood on the brink of taking it.

 Kurds from villages throughout northern Syria have fled to Kobani for a final stand as the terrorist group has marauded across huge swaths of land, leaving a trail of death and destruction. With the city under siege for three weeks, the black-clad fighters have begun to raise their flag over neighborhoods and UN Special Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura said the city was about to fall.

 "The world has seen with its own eyes the images of what happens when a city in Syria or in Iraq is overtaken by the terrorist group called ISIS or Da'esh: massacres, humanitarian tragedies, rapes, horrific violence," De Mistura said. "The international community cannot sustain another city falling under ISIS.

 "The world, all of us, will regret deeply if ISIS is able to take over a city which has defended itself with courage but is close to not being able to do so," De Mistura added. "We need to act now."

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 With the fighting taking place with view of the Turkish border, international pressure increased on Ankara to get involved militarily. Turkey has already taken in an estimated 200,000 refugees, and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the coalition air campaign launched last month would not be enough to halt the Islamic State group's advance.

 "Kobani is about to fall," Erdogan told Syrian refugees in the Turkish border town of Gaziantep, according to The Associated Press.

 Erdogan, whose troops are massed near the border but have so far not taken an offensive posture, called for greater cooperation with the Syrian opposition, which is fighting both the extremists and forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar Assad.

 "We asked for three things: one, for a no-fly zone to be created; two, for a secure zone parallel to the region to be declared; and for the moderate opposition in Syria and Iraq to be trained and equipped."

 The capture of Kobani would give ISIS control of a large swath of land bordering Turkey and eliminate a vital pocket of Kurdish resistance. It would also provide a link between the group's territory near the ancient Syrian city of Aleppo and its largest operations base at Raqqa in northeastern Syria.

 The Associated Press reported that warplanes believed to be part of the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State, struck militant positions Tuesday. Journalists on the Turkish side of the border heard the sound of warplanes before two large plumes of smoke billowed just west of Kobani. A Fox News crew on the Turkish side of the border reported only one U.S. airstrike in the previous five days.

 Fighting continued into Tuesday morning on the outskirts of the town. One coordinator with the Kurdish defenders told The New York Times that their defenses benefited from the new round of airstrikes, but they were still outmatched by the more heavily armed militants.

 On Tuesday morning, the AP reported that occasional gunfire could be heard in Kobani, also known by the Arabic name Ayn Arab. A flag of the Kurdish force known as the People's Protection Units, or YPG, was seen flying over a hill in the center of town.

 The Wall Street Journal reported that ISIS fighters had entered the eastern outskirts of the city on Monday after capturing more than 300 surrounding Syrian Kurdish villages in the previous three weeks. The paper also reported that the militants raised their black flag in two separate places, one on top of a civilian apartment building and another on a hilltop near a checkpoint at the city’s eastern entrance. The flag at the checkpoint could be seen by reporters watching from across the border in Turkey.

 The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the Kurds forced the jihadists to withdraw from the eastern part of the town in heavy clashes after midnight Tuesday, adding that five loud explosions were heard in the town as warplanes soared overhead. However, a local Kurdish militia commander estimated to The Journal that ISIS fighters were still a mile from the city center. On Tuesday, Reuters reported that ISIS had also taken over several buildings in the southwest of the city.

 Before the recent fighting began, the city had been a focal point for refugees fleeing Syria's three-years-long civil war. Between 160,000 and 180,000 people are believed to have fled into Turkey since the ISIS advance began. A Kurdish politician told Reuters that more than 2,000 Syrian Kurds, including women and children had been evacuated from the town in the midst of the fighting Monday.

 State Department officials told the Journal that U.S. officials will travel to Turkey later this week to discuss the status of the international coalition. Retired Marine Gen. John Allen, the White House's special envoy in the fight against ISIS, is among those traveling to Turkey.

 Despite U.S. pressure to become a full-fledged member of the coalition, and despite the Turkish parliament passing a law giving the government authority to conduct operations against ISIS in Syria or Iraq, Ankara has largely stayed on the sidelines. Fox News reported Monday that twenty Turkish tanks have been stationed on a hillside overlooking Kobani, ready to strike the city on short notice. However, Turkish authorities have mostly been preoccupied with attempting to control the flow of Kurdish refugees across the border and deal with their protests at the government's inaction.

 Also Tuesday, Turkish media reported that police in Istanbul and at least six other Turkish cities clashed with hundreds of demonstrators. The private Dogan news agency clashes broke out in several Istanbul neighborhoods overnight, as protesters set up barricades, hurled stones, fireworks and firebombs at police and set a bus on fire. One police officer was injured.

 Police used tear gas and water cannon to disperse similar protests in the mostly Kurdish-populated cities of Diyarbakir, Batman, Van, Sirnak, Sanliurfa and Hakkari.

 Fox News' Greg Palkot and The Associated Press contributed to this report. ||||| Kurdish protesters wearing an apron calling for support to save the Syrian town of Kobani from being overrun by Islamic State group fighters during a demonstration outside the Parliament of Cyprus in... (Associated Press)

 ANKARA, Turkey (AP) — Kurdish protesters clashed with police in Turkey leaving at least 14 people dead and scores injured Tuesday as demonstrators in Brussels forced their way into the European Parliament, part of Europe-wide demonstrations against the Islamic State group's advance on a town on the Syrian-Turkish border.

 Turkey's private Dogan news agency reported 8 dead in the eastern city of Diyarbakir and that the other victims died in cities in the east as police used water cannon and tear gas to disperse protesters who burned cars and damaged businesses.

 The activists are demanding more help for the besieged Kurdish forces struggling to hold onto the Syrian town of Kobani. Some European countries are arming the Kurds, and the American-led coalition is carrying out airstrikes against the Islamic extremists, but protesters say it isn't enough.

 A demonstrator in Cyprus urged the coalition to "hit the jihadists harder" so that Kurdish forces can hold the town.

 Tensions are especially high in Turkey, where Kurds have fought a 3-decade-long battle for autonomy and where Syria's violence has taken an especially heavy toll.

 Protests were reported in cities across Turkey on Tuesday, after Islamic State fighters backed by tanks and artillery engaged in heavy street battles with the town's Kurdish defenders.

 Police used water cannons and tear gas to disperse demonstrators in Istanbul and in the desert town of Kucuk Kenderciler, near Kobani on the Turkish side of the border. One person in Istanbul was hospitalized after being hit in the head by a gas canister, Dogan reported.

 Some protesters shouted "Murderer ISIS!" and accused Turkey's government of collaborating with the Islamic militants.

 Authorities declared a curfew in six towns in the southeastern province of Mardin, the Anadolu Agency reported.

 Hundreds of thousands of Kurds live elsewhere in Europe, and mobilized quickly via social networks to stage protests after the advance on Kobani. Some European Kurds have gone to the Mideast recently to join Kurdish forces.

 In Brussels on Tuesday, about 50 protesters smashed a glass door and pushed past police to get into the European Parliament. Once inside, some protesters were received by Parliament President Martin Schulz, who promised to discuss the Kurds' plight with NATO and EU leaders.

 In Germany, home to Western Europe's largest Kurdish population, about 600 people demonstrated in Berlin on Tuesday, according to police. Hundreds demonstrated in other German cities. Austria, too, saw protests.

 Kurds peacefully occupied the Dutch Parliament for several hours Monday night, and met Tuesday with legislators to press for more Dutch action against the insurgents, according to local media.

 The Netherlands has sent six F-16 fighter jets to conduct airstrikes against Islamic State in Iraq, but says it does not see a mandate for striking in Syria.

 France, too, is firing airstrikes on Islamic State positions in Iraq but not in Syria, wary of implications on international efforts against President Bashar Assad.

 "We don't understand why France is acting in Kurdistan in Iraq and not Kurdistan in Syria," said Fidan Unlubayir of the Federation of Kurdish Associations of France.

 Kurds protested overnight at the French Parliament and plan another protest Tuesday.

 Kurds also staged impromptu protests against the Islamic State fighters in Helsinki, Oslo and Stockholm.

 On Monday, protesters at the U.S. Embassy in Cyprus urged the international coalition to provide heavy weaponry to Kurdish fighters and forge a military cooperation pact with the Kurdish group YPG.

 ___

 Angela Charlton reported from Paris. Menelaos Hadjicostis in Nicosia, Raf Casert in Brussels, Geir Moulson in Berlin, Jari Tanner in Tallinn and Mike Corder in The Hague contributed to this report. ||||| A divided House of Commons voted Tuesday in favour of sending Canadian aircraft and personnel to join coalition airstrikes in Iraq against Islamic State of Iraq and Syria targets.

 "We do not take this step lightly. The threat posed by [ISIS] is real," said Prime Minister Stephen Harper in a statement released shortly after the motion passed by 157 votes to 134.

 "If left unchecked this terrorist organization will grow and grow quickly. They have already voiced their local and international terrorist intentions and identified Canada as a potential target."

 Six CF-18 fighter-bombers, two CP-140 surveillance planes, one aerial tanker aircraft and 600 personnel have been tapped to join coalition airstrikes in Iraq for up to six months, pursuant to the motion before the Commons.

 Canadian CF-18s, like the one pictured, will take part in airstrikes in the Middle East. (Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press)

 Harper stressed Canadian troops would not be involved in ground combat against ISIS, also known as ISIL.

 Tories 'plunging Canada into a prolonged war': NDP

 In a written statement released after the vote, Opposition Leader Tom Mulcair accused the government of "plunging Canada into a prolonged war without a credible plan to help victims of ISIL terror," and "opening the door" to getting Canada involved in the "bloody" Syrian civil war.

 Mulcair's New Democrats had proposed an amendment to overhaul the motion entirely and switch the focus to supplying arms to local fighters battling ISIS and increasing humanitarian support.

 That motion was defeated by a vote of 157 to 134, with all but two opposition MPs voting in favour, and the Conservatives voting against.

 Green Party MP Bruce Hyer and Brent Rathgeber, an Independent who used to sit with the Conservatives, voted with the government on both the NDP amendment and the main motion.

 "In response to the Conservatives' ill-defined combat mission, New Democrats laid out a strong alternative action plan that would significantly increase Canada's humanitarian response to this crisis," Mulcair said.

 "The Conservatives voted against smart and responsible measures that would save lives in Iraq right now."

 Moments after the vote, Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau took to Twitter to reaffirm that his party "disagrees with [the government] on how Canada can best help confront threat of ISIL."

 "Tonight we voted against motion to send our Forces to war," he noted.

 "The members of the Canadian Armed Forces who will now go into harm’s way have our full and unwavering support."

 "Now the six months begin," tweeted Liberal foreign affairs critic Marc Garneau.

 Longtime Liberal MP Irwin Cotler abstains from vote

 Liberal MP Irwin Cotler abstained from the vote.

 The longtime MP released a statement explaining that he feels the government motion is unclear on Canada's involvement and did not share enough information for MPs to make an informed choice.

 "In particular — and this is reason enough for me not to support the motion — I am deeply disturbed by the prime minister’s statement that Canada would require the approval of the criminal Assad regime to carry out operations in Syria," he wrote.

 "To allow the perpetrator of war crimes, crimes against humanity, ethnic cleansing and genocide to green-light Canadian intervention is to turn R2P on its head," he said, referring to the doctrine of responsibility to protect, a principle in international law that a country can take action against another to safeguard civilians against mass atrocities.

 Assad, Cotler said, "should be a criminal defendant, not a coalition partner."

 He added that the government "has neither briefed nor consulted with the leaders of the opposition, nor has it shared more fulsome information about the mission that would have helped parliamentarians to make an informed choice."

 There is no requirement for the House of Commons to approve combat missions, but Harper promised this mission would be put up for debate when he first floated the idea of a new military role in Iraq.

Summary: – The world has seen the "massacres, humanitarian tragedies, rapes, horrific violence," and other atrocities that unfold when ISIS seizes a town—and it needs to act now to stop the same happening in the Syrian border city of Kobani, a UN official warns. The UN special envoy for Syria warns that the city that Kurds from around the region have fled to is about to fall and ISIS flags have already gone up over some neighborhoods, Fox reports. "The world, all of us, will regret deeply if ISIS is able to take over a city which has defended itself with courage but is close to not being able to do so," he says. In other developments: Fighting continued around Kobani overnight, with Kurdish fighters assisted by more airstrikes from the US-led coalition, reports the BBC. It's not clear which side currently has the upper hand, although the ISIS advance appears to have been halted. Senior American officials tell CNN that Kobani will probably fall soon, but that isn't a major US concern. The main US goal, they say, isn't saving Syrian cities from ISIS but going after its leadership and resources, especially in Iraq, say the officials, who would like Turkey to do more about the crisis just over its border. In Turkey, at least 14 people were killed and dozens more injured as Kurds protesting the country's failure to act against ISIS clashed with police in several cities, reports the AP. In Hamburg, Germany, more than a dozen people were injured when Kurdish protesters clashed with members of a hard-line Islamist group. The US has a new partner against ISIS: Lawmakers in Canada have voted 157 to 134 to send Canadian aircraft to join strikes against ISIS in Iraq, reports the CBC. "If left unchecked, this terrorist organization will grow and grow quickly," Prime Minister Stephen Harper said in a statement. "They have already voiced their local and international terrorist intentions and identified Canada as a potential target."


In one of the more surprising events of the U.K. chart year, 1980s pop favorite Rick Astley has scored his first U.K. No. 1 in 29 years with the album 50 (BMG). Meanwhile, Drake's “One Dance” (Cash Money/ Republic/Universal), featuring Wizkid & Kyla, tops the singles chart for a remarkable tenth straight week.

 50, which marks Astley's 50th birthday last February, is the singer's first studio album since 2005's Portrait, which reached No. 26. An Ultimate Collection release then hit No. 17 in 2008. In his pop heyday, Astley had hit No. 1 with his first album Whenever You Need Somebody in the wake of chart-topper "Never Gonna Give You Up." The new album won a close sales race with British singer-songwriter Tom Odell's sophomore release Wrong Crowd (Columbia/Sony), finishing 3,700 combined sales ahead, according to the Official Charts Company. Odell's debut set Long Way Down debuted at No. 1 in the U.K. in July 2013.

 A busy week of new entries on the album chart also included a No. 3 start for Paul McCartney's new Pure McCartney collection on Concord. The release of a special edition of the Electric Light Orchestra's All Over The World — The Very Best Of retrospective (Legacy/Epic/Sony) brought it back to the top 75 at a new peak of No. 4. Drake's Views fell 2-5. British soul star Beverley Knight notched a fourth top 10 album (and first since 2007's Music City Soul) with Soulsville, her first for East West/Warner Music. Just beyond the top 10, veteran singer-songwriter Gilbert O'Sullivan came in at No. 11, his highest album ranking since A Stranger In My Own Back Yard reached No. 9 in 1974, with The Essential Collection (USM Media).

 Drake held off a strong challenge from “This Girl” (3 Beat) by Kungs Vs. Cookin' On 3 Burners to record its tenth week at No. 1. The Kungs track had led the way earlier in the sales week, but “One Dance” edged back into the lead and took the honors by a mere 1,773 combined chart sales. It's the first time a song has spent ten weeks at No. 1 in the U.K. since Rihanna's “Umbrella” did it in 2007. Justin Timberlake's “Can't Stop The Feeling” (RCA/Sony) fell 2-3 on the new chart, and “This Is What You Came For” (Columbia/Sony) by Calvin Harris and Rihanna dipped 3-4. Another guest appearance by Rihanna, on Drake's “Too Good,” saw a 6-5 climb. The other new title within the top ten was “Sex” (Spinnin') by Cheat Codes and Kris Kross Amsterdam. ||||| 29 years after achieving record-topping success with his debut record, singer Rick Astley has hit the UK album chart's number one spot.

 The singer's first release in over a decade, 50, won out against some stiff competition to claim the victory with Tom Odell's latest record and a new Paul McCartney compilation falling by the wayside.

 Speaking about the feat, Astley said: "It's amazing, it's incredible. It's been a very, very, very long time."

 Astley's debut album Never Gonna Give You Up reached number one in 1987.

 His closest competitor this time around was Odell whose second record Wrong Crowd was number one at several stages throughout the week.

 The Official Charts Company has since revealed that Odell racked up more digital sales and streams while Astley sold more physical copies - ultimately outselling him by a mere 3,700.

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 Astley continued: "I like Tom Odell. I bought his last album and I'm going to buy this one as well, but I've held off from buying it this week!"

 Paul McCartney compilation, Pure McCartney, entered the charts at number three.

 The singles chart sees Drake match Rihanna's record-breaking ten-week chart reign with "One Dance." Rihanna earned the feat with "Umbrella" in 2007.

Summary: – Looks like fans are never going to give him up or desert him. Almost 30 years after topping the charts with "Never Going to Give You Up"—and almost a decade after "rickrolling" became a hazard of Internet use—Rick Astley has scored another No. 1 in the UK with new album 50, the Independent reports. "It's amazing, it's incredible," says the 50-year-old, who beat singer-songwriter Tom Odell to the top spot. "It's been a very, very, very long time since this happened before, I'm ecstatic, I couldn't be happier." Astley's previous album, 2005's Portrait, never rose higher than No. 26, Billboard notes. (Even the White House rickrolled its followers at one point.)


The Romney campaign stressed Monday that states should take the lead in responding to emergencies like hurricanes. But the campaign said Romney would not abolish the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

 “Gov. Romney believes that states should be in charge of emergency management in responding to storms and other natural disasters in their jurisdictions,” Romney spokesman Ryan Williams said in a statement. “As the first responders, states are in the best position to aid affected individuals and communities, and to direct resources and assistance to where they are needed most. This includes help from the federal government and FEMA.”

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 reset Yard signs as missiles

 (PHOTOS: Hurricane Sandy)

 A campaign official added that Romney would not abolish FEMA.

 The statement came after The Huffington Post highlighted Romney’s comments from a June 2011 CNN primary debate in which Romney said states should take on a bigger role in responding to disasters. “Mitt Romney In GOP Debate: Shut Down Federal Disaster Agency, Send Responsibility To The States,” read the Huffington Post’s headline.

 “FEMA is about to run out of money, and there are some people who say, ‘Do it on a case-by-case basis.’ And there are some people who say, ‘You know what, maybe we’re learning a lesson here that the states should take on more of this role.’ How do you deal with something like that?” debate moderator John King asked Romney during the debate, pointing to the May 2011 tornado that killed more than 150 people in Joplin, Mo.

 “Absolutely. And every time you have an occasion to take something from the federal government and send it back to the states, that’s the right direction. And if you can go even further and send it back to the private sector, that’s even better,” Romney responded.

 “Instead of thinking in the federal budget, ‘What we should cut?’ we should ask ourselves the opposite question, ‘What should we keep?’ We should take all of what we’re doing at the federal level and say, ‘What are the things we’re doing that we don’t have to do?’ And those things we’ve got to stop doing,” Romney continued.

 (PHOTOS: Political plans: Rock me like a hurricane) ||||| Back when he was being “severely conservative,” Mitt Romney suggested that responsibility for disaster relief should be taken from the big, bad federal government and given to the states, or perhaps even privatized. Hurricane Sandy would like to know if he’d care to reconsider.

 The absurd, and dangerous, policy prescription came in a GOP primary debate in June. Moderator John King said he had recently visited communities affected by severe weather and noted that the Federal Emergency Management Agency “is about to run out of money.”

 Eugene Robinson writes a twice-a-week column on politics and culture, contributes to the PostPartisan blog, and hosts a weekly online chat with readers. In a three-decade career at The Post, Robinson has been city hall reporter, city editor, foreign correspondent in Buenos Aires and London, foreign editor, and assistant managing editor in charge of the paper’s Style section. View Archive

 “There are some people . . . who say, you know, maybe we’re learning a lesson here that the states should take on more of this role,” King said. “How do you deal with something like that?”

 Romney replied: “Absolutely. Every time you have an occasion to take something from the federal government and send it back to the states, that’s the right direction. And if you can go further and send it back to the private sector, that’s even better.”

 Romney went on to express the general principle that, given the crushing national debt, “we should take all of what we’re doing at the federal level and say, ‘What are the things we’re doing that we don’t have to do?’ ”

 King gave him a chance to back off: “Including disaster relief, though?”

 Romney didn’t blink. “We cannot afford to do those things without jeopardizing the future for our kids,” he said, adding that “it is simply immoral . . . to rack up larger and larger debts and pass them on to our kids.”

 Now, with an unprecedented and monstrous storm bashing the East Coast, this glib exercise in ideological purity is newly relevant. Was Romney really saying that the federal government should abdicate the task of responding to natural disasters such as the one now taking place? Yes, he was. Did he really mean it? Well, with Romney, that’s always another question.

 As the legendary Watergate source Deep Throat never actually said: “Follow the money.”

 The dishonest “solution” proposed by Romney and running mate Paul Ryan for the federal government’s budget woes relies largely on a shell game: Transfer unfunded liabilities to the states.

 Most disastrously, this is what Romney and Ryan propose for Medicaid, the health-care program for the poor. The GOP plan would give the states block grants that would not begin to cover Medicaid’s rising costs. Governors and legislatures would be forced to impose draconian cuts, with potentially catastrophic impact for millions of Americans.

 Medicaid’s most expensive role — and thus, under Romney, the most imperiled — is to fund nursing-home care for seniors who classify as “poor” only because they have exhausted their life savings. Transferring the onus of Medicaid and other programs to the states would save money only by making it impossible to provide services at current levels.

 For the hard-right ideologues who control the Republican Party, this would be a good thing. Our society has become too dependent on government, they believe, too “entitled” to benefits; we are unwilling to “take personal responsibility and care for” our lives, as Romney said in his secretly recorded “47 percent” speech.

 Romney’s budget proposals would end all this coddling — except for the Pentagon and its contractors, who would get a big boost in federal largess, and of course, the wealthy, who would get a huge tax cut.

 So-called “discretionary” federal spending would be sharply reduced. This would include spending for such agencies as FEMA. So yes, even if Romney was just pandering to the right-wing base at that June debate, one consequence of his policies would be to squeeze funding for federal emergency relief.

 I guess having to survive a few hurricanes, tornados and earthquakes on our own would certainly foster personal responsibility.

 And by the way, why is it that we’re having such a huge hurricane make landfall in such an unusual place at such a late date in the season? Is this another of those freakish once-in-a-century weather events that seem to be happening so often these days?

 I know it’s impossible to definitively blame any one storm on human-induced atmospheric warming. But I’m sorry, these off-the-charts phenomena are becoming awfully commonplace. By the time scientists definitively establish what’s happening, it will be too late.

 As has been noted, the words “climate change” were not spoken during the presidential debates. Hurricane Sandy wants to know why.

 eugenerobinson@washpost.com

Summary: – There's something of a Sandy-related brouhaha swirling around comments Mitt Romney made in the ancient days of 2011: Seems that when asked during a Republican debate about disaster relief, Romney sounded like he wanted to gut FEMA, saying he'd shift responsibility for disaster management to the states—or even private firms. Said Romney: "Every time you have an occasion to take something from the federal government and send it back to the states, that’s the right direction. And if you can go further and send it back to the private sector, that’s even better." Asks Eugene Robinson at the Washington Post: "Hurricane Sandy would like to know if he’d care to reconsider." "Even if Romney was just pandering to the right-wing base at that June debate, one consequence of his policies would be to squeeze funding for federal emergency relief." The New York Times editorial board echoes Robinson, asking, "Does Mr. Romney really believe that financially strapped states would do a better job than a properly functioning federal agency?" The Romney campaign took the opportunity to clarify its position, Politico reports: "States should be in charge of emergency management in responding to storms and other natural disasters in their jurisdictions." But he wouldn't abolish FEMA: The states would act "with help from the federal government and FEMA."