A Malawian court has ruled that US pop star Madonna has failed in her bid to adopt a second child from the country. “I must decline to grant the application for the adoption of the infant,” judge Esmie Chondo said after a closed-door hearing on Friday.

The judge said that Madonna was not fit to be a mother to three-year-old Mercy James. A spokesman for the multi-millionaire singer furiously denied she was unfit, saying that she had the body of a man half her age.

The spokesman refused to confirm reports that Madonna would now turn to a team of international mercenaries to “liberate” the child from Africa. It is believed that a plan codenamed Operation No Mercy had been put in place in the event of the adoption application being denied. Five Serbian marines, former bodyguards to President Slobodan Milosevic, are said to have been paid $2 million each to take the child to America “dead or alive”, preferably alive.

Madonna’s spokesman also denied reports that she was to cover Duffy’s number one single (You got me begging you for) Mercy, saying that she would not wish to use her fame and money to cash in on the suffering of a child. She said that instead she would simply go and buy one somewhere else.

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