Madonna in Moscow: First reports

The interest in the early reports of Madonna's Moscow concert is not so much that, written virtually as soon as the first notes were heard, the Associated Press had to sort-of hope that everything passes off without incident; not the heavy-handed arrests of ten Orthodox protestors (lucky the Russian police got in some practice during the G8), but rather how much ground Maddy had conceeded to the Church already.

It turns out the change in location - sold on the unlikely "fear of students falling out of windows" - had been to pacify concerns that Vorobyovye Gory was too near two branches of the church; the shift in date - now being claimed to have something to do with the 11th September 2001 attacks - was to avoid a clash with the feast day of John The Baptist.

Even that wasn't enough for Leonid Nikshish of the Union of Orthodox Crusaders:

"As soon as she starts to defile the cross, we will do everything possible to make sure she's kicked out of Russia and not just Russia."

Where else does he intend to kick her out of? All of Europe? The entire planet? The good news is we'll find out, as she did do her bit on the big cross.

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