Madonna, pictured here in her recent Vanity Fair shoot, tells the magazine that the US “inflicting cruelty” Britney Spears.

She says:

• “When you think about the way people treat each other in Africa, about witchcraft and people inflicting cruelty and pain on each other, then come back here and, you know, people taking pictures of people when they’re in their homes, being taken to hospitals, or suffering, and selling them, getting energy from them, that’s a terrible infliction of cruelty. So who’s worse off?”

The one-time Material Girl - 50 this year - recently told a US TV show that we should “go save” Britney Spears.