"Slumdog Millionaire" child star Azharuddin Mohammed Ismail, center, stands amid the remains of his demolished home in Mumbai, India, Thursday. City workers bulldozed the home of Azharuddin Thursday as part of the demolition of dozens of shanties in a Mumbai slum.

MUMBAI — City workers bulldozed the home of a “Slumdog Millionaire” child star Thursday as part of the demolition of dozens of shanties in a Mumbai slum.

Azharuddin Mohammed Ismail was asleep when a police officer woke him up and told him to leave his family’s home, he said. Shortly after that, the shack and about 30 more were destroyed.

“A police officer took a bamboo stick to hit me, and I was frightened,” said 10-year-old Azhar.

Authorities say his family will be given a new home elsewhere.

Eight Oscars and $326 million in box office receipts have so far done little to improve the lives of the film’s two impoverished child stars, Azhar and Rubina Ali — who were plucked from the slum to star in the blockbuster.

They have been showered with gifts and brief bursts of fame, but their day-to-day lives are little changed.

Thursday morning, city workers flanked by policemen arrived as part of a slum demolition drive — common in India’s chaotic cities, where officials struggle to keep crowding under control.

“They didn’t give prior notice. We didn’t even get a chance to take out our belongings,” said Shameem Ismail, Azhar’s mother, who has lived in the shanty town for more than 15 years. She has no legal right to the land.

“I don’t know what I am going to do,” she said, sitting on a bed she had dragged from the wreckage. Next to her was a plastic bag stuffed with belongings.

U.D. Mistry, an official with the city’s Bombay Municipal Corporation, said the razing was part of a “pre-monsoon demolition drive.

He said only illegally built shanties — not homes that were legally owned — were bulldozed.

“They were removed. That is the principle,” he said, adding he was not aware that the child star lived in that slum.

Mistry said residents who have lived in the shanty town for more than 15 years — including Azhar’s family — would be resettled elsewhere in government-built housing. He gave no other details, and such official promises of resettlement often amount to nothing. When slum-dwellers are given housing, it is often in poor-quality buildings on the outskirts of cities and far from jobs.

“Slumdog” filmmakers say they’ve done their best to help the young stars. They set up a trust, called Jai Ho, after the hit song from the film, to ensure the children get proper homes, a good education and a nest egg when they finish high school. They also donated $747,500 to a charity to help slum kids in Mumbai.

Producer Christian Colson has described the trust as substantial, but won’t tell anyone how much it contains — not even the parents — for fear of making the children vulnerable to exploitation.

Susan Boyle's new look

LONDON – The economy is scary, jobs are disappearing and taxes are going up. But Britain is buzzing over something else — Susan Boyle’s new hairdo.

Some say the overnight singing sensation who rocketed to fame after a phenomenal performance on “Britain’s Got Talent” has every right to upgrade her dowdy appearance. Others fear she may lose her authenticity — and her amazing connection with the TV audience — if she goes too far in the image makeover department.

The change is startling. Gone is the fusty woman with graying, frizzy hair and a jowly face who joked on air that she had never been kissed, replaced by a stylish, freshly-coiffed lady in fashionable leather jacket and what looks to be a Burberry scarf. The dark, unkempt eyebrows have been shaped and colored.

Fashion experts say she’s taken years off her looks, but should think twice about making more improvements, particularly if they go beyond styling and involve artificial enhancements.

“She looks 10 years younger,” said Toni Jones, assistant fashion editor at The Sun tabloid newspaper, which featured the new look Boyle on its cover Friday.

“Compared to what she had, it’s a 200 percent improvement. But our readers think this is as far as she should go. We want her to stay one of us.”

Jones said Boyle’s decision to dye her hair brown was causing some consternation among the powers-that-be at “Britain’s Got Talent” by stoking fears that she may no longer seem real.

“It’s got massive implications for her because the people above her want her to look ordinary,” said Jones, who praised Boyle for spending 35 pounds ($51) at a salon near her home in Scotland rather than trekking to London for a 200 pound ($295) cut at a celebrity salon.

Jones said she was amazed at the interest generated by Boyle’s new do and warned the singer against going too far by adding, for example, the hair extensions and fake tans favored by England’s WAGs, as the pampered wives and girlfriends of Britain’s elite professional athletes are known.

Max Clifford, Britain’s most prominent publicist, said the makeover was risky because it could jeopardize the singer’s emotional connection to her audience..

“Keep her as natural as possible for as long as possible,” was his advice. “It’s more about protection than promotion. She’s got the voice. She has to make sure that the person people all around the world fell in love with remains the same.”

The debate has crossed the Atlantic, with Washington Post fashion writer Robin Givhan urging Boyle in print to take advantage of the opportunity to transform her appearance.

“The tale of Susan Boyle will not be complete until the shy spinster blossoms,” Givhan wrote before the makeover. “Those who have been entranced by her story so far should let Boyle’s fairy godmother finish her work.”

But Givhan cautioned that Boyle might be tampering with success: “Boyle would not be mesmerizing if she were not an ugly duckling,” she wrote.

Londoners seem to be split over the new look.

Dean Elliott, a young drama student in London, said Boyle had lost what made her special by altering her appearance.

“Part of the charm was that she wasn’t done up,” he said.

But Helen Gledhill, a London photographer, said she understood Boyle’s decision and would likely have done the same if she was in the same position.

“If I had a bit more money and was exposed, I’d probably have something done too,” said Gledhill.

She said the fact that talent is often less important than looks and sex appeal is a sad commentary on modern society, blaming Madonna for a wholesale change in attitudes.

“Before Madonna, you just had to have talent,” she said. “Now, it’s the whole package.”

The success of the mini-makeover may hinge on how far Boyle progresses on “Britain’s Got Talent.” Judges will decide May 23 whether she gets through to the next round.

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ON THE WEB

Susan Boyle on “Britain’s Got Talent”

Hawking “was being kept in observation” at Addenbrooke’s hospital after being admitted Monday.

“He is comfortable and his family is looking forward to him making a full recovery,” the university said in a statement.

It was not immediately clear whether the scientist’s condition had actually improved or whether the family was merely basing its remarks on hopes for his improvement.

The hospital declined to comment, referring all calls to the university.

Hawking, 67, gained renown for his work on black holes and has remained active despite being diagnosed at age 21 with ALS, (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis), an incurable degenerative disorder also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.

Hawking has been almost entirely paralyzed for years and communicates through an electronic voice synthesizer activated by his fingers.

Hawking has searched for a major goal of physics — a “unified theory” — to solve contradictions between Albert Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity, which explains the laws of gravity that control the motion of large objects like planets, and the Theory of Quantum Mechanics, which deals with subatomic particles.

“A complete, consistent unified theory is only the first step: our goal is a complete understanding of the events around us, and of our own existence,” he wrote in “A Brief History of Time,” his best-selling book published in 1988.

In the sequel “The Universe in a Nutshell,” published in 2001, Hawking looked into concepts such as supergravity and the possibility of a universe with 11 dimensions.

“He is amazingly resilient,” said Andrew Fabian, the head of the Royal Astronomical Society and a professor of astronomy at Cambridge. “He goes around the world — he does more traveling than most of us. … And he just seems unstoppable. It’s truly amazing.”

Hawking did announce last year that he would no longer hold his post as Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, a title that 18th-century physicist Isaac Newton once had. Because the university said Monday that Hawking intended to continue working as Emeritus Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, Fabian said that he thinks Hawking will “carry on and do just the same.”

The chest infection, which Hawking has been fighting for several weeks, had caused him to cancel an appearance at Arizona State University on April 6.

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ON THE WEB

Stephen Hawking: www.hawking.org.uk

In this 2008 file photo, Professor Stephen Hawking of the University of Cambridge, makes remarks at an event marking the 50th anniversary of NASA, at George Washington University in Washington. Hawking has been rushed to a hospital and is seriously ill, Cambridge University said Monday

LONDON — Famed mathematician Stephen Hawking has been rushed to a hospital and is seriously ill, Cambridge University said Monday.

The university said Hawking has been fighting a chest infection for several weeks, and was being treated at Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge, the university city north of London.

“Professor Hawking is very ill,” said Gregory Hayman, the university’s head of communications. “He is undergoing tests. He has been unwell for a couple of weeks.”

Hawking, 67, gained renown for his work on black holes, and has remained active despite being diagnosed at 21 with ALS, (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis), an incurable degenerative disorder also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease.

For some years, Hawking has been almost entirely paralyzed, and he communicates through an electronic voice synthesizer activated by his fingers.

“Professor Hawking is a remarkable colleague. We all hope he will be amongst us again soon,” said Professor Peter Haynes, head of the university’s Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics.

Hawking had canceled an appearance at Arizona State University on April 6 because of his illness.

He announced last year that he would step down from his post as Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, a title once held by the great 18th century physicist Isaac Newton, and the end of this academic year. However, the university said Hawking intended to continue working as Emeritus Lucasian Professor of Mathematics.

Pope Benedict XVI urged survivors to keep up hope in a message delivered on his behalf at the special Good Friday Mass.

The 6.3-magnitude quake — Italy’s worst in three decades, which killed 289 and left some 30,000 homeless — struck Monday at the start of Holy Week, heightening the sense of suffering in this deeply Roman Catholic country.

“This is the time to work together,” the pope said in a message read by his secretary, Monsignor Georg Gaenswein. “Only solidarity will allow us to overcome this painful trial.”

Weeping mourners in the front row bowed their heads, their shoulders shaking as they sobbed. A few ran their fingers on the caskets neatly lined up on the vast military ground in the quake-stricken city of L’Aquila. Others stared out blankly at the sea of flowers.

Firefighters, rangers and other rescue workers stood solemnly, their hands clasped in front of them. At least 10 mourners fainted during the ceremony, according to a doctor at the scene.

Amid the rows of coffins, five small white caskets of the youngest victims rested on those of their parents. On them rested mementos of short lives: a boy’s toy motorcycle and a baby’s powder blue T-shirt with a Tweetie Bird design.

Twenty children and teenagers were among the dead. The youngest victim would have turned 5 months on Easter Sunday.

The Vatican’s secretary of state, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, presided over the Good Friday funeral Mass for about 200 of the dead. Some of the 289 victims had already been buried privately. Two bodies were found in the rubble as officials prepared for the funeral.

Speaking of the upcoming Easter Sunday celebration, Bertone told the mourners: “It will be your Easter, an Easter which will be born once again from the rubble of a people who have suffered so many times in its history.”

An imam briefly took the stage to address the relatives of an unknown number of Muslim victims. He also offered encouragement to all the mourners, who quietly applauded when he finished speaking.

After the service ended, uniformed police officers and rescue workers, some in bright orange uniforms, slowly carried the wooden caskets from the military ground and loaded them into long, silver-colored hearses. Many were going directly to cemeteries for burial.

Premier Silvio Berlusconi and other government officials were among the 10,000 people at the outdoor ceremony beneath Abruzzo’s snowcapped mountains. The funeral was being held outdoors because none of the region’s churches was stable enough for the ceremony.

Berlusconi — who has won praise for his compassionate handling of the crisis — comforted mourners, shaking hands and giving hugs. Berlusconi told one young mourner kneeling before a relative’s casket to “keep your chin up,” according to the news agency ANSA.

“How can one not be moved by so much pain?” Berlusconi said, shortly before departing for L’Aquila for the funeral.

Friday was declared a national day of mourning and many shops across the country were closed during the service.

Volunteers guided grieving relatives to the caskets of their loved ones. Each of the simple varnished wooden coffins, graced with either a cross or a crucifix and with a bouquet of flowers, bore a golden plaque with the name of the deceased, the dates of birth and death.

A woman mourned at a casket draped in soccer jerseys and holding the silver-framed photo of a smiling young man with thick blond hair.

The Vatican granted a special dispensation for the Mass. Good Friday, which marks Jesus’ death by crucifixion, is the only day in the year on which Mass in not normally celebrated in the Roman Catholic Church.

Benedict, who noted that the quake was felt at the Vatican, is to travel to the region sometime after the Easter holiday.

“Today is a ‘Via Crucis’ for each of us,” said Stefania Pezzopane, one of the top officials of this medieval city in central Italy. The “Via Crucis,” or “Way of the Cross,” is the procession held on Good Friday in commemoration of Jesus’ suffering before crucifixion.

The quake struck Monday at 3:32 a.m. while many slept. It reduced entire blocks to piles of rubble. L’Aquila was among the hardest hit, but the quake damaged some 26 towns in the central mountainous region of Abruzzo.

On Thursday, L’Aquila took a halting step toward normalcy as butchers, bakers and other shopkeepers reopened for business and firefighters began entering buildings to grab essential items for the homeless.

Aftershocks, including some strong ones, continued to rattle residents — nearly 18,000 of whom are living in tent camps around the stricken region. An additional 10,000 have been put up in seaside hotels, out of the quake zone, and the Italian railway provided heated sleeping cars at L’Aquila’s main train station, where nearly 700 people spent the night.

Firefighters surveyed for damage as far away as Rome, 60 miles (100 kilometers) west of the quake’s epicenter.

By Ariel David, Vanessa Gera

Apple Corps Ltd. and EMI Music say they will release the new discs Sept. 9 on the same day as the release of a video game, “The Beatles: Rock Band.”

Each of the dozen new CDs will include the original U.K. album art and expanded liner notes.

Apple and EMI will also release “The Beatles in Mono” with the original monaural versions of 10 albums plus some other bits in mono.

Apple and EMI made no mention in their announcement Tuesday about plans for digital distribution.

The Wilmington Group, which brought the publication out of administration three years ago, said both the monthly print edition and the online version would close.

The group said it had invested significant funds in hope of making the 43-year-old publication profitable.

“Unfortunately Press Gazette, along with much of the profession, has suffered from a declining market during these years and its losses have increased,” the group announced on the Press Gazette Web site.

“We have therefore been forced to conclude that the market required to sustain a commercially viable Press Gazette magazine no longer exists,” it said.

The monthly magazine, which had been a weekly until August, had some 2,500 subscribers paying 115 pounds ($171) a year.

Wilmington said it would continue to support the annual British Press Awards.

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ON THE WEB

Press Gazette: www.pressgazette.co.uk

Hughes, who was not married and had no children, hung himself at his home March 16, Alaska State Troopers said. An evolutionary biologist, he spent more than a decade on the faculty of the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Marmian Grimes, the university’s senior public information officer, said he left about a year ago.

Hughes’ older sister, poet Frieda Hughes, issued a statement through the Times of London, expressing her “profound sorrow” and saying that he “had been battling depression for some time.”

Nicholas Hughes was only 9 months old when his parents, Plath and poet Ted Hughes, separated, and still an infant when his mother died in February 1963. A few months earlier, she had written of Nicholas: “You are the one/Solid the spaces lean on, envious/You are the baby in the barn.”

Not widely known when she died, Plath became a cult figure and feminist martyr through the novel “The Bell Jar,” which told of a suicidal young woman, and through the “Ariel” poems she had been working on near the end of her life.

The immediate cause of their breakup was Hughes’ affair with Wevill, and Plath’s fame would long haunt her husband, hounded for years by women who believed he was responsible for her suicide and by a procession of scholars and fans obsessed with the brief, impassioned and tragic marriage between the two poets.

Ted Hughes would relive the tragedy not only through the constant reminders of Plath, but also through the suicide of Wevill, his second wife, who in March 1969 killed herself and their 4-year-old daughter.

Hughes, England’s poet laureate, was reluctant to discuss Plath until near the end of his life when he published the best-selling “Birthday Letters,” a collection of deeply personal poems that came out in 1998. He died of cancer the same year.

A girl enjoys the atmosphere at the St Patrick's Day parade in Belfast, Northern Ireland, Tuesday. Catholic Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin emphasized that the island's 4 million Catholics must pray on St. Patrick's Day for an end to Irish Republican Army dissident attacks that claimed three lives this month in the British territory of Northern Ireland.

DUBLIN — Half a million Irish natives, immigrants and tourists jammed into Dublin’s city center Tuesday to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day, a boisterous national holiday that has been darkened this year by recession and violence.

“To hell with the recession! Let’s dance!” shouted a leprechaun-dressed street entertainer in the vanguard of the parade. The 10-deep crowd roared with laughter at his lewd jig — and, for an earsplitting hour featuring bands from India to Indiana, forgot its troubles.

But Ireland faces its sternest challenges in decades. Unemployment has soared above 10 percent, the government is increasing taxes and cutting spending to combat the worst budget deficit in Europe, and people are worried by rising emigration and renewed bloodshed.

From their pulpits, cardinals and bishops said the island’s 4 million Catholics must reorder their priorities away from finances and toward family and community.

“Today I believe Patrick is calling the Irish to reconsider aspects of the culture and values upon which society has been built in recent years,” Cardinal Sean Brady said in his annual sermon honoring Ireland’s patron saint, who brought Christianity to the pagan Gaels in the 5th century.

“Like Patrick, can we not admit that we have been negligent in relegating God to the sidelines? Where is this preoccupation with personal wealth and success leading us? What has the breakup of family and community done to our happiness?” Brady asked.

He and other church leaders called for communities, in both the Irish Republic and the British territory of Northern Ireland, to isolate the gunmen who are spreading fear and dread. Irish Republican Army splinter groups killed three people this month in Northern Ireland and eight people have been gunned down in Dublin criminal feuds this year.

Catholic Archbishop Diarmuid Martin of Dublin said both parts of Ireland should “send an urgent and unambiguous message that as one community, north and south, without distinction of belief or of political allegiance, we are united against anyone who takes the path of violence.”

But tensions in Northern Ireland forced authorities to cancel the parade in one town, Lurgan. Catholic youths in the town rioted over the weekend after the area’s alleged senior IRA dissident was arrested on suspicion of killing two British soldiers.

Politicians from the Irish Catholic community canceled the parade for fear that the youths might use it to provoke more conflict with police and Protestants.

And in Belfast, several hundred students living beside Queen’s University engaged in drunken street scuffles with police, who donned riot gear to protect themselves from barrages of beer bottles and other alcoholic drink containers.

The trouble — in a tree-lined district of student-rented housing — has been a perennial problem on St. Patrick’s Day. But these clashes involved far greater numbers of students and a greater level of destruction than in previous years, including broken trees, smashed windows, and vandalized telephone booths. Police blocked off both ends of one road after students ransacked a car and tried to set it on fire.

Dublin’s parade — the climax of a six-day festival featuring fireworks, street theater and children’s rides — was entirely peaceful as it attracted an exceptional range of foreigners who, for the day at least, branded themselves Irish.

Children of all colors and accents painted their faces the green, white and orange of the Irish flag, donned Viking horns and leprechaun hats, and pressed shamrock tattoos on their cheeks.

But Dublin Lord Mayor Eibhlin Byrne warned that, as the economy sours, the city of 1.3 million faces a growing risk of racist violence. Many natives resent the 200,000-plus Eastern Europeans, Asians and Africans who settled in Ireland during its Celtic Tiger boom of 1994-2007.

“It’s been a difficult — for some devastating — year. And now more than ever, we need to rebuild our communities and our sense of solidarity,” Byrne said.

The mayor said Ireland’s national holiday posed the question of “what it is to be Irish in the 21st century (and) how we blend our old and new cultures.”

A player of the Gaelic Athletic Association carries the figure of an Irish Wolfhound on his back during the annual St Patrick's Day Parade, as he walks through the streets of Dublin, Tuesday March 17, 2009. The two-hour spectacle will see street theatre troupes, artists, giant puppetry, dancers and marching bands from Ireland and further afield weave across the Irish capital.

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On the Web

Catholic Church history on St. Patrick: www.catholicbishops.ie

St. Patrick’s Festival 2009: www.stpatricksfestival.ie

Winehouse

LONDON – Fresh from a two-month Caribbean vacation, singer Amy Winehouse is due in court for an alleged attack on a fellow guest at a party last year.

The retro-soul singer was charged with assault Thursday for allegedly attacking a fan at an end-of-summer ball in London on Sept. 26, police and the singer’s representative said.

Dancer Sherene Flash had been quoted by tabloid newspapers as saying she was hit in the eye by the 25-year-old “Back to Black” singer after asking to take her picture at the Berkeley Ball, a charity function held in central London’s Berkeley Square.

Spokesman Chris Goodman said Friday that Winehouse went voluntarily to the police station, where she was arrested and charged. She’s been released and is due to appear in court on March 17, police said.

Winehouse’s battles with addiction and frequent run-ins with the law have been highly publicized. She was fined for illegally possessing marijuana in Norway in 2007, and her drug problems have been front page news in Britain, where she was pictured puffing on what appeared to be a crack pipe last year.

She also got a police warning in April of last year after scuffling with two men during a night out on the town in Camden, a young and raucous north London neighborhood known for its music scene — and drug culture.

Winehouse, who has been in and out of rehab, has recently returned from an extended break in the Caribbean island of St. Lucia, reportedly to help her recover her from her fast-living lifestyle.

She recently left party-happy Camden for the more sleepy Hadley Wood area of Enfield, a borough in London’s far north. The alleged assault took place before Winehouse’s vacation and move to quieter quarters.