A man sleeps near a poster of "Slumdog Millionaire," posted on a pillar in Mumbai, India. India's movie-mad millions have not yet seen "Slumdog Millionaire," but this Mumbai-based fairy tale, which opens in Mumbai next week, is already the toast of Bollywood. On Sunday, the film won four Golden Globe awards, and became the movie to beat at the Academy Awards.

MUMBAI, India – In a city that worships the movies, people are proudly embracing “Slumdog Millionaire” as the newest addition to the cinematic pantheon — never mind that it hasn’t hit the screens here yet.

The “Slumdog” sweeps at the Golden Globes on Sunday were enough to make an unseen sensation of this Mumbai-based fairy tale of love and riches. It became the talk of Mumbai, where the vast Hindi-language movie industry known as Bollywood is based.

Now, many are predicting blockbuster sales when it opens in India on Jan. 23.

The movie tells the story of Jamal Malik, a poor kid from the slums of Mumbai who becomes the champion of India’s “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” as he searches for his lost love.

“Indian tale catches global fancy,” the Hindustan Times said in a proud headline. “The $lumdog Has Its Day,” said the Times of India.

Despite its setting and partial Hindi-language dialogue, “Slumdog” isn’t true Bollywood. It has a British director, Hollywood backing and a $14 million budget that — while small in the West — is enormous by Indian standards.

“Danny Boyle is a culturally sensitive director and I’m sure it will be a good film, but you cannot describe it as a Bollywood film,” said director Kabir Khan.

But when the movie won four Golden Globes and became the movie to beat at the Oscars, it was immediately adopted.

Shobhaa De, a chronicler of India’s new wealth and changing social mores, watched it on a bootleg DVD — and was entranced.

Mumbai is a city of extremes: wealth and poverty; multiculturalism and ethnic bigotry; gleaming skyscrapers and vast slums. To the country’s poorest, it is spoken of as a financial Shangri-La, and thousands of people arrive every day in search of new jobs and lives.

The movie is Boyle’s “gift to Mumbai,” De wrote in the Times of India. “He has unblinkingly shown us the rather hideous face of this devastated metropolis that still remains the magnet for the rest of India.”

But, she added, Boyle shows “there is still lyricism, tenderness and love under all that grime.”

For many in India, though, the loudest cheers were saved for A.R. Rahman, who won the award for original score. Rahman, who has composed music for more than 130 Indian movies, is a musical institution in Bollywood.

“Rahman has seen huge success in India, but the U.S. is a totally different market,” said Subir Malik, a well-known Indian musician. “For Rahman to win a music award in a language that the critics don’t even understand is fantastic. Now when the movie releases here it’s going to be a sellout.”

Vijay Singh, chief executive officer of Fox STAR Studios India, which is distributing the movie, is hoping for a blockbuster.

“It’s an exceptional film, it has Indian emotion much like a Bollywood film,” Singh said Tuesday, adding that a version dubbed in Hindi will be released for smaller towns and villages.

“The film has been built on the buzz, it built its credibility in the U.S. and then rolled out in the rest of the world.”

Indian poverty is a delicate issue here, particularly when it’s raised by an outsider. While the country has gone through spectacular economic growth over the past decade, about 400 million people are believed to live on less than $1 a day. And while Mumbai has some of the most expensive real estate in the world, more than half the city’s 18 million people live in ramshackle huts packed near train stations or adjoining towering skyscrapers.

But fans believe the movie speaks about hope even as it shows slums where the poverty can be shattering.

“Why run away from things? We have our slums and the world knows about our slums,” Malik said.

Sen. Hillary Clinton and President Bill Clinton dance at the start of the new year on Thursday in Times Square, New York.

NEW YORK — Hundreds of thousands of revelers rang in 2009 from frigid Times Square as the famous Waterford crystal ball dropped, signaling the end of a historic and troubled year that saw the election of the first black U.S. president and the worst economic crisis in decades.

As the clock struck midnight, a ton of confetti rained down while the partygoers hugged and kissed.

Josh Torres and his girlfriend, Sarah Manganello, both 21, screamed and cheered as they watched the ball drop. Manganello had advice for people in the new year: “Learn from what you’ve done and move forward.”

The wind chill made it feel like 1 degree in the area, but that didn’t stop the throngs bundled in fur hats, heavy coats and sleeping bags from attending the event.

Former President Bill Clinton and Sen. Hillary Clinton helped Mayor Michael Bloomberg lower the ball atop 1 Times Square for the 60-second countdown to midnight. Last year, Hillary Clinton was in Iowa campaigning for the presidency, and now she’s expecting to be secretary of state in President-elect Barack Obama’s administration.

Many other New Year’s Eve traditions around the country were in place, but some festivities fell victim to hard times, and those that remained felt somewhat subdued. The nation’s economic troubles made many people less interested in giving 2008 an expensive send-off. Public celebrations were canceled in communities from Louisville, Ky., to Reno, Nev., and promoters in Miami Beach, Fla., reported slower ticket sales than expected for celebrity-studded parties that they say would have sold out in past years.

But New York’s celebration was still going strong. Five minutes before midnight, 1,000 balloons with the words “Joy,” “Hope” and “2009″ were released from rooftops in the area. The Waterford crystal ball — 12 feet in diameter and weighing nearly 12,000 pounds — dropped as the crowd erupted in cheers.

Sam Tenorio and his family drove to New York from Orlando, Fla., so his teenage daughter Brianna could see the Jonas Brothers perform live in Times Square.

“The economy is what it is. It’s going to turn around. You just have to be positive,” Tenorio said. “That’s what we’re doing, otherwise we wouldn’t be here. I think that’s why most people are here tonight: optimism.”

Along with the Jonas Brothers, Lionel Richie and the Pussycat Dolls performed. Dick Clark made several TV appearances from inside a studio, and Ryan Seacrest hosted the event.

Las Vegas casinos put on a midnight fireworks display and daredevil acts, including a 200-foot jump over the refurbished volcano at The Mirage hotel-casino by Robbie Knievel, son of the late Evel Knievel.

Others weren’t so lucky. Windy weather and rough harbor waters caused Baltimore officials to postpone a New Year’s Eve fireworks celebration. In Reno, officials canceled their fireworks show for the first time since 2000.

“With the downturn in the economy, with people getting laid off and with the tightening of budgets all over town, we just didn’t think it was right to spend $20,000 or $30,000 on something that goes up in smoke,” Mayor Bob Cashell said.

Louisville Mayor Jerry Abramson expected to save $33,000 by canceling a New Year’s Eve party he traditionally throws.

Elkhart, Ind., planned a party at its outdoor skating rink, with volunteers leading some games, instead of a $5,000 event with fireworks. The city hadn’t gotten any complaints about the scaled-back celebration, said Arvis Dawson, executive assistant to the mayor.

“I think most people understand,” he said.

Philadelphia planned to celebrate New Year’s Day with its more than century-old Mummers Parade, though it had fallen into jeopardy when city officials withdrew about $400,000 in support.

After weeks of limbo, the Mummers Association successfully raised enough private donations to continue the pageant filled with flamboyantly dressed performers, sometimes described as the city’s Mardi Gras.

Rich Porco, a Mummer for 51 years, said the uncertainty made this “one of the worst years I’ve ever been involved with.”

Instead of preparing for the festivities, “you found yourself thinking more about, ‘Is there going to be a parade?”‘ Porco said. “It was hard.”

In Pasadena, Calif., hundreds of thousands of spectators were expected for the Rose Parade. Organizers said any economic hit they might have suffered was lessened because commitments to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on floats have been in place for at least a year.

“We may or may not feel the effects of the economy this year, but more likely next year,” Tournament of Roses Chief Operating Officer Bill Flinn said. “We do feel one of our jobs is to bring optimism at a time when things are not so good for so many people.”

The Peach Drop, which has been the staple of downtown Atlanta’s New Year Eve since 1989, was expecting almost 100,000 in attendance at Underground Atlanta — an 80,000 dropoff from last year. Some attendees believed the shaky economy played a part in fewer people showing for the event, but they said it wouldn’t deter their spirits.

John Buleey, a building contractor from Dawsonville in north Georgia, expects hard times to come next year. The 39-year-old also said the struggling economy should improve by the year’s end.

“Sure, we’ll go through tough times,” said Buleey, who wore a shiny, gold-colored hat that read “Happy New Year” across the front along with his five family members. “But judging from the past, this country will overcome our financial woes.”

Angela Sytko of New Jersey (right) and T.J. Clark of New York's Brooklyn Borough kiss at the stroke of midnight during New Year's Eve festivities in Times Square in New York.

ROME – Some women in Naples said they won’t make love if their men shoot off dangerous fireworks on New Year’s Eve. “Se Spari, Niente Sesso” (If you shoot, no sex), as the reported group calls itself, claims to have signed up hundreds of women in the Naples area to combat celebrations that injure or maim hundreds each year.

Carolina Staiano, a mother of two, was quoted in La Stampa daily on Wednesday as saying she was inspired to create the group because her father was partially paralyzed in a fireworks accident.

Setting off fireworks, often homemade or illegally imported, remains popular in Italy and especially in Naples, even though accidents are frequent and sometimes deadly.

Staiano said that “there are other ways to celebrate.” And if men don’t get the message, women should “send them to sleep on the couch.”

A visitor steps over the Greenwich Meridian Line at the Royal Observatory. Scientists will mark the end of 2008 by tacking a second onto the clock, ever-so-slightly slowing the arrival of the new year. The addition of the "leap second" has been used sporadically since 1972 to help keep "atomic time" and "earth time" in closer union. Despite this compromise, Greenwich Mean Time, a longstanding internationally agreed measure of time, faces irrelevance as time-keeping technology improves.

AT THE GREENWICH PRIME MERIDIAN, England – Eager to say goodbye to the worst economic year since the Great Depression? You’ll have to wait a second.

That’s because the custodians of time are preparing to tack a “leap second” onto the clock on Wednesday to account for the minute slowing of the Earth’s rotation — meaning champagne toasts and Auld Lang Synes will have to come a second late.

The leap second has been used sporadically at the Royal Observatory at Greenwich since 1972, an adjustment that has kept Greenwich Mean Time the internationally agreed time standard.

Some scientists now say GMT should be replaced by International Atomic Time — computed outside Paris — because new technologies have allowed atomic time to tick away with down-to-the-nanosecond accuracy.

But opponents say atomic time’s very precision poses a problem.

A strict measurement, they say, would change our very notion of time forever, as atomic clocks would one day outpace the familiar cycle of sunrise and sunset.

The time warp wouldn’t be noticeable for generations, but within a millennium, noon — the hour associated with the sun’s highest point in the sky — would occur around 1 o’clock. In tens of thousands of years, the sun would be days behind the human calendar.

That bothers people like Steve Allen, an analyst at the University of California at Santa Cruz’s Lick Observatory.

“I think (our descendants) will curse us less if we choose to keep the clock reading near 12:00 when the sun is highest in the sky,” Allen said.

Atomic time advocates argue that leap seconds are onerous because they’re unpredictable.

Since the exact speed of the Earth’s rotation can’t be plotted out in advance, they’re added as needed. Sometimes, like this year, they’re added on Dec. 31, sometimes they’re inserted at the end of June 30.

Those willy-nilly fixes can trip up time-sensitive software, particularly in Asia, where the extra second is added in the middle of the day.

Critics say everything from satellite navigation to power transmission and cellular communication is vulnerable to problems stemming from programs ignoring the extra second or adding it at different times.

When the extra second is added, the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Boulder, Colorado, which provides the time standard for computers and appliances across the U.S., will probably be busy fixing bugs starting at 5 p.m. Mountain Time, predicted Judah Levine, a physicist at the institute’s Time and Frequency Division.

“There’s always somebody who doesn’t get it right,” Levine said. “It never fails.”

Britons seemed less concerned about the remote prospect of having tea at 3 a.m. than the notion of leaving a France-based body in control of the world’s time.

“I think there’s some kind of historical pride we might feel in Britain about Greenwich being the point around which time is measured,” 50-year-old telecoms executive Stephen Mallinson said as he waited to board a Eurostar train for Paris at London’s St. Pancras Station.

“But in practice, does it make a difference? No.”

At the Royal Observatory, 53-year-old homemaker Susie Holt was adjusting her wristwatch to match the digital display above the meridian. She said it would be a pity if GMT were made obsolete. Her daughter, 15-year-old Kirsty, was more forthright.

“We don’t want the French to control time,” she said. “They might get it wrong or something.”

Meanwhile, Elisa Felicitas Arias, a scientist at the International Bureau of Weights and Measures, which computes atomic time at a facility outside Paris, has been busy lobbying to scrap the leap seconds that have given the 17th century Royal Observatory pride of place.

“GMT is out of date,” she sniffed.

She said she has been garnering considerable support, with the International Telecommunications Union — the arbiter of international time standards — considering a vote on a switch as early as next year, with a 2018 target to implement it.

The U.S., France, Germany, Italy, and Japan were all on board, she said.

But David Rooney, the Royal Observatory’s curator of time, defended leap seconds, saying they give everyone “the best of both worlds.”

The arrangement, he said, allows satellites, physicists, and high-frequency traders to benefit from the accuracy of atomic time while keeping our clocks consistent with the position of the sun in the sky — and with GMT.

The American Astronomical Society is officially neutral on the proposal to switch to atomic time, which is calculated based on readings from more than 200 atomic clocks maintained across the world.

Perhaps predictably, Britain’s Royal Astronomical Society has come out in favor of conserving leap seconds. While spokesman Robert Massey said star-watchers could cope no matter what happened, he urged caution on such an important change.

“It’s not just a matter for the telecommunications industry to tell everybody to get rid of the leap second,” Massey said. “It would be a big cultural change at the very least. Abandoning the connection between time and solar time is really a big shift.”

‘The Birthday Party,’ ‘The French Lieutenant’s Woman’ among playwright’s 32 plays and 22 screenplays

This is a Jan. 17, 2007, file photo of Nobel-winning British playwright Harold Pinter, wearing the French Legion d'honneur that he was awarded by French Prime Minster Dominique de Villepin, at the French Embassy in London.

LONDON – Harold Pinter, praised as the most influential British playwright of his generation and a longtime voice of political protest, has died after a long battle with cancer. He was 78.

Mr. Pinter, whose distinctive contribution to the stage was recognized with the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2005, died on Wednesday, according to his second wife, Lady Antonia Fraser.

“Pinter restored theater to its basic elements: an enclosed space and unpredictable dialogue, where people are at the mercy of each other and pretense crumbles,” the Nobel Academy said when it announced Mr. Pinter’s award. “With a minimum of plot, drama emerges from the power struggle and hide-and-seek of interlocution.”

The Nobel Prize gave Mr. Pinter a global platform which he seized enthusiastically to denounce U.S. President George W. Bush and then-British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

“The invasion of Iraq was a bandit act, an act of blatant state terrorism, demonstrating absolute contempt for the concept of international law,” Mr. Pinter said in his Nobel lecture, which he recorded rather than traveling to Stockholm.

“How many people do you have to kill before you qualify to be described as a mass murderer and a war criminal? One hundred thousand?” he asked, in a hoarse voice.

Weakened by cancer and bandaged from a fall on a slippery pavement, Mr. Pinter seemed a vulnerable old man when he emerged from his London home to speak about the Nobel Award.

Though he had been looking forward to giving a Nobel lecture – “the longest speech I will ever have made” – he first canceled plans to attend the awards, then announced he would skip the lecture as well on his doctor’s advice.

Mr. Pinter wrote 32 plays; one novel, “The Dwarfs,” in 1990; and put his hand to 22 screenplays including “The Quiller Memorandum” (1965) and “The French Lieutenant’s Woman” (1980). He admitted, and said he deeply regretted, voting for Margaret Thatcher in 1979 and Tony Blair in 1997.

Mr. Pinter fulminated against what he saw as the overweening arrogance of American power, and belittled Blair as seeming like a “deluded idiot” in support of Bush’s war in Iraq.

In his Nobel lecture, Mr. Pinter accused the United States of supporting “every right-wing military dictatorship in the world” after World War II.

“The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them,” he said.

The United States, he added, “also has its own bleating little lamb tagging behind it on a lead, the pathetic and supine Great Britain.”

Most prolific between 1957 and 1965, Mr. Pinter relished the juxtaposition of brutality and the banal and turned the conversational pause into an emotional minefield.

His characters’ internal fears and longings, their guilt and difficult sexual drives are set against the neat lives they have constructed in order to try to survive.

Usually enclosed in one room, they organize their lives as a sort of grim game and their actions often contradict their words. Gradually, the layers are peeled back to reveal the characters’ nakedness.

The protection promised by the room usually disappears and the language begins to disintegrate.

Mr. Pinter once said of language, “The speech we hear is an indication of that which we don’t hear. It is a necessary avoidance, a violent, sly, and anguished or mocking smoke screen which keeps the other in its true place. When true silence falls we are left with echo but are nearer nakedness. One way of looking at speech is to say that it is a constant stratagem to cover nakedness.”

Mr. Pinter’s influence was felt in the United States in the plays of Sam Shepard and David Mamet and throughout British literature.

“With his earliest work, he stood alone in British theater up against the bewilderment and incomprehension of critics, the audience and writers too,” British playwright Tom Stoppard said when the Nobel Prize was announced.

“Not only has Harold Pinter written some of the outstanding plays of his time, he has also blown fresh air into the musty attic of conventional English literature, by insisting that everything he does has a public and political dimension,” added British playwright David Hare, who also writes politically charged dramas.

The working-class milieu of plays like “The Birthday Party” and “The Homecoming” reflected Mr. Pinter’s early life as the son of a Jewish tailor from London’s East End. He began his career in the provinces as an actor.

In his first major play, “The Birthday Party” (1958), intruders enter the retreat of Stanley, a young man who is hiding from childhood guilt. He becomes violent, telling them, “You stink of sin, you contaminate womankind.”

And in “The Caretaker,” a manipulative old man threatens the fragile relationship of two brothers while “The Homecoming” explores the hidden rage and confused sexuality of an all-male household by inserting a woman.

In “Silence and Landscape,” Mr. Pinter moved from exploring the dark underbelly of human life to showing the simultaneous levels of fantasy and reality that equally occupy the individual.

In the 1980s, Mr. Pinter’s only stage plays were one-acts: “A Kind of Alaska” (1982), “One for the Road” (1984) and the 20-minute “Mountain Language” (1988).

During the late 1980s, his work became more overtly political; he said he had a responsibility to pursue his role as “a citizen of the world in which I live, (and) insist upon taking responsibility.”

In March 2005 Mr. Pinter announced his retirement as a playwright to concentrate on politics. But he created a radio play, “Voices,” that was broadcast on BBC radio to mark his 75th birthday.

“I have written 29 plays and I think that’s really enough,” Mr. Pinter said . “I think the world has had enough of my plays.”

Mr. Pinter had a son, Daniel, from his marriage to actress Vivien Merchant, which ended in divorce in 1980. That year he married the writer Fraser.

“It was a privilege to live with him for over 33 years. He will never be forgotten,” Fraser said.

MEXICO CITY — It’s another boy for Mexico’s Grammy-winning singer Luis Miguel and his wife, Mexican actress Aracely Arambula.

A news release posted on the singer’s Web site says the healthy, 7.7-pound boy was born Thursday. It did not reveal the baby’s name.

The couple’s first son, Miguel, is 18 months old.

Luis Miguel has sold more than 55 million albums, winning five Grammy and four Latin Grammy awards

During his quarter-century career, he has been linked to a slew of female stars, including singer Mariah Carey and model Daisy Fuentes.

Models strip in near-freezing temperatures to demonstrate outside the city's cultural affairs bureau in Paris on Monday to protest a new municipal order sent in October to stop an age-old practice of tipping those who pose nude. Artists' models have bared their determination and much more in a protest against a new Paris City Hall order that strips them of the tips they receive from painters and sculptors to boost their income.

Paris City Hall wants to strip art school models of the tips they receive from painters and sculptors – and the nude models decided they weren’t going to take that with their clothes on.

About 15 models braved near-freezing temperatures to strip outside the city’s cultural affairs bureau Monday to protest a new municipal order that again bans the age-old practice of tipping those who pose nude. The order affects about 100 people.

City officials say the tips have long been illegal — it’s just that enforcement has lagged – and they pledged to discuss ways of boosting the models’ pay.

“The hourly pay is euro11 ($14.86), or a little bit more than a housekeeper earns,” said Christophe Girard, cultural adviser to Mayor Bertrand Delanoe.

The forebears of today’s models were muses for artists like Picasso, Modigliani, Courbet and Degas. But some students today don’t like having to shell out cash at every session. And Girard said he and the mayor could be blamed for unaccounted-for money changing hands at city-funded arts schools.

Today’s art models in Paris are mostly part-time — and some are artists themselves. Those who work full-time say their body shapes are unique.

Girard himself was an occasional nude model, some 25 years ago at art school.

“It’s always been forbidden, we just didn’t know,” he said of the tips.

———

ON THE WEB

The Guardian: www.guardian.co.uk/france-art-life-models-protest

Paul McCartney

LONDON – Paul McCartney claims that he was the real politicized figure in The Beatles, not John Lennon, according to an interview published Sunday.

McCartney was quoted as saying it was he who first raised concerns over the Vietnam war within the group and advocated their anti-war stance.

Fans have long regarded Lennon, who wrote songs such as “Revolution” and — in later years — “Give Peace a Chance,” as the group’s authentic political voice.

But McCartney claimed that his meeting with philosopher Bertrand Russell in the mid-1960s sparked his own — and eventually Lennon’s — curiosity about world affairs.

Following his talk with Russell, McCartney said he told “the guys, particularly John (Lennon), about this meeting and saying what a bad war this was,” The Sunday Times quoted McCartney as saying in the interview.

The newspaper said McCartney was interviewed in Britain’s Prospect magazine, which is published on Wednesday. McCartney’s publicist Stuart Bell was not immediately available to confirm the comments.

According to the newspaper, McCartney said he believes his stance has inspired the work against African poverty carried out in recent years by Bob Geldof and U2′s Bono.

SANTIAGO, Chile — Chileans have a new hero: an apparently homeless dog who’s gone missing.

A surveillance camera on a Santiago freeway captured images of a dog trotting past speeding cars to pull the body of another dog, mortally struck by a vehicle, away from traffic, to the median strip.

The scene was broadcast by Chilean television stations and then posted on Web sites such as YouTube.com, and hundreds of thousands of people had viewed versions of it by Monday.

Highway crews removed both the dead and live dogs from the median strip of the Vespucio Norte Highway shortly after the Dec. 4 incident, and the rescuer dog ran away.

Authorities say images of the rescue prompted some people to call and offer to adopt the dog, but neither highway workers nor a television crew could find they animal when they went to hunt for it.

DUBLIN, Ireland – Dutch brewing giant Heineken NV announced Thursday it is closing one of Ireland’s oldest breweries, Beamish & Crawford in the city of Cork, just weeks after taking control of the operation.

Heineken said the brewery — best known for making Beamish, one of Ireland’s three brands of dark-brown stout — would close in March with the loss of 120 jobs, about three-fifths of the work force.

The rest would transfer to the Cork brewery that Heineken has owned since 1983 — and where it already makes Cork’s rival stout, Murphy’s.

Gerrit van Loo, managing director of Heineken Ireland, called it “the most difficult decision we have ever had to make.” He pledged that the Beamish brand would survive and be produced alongside Murphy’s, which can be a bit creamier and sweeter than the sharper-edged Beamish.

“Retaining two breweries is not sustainable and the loss of so many jobs remains a sad but unavoidable outcome,” he said.

Heineken gained control of the Beamish brewery only in October after a six-month investigation by Ireland’s Competition Authority ruled — to the disgust and disbelief of many Irishmen — that it wouldn’t be a conflict of interest for Heineken to produce both stouts.

Business and political leaders warned that the takeover would mean the death-knell of the 210-year-old brewery. Few expected the announcement so soon.

“It is vital that investment in the Beamish brands, particularly Beamish stout, continues and that the brand is developed to its full potential,” said Cork lawmaker Ciaran Lynch. “The worst possible outcome would be the loss not just of jobs, but of an internationally renowned brand which is of significant value to the economy.”

Another legislator, Deirdre Clune, called it “a dreadful day” for the brewery workers as well as Ireland’s heritage. She called on Heineken to spell out what it will do to the brewery, a Cork landmark beside the city’s medieval South Gate.

Both Cork brands have long struggled for market share against Ireland’s Goliath of stouts, Dublin-based Guinness, which is owned by British drinks company Diageo. Together the Cork stouts account for fewer than one in 10 pints of “the black stuff” sold in Ireland.

But the brewing industry in Ireland as a whole is feeling pressure from increased competition in Eastern Europe and Asia, and stout in particular is shunned by Ireland’s trendy young drinkers, who tend to favor lighter lagers and vodka-based drinks. Earlier this year Diageo announced it will close two of its four breweries and cut back operations at its 249-year-old Guinness brewery in Dublin, in favor of a future state-of-the-art brewery to be built on the capital’s outskirts.

Heineken won ownership of Beamish’s brands and brewery as part of a much larger joint takeover, with Danish brewers Carlsberg, of British brewers Scottish & Newcastle.

Britain's Prince Philip reacts to a blast from the ship's fog horn, as he is driven away following a visit to the liner Queen Elizabeth 2, in Southampton, England, Tuesday Nov. 11, 2008. The ship is in Southampton for the last time before departing on its final voyage to Dubai, where it will become a floating hotel.

LONDON – Britain’s most famous cruise ship, the Queen Elizabeth 2, sailed out into the English channel Tuesday in its last voyage.

Thousands of people gathered at the port in Southampton on England’s south coast to wave goodbye to the 70,000-ton ship as it sailed to a new life as a luxury hotel in Dubai.

Fireworks lit up the night sky and dozens of smaller boats bobbed in the water as the ship sailed away with its 2,700 customers and crew.

But the departure was less dignified than it should have been — on a windy morning, the liner ran aground on sand banks by the nearby island of the Isle of Wight and had to be refloated with the help of five tug boats and a favorable evening tide.

Captain Ian McNaught described the ship as “a symbol of British excellence for 40 years.”

Queen Elizabeth II launched the QE2 in 1967 and since then it has traveled around 6 million miles (9.6 million kilometers), making more than 800 trans-Atlantic crossings and carrying 2.5 million passengers.

In 1982, it was requisitioned as a troop carrier for the Falklands War that Britain fought against Argentina.

Last year, its owner Cunard said it was selling the QE2 to the Dubai World Company for 50 million pounds (then $100 million). The company, which manages projects for the government in Dubai, plans turn it into a floating hotel and tourist attraction.

The Queen Elizabeth 2

LONDON – Madonna and filmmaker Guy Ritchie will end their marriage after nearly eight years, the couple said in a joint statement Wednesday.

The couple asked the media to “maintain respect for their family at this difficult time,” said the statement, e-mailed to The Associated Press by Liz Rosenberg, Madonna’s publicist.

A financial settlement has not been agreed by the wealthy couple, who must also decide child custody issues.

In London, Ritchie’s mother, Lady Amber Leighton, told reporters that the family wouldn’t be making any statement.

Madonna and Ritchie, director of “Snatch” and “Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels,” married in December 2000 at a Scottish castle. The couple have two children: Rocco, 8, and David Banda, 3, who was adopted from Malawi in 2006. Madonna also has a 12-year-old daughter, Lourdes, from her relationship with personal trainer Carlos Leon.

The couple are reportedly worth some $525 million, the bulk of that belonging to Madonna. Ritchie has an estimated $35 million fortune. They own homes in London, Los Angeles and New York, and a 1,200-acre retreat in Wiltshire, England.

Madonna is to perform concerts Wednesday and Thursday in Boston as her “Sticky and Sweet” tour continues. Ritchie’s latest movie, “RocknRolla,” recently opened to mixed reviews.

Lawyers said the couple would likely try to come to an agreement before heading to court.

“The judgment of the court would be to try and assess what they came in with and divide what they built up fairly equally,” said David Allison, a lawyer with Family Law in Partnership, a London firm.

Ritchie’s career has faltered during the marriage, while Madonna’s songs, videos and concerts remain popular worldwide.

The needs of the couple’s children will also be factored by the court, as they were in Britain’s latest high-profile celebrity divorce, the battle between former Beatle Paul McCartney and model Heather Mills. In that case, McCartney and Mills fought over money and custody of their young daughter.

Mills received 24.3 million pounds in the divorce after four years of marriage.

“The needs of children figure quite highly, and that was one of the reasons Heather Mills got a gigantic amount of money, despite the fact that the bulk of Sir Paul’s money was made before the marriage,” Allison said.

The Sun newspaper splashed the split across its front page Wednesday under the headline: “We’re Divorcing.” It was the second time this year that the superstar couple’s marriage has come under the media microscope. Over the summer, Madonna was linked — unfairly, she said — to the breakup of New York Yankee Alex Rodriguez and his ex-wife Cynthia.

Madonna was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame last year.

LONDON – Ringo Starr doesn’t want to hear from you.

If you do write, your letter will end up in the trash.

That’s the message from Richard Starkey, aka Ringo Starr. After 45 years of stardom, he doesn’t want to spend any more time answering mail or sending signed photos back to fans.

The fan fatigue led the former Beatles drummer to post a sometimes angry sounding short video clip on his Web site telling fans that any mail sent to him after Oct. 20 will not be read or answered. British television stations broadcast the video on Tuesday.

“It’s going to be tossed,” he says on the video. “I’m warning you with peace and love, I have too much to do. So no more fan mail. Thank you, thank you. And no objects to be signed. Nothing. Anyway, peace and love, peace and love.”

The drummer and singer did not elaborate on the reason behind his decision to cut off a major point of contact with his many fans.

Starr, 68, has maintained a very active touring and recording schedule in recent years, drawing large crowds for performances with his All-Starr band.

The band plays a mix of old Beatles hits, Starr’s many solo offerings, and other classics from the 1960s and 1970s. Starr usually serves as front man, though he sometimes plays the drums.

But he has angered longtime fans in Liverpool by telling interviewers that he does not miss his native city. Vandals there beheaded a topiary sculpture of Starr earlier this year — he was the only one of the four Beatles whose likeness was desecrated.

The good-natured drummer, who also enjoyed a brief acting career after star turns in Beatles’ films “A Hard Day’s Night” and “Help!,” guest starred on a 1991 episode of “The Simpsons” in which he is shown scrupulously answering every piece of fan mail that comes his way.

“They took the time to write to me, and I don’t care if it takes 20 years, I’m going to answer every one of them,” Starr says on the show.

In his mail, he finds a package from Marge Simpson that contains a portrait she painted of him back in the Beatles heyday. He puts it on his wall and writes back to tell her — a few decades late — how much he likes her painting.

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On the web

www.ringostarr.com/

Spanish singer Placido Domingo speaks during a press conference in Chichen Itza, Mexico, on Thursday. Domingo will perform in concert on Saturday at the Mayan ruins.

MERIDA, Mexico – Placido Domingo’s concert at the Mayan ruins of Chichen Itza on Saturday night is being billed as “the world’s greatest tenor at one of the Seven Wonders of the Modern World,” a claim few lovers of opera or history would dispute.

But some Mexicans question whether the show should go on at all.

Archaeologists are pressing for criminal charges against the organizers, reviving a debate over how to use treasured ancient sites.

It’s a balancing act many countries face as they try to promote and protect their cultural heritage. As artists seek to perform in stunning places from the Great Wall of China to India’s Taj Majal and ancient Greek, Roman and Egyptian structures, many worry not only about damage but also about cultural propriety.

Domingo sought to reassure his critics Thursday, saying “I know there has been some discomfort in Mexico because I was going to perform at this site, but we have taken care of every detail to carry out this event.”

Mexico’s federal government turns down almost all requests to hold concerts at ancient temples, but they are increasingly pressured by state governors to promote ruins already swamped with tourists.

Domingo’s concert inside Chichen Itza violates a law that requires the ruins to be preserved to educate Mexicans about ancient cultures, said Cuauhtemoc Velasco, a leader of the archaeologists’ union.

“These monuments are not there so that rich people can hold events at them” said Velasco, noting the tickets cost between US$45 and US$900 in a country with a minimum wage of about US$4.50 per day.

For present-day Mayas like Amadeo Cool May, who hosts a Mayan-language radio program, the concert “is an event for foreigners who come here on vacation. It is something completely alien to the Mayas, because of the ticket prices and the type of music.”

Jorge Esma, who is organizing the concert for the Yucatan state government, counters that non-ticket holders can watch it for free on local television, and says the Mayan temples will be well protected. The government has required light stage structures, forbidden anything from being anchored into ancient stones, and will have experts on hand to evaluate the impact on the 1,200-year-old temples.

But a researcher at the government archaeology institute filed a criminal complaint with federal prosecutors, seeking to punish the organizers for “degrading” Chichen Itza by using it as a “simple backdrop.”

The concert is expected to draw 4,000 people, the number set by the government as a maximum after organizers asked for permission to hold a much larger event.

Esma said more than half a dozen concerts at Chichen Itza since Luciano Pavarotti sang here in 1997 prove such events can be held without damaging the temples. The site, voted one of seven modern wonders in a global 2007 poll, is visited by as many as 12,000 people a day, leading to concerns of overcrowding and wear and tear.

But Esma said “we haven’t had a single complaint” about damage, and notes that other countries use their ancient sites for concerts. “There are questions to be asked about this globalized trend, but what we can’t do is try to stop it.”

Domingo, a Spanish tenor who began his career in Mexico, noted that “it is painful to see other sites, like Petra, Jordan, where the tourists climb up on the structures and rocks. The archaeological heritage has to be cared for, and preserved.”

Some countries have learned to say no.

India’s Supreme Court banned large-scale events at the Taj Majal after complaints that floodlights and sound vibrations from a 1996 concert by Greek musician Yanni damaged the palace. Summer opera was curtailed at Rome’s Baths of Carcalla for the same reason. And Venetians have been less hospitable to rock concerts since litterers and vandals joined 200,000 Pink Floyd fans in St. Mark’s Square.

Egypt imposed some limits on regular concerts at its famed Giza Pyramids in the years after the Grateful Dead played near the Sphinx in 1978. Verdi’s Aida rang in the year 2000, Sting played the pyramids in 2001 and Shakira drew thousands of fans to the site last year. The concerts were held at least 500 yards (meters) from the pyramids to prevent damage.

Because of the tourism benefits, Egypt’s government has overruled objections by the head of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, Zahi Hawass, who says the ground shook and stones vibrated during the Sting and Dead concerts. He still blames the Dead concert in part for a chunk of the Sphinx’s shoulder falling off ten years later.

Lebanon also hosts annual summer concerts at the ancient Roman ruins of Baalbek in the eastern Bekaa Valley, political violence permitting, and performances by Sting and Lebanon’s top diva Fairouz generated few complaints from archeologists there.

China recently opened its Great Wall for a fashion show by Fendi and a concert by Alicia Keys, Cyndi Lauper and Boyz II Men; and Domingo performed at the Forbidden City as one of the “Three Tenors” in 2001, amid only scattered complaints.

Mexico’s National Institute of Anthropology and History is resisting the trend, turning down a dozen concert requests a year.

“We get calls from filmmakers who want to shoot movies at archaeological sites, and they always say ‘We will make your site famous,”‘ spokesman Benito Taibo said. “We answer, ‘Thanks, but it already is famous. Don’t do us any favors.’ ”

PARIS – A French museum has found a previously unknown piece of music handwritten by Mozart, a researcher said Thursday. The 18th century melody sketch is missing the harmony and instrumentation but was described as important find.

Ulrich Leisinger, head of research at the International Mozarteum Foundation in Salzburg, Austria, said there is no doubt that the single sheet was written by the composer.

“This is absolutely new,” Leisinger said in a telephone interview. “We have new music here.”

“His handwriting is absolutely clearly identifiable,” he added. “There’s no doubt that this is an original piece handwritten by Mozart.”

The work, described as the preliminary draft of a musical composition, was found by a library in Nantes in western France as staff were going through its archives. Leisinger says the library contacted his foundation for help authenticating the work.

“It’s a melody sketch so what’s missing is the harmony and the instrumentation but you can make sense out of it,” he said. “The tune is complete. It’s only one part and not the whole score with eight or twelve parts.”

“One can really get a feeling of what Mozart meant although we do not know how he would have orchestrated it.”

The city is planning to hold a news conference on the find later on Thursday.

There have been about 10 Mozart finds of such importance over the past 50 years, he said. If sold, the single sheet would likely be worth around $100,000.

“The fact that an entirely new sheet shows up is extremely rare,” he said.

The sheet was bequeathed to the library by an autograph collector in the 19th century and was catalogued back then as part of the library’s collection, he said.

But it was later “entirely forgotten,” essentially becoming lost to scholars for more than century, and was only rediscovered by the library as it re-catalogued its archives in recent years. It was unclear what happened to the library’s 19th century catalogue.

Circumstantial evidence, including the type of paper, suggests Mozart did not write it before 1787, Leisinger said. Mozart died in 1791.

Mozart was interested in church music and at that time was planning to become the choir and music director of Vienna’s main cathedral, although he died before he could take up the post.

In all, about 100 such examples of musical drafts by Mozart are known about. Many are notes for works that he went on to complete.

But the rediscovered sheet is the “draft for a piece that Mozart did not work out for what ever reason,” said Leisinger.

The sheet appears also to have been examined in the 19th Century by Aloys Fuchs, a well-respected autograph hunter who collected works from more than 1,500 different musicians. Fuchs wrote “authenticity of this present handwriting of W.A. Mozart is confirmed,” in an annotation dated Aug. 18, 1839, in Vienna.