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LILONGWE, Malawi – Madonna toured an impoverished village and discussed plans Sunday for building a new school in Malawi, the central African nation where officials said she would begin proceedings this week to adopt a young girl.

Madonna, casually dressed with a white fedora, walked through the village of Chinkhota holding the hand of her 12-year-old daughter, Lourdes. Dozens of reporters looked on.

The 50-year-old pop star refused to answer questions about reports that she was in Malawi to adopt a four-year-old girl. She said it was “amazing” to be back in the country where she runs a charity organization and from where she adopted her son David, 3, last year.

Then she rushed away in a convoy of at least three sport utility vehicles, as crowds of shouting, waving children ran after her.

A security guard with the convoy said Madonna was speaking to villagers about building a school there, and she was seen looking at an artist’s impression of the proposed building. Hours earlier, Madonna landed at the airport in the capital of Lilongwe.

Madonna was expected to appear Monday in court in Lilongwe to sign adoption papers.

A Malawian welfare official and another person involved in the adoption proceedings have said the girl Madonna is hoping to adopt is about 4 years old and her unmarried mother died soon after she was born. The girl’s father is believed to be alive but no other details were available. They spoke on condition of anonymity because the case is considered sensitive.

A U.S. government official has also confirmed that an adoption bid by Madonna, an American, was under way.

Madonna has faced harsh criticism for years over David’s adoption. Children’s advocacy groups accused her of wielding her immense wealth and influence to circumvent Malawian law requiring an 18- to 24-month assessment period before adoption.

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NEW YORK – Adam Lambert showed his softer side on “American Idol,” earning a standing ovation for his smooth performance of “The Tracks of My Tears.”

Guest mentor Smokey Robinson, who originally performed the classic song with the Miracles, rose to his feet after watching the 26-year-old theater actor hit all the right notes during Wednesday’s Motown-themed installment of the “Fox” singing competition.

Lambert, who’s from Los Angeles, ditched his rocker duds for a sleek silver suit and smoothed his black hair back into an Elvis-style pompadour.

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RIO DE JANEIRO - The number of people infected with both tuberculosis and HIV is twice what researchers previously thought, top health officials said Tuesday. The World Health Organization’s annual report on TB, presented in Rio, indicates that there were 1.37 million cases of people with both TB and HIV in 2007, the latest year for which statistics are available. About 700,000 people were infected with both in 2006, according to a report released by WHO last year.

Researchers attribute the numbers mostly to more widespread testing and reporting. They say direct information on the HIV status among TB patients is now available from 64 nations – up from just 13 nations in recent years. More reporting is also coming from Africa, where 79 percent of the dual-infection cases were reported.

In 2007, 1.3 million people died from TB, while another 465,000 people who had both TB and HIV died. About 1.5 million people died in 2006 from TB, according to WHO’s report last year. It was not clear how many of those who died also were infected with HIV.

WHO researchers said the new data means HIV-positive people are about 20 times more likely than HIV-negative people to develop TB in countries where HIV is at epidemic levels, and between 26 and 37 times more likely to develop TB where HIV prevalence is lower.

In a message to mark World TB Day, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said the epidemic is continuing to decline “but the rate of decline is far too slow, and TB still takes a life every 20 seconds.”

“Millions of people are benefiting from treatment through coordinated national efforts, but millions more are still missing out,” he said in the message released at U.N. headquarters in New York. “Unless we accelerate action, the numbers of those falling ill will continue to grow.”

The WHO’s annual report had other pessimistic points: an expected $1.6 billion gap in funding needed to fight the disease this year and an increase in the number of cases of drug-resistant TB.

“We have a situation with very little progress, particularly in Africa and Eastern and Central Europe,” said Tido von Schoen-Angerer, the executive director of Doctors Without Borders, who was attending the TB conference. “There is no room anywhere in this report for congratulations.”

The survey estimates that 9.27 million people around the globe had TB in 2007 – slightly up from 9.24 million in 2006.

That amounts to a per capita rate of 139 per 100,000 people globally, the report states. That pace, a drop of less than 1 percent a year, has continued for the past several years, said Mario Raviglione, director of the WHO’s Stop TB program.

He said it would take millennia to wipe out the disease at that rate.

Multiple-drug-resistant cases of TB also rose in 2007 to 500,000. Such cases are more difficult to treat and have a higher rate of deaths.

Aggravating the fight against TB is the global financial crisis.

Michel Kazatchkine, executive director of the U.N.-backed Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, said funding for programs to fight TB will fall $1.6 billion short in 2009, a gap he estimates will reach at least $4 billion in 2010.

“The crisis is severely affecting developing nations,” he said. “But countries should realize health costs are an investment for development and not just a strain on budgets.”

Asia registered the most TB cases in 2007, with 55 percent, while Africa had 31 percent. Among nations, India had the most cases with 2 million, China had 1.3 million and Indonesia 530,000.

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LOS ANGELES – It was time, says The Dead’s Bob Weir, to give charitable causes a boost while directing a kick to the hindquarters of ticket scalpers.

So he and his bandmates announced Tuesday they have held back some of the best seats for their forthcoming spring tour, and are putting them up for bid in an online auction.

Want to sit in the third row, center-stage-right, for the tour’s opening show April 12 in Greensboro, N.C.? The bidding starts at $250 at charityfolks.com.

Proceeds will benefit a number of charities the group has supported for years, including its Rex Foundation, which was established by the Grateful Dead in 1983 and provides grants to support the arts, science, education and other causes.

“Needless to say, like any charity these days, their revenues are down right now. They’re hurting,” Weir said Tuesday in a phone interview. “We want to do what we can to keep these folks up and running and in business.”

Successful bidders won’t be able to collect their tickets until the day of a show to minimize scalping, Weir said.

Weir said he hoped the auction would raise at least $250,000. Other charities the group is supporting include the Further Foundation, which works for environmental and social causes; the Unbroken Chain Foundation, which supports community service projects; and the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society, which is dedicated to protecting oceans and marine life.

Dead drummer Bill Kreutzmann is an avid supporter of the latter.

“I live in Hawaii and right now it’s humpback whale season and we see them here,” he said by phone Tuesday. “At the rate they are being slaughtered for ocean fishing there won’t be any left.”

The group, which dropped Grateful from its name following the death of guitarist Jerry Garcia, is launching its first tour in five years with core surviving members Weir, Kreutzmann, drummer Mickey Hart and bassist Phil Lesh.

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LOS ANGELES – She may be the girl next door, but Holly Madison’s reality star status was what kept her in the competition on “Dancing With the Stars.”

Denise Richards earned extra points for her samba during Tuesday’s results show, but it didn’t help the 38-year-old actress compete with Madison’s viewer votes and Richards was cast out of the ballroom.

Richards said after Monday’s performance that she “would be shocked” not to be among the low-scorers forced into the dance off – a last chance to increase her judges’ scores and remain in the competition – with her professional partner Maksim Chmerkovskiy.

But despite what judges said was an improved samba, the couple failed to dominate fellow low-scoring couple, Madison and Dmitry Chaplin.

Madison said Monday she was dreading the dance off.

“I don’t want to have to do it with this dance because it’s the hardest one,” Madison said. “I’m just praying people vote and I can stay on another week and have another chance.”

Her prayers were answered, although Richards scored two points higher in the second go-round.

“My daughters love my dancing,” Richards said after she was eliminated. “It’s been fun. I’m a huge fan of the show and I will continue to be, so and it’s fun to be on the other side.”

Viewer votes are also what kept Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and his partner, Karina Smirnoff, on the show. The couple earned only 10 points in Monday’s competition – the lowest score in six seasons, but were saved from the dance off by their fans.

“I am having a blast,” Wozniak said after Monday’s performance. “When I got up there on the stage and was just about to start dancing, I thought, I’m the luckiest person in the world.

And Wozniak’s fans seem to think they’re lucky to be watching him.

“With Woz, I think what you’re getting is real entertainment, and to me isn’t that what Dancing With the Stars is all about?” said Chris Harrington, founder of the Web site VoteWoz.com. Harrington’s Vote Woz twitter page has more than 60,000 members.

Judges’ scores are combined with viewer votes to determine which couple is eliminated each week. The new dance-off approach allows the two lowest-scoring couples to earn extra points from judges for command performances of their best dance. Viewer votes still count for 50 percent of each couple’s final score.

Besides Madison and Wozniak, remaining competitors include rodeo athlete Ty Murray, rapper Lil Kim, former football star Lawrence Taylor, Olympic gymnast Shawn Johnson, country singer Chuck Wicks, reality stars Steve-O and Melissa Rycroft, and actors David Alan Grier and Gilles Marini.

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CHICAGO – The health care costs of Alzheimer’s disease patients are more than triple those of other older people, and that doesn’t even include the billions of hours of unpaid care from family members, a new report suggests.

Compared with people aged 65 and older without Alzheimer’s, those with the mind-destroying disease are much more often hospitalized and treated in skilled-nursing centers. Their medical costs also often include nursing home care and Medicare-covered home health visits.

That all adds up to at least $33,007 in annual costs per patient, compared with $10,603 for an older person without Alzheimer’s, according to a report issued Tuesday by the Alzheimer’s Association.

The numbers are based on 2004 data and include average per-person Medicare, Medicaid and private insurance costs.

Costs likely have grown since then as the U.S population has aged and the number of Alzheimer’s diagnoses has risen, said Angela Geiger, the Alzheimer’s Association chief strategy officer.

According to the group’s report, nearly 10 million caregivers – mostly family members – provided 8.5 billion hours of unpaid care for Alzheimer’s patients last year.

“All of these statistics paint a really grim picture of what’s going to happen … unless we invest in solutions” to delay or prevent the disease, Geiger said.

This week a Senate committee will hear from an independent coalition of experts that has been working on a strategy for dealing with the growing Alzheimer’s population.

An estimated 5.3 million Americans have the disease; by next year nearly half a million new cases will be diagnosed, according to the Alzheimer’s Association.

As the disease progresses, people lose the ability to care for themselves and need help with eating, bathing, dressing and other daily activities. Eventually, they may need help with breathing and swallowing.

From 2000 to 2006, while deaths from heart disease, stroke, breast and prostate cancer declined, Alzheimer’s deaths rose 47 percent.

Geiger said those trends reflect improved treatments for other diseases, while there are no treatments that can slow or prevent Alzheimer’s.

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NEW YORK – Robin Williams was recovering at the Cleveland Clinic after heart surgery that his doctors deemed successful, his publicists said Monday.

The 57-year-old actor had an operation to replace an aortic valve on March 13, publicists Mara Buxbaum and Chris Kanarick said. He was expected to make a complete recovery in the next eight weeks.

“His heart is strong and he will have normal heart function in the coming weeks with no limitations on what he’ll be able to do,” said Dr. A. Marc Gillinov, a cardiothoracic surgeon at the Cleveland Clinic. “A couple of hours after surgery, he was entertaining the medical team and making us all laugh.”

Williams was initially treated at the University of Miami Hospital before being transferred to Cleveland. He had been in Florida earlier this month when he was forced to cancel the remainder of his one-man comedy show, “Weapons of Self-Destruction,” after experiencing shortness of breath.

Williams, whose sold-out, multi-city tour is expected to resume in the fall, thanked staff at both hospitals.

“I can’t thank them enough for their kindness and dedication while I was in their care,” he said in a statement. “I must also thank all the people who have expressed their love and concern for me. I have been deeply touched by their support.”

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AUSTIN, Texas – It wasn’t just the legions of concertgoers wandering the streets who were twittering at South By Southwest. Many of the acts were posting tweets throughout the music conference and festival, sometimes even on stage or during interviews.

Microblogging by performers shed a new light on their SXSW experience, revealing the fun, fatigue and frenzy of the annual Austin music event – which concluded early Sunday.

Dave Navarro, the guitarist for Jane’s Addiction, took a photo of this reporter in the middle of an interview of the band, later explaining a negative story would mean the wrath of his Twitter followers. Later, after playing “Three Days,” he tweeted from the stage: “We just played 3 days!!!! Yeah!”

Tweets must be 140 characters or less and can be posted directly from mobile phones to twitter.com.

Colin Meloy, the frontman for the Decemberists, perfectly reflected typical pre-show and post-show emotions. Shortly before performing the band’s new folk opera “The Hazards of Love” for the first time, he wrote: “Krikes! Nervous as all get up. Think good thoughts.”

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LOS ANGELES – Bruce Willis has tied the knot for the second time.

The actor’s publicity agency, Rogers & Cowan, says in a statement Sunday that the 54-year-old Willis married Emma Heming in a small, private ceremony at his home in Parrot Cay in the Turks & Caicos Islands.

The couple met through mutual friends more than a year ago.

This is the first marriage for Heming, a 30-year-old model/actress.

Guests included Willis’ three daughters from his first marriage to actress Demi Moore: Rumer, 20, Scout, 17, and Tallulah Belle, 14, as well as Moore, and her husband, actor Ashton Kutcher.

The couple plan a civil ceremony when they return to California.

(This version CORRECTS Corrects spelling of Rumer Willis. Moving on general news and entertainment services.)

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NEW YORK – A mahogany casket bearing Natasha Richardson’s body has been taken from the Manhattan townhouse where screen and stage stars gathered to pay their respects.

The Daily News says the actress’ casket was driven later Saturday to the upstate New York country home where she married Liam Neeson in 1994. It is in a stretch of hills and horse farms in Millbrook, about 90 miles north of New York City.

There has been no official word on a funeral, but reports have suggested one is planned Sunday in Millbrook.

The 45-year-old Richardson died Wednesday at a New York hospital after a skiing accident in Canada.

Neeson greeted a stream of celebrity mourners Friday at the American Irish Historical Society in Manhattan.

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