Fur flies in Egyptian couple's marriage dispute

Celebrity gossip, famous birthdays and other tidbits, compiled from Seattle Times news services.

JEROME A. POLLOS / AP

Djuna Luckey, 5, left, Jett Childers, 5, and Cali Shipman, 7, follow Cynthia Marlette, a music teacher at Glory Be preschool in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, as she leads her "cherub choir" across a downtown street Thursday. The youngsters were on their way to an impromptu concert.

Oakley Hall

Warren Cowan

Critters

The fur flies

An Egyptian woman who filed for divorce after her husband refused to pay for the wedding of her favorite cat in a five-star hotel got her way after all, Egypt media reported this week. The woman, identified only as Khadiga, had begged her husband, some 50 years her senior, to pay for her cat's wedding. In court, her husband said he would agree to a divorce, and as a last present to his wife he would pay for a wedding for her cat, but in a less-expensive hotel owned by his friend. The woman promptly called off divorce proceedings.

People

Grant, Hurley win suit

Two photo agencies have agreed to pay $113,000 to Hugh Grant, former girlfriend Liz Hurley and her husband, Arun Nayar, for taking photos of them while they were vacationing in the Maldives. Britain's High Court says The Big Pictures and Eliot Press Sarl agencies apologized Thursday for using a long lens to violate the trio's privacy in October. The pictures appeared in several newspapers. The trio plan to donate the money to a cancer charity.

Passages

Warren Cowan, 87 — a legendary Hollywood publicist who co-founded Rogers & Cowan public-relations company and was known as an innovative pioneer of publicity for the biggest names in show business, including Kirk Douglas, Frank Sinatra, Judy Garland, Cary Grant, Audrey Hepburn and Clint Eastwood — died Wednesday at a Los Angeles hospital of cancer, which was diagnosed three weeks earlier.

John Phillip Law, 70, the strikingly handsome 1960s actor who portrayed an angel in the futuristic "Barbarella" and a lovesick Russian seaman in "The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming," died Tuesday at his Los Angeles home.

Oakley Hall, 87, a novelist and writing teacher who helped define California literature in the generation after John Steinbeck, died Monday in Nevada City, Calif., of cancer and kidney disease. His novel "Warlock" was a finalist for the 1958 Pulitzer Prize.

Today in History

1770: Marie Antoinette, 14, married the future King Louis XVI of France, who was 15.

1868: The Senate failed by one vote to convict President Andrew Johnson as it took its first ballot on 11 articles of impeachment against him.

1975: Japanese climber Junko Tabei became the first woman to reach the summit of Mount Everest.

1988: The Supreme Court ruled that police can search discarded garbage without a search warrant.

Today's Birthdays

Author Studs Terkel, 96. Actor Pierce Brosnan, 55. Actress Debra Winger, 53. Soviet-born gymnast Olga Korbut, 53. Actress Mare Winningham, 49. Rock musician Krist Novoselic, 43. Singer Janet Jackson, 42. Political correspondent Tucker Carlson, 39. Actress Tracey Gold, 39. Actress Tori Spelling, 35. Actress Megan Fox, 22.