Celebrities

Richard Gere tried to repair the damage of a public kiss that he gave a Bollywood star at an AIDS awareness event. Unaware of the protests that would happen, Gere apologized for any offense he may have caused. Gere’s embrace and kiss of actress Shilpa Shetty sparked several noisy demonstrations by hard-line Hindu groups and a flurry of legal complaints, which ended with a judge in the northwestern city of Jaipur issuing an arrest warrant for the two stars for violating obscenity laws.

Rai, a former Miss World, is apparently going to wed actor Abhishek Bachchan on Friday. Bachchan, 31, comes from a famous Bollywood family his father, Amitabh, and mother, Jaya, are among India’s best known actors. A red-and-blue air-conditioned tent with huge mirrors is being readied in a garden adjoining the Bachchan’s suburban family home for what is billed as India’s “wedding of the year.”

People are starting to believe that Leonardo DiCaprio owns a check-list of important subjects that need to be made into films, in which case we’re looking forward to the Leonardo DiCaprio movie about Moira Stewart being too old to read the news any more. In the meantime, though, we’ll have to be happy with Leonardo DiCaprio’s most recently announced movie role, in Body Of Lies, a Ridley Scott, directed adventure.

The ashes of James Doohan, who played chief engineer Montgomery “Scotty” on the original “Star Trek” television series, has been loaded into a rocket that is set to launch in New Mexico later during the month. The remains of Doohan, Mercury astronaut Gordon Cooper and some 200 others were loaded into the rocket Friday by Charles Chafer, chief executive of Celestis, a Texas company that contracts with rocket firms to send cremated remains into space.