RANTHAMBHORE NATIONAL PARK, India – British comedian Russell Brand and American pop singer Katy Perry were married Saturday in a traditional Hindu wedding ceremony at a luxury resort in a tiger reserve in northwestern India, an official said.

A Hindu priest conducted the ceremony, which was attended by family and close friends of the couple, a hotel official said on condition of anonymity, as he was not authorized to speak to the media.

Security has been stringent with private guards stationed at the resort and other nearby hotels where guests and the couple are staying for the six-day wedding celebration.

Photographers and media reporters were not allowed into the Aman-e-Khas wildlife retreat. The couple have given the exclusive coverage rights to a London magazine, and no other photographers or journalists will be allowed into the resort.

Both Brand and Perry wore traditional Indian clothes to the wedding.

Perry donned a sari, as did a number of other female guests at the ceremony. On Friday, at a prenuptial celebration, Perry, like a typical Indian bride, had henna designs applied on her palms and hands.

Meanwhile, a four-member committee had been set up to check noise pollution from the wedding celebration and ensure that animals in the wildlife reserve in India’s Rajasthan state are not disturbed, said Ravi Kumar, a district official.

The Ranthambhore National Park, where the resort is located, is home to a host of wildlife species including tigers, leopards, wild boars, hyenas and sloth bears.

Press Trust of India news agency said 21 camels, elephants and horses formed part of Brand’s wedding procession from Sher Bagh, another nearby luxury resort, to the Aman-e-Khas. The procession was accompanied by traditional Indian dancers and musicians.

Quaids arrested in Canada, where they seek asylum from ‘murderers’

VANCOUVER – Actor Randy Quaid told Canada’s immigration board Friday that he and his wife are seeking asylum from “the murderers of Hollywood” and will therefore apply for refugee status in Canada, after they were arrested in Vancouver on U.S. warrants related to vandalism charges.

The pair were arrested on Thursday afternoon in a shopping area of an affluent Vancouver neighborhood and were jailed on outstanding U.S. warrants.

The Quaids are wanted in Santa Barbara, where they missed a court hearing Monday on felony vandalism charges.

Evi Quaid begged a Canadian immigration adjudicator not to force them to return, saying on Friday that friends, such as actors David Carradine and Heath Ledger, have been “murdered” under mysterious circumstances and she worried something would happen to her husband next.

Research shows Austen had poor writing skills

LONDON – She’s renowned for her precise, exquisite prose, but new research shows Jane Austen was a poor speller and erratic grammarian who got a big helping hand from her editor.

Oxford University English professor Kathryn Sutherland studied 1,100 handwritten pages of unpublished work from the author of incisive social comedies such as “Pride and Prejudice.” She said Saturday that they contradicted the claim by Austen’s brother Henry that “everything came finished from her pen.”

“In reading the manuscripts, it quickly becomes clear that this delicate precision is missing,” Sutherland said.

She said the papers show “blots, crossings out, messiness,” and a writer who “broke most of the rules for writing good English.”

Sutherland said letters from Austen’s publisher reveal that editor William Gifford was heavily involved in making sense of Austen’s sensibility, honing the style of her late novels “Emma” and “Persuasion.”

Gifford did not edit earlier books such as “Sense and Sensibility” and “Pride and Prejudice,” whose inconsistencies have sometimes been blamed on bad printing.

 

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