People in the News

From The Associated Press

Model-turned-French First Lady Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, actress Catherine Deneuve and the Shah of Iran’s widow were among mourners Thursday at the funeral of legendary designer Yves Saint Laurent four days after he died of cancer at age 71.

Applause rose as Saint Laurent’s casket was carried into the flower-bedecked Saint-Roche church near the Louvre Museum and Tuileries Gardens in Paris and placed before the altar, draped in a decorated yellow cloth.

Saint Laurent was among the most influential designers during the most important era of Parisian fashion, changing the way generations of women dressed, most enduringly by making it glamorous and feminine to wear pants.

Ellen DeGeneres is doing it. So is George Takei. But Rosie O’Donnell isn’t jumping at the chance to walk down the aisle.

O’Donnell and her girlfriend, Kelli Carpenter, were married four years ago when the mayor of San Francisco allowed same-sex marriages. The California Supreme Court later declared such marriages invalid.

Now the state’s highest court has ruled that denying same-sex marriages was discriminatory, and many gay and lesbian couples, including DeGeneres and girlfriend Portia de Rossi and Takei and his partner, Brad Altman, are planning to tie the knot.

O’Donnell told AP Radio that she and Carpenter are “going to wait until it’s legal everywhere, because otherwise, I said to Kelli, we’ll be going around touring the country on the marriage tour every state by state.”

MSNBC pundit Keith Olbermann, who spotlights misbehavior nightly with his “Worst Person in the World” recognition, owes New York state for unpaid business taxes, according to a tax warrant notice.

Olbermann, the host of “Countdown,” owes New York $2,269.50, according to a tax warrant obtained by The Associated Press. State Tax and Finance Department spokesman Tom Bergin said the debt recorded against the TV host’s Olbermann Broadcasting Empire Inc., based in Los Angeles, is still open.