Italy Welcomes Queen for a Day

--Italy’s former queen came home for a brief visit after four decades of exile. Former Queen Maria Jose, whose family’s palace is now the residence of the Italian president, drove across the border from Switzerland, where she lives, to attend a conference on the life of St. Anselm, an 11th-Century ancestor by marriage who became the first archbishop of Canterbury. “I didn’t feel any special emotions entering Italy, but I am happy,” the 81-year-old widow of King Umberto II told reporters in St. Anselm’s native town of Aosta. It took special dispensation by the Italian Cabinet to allow the Belgian-born Maria Jose Carlotta Enrichetta Gabriella of Saxe-Coburg to return to Italy. She and her husband left the country in 1946, after a national referendum narrowly approved replacing the monarchy with a republic. Umberto died in Switzerland in 1983. The Italian constitution, which went into effect in 1948, specifically forbade the return of Umberto, his consort or any of his male descendants. Last year, lawyers for Maria Jose wrote President Francesco Cossiga arguing that the ban should be lifted since she was no longer a consort but a widow. In December, the government agreed.

--One of the reporters covering Arizona Gov. Evan Mecham’s impeachment trial in the state Senate is no stranger to political crisis. Former White House aide John D. Ehrlichman, a key figure in the Watergate scandal, is covering the event for Rolling Stone magazine. Ehrlichman, 62, once President Richard M. Nixon’s second in command, is now a writer living in Santa Fe, N.M. Asked if he brought any special knowledge to his new assignment, Ehrlichman, who resigned as Nixon’s counsel and assistant for domestic affairs in April, 1973, said the impeachment trial was unique. “It’s very different from anything I’ve seen or been a part of,” he said. In 1974, Ehrlichman was convicted and sentenced on a variety of charges filed in connection with the Watergate scandal, including conspiracy, obstruction of justice and lying to a grand jury. He served 18 months in a federal prison.

--Kay A. Orr, the nation’s first elected woman Republican governor and the first female governor of Nebraska, is now the first of her sex to be chosen “Man of the Year” by the Omaha Club. “I’m pleased you consider me woman enough to be your man of the year,” Orr told the club. The business community represented by club members was important in her efforts to improve the state’s business climate, she said, noting: “You were there when I needed you.”