Word: queens
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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What do the simple folk do? Pay taxes. And if Liberal Democrat M.P. Simon Hughes has his way, Queen Elizabeth II will soon pony up her share. Hughes introduced a bill in the House of Commons last week requiring the Queen to pay taxes on the $35 million she receives each year in private income from stock investments and land. The annual $12.7 million she gets from the government for expenses would remain tax free...
...unlikely the bill will become law. But Hughes' gesture is consistent with a growing public disapproval of the half-century-old perk that exempts the Queen -- whose worth is estimated to be upwards of $9.6 billion -- from the 40% top tax rate her subjects endure. Publicly, Buckingham Palace had no comment on the bill; privately, officials concede that public opinion might persuade the Queen to pay up. Confided one: "She knows sooner or later she will be paying taxes, but if she agreed to it now, it would be seen to be bending to pressure...
...decision should be a relief for Major, who is trying to chart his own policy on European integration. He can speed Thatcher on her way: if she is to sit in the Lords, he will have to ask the Queen to grant her a peerage...
...April a new flash point arose between Robb and Wilder. As NBC prepared a flimsy documentary on Robb's private behavior, including an alleged dalliance with a former Miss Virginia beauty queen, the Robb camp accused Wilder's crew of complicity in the muckraking. The apparent strategy was to paint the expose as resulting from a political vendetta. According to two sources familiar with the episode, two Robb associates -- his press secretary, Steven Johnson, and the political director of Robb's Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, Robert Watson -- briefed a Washington Post reporter on the tape's contents about two months...
...Ethiopian pejorative means strangers in Amharic -- were airlifted to safety in another Israeli rescue operation. By plane, the trip from Addis Ababa to Tel Aviv takes just under four hours. But for these rural and deeply religious Jews, who believe they are descendants of King Solomon and the Queen of Sheba, the journey spans centuries. Descending from C-130 transports and commercial jets, they discover that their new home is not the least bit familiar. Says Rachamim Elazar, an Ethiopian activist who arrived in Israel in 1971: "It's the distance of 2,500 years...