This has been ancestors day in the British newspapers. Gandhi's great-something-grandson is running for the Indian parliament. Stalin's 2 grandchildren are profiled in the Times. One's a military man and rabid Stalinist, the other a theatrical producer who very much isn't. I sent an item a couple of months ago about the first creating a hit list of people who have said bad things about Stalin. The other grandson is on the list. William Gladstone's great-grandson is to make a 1,000-mile expedition in Tibet to find a duck previously thought to be extinct. It has a pink head. And what have we got? Michael Kennedy runs into a tree playing ski-football. I can't wait for the next generation of Kennedies. I foresee a series of running-with-scissors fatalities.

Another Tory cover-up: during the last general election, a UFO was spotted hovering over Home Minister Michael Howard's house, but the party got the local papers not to report it. The Truth is Out There.

The Holocaust Memorial Museum, which is largely taxpayer-financed, refused to extend a welcome to Arafat, who the State Dept had convinced to go, unless you can count as a welcome a comment to the effect that he could stand in line and buy a ticket like anyone else. Nice to see the museum performing its function of alleviating hatred (of everyone except Germans).

Our country of the week, almost in the news because Prince Charles will visit there: Bhutan. Population 600,000, one intersection with traffic lights. Evidently it is compulsory to wear the national costume, which for me is a dressing gown with argyle socks (if you don't believe me, try the Telegraph web site). And no TV. Oh, and the king is named Wangchuck.

Montana figures that as long as states are getting into the gambling business in a big way, they'll go even further into Mafia territory, and have legalized money laundering. Numbered accounts with Swiss-type secrecy, taxed at 1.5% (hell, it's not like any of that money will be taxed wherever it came from). No US citizens or convicted felons, minimum balance $200,000.

I was right about ethnic clashes in Asia. Chinese shopkeepers in Indonesia have been threatened by angry mobs.