"Names make news." Last week these names made this news:

Off to Trinidad went Dr. Raymond Lee Ditmars, the Bronx Zoo's much-traveled curator of mammals and reptiles. This time he was looking for parasol ants, which carry leaves and flowers in their mouths, umbrella-fashion.

Because her boat from Australia was delayed and she had a date to sing in Los Angeles, Opera Singer Kirsten Flagstad boarded the Japanese Tatsuta Maru at Honolulu rather than wait for a U. S. boat. When the Tatsuta Maru got to San Francisco, polite customs officials sent a launch to meet her, quickly issued clearance papers in the "stream," whisked her to a plane. Department of Commerce officials, not so polite, fined Mme Flagstad the customary $200 for traveling between U. S. ports on a foreign ship. Also fined the same amount each were her husband, her accompanist, her maid.

Wrote tousled Manhattan Columnist Heywood Broun: "The United States Chamber of Commerce might well profit by a little lecture from Miss Carole Lombard." Miss Lombard's little lecture: "I gave the Federal Government 65% of my wages last year, and I was glad to do it, too. . . . Income tax money all goes into improvement and protection of the country. . . . I really think I got my money's worth."

In Beverly Hills, energetic old Cinemactress May Robson, 73, tripped over her pet dog, broke her arm.

When his Paris taxicab bumped into another, the Rev. Dr. Endicott Peabody, 81-year-old founder and headmaster of Massachusetts' socialite Groton School, who educated and performed the marriages of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and most of the Roosevelt children, went to a hospital with three broken ribs.

Named Minister of Eire to the U. S. was Robert Brennan, the Eire legation's charge d'affaires in Washington since Minister Michael MacWhite was transferred to Rome last March. In 1916 Minister Brennan was condemned to death for his potent activities in the abortive Sinn Fein rebellion, saved by a commutation few minutes before it was his turn to be shot.

At a dinner in Belfast given for him by the Queen's University Students' Union, Frederick Wolff Ogilvie, new director-general of British Broadcasting Corp. (TIME, Aug. 1), ordered that none of the speeches, including his own, be broadcast.

In Hollywood, Radioldster Lee De Forest, inventor 31 years ago of the audion radio tube which made long-range broadcasting possible, celebrated his 65th birthday by telling reporters how little he thinks of broadcasting, 1938 style: "I seldom tune in. . . . The programs, all swing and croon, are not only poor, but the interruptions for commercial announcements are maddening. . . . Isn't it sickening? It isn't at all as I imagined it would be."

In San Francisco's grim Alcatraz Prison, tough Gangster Alvin Karpis, onetime Public Enemy No. 1,--* asked for and was given two books: Salt Water Fishing, An American Angler in Australia.

When he tried to help an angler pull in a 400-lb. tuna while boating off Elsinore, Prince Axel of Denmark, who once rescued a Swedish cinemactress from drowning, was dragged into the water. Into his boat the angler safely pulled both fish and Prince.

Back to his baton after three years of musical silence went wax-mustached Bandmaster Victor Aloysius ("Vic") Meyers, lieutenant governor of Washington. Said he, after leading his brand-new band in Seattle's Trianon Dance Hall: "It's all right to be lieutenant governor, but a man has to eat, too.''/-

To the U. S. came the tale of a London dinner party conversation between Germany's new 100% Nazi Ambassador to the Court of St. James's, Dr. Herbert von Dirksen, and the beauteous 23-year-old Duchess of Roxburghe, a granddaughter of the late great Liberal Prime Minister, Lord Rosebery. Dr. Dirksen: "I suppose you get your fine black eyes from your Scottish ancestry?" The Duchess: "No, Your Excellency, I think it must be my Jewish ancestry. One of my grandfathers was Baron Meyer de Rothschild."

--*Unofficial 1938 titleholder: one Louis Buchalter (alias Lepke): New York racketeer for whose capture the U. S. Attorney-General offers $2,500 reward.

--/-His salary as lieutenant governor: $1,200.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.