If Dog Bites Man, See State Dept.

--White House spokesman Larry Speakes used a news briefing after a speech by Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev to give reporters a lesson in the Administration’s chain of command on the news. Speakes evaded a request for reaction to Gorbachev’s denunciation of American accounts of the Chernobyl nuclear accident by explaining how such questions are answered. “It depends on how we rate it on a scale of 1 to 10,” Speakes said. “If it’s something big, we’d come out here and say it. If it’s something really big, the President would say it.” However, he added: “I don’t think it could ever be that big. If it was semi-big, I’d come out and say something. If it was teeny tiny, we’d give out a piece of paper. And if it was teeny tinier than that, we’d let the State Department do it.” Reporters, familiar with the occasional rivalry between the White House and State Department staffs, roared with laughter. “If it’s bad news,” Speakes continued, “we’d let the Interior Department do it.”

--Body-builder and actor Arnold Schwarzenegger says “over-the-phone sex” won’t work when he and his bride of three weeks, Maria Shriver, anchorwoman on the “CBS Morning News” and niece of President John F. Kennedy, get ready to have children. Schwarzenegger says Shriver will eventually want to have kids and leave her job. “We fly back and forth as much as possible and we run up thousands of dollars in phone bills,” Schwarzenegger said in an interview with Boston television station WBZ. “We have over-the-phone sex,” he joked, “but there’s no way we can have children with her on the East Coast and me on the West Coast.” For now, he said, he supports her staying with CBS. “It’s only a temporary thing,” he said. “But she should do it because she’ll be happy the rest of her life because she’s done it.”

--A loyal 9-year-old dog named Teddy won the right to live out his days in his late owner’s $78,000 home in Rockville, Md. Judge Leonard Ruben ruled that the intent of Celeste Crawford’s will was clear when she stipulated that her fluffy white Pomeranian, which had been by her side during a long battle with cancer, should have the run of her home until he dies. Since Crawford’s death from cancer two years ago, Teddy has been camping out with George Schnabele, a retired Montgomery County police officer who for 18 years rented a room in Crawford’s home, and Crawford stipulated in her will that Schnabele remain at the house until Teddy dies. Then, the estate is to be divided among six of Crawford’s relatives, including a sister and four brothers.