Britain Ups Ante for Flush Royals

The cost of living keeps going up, even for royalty. Accordingly, the “civil list” in Britain’s 1988 budget includes salary increases for most of the royal family. Queen Elizabeth II will get a raise this year of $321,715 for a total annual salary of $8.32 million, the government said. She received $8 million in 1987 to pay for running her royal household, various properties, travel and entertainment. Queen Mother Elizabeth makes the next largest salary, $722,055 this year compared to last year’s $694,305. One member of the royal family who did not receive a pay raise was the queen’s youngest son, Prince Edward, who quit the Royal Marines and took a job in a theatrical company. His salary will remain at $37,000.

--Rather than cutting ribbons to open new shopping malls or shaking hands at state fairs, as past Miss Americas often have done, Kaye Lani Rae Rafko is working to maximize the image of the nursing profession. Rafko said she will return to her job as a registered nurse at a hospital in Toledo, Ohio, working with terminally ill cancer and AIDS patients, as soon as her reign ends. “After another six months of this, I’ll be ready to hang up the heels and the tiara and head back to work,” she said when visiting hospitals in Atlantic City, N.J. The first months of Rafko’s reign, which began in September, were booked with appearances for the pageant’s six sponsors, pageant executive director Leonard Horn said. “But, once people saw that Kaye Lani was a nurse, we cleared her schedule to make room for more public service appearances,” he said. Rafko, 24, has visited hospitals and hospices and spoken to nursing associations and medical groups. She has done a public service announcement for the profession and appeared on the cover of a nursing journal.

--Sen. William Proxmire (D-Wis.) believes a study of the sex lives of Japanese quail is for the birds and has awarded his monthly “Golden Fleece” prize to the National Science Foundation and the National Institute of Mental Health for spending federal money on the project. Proxmire said the study has already cost $107,000 and estimated that the institute will spend an additional $100,000 over the next two years. The final National Science Foundation project summary, in addition to giving other scientific reasons for the study, said that, with the threat of AIDS, “knowledge of how sexual habits are acquired is very important.” But Proxmire was unconvinced. “How the studying of sexual behavior of birds in a laboratory can help us understand and contain the human epidemic of AIDS is beyond me,” he said.