Erasing the Past: Tattoos from past love...

Erasing the Past: Tattoos from past love affairs can be an embarrassment, since they too often outlast the relationship. That’s why Princess Stephanie of Monaco is undergoing laser treatment to remove a tattoo from her bottom. It seems she had herself engraved for ex-boyfriend Mario Oliver Jutard. Now she is preparing to marry French developer Jean-Yves LeFur and wants to start off with a clean slate, so to speak.

* Moscow, Minn.: Most Minnesota Muscovites are Scandinavian, can’t buy vodka locally and would say it’s whistling “Volga Boatman” to think Mikhail S. Gorbachev would ever visit Moscow on Turtle Creek, Minn. Still, township board chairman Richard Ruble says the board will decide next week whether to invite Gorbachev to stop by when he visits Minneapolis-St. Paul, 100 miles away, on June 3. Ruble, a farmer who sees no irony in his name being the same as the Soviet currency, knows the chances are slim. But “you’ve got to be hospitable,” he said.

* Mandela Writes: Little, Brown & Co. has acquired world rights to publish Nelson Mandela’s memoirs following a flurry of competition that began before Mandela’s release from prison. The African National Congress leader, freed after 27 years as a political prisoner, is expected to write a personal and political memoir. Less than two weeks after Mandela left prison, William Phillips, vice president and editor in chief of Little, Brown, met with him in his Soweto home. Financial details were not disclosed.

* RFK Day: The U.S. Senate adopted a resolution Tuesday designating July 22 as “Rose Fitzgerald Kennedy Family Appreciation Day” in honor of her 100th birthday. The measure calls Kennedy “one of the most admired and beloved symbols of the American family” and urges that people “observe the day with appropriate ceremonies and activities.” Kennedy, the mother of President John F. Kennedy and Sens. Robert and Edward Kennedy, was born July 22, 1890, in Boston.