Get the Point?: Ana Mae Diaz de...

Get the Point?: Ana Mae Diaz de Endara, the wife of the Panama president, won’t tolerate impertinent reporters’ questions, thank you. One newsman learned this the hard way recently when Endara was confronted by a swarm of reporters outside the presidential palace. When a journalist asked about her criticism of El Salvador President Alfredo Christiani and Panama Justice Minister Ricardo Arias Calderon, she shot back: “I have nothing to say,”--and she slapped him.

* Rumor Denied: Buckingham Palace has denied tabloid stories claiming that Princess Anne is seeking a divorce from her husband, Capt. Mark Phillips, who has been accused of fathering a child by a New Zealand woman. “There is absolutely no change in what we have been saying over the past 21 months--that there are no plans for a divorce,” a palace spokesman said. Anne separated from Mark in September, 1989.

* Caged Heat: The hoots and howls from the world’s oldest zoo in London may soon be silenced if it closes for lack of money, so some members of Parliament are raising their own uproar to save it. The zoo’s popular inmates have included Chi-Chi the panda and Guy the gorilla. Animal-rights activists say the facility should close: Wildlife films and the popularity of foreign travel render zoos nothing more than prisons.

* Fictional Facts: A woman jilted by her fiance sought sympathy by faking terminal breast cancer for two years, shaving her head and dieting away 20 pounds, a psychiatrist says. The unnamed woman “felt that . . . rebuilding a social life . . . was simply overwhelming. She needed a shortcut,” wrote Marc Feldman, co-author of a scientific report on the case. The woman had a factitious disorder, in which an illness is consciously faked for psychological gain. The charade was uncovered when a check of medical records showed that the woman had never seen the cancer specialist she claimed was treating her.