* Sinking Feeling: Baptist convert Manuel Noriega...

* Sinking Feeling: Baptist convert Manuel Noriega will have to wait until after his drug-smuggling trial to fulfill a requirement of his new faith: full-body baptism. A spokesman at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in Miami, where Noriega is being held until his July 22 trial, said “baptism is a long-term personal commitment and would not be appropriate in a temporary facility.” If Noriega is convicted, he may be baptized in whatever prison he’s sent to.

* It’s a Walk: The Washington, D.C., street where a woman welcomed Queen Elizabeth to her home with an embrace has been renamed Queen’s Stroll. Images of Alice Frazier’s encounter were seen widely in the media because, according to British tradition, no one is to touch the queen in public. “We needed something different. This is just right,” Frazier said of the name change, and Councilman H. R. Crawford echoed: “The neighborhood is on a roll.”

* Capitalist Price: An eight-page article written by a young Karl Marx is expected to fetch p to $170,000 at a London auction June 26, an auction house said. Christie’s called the article, written in 1842 when Marx was 24, “the most important autograph manuscript by Karl Marx to come to auction for more than 25 years.” The article excoriates the policies of King Friedrich Wilhelm IV of Prussia.

* Capitalist Price, Part 2: The Chrysler Corp. recently took Chairman Lee Iacocca’s oceanfront Boca Raton, Fla., penthouse off his hands for $795,000--3 1/2 times the assessed value. Iacocca had tried to sell the place himself for $995,000, but in 18 months no one took the bait. Chrsyler, which also has purchased Iacocca’s Bloomfield Hills, Mich., home for $905,000, said buying the homes would “make it possible for Iacocca to continue to devote his full time and attention to Chrysler business.”