Inquiring Minds: Students at Houston’s Jefferson Davis...

Inquiring Minds: Students at Houston’s Jefferson Davis High School could have asked Barbara Bush for her thoughts on oil depletion allowances. Instead, they posed the question that has been dogging Queen Elizabeth for years: Just what the heck is in that purse? asked Hugo Tinoco. With students, reporters and photographers looking on, the First Lady removed a piece of paper containing the students’ names, tissue, makeup, a perfume bottle, a pen, and some candy, which she gave to Tinoco.

Mind Over Miami: Dade County thinks it has a way to stop rental cars from being broken into. The Metro-Dade Commission voted 8-0 this week to ban bumper stickers and other signs carrying the rental company’s name, in response to a rash of smash-and-grab robberies of tourists’ cars. When the law goes into effect Dec. 1, “you cannot rent a car in Dade County with signs that say, ‘Rob me,’ ” says Commissioner Larry Hawkins.

Maggie No More: Margaret Thatcher was called a lot of names when she was prime minister. But according British press reports, she is going to join the aristocracy as a hereditary countess. Thatcher is expected to take the title of Countess of Finchley.

The Butler Isn’t: Is there anyone in the Gorbachev household who isn’t writing a book that makes some mention of trouble brewing? In Raisa Gorbachev’s book, “I Hope,” she says that her husband--and it seems, sometime psychic--Mikhail Gorbachev (who has written a book of his own on the subject) warned her during their vacation last year that tough times were ahead. He said, “ ‘There is going to be political fighting . . . we mustn’t surrender the fate of the country to cowboys. They will ruin everything,’ ” she writes.