Names make news. Last week these names made this news:

An era in U.S. show business ended in Pittsburgh, and John Ringling North, hereditary boss of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, pronounced an epitaph: "The tented circus as it now exists is a thing of the past." Last of the surviving big-time big tops, Ringling struck its huge tent for the last time, packed up to limp back to winter quarters in Sarasota, Fla., though the season was but half over. The big show's ailments: television, labor troubles, miserable weather this year, and soaring costs. Starting next April, North added bravely, the circus will sally forth again and play its seasons in "air-conditioned arenas all over the United States."

Washington's generous Hostess-with-Mostes' Perle Mesta was sued by a former niece-in-law, Mrs. Idel Tyson (now divorced from Perle's nephew). The charge: Perle had helped haul off $8,700 worth of household goods from Idel's Washington apartment while Idel was off in Europe.

The traditional squabbling and shrill cries broke out among the also-rans after Iowa's blue-eyed Carol Morris. 20. yare-proportioned (36-25-36) daughter of an Ottumwa minister, was crowned Miss Universe in the annual measurement melee at Long Beach, Calif. What especially irked some of the other girls: Carol is the second U.S. contestant to take the title in the past three years. One of the more outspoken Latin beauties, miffed Miss Chile (36-24-36), tried her own hand at judging. Meeowed she: "Miss Germany--second--is top-heavy ("40"-22-34). Miss Sweden--third--could not recite or speak in public. As for the beauty of some of the others--well . . ."

In the Bavarian mountain resort of Berchtesgaden, where Adolf Hitler used to hole up in his eagle's-nest retreat, a small, grey-haired woman of 60 got notice to get out of her $2.80-a-week room in a shabby row of flats. She was none other than Hitler's sister Paula, who has long gone by the name of Paula Wolf. Paula was not in arrears on her rent, but her landlord seemed to fear that she soon might be. Reason: as the only survivor of Hitler's immediate family. Frauelein Wolf has long hoped for a hunk of Hitler's great fortune, but her prospects of getting even a pfennig of it have dimmed to the vanishing point. Facing her eviction stoically, Paula indulged in some fond reminiscences of her late big brother: "He was kind to me when father died. He took me to my first opera--Lohengrin. But he made me stick to my studies. When we were children, he would tell me that if anyone was unkind to me he would protect me." Had she ever foreseen Hitler's rise to Fuehrer? "No," said she with a smile. "But he was always a man who knew what he wanted." So saying, she turned back to her typewriter and her memoirs.

Britain's most loyal ally in the Middle East, Iraq's young (21) King Feisal II, jubilantly showed up at Buckingham Palace for a state visit to a power behind his throne. Flanked by his uncle, Crown Prince Abdul Illah, little Feisal posed for an official photograph, looking delighted as a 21-year-old with his gleaming white uniform, the attention he was getting and the company he was keeping--the Duke of Edinburgh (caparisoned as an Admiral of the Fleet) and Queen Elizabeth II, a crownless standout amidst the profusion of feathers, ribbons, tassels and gold braid.

The first and only lady banker in Richland, Kans. (pop. 200), Democrat Georgia Neese Clark Gray, whose signature graced the nation's folding money when she was Treasurer of the U.S. (1949-1953) organized a weekly whistling contest, limited to kids under 16. Reasons: obscure. Prizes: two shiny silver dollars. "I just love to hear the sound of whistling," burbled Mrs. Gray. "Why be gloomy when you can be cheerful?"

Monaco's most pressing internal problem is, of course, whether Princess Grace is pregnant. In Paris Prince Rainier III kept his own counsel. But a correspondent for CIP, international Catholic news agency, reported that the Prince's chaplain, Delaware's garrulous Father Francis Tucker, had told all: "I see no reason to deny information which will soon be made official."

Aneurin Bevan, the aging enfant terrible of the British Labor Party, erupted, as he does periodically, to bellow a complaint against the West's men of God. Cried Nye Bevan: "I solemnly say to the churches of mankind, to the leaders of religion here and in the United States, that they are guilty of blasphemy! They describe the Russians as a nation of God-haters, as a nation of atheists. Well, comrades, strip from your mind all the delusions you are fond of harboring ... It is from the God-haters that the proposal [to ban H-bombs] has come, and it is by the God-lovers that the proposal has been rejected! Is there any Christian minister who has a reply?"

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