The story was that she had a throat abscess, but rumors persisted that her "throat" had been treated in a maternity ward. Finally Sophia Loren, 29, told Italy's leading weekly, Oggi, that she had indeed recently miscarried after two months of pregnancy. Because of Roman Catholic Italy's refusal to recognize her marriage to twice-wed Carlo Ponti, Sophia had always before thought it best not to have children. But now her mind was made up. "Nothing is more important to a woman than a child. I have always dreamed of a daughter for Carlo and me. I already see her little fat legs in a short skirt, straight hair, high cheek bones like mine and the constant good humor of Carlo."

He has not been feeling up to snuff since September, when his sailboat capsized, tossing him into chilly waters at Martha's Vineyard, Mass., for an hour and into a hospital with pneumonia. Now Presidential Scientific Adviser Jerome Wiesner, 48, has definitely decided to leave his White House post. But health is only part of the reason. On leave from M.I.T. for nearly three years, Wiesner is more concerned about losing touch with the academic world, and will return to the institute in his old job as professor of engineering, probably early next year. His successor: Princeton Chemist Donald F. Horning.

While Pop, the P.M., was seeking election to Parliament in Scotland, Meriel Douglas-Home, 24, her two sisters and brother decided that they would renounce their courtesy titles (hers is Lady) because of "the love and favor and affection which they bear toward their parents." A few weeks before, Lord Home shed his own title to become just plain Sir Alec Douglas-Home, and that made the noble bit a little conspicuous for the children. Meriel took a proper commoner job as salesgirl at Bumpus, London's venerable bookshop. A photographer caught her melding into her new scenery during lunch hour, going shopping like everyone else.

Hickory Hill is a Virginia home that houses one turtle, one frog, one guinea pig, one donkey, one crayfish, two lizards, two horses, two servants, three salamanders, three toads, three dogs, three birds, three roosters, four ducks, six ponies, eight children, 22 tropical fish, hundreds of meal worms, and Bobby and Ethel Kennedy, 35. It is a bad house to live next to if you are not kind to animals. When Ethel made up her mind that the man next door was starving his horse to death, she quickly brought the creature over to Hickory Hill, where the horse died anyway. She complained to the Animal Rescue League, and last week Neighbor Nicholas Zemo went on trial. Hearing Ethel's testimony, the judge said, "This is one of the clearest cases of cruelty by neglect I've ever seen," and fined Nasty Neighbor Nick $250.

The Lord's Taverners are a group of British showbiz and sporting chaps who like to yuk it up in various sports that catch their fancy. At this year's outing the game was basketball--and against the court-clowning Harlem Globetrotters, no less. In the first half, the Globetrotters laughed their way to a 20-0 lead. But the script always calls for the Taverners to win. And so Prince Philip, 42, a Taverner reserve and part-time Gunga Din, donned white waiter's jacket and served the visitors champagne in silver cups. While the Globetrotters reeled, his mates stole one of the baskets. That bit of gamesmanship gave the Taverners a 26--24 victory, and Philip's favorite charity got $22,400 in proceeds from the event.

In 1958 the Archbishop of Dublin blocked performance of The Drums of Father Ned, and in retaliation Sean O'Casey, 83, announced that nevermore would any of his plays be produced professionally in the Republic of Ireland. But Dublin's famed Abbey Theatre is due to perform two of his works--Juno and the Paycock and The Plough and the Stars--next year in London at a drama festival of companies from all over Europe. Naturally they want to do the plays justice, and they have asked permission to produce them in Dublin for a two or three weeks' trial run. "I could not honorably or sentimentally refuse." But just this once, said the playwright.

The fallout was still raining down from that after-debut brawl that left a Southampton, L.I., mansion in ruins and resulted in indictments for 14 young socialites. To make sure that nothing like that happens to her again, Fernanda Wanamaker Wetherill, 18, and her parents have called off a second coming-out party, which was to be held at Christmastime in a Philadelphia hotel. The money will go to a local boys' school--"a much better cause," allowed her stepfather. Said Fern: ".It was the only thing to do. This whole deb business is getting me down."

Ill lay: Author-News Commentator Lowell Thomas, 71, in Detroit's Henry Ford Hospital in satisfactory condition after a mild heart attack; Actor Anthony Perkins, 31, for three days, after he sprained his ankle while chasing through the woods with Brigitte Bardot during the filming of Une Ravissante Idiote near Paris; Ballplayboy Bo Belinsky, 26, for a day, after breaking his nose in two places when his surfboard rose up and clobbered him off Waikiki.

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