President Richard Nixon is "an astrological island surrounded by water," according to Washington Astrologer Hal Gould. Nixon, whose sign is the earth sign of Capricorn, is surrounded by the three water signs of Pisces (Wife Pat and Daughter Tricia), Cancer (Daughter Julie, and the confirmation of Agriculture Secretary Earl Butz will bring the number at Cabinet level to five) and Scorpio (Vice President Spiro Agnew, Crony Bebe Rebozo, Friend Billy Graham, Aide Bob Haldeman). Explains Gould: "Capricorn people are the Avis of the zodiac--they try harder, they place tremendous demands on their friends. The water signs are sensitive, emotional, idealistic; and since Capricorn is practical and hard-nosed, he looks for more visionary people." Among Gould's "hunches" for 1972: Spiro Agnew will be replaced by another water man. He names no names--except to predict that Piscean Pat Nixon will have a hand in the selection. John Connolly, incidentally, is a Pisces.

"I've about cornered the market on dissident Communists," says Actor Richard Burton. Having just finished playing Yugoslavia's Marshal Tito (TIME, Oct. 18), he is now Stalin's mortal enemy, Leon Trotsky, in The Assassination of Trotsky, being filmed in Rome by U.S. Director Joseph Losey. Elizabeth Taylor anxiously monitored the scene in which the murderer, played by French Actor Alain Delon, sneaks up behind Trotsky with an Alpine ice ax hidden under his coat. Delon claimed to be so wrapped up in his role that he was afraid he might actually kill Burton. "There are plenty of French actors in the world, but if you kill me you kill one-sixth of all Welsh actors," said Richard, forgetting for a moment that nearly every Welshman is an actor of sorts.

After 20 years of true red love, Italy's Numero Una Communist, Luigi Longo, 71, boss of the largest (1,500,000 members) Communist Party in the West, took advantage of Italy's new divorce law to make an honest comrade of his longtime mistress Bruna Conti, 58. Their 17-year-old son Egidio was present at the ceremony, performed by the Communist mayor of Genzano. So were two other sons by his previous wife Teresa Noce, who fought beside him in the Spanish Civil War and served the party in Italy, Spain and France. Though Longo had not lived with her since he spotted Bruna in the Union of Italian Women a couple of decades ago, Teresa is reported to have phoned her congratulations.

David Kissinger is only ten years old, but he has already learned something about making news. On the presidential plane The Spirit of '76 with his father, Henry Kissinger, and White House Press Secretary Ronald Ziegler, he heard the inevitable newsmen ask the inevitable question: "When are we going to China?" When Dad did not answer, David helped out. "You're going in March, aren't you?" he piped up. That was news of the first magnitude, and Master David was quickly whisked back to his seat, where Ziegler asked him where he had got his information. On the radio, replied David, who returned to the amused correspondents and volunteered his source.

Teddy Roosevelt's advice to statesmen, "Speak softly and carry a big stick," has been put to good use by Britain's Prime Minister Edward Heath. The stick he wielded was big in prestige --the baton of the London Symphony Orchestra--and his soft words were admonitions like "Ssh!" when he thought things were getting a bit too loud in the musicians' rousing rendition of Sir

Edward Elgar's 15-minute Cockaigne overture. "A thoroughly professional job," said the Daily Telegraph critic. "Genuine creative interpretation," said the Guardian's man, who particularly admired "the shading of the rallentandos in the romantic passages." The P.M., a former Oxford organ scholar, has long conducted the Christmas carol concert in his home town of Broadstairs, but the concert at London's Royal Festival Hall, for which he meticulously rehearsed, was his debut with a professional orchestra. "The fulfillment of a life's ambition," he beamed. "I must be one of the most fortunate men alive." Commented the London Symphony's regular conductor, Andre Previn: ''It is not true that I am shortly to be guest Prime Minister for 15 minutes."

To Women's Liberationists it seemed too good to be true: a beauty queen --Miss World, no less--publicly renouncing the whole chauvinist charade. After Brazil's beauteous Lucia Petterle learned in London that she would be at the beck and call of the contest sponsors throughout 1972, she summoned her lawyers. Her mail was being opened, she complained; she was being wakened at 7 a.m. for appointments and was under constant supervision. "I don't want to be enslaved by this title," flounced the third-year medical student at a press conference back in Rio de Janeiro. "I'm not going to lose a year of study because of any crown." She said that she had refused to sign her contract, had turned down a modeling tour of France and Bob Hope's Christmas trip to Viet Nam. But alas, a day or two later, liberated Lucia slipped back into those golden chains. Her final year at medical school would be "postponed," she said, and everything was going to work out according to the sponsors' idea of the best of all possible Miss Worlds.

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