The French president, Jacques Chirac, travels to Bonn today for a "working dinner" at which he reportedly intends to reassure Germany about France's planned military reforms. Rawlins determined that the erased line was a question by Byrd to Bennett. "How long were we gone before we turned around?" The reply is, "8 1/2 (hours)."This is not the sort of question one expects from a navigator who has been keeping close track of times and distances," Rawlins said in his report "It also sounds like the turnaround was pretty sudden. "It's quite clear to me he exaggerated and knew it," said navigation scholar Dennis Rawlins.Apparently engine noise made communication difficult during the flight on 9 May 1929, and Byrd and Floyd Bennett exchanged questions and answers in the diary.

At one point there is a blank in the diary where something has been erased. She would not, as Richard Byrd did 70 years ago, allow herself to be paraded in New York and receive medals from President Coolidge. Researchers of Byrd's recently discovered flight diary say he and his pilot were concerned about an engine leak and turned around about 150 miles from the top of the world. "I have searched my conscience and my heart and find that I cannot accept this nomination - and prefer to stand instead with the egregiously overlooked," she said in an emotion- packed speech after curtain calls at the Wednesday matinee performance.If Julie Andrews were to set off in an aeroplane for the North Pole, and turn back 150 miles short of her target, there is no question but that she would come clean when she got home.

Andrews also egregiously extended the vocabulary range we have come to associate with the stars. The reason, apparently, is solidarity with her husband, Blake Edwards, who directed and produced the show, as well as co-stars, Tony Roberts, Michael Nouri and Rachel York. "That's expensive mayonnaise." So she picked up a knife, stirred the bowl until the evidence of the animal's slobbering had disappeared and cried out, "Come on, everybody. Eat up!"Someone who as a matter of principle would never feed her guests dog slaver is Julie Andrews. In her latest principled stand, the star has turned her back on the 1996 Tony Awards, rejecting a nomination that still could win her a prize for her performance in the musical Victor/Victoria. "Marge," said the wife of of one of her staff, "Scotzzie's gotten into the food." "That's terrible," Schott replied.