Even in Defeat, He’s Still Wedded to His Conviction

T. J. Manning knows when he’s beat. The president of the Greater Towson, Md., Jaycees had tried his best to keep women out of the organization, but the chapter’s board of directors voted against him. Now, proving that he is a good loser, Manning, 33, plans to marry Rose Maturo, the first woman who joined the group. “We’ll probably have all daughters and no sons,” said Maturo, teasing her husband-to-be about his reputation as the Jaycees’ most notorious male chauvinist. Manning still thinks he was right about admitting women. “I didn’t think it (allowing women members) was such a great idea. I had seven sisters, and any distance I could get from females was a wonderful thing,” he said recently. But Manning should have known he couldn’t win. In his freshman year at Mount Saint Mary’s College, officials decided to admit women.

--Nabila Khashoggi, 25-year-old daughter of Saudi Arabian arms dealer Adnan Khashoggi, has denied reports that she married Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi. An Italian newspaper on Saturday quoted unidentified diplomatic sources as saying the marriage took place recently. The newspaper said that as a gift to the bride’s family, Kadafi signed a contract to sell Libyan crude oil to Khashoggi at below-market prices. “It is total and utter lies being put around by enemies of my father,” Nabila Khashoggi is quoted as saying. She said she has never met Kadafi and reports that “my father would sell me for oil . . . well, that’s just ridiculous.”

--Fighting persists over Rhode Island’s celebration of an end to battle. That state is the only one to mark VJ Day, the nation’s World War II victory over Japan, and members of the Japanese community said they favor abolishing or changing the name of Victory Day, or Victory-Over-Japan Day. “It is not appropriate,” said Minoru Tamba, Japanese consul general in Boston. Tamba said he would meet with Gov. Edward DiPrete if asked. DiPrete, who traveled to Japan a year ago, has pushed heavily to have Japanese firms set up operations in Rhode Island. The holiday is celebrated on the second Monday of August, although the U.S. victory over Japan was not official until Aug. 15, 1945. Efforts to change the name have failed before, with Rhode Island veterans providing the heaviest opposition.