Foreign News: The White Queen

One of the world's loneliest places is the Cocos Islands, a group of 27 coral islets whose tall coconut palms are fanned by the soft trade winds of the Indian Ocean midway between Ceylon and Australia. Until last week, one of the loneliest men there was its benevolent ruler: king John Clunies-Ross, a slim young (22) Briton who rules the 1,200 copra-gathering islanders under a 999-year charter granted by Queen Victoria to his great-greatgrandfather, Ross I, a Scot from the Shetland Isles, who settled there in 1827.

To while away the hours on lonely Cocos, great-great-grandson Ross V has golf links, a...

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