News In Brief

TWICE THE FUN The results are in, and your third-place finisher in last week's tournament at Huntercombe Golf Club was Paul Chana. So what, you ask? Admittedly, the outcome of an obscure competition for amateurs in Henley-on-Thames, England, won't stand the world on its ear. Still, Chana did accomplish something truly remarkable: two holes-in-one in the same round. Both were on par-threes and were the first of his life. Folks who should know, the Hole-in-One Society, put the likelihood of that happening at 13 million to 1.

WE'VE GOT A SURPRISE FOR YOU Gee, look at all the people who've come to help us move in, thought Bill Emrich as he pulled up with the first load of furniture hours after buying a house in Sturbirdge, Mass. But what lured the neighbors was smoke pouring out of the place from a basement stove that had been left on. Firemen put out the flames, and insurance will cover the damage.

US workers buck world trend - spend more time on jobs While employees in other industrialized nations have been reducing the amount of time they spend at work, Americans actually expanded theirs by 4 percent between 1980 and 1997. That incremental increase counters a general downward pattern noted in a recent study by the Geneva-based International Labor Organization. Although Americans may be working more, their 22 percent increase in productivity didn't keep up with gains made by the Japanese (43 percent) or by workers in France, Germany, or Britain (all up at least 30 percent). The number of hours an average worker spent on the job annually in selected industrialized nations included in the UN survey:

United States 1,966

Japan 1,889

Australia 1,867

New Zealand 1,838

Canada 1,732

Great Britain 1,731

France 1,656

Germany 1,560

Sweden 1,552

Norway 1,399

- Reuters

Compiled by Robert Kilborn, Lance Carden, and Ross Atkin

(c) Copyright 1999. The Christian Science Publishing Society