etc...

THREE ARE BETTER THAN ONE

If you're following along at home, the winner of the annual 22-mile cross-country race between man and horse in the Welsh town of Llanwrtyd Wells last weekend was ... the one with the hooves. Royal Mikado (and rider) covered the distance in a time of 2:08:06 - more than 9 minutes faster than the first individual runner to cross the finish line. So the $32,000 prize offered if any man were to win went unclaimed. Ah, but that doesn't mean that the horse outran every human in the contest. In fact, the fellow on the final leg of a three-man relay team beat Royal Mikado to the line by almost three minutes.

From Berlin comes word that the famous illusionist David Copperfield is in even greater demand than usual. Why now? Because in a "mental exercise" he correctly predicted the winning numbers - in sequence - of last weekend's German national lottery. What's more, he did so back on Feb. 17. His prediction was notarized and kept under guard in a sealed box until one hour after the numbers were drawn. But Copperfield doesn't participate in lotteries because "I find them boring; I'm not a gambler."

Osama bin Laden was the most common online search term during the week ending Oct. 13, at least according to the popular search engine Terra Lycos. Meanwhile, searches for anthrax, the third-most-popular term, increased by more than 600 percent over the previous week. The 10 most common search terms last week, according to Lycos:

1. Osama bin Laden

2. Halloween

3. Anthrax

4. Dragonball

5. World Trade Center

6. Afghanistan

7. Costumes

8. Morpheus

9. American flag

10. Britney Spears

- Business Wire