News In Brief

I NEVER GO FASTER THAN 65

It's not inconceivable that Abdul Rahman Ismail, a taxi driver in Penang, Malaysia, might have been speeding. But when a ticket arrived in the mail last week for an offense that allegedly occurred back in October, he knew he had grounds to contest it. That's because he was accused of going 700 m.p.h. After newspapers publicized his story, police acknowledged that the ticket was "probably" a technical error and invited Ismail down to the station to clear up the matter.

PACK MY THERMAL UNDERWEAR

Score a hole-in-one, win $1 million. Sounds like a golfer's dream, right? Well, maybe not. For starters, the opportunity will be offered in the world ice golf championship. In early April. In Greenland, 400 miles north of the Arctic Circle. On a frozen sea, where polar bears prowl and icebergs loom. The greens? They'll be white, and the balls will be pink and orange. The tournament is sponsored by a distillery.

World's 'underprotected' forests rated in new survey

For all the progress made in places such as the Amazon basin, environmentalists say many of the world's forests still are underprotected - in large measure because they lack effective management. A new study released by the World Wildlife Fund places most of these in poor nations unable to safeguard their natural resources. The WWF's top 10 threatened forests, and the degree each is considered to be protected, in percentage terms:

American Samoa/ Southern Pacific Islands 0.2%

Naga-Manapuri-Chin Hills, Southeast Asia 0.8%

Solomons/Vanuatu/Bismarck, southwest Pacific Ocean 1.0%

Cameroon Highlands, West Africa 1.0%

Gulf of Guinea mangroves, Northwest Africa 1.1%

Madagascar mangroves 1.3%

Palawan, Philippines 1.4%

Philippines most forests 1.8%

Souththern Mexico dry forests 2.1%

East African mangroves 2.2%

-US Newswire

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