A Qatari national has received a $4. 3 million offer to buy his 400-year-old copy of the Holy Koran. Saeed Ali Al Suwaidi, who got the rare handwritten book from a Yemeni Islamic scholar in Makkah, Saudi Arabia last Ramadan, said the offer came from among the Saudi, Kuwaiti and Emirati prospective buyers who approached him.

As the New Year is just round the corner, the markets are flooded with new calendars for 2007, most of them featuring semi-nude pictures. In one of them, Miss December is shown wearing nothing but a Santa hat and a smile. One such organization is The Humane Society in the city of Jefferson, about 50 miles west of Milwaukee. It is one of the many nonprofit organizations from Australia to Wisconsin selling tastefully nude calendars for next year.

Car-crazy Kevin Beresford has traveled across the U. K. to take photographs of parking garages and lots for a calendar he wants to publish. According to The Sun newspaper, Beresford took hundreds of pictures of various garages and lots across Britain to choose only 12 of his favorites to be included in the calendar.

Austrian ski instructors in Arlberg region have agreed to bare it all after students ask them to release a naked calendar. It was reported that 24 male and female instructors stripped their clothes off and braved the Alpine cold over 6,000 feet above sea level to pose for the Ski Instructors Calendar.

London traders are taking their clothes off to raise money for charity. The KatCanDo charity is making a calendar that will feature 12 nude people with strategically placed objects covering their embarrassing bits.