U. S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice turned down requests to witness her ice-skating talents and warm up frosty U. S. -Russian relations during a visit to a rink in Russia, Friday. In a report Rice said that it had been 10 years since she last put her feet inside ice skates.

amily, health and religion - and not sex - make Filipinos most happy, according to a new Philippine Happiness Index. The index, crafted by Dr. Romulo A. Virola, Secretary General of the National Statistical Coordination Board, was posted on the Board's website on Tuesday.

Saying he just wants to help her prepare to achieve her dream of someday swimming across the English Channel, a father tied his daughter's hands and feet and watched her swim in a chilly southern China river for three hours Tuesday. In an interview, Huang Daosheng said her daughter, Huang Li, 10, swam more than a mile in the Xiang River on Tuesday, traveling with the current.

The mayor of the Philippine capital Manila on Monday ordered a ban on street basketball saying playing the popular ball game in the middle of the streets endangered both the players and motorists. Mayor Alfredo Lim directed Carlos Baltazar, the chief of Manila's department of public services, to serve notice to all village chiefs to enforce the ban. The order also asks village chiefs to remove all basketball courts that have been put up in the middle of the streets or major thoroughfares.

A Washington, DC man who purchased a Hummer despite being in an environmentally-conscious neighborhood only owned the vehicle for five days before someone vandalized it. Two masked men reportedly smashed the windows, slashed the tires and scratched into the body of the car a message: "For the Environ. "