As President Bush winds up his last week in office, here's something to ponder, especially if you happen to be sitting on a plane held on the tarmac. One of his administration's last acts in the transportation field was to approve a policy that could open the way for consumers to sue airlines in state courts for any action that might violate their "contract of carriage," that pact that, unbeknownst to most travelers, goes into effect each time an airline sells you a ticket.

Who Wants a Pleistocene-Era Backyard?

While casting about for feel-good stories, we remembered the lost and starving Magellanic penguins that were airlifted to safety by the Brazilian army last fall. The young penguins, whose home is in the southern Atlantic, had wandered too far north, washing up on the warm beaches of Brazil by the hundreds, and the situation looked grim when "animal-welfare activists loaded the birds onto a Brazilian air force cargo plane and flew them 1,550 miles to the country's southern coast, where a crowd of onlookers celebrated as the penguins marched back into the sea." Definite feel-good material.

The Cheers Travel World / Nambucca heads hotels