NEWS LITE : BACKSTREET BOYS' DONATION IN DOUBT.

The Backstreet Boys planned to donate $75,000 from their Denver concert to the Columbine College Fund, but the nonprofit organization is about to fold for lack of funds.

``We're currently trying to get in contact with the correct organization to make sure that the money donated on behalf of the Backstreet Boys gets to the kids,'' Mark Norman, vice president of show promoter House of Blues, said Wednesday.

The group donated the money after learning that 1,200 tickets to their Oct. 31 Denver concert were scalped for at least $110 apiece.

Patrice Pagano, who established the San Francisco-based fund in May to provide college scholarships to students in the Columbine High School massacre, said only about $800 has been donated.

Necessity of hunt obvious to Nugent

Rock star Ted Nugent says protests against state-sanctioned deer hunts in two Michigan parks are off target.

``It's a boon to all except those that think Bambi's real,'' Nugent said Friday while hunting near his home in rural Jackson County. ``Reducing living, breathing flesh-and-blood creatures to the value of a cartoon. It hurts.''

Managers of the parks, concerned that the high numbers of deer will either starve or devour endangered plant life, endorsed a series of hunts in July. They consulted with an advisory committee that included representatives of two outdoors groups that Nugent heads.

Opponents say the hunts are unnecessary and inhumane, but Nugent says the hunters are doing a job that needs to be done.

Model's right to say `Playmate' upheld

A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit filed by Playboy Enterprises Inc. against 1981 Playmate of the Year Terri Welles.

Welles of Carmel Valley ran her own Internet site touting her nearly two-decade-old title and modeling for the men's magazine.

Playboy sued Welles in February 1998, claiming her use of the trademarked words Playmate and Playboy were illegal infringement. The words appeared both on her Web page and a hidden source code known as meta-tags.

Computer search engines that scan the millions of Web pages at the request of computer users read meta-tags when deciding which pages to select.

U.S. District Judge Judith Keep in San Diego found Welles' use of the words was proper because they described her and her World Wide Web site, said Welles' attorney David J. Noonan.

CAPTION(S):

2 photos

Photo: (1) IS HE COMING?

Eddie Castellano's Dalmatians, Boy and Cheetah, wait in the car while their owner buys dog food during a shopping trip Saturday in Gulf Breeze, Fla.

Mari Darr-Welch/The Northwest Florida Daily News

(2) The Backstreet Boys' recent attempt to donate to a Colorado charity may not have reached the fund in time to prevent it from folding.

Rick Havner/Associated Press