.htaccess riddle - guru needed!

[sockwater]

I wasn't trying to imply you were slow..

I would do something like this, but it's kind of hard to tell, not knowing how your scripts work.

# permanently redirect headlines.php to headlines/ (change the url)
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} -f
RewriteRule ^news/headlines.php$ headlines/ [L,R=301]

# send the headlines/ url to the headlines.php script behind the scenes (don't change url)
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f 
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule ^headlines/(.*)$ headlines.php?uri=$1 [L]