Electric-dipole intercombination and forbidden transitions have been optically observed with ions circulating in a storage ring, and atomic lifetimes determined. For the 2s2p 3 P o 1 level in the Be-like ion B + , the measured lifetime of (97.65 ± 0.5) ms corresponds to a transition probability of (10.24 ± 0.05) s −1 . This result ties in with experimental work on the neighbouring ion C 2+ and with recent calculations. For the corresponding level 3s3p 3 P o 1 in the Mg-like ion Al + , a lifetime of (305±10) µs (transition rate (3280±100) s −1 ) has been measured, corroborating earlier experiments but not the more recent calculations. The transition probability of the M1/E2 transition between the fine-structure levels of the 2s 2 2p 5 2 P o ground state in F-like Sc 12+ has been determined as (1000 ± 30) s −1 , in agreement with the results of semi-empirically corrected multi-configuration Dirac-Fock calculations.