Week In Review A Look Back At The Top Stories From The Last Week

BUSINESS

A Fortunate 500

Forbes and Fortune magazines reported early last week that the nation’s top 500 companies enjoyed a 23 percent jump in profits last year. The growth in company profits far outpaced employee income gains.

“The companies of the Fortune 500 have restructured, re-engineered, refinanced, downsized, laid off, split up and merged their way to prosperity,” the magazine said. “Don’t businesses need to start selling more jet engines, more hamburgers, more software programs, and more telephone calls - to keep this earnings express rolling?”

Just a correction

The Dow Jones industrial average, up and down all week, ended decidedly down, falling 148.36 points Friday to close at 6391.69, down about 1 percent for the year and nearly 10 percent from its peak in March.

WORLD AFFAIRS

Failed talks

On Monday, President Clinton tried without success to jump-start the Mideast peace talks, which have been stalled since Israel announced plans to build housing in Arab East Jerusalem. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu mockingly called the controversy “terrorism of the walk-up rentals,” which pretty much set the tone for his discussion with Clinton in Washington.

Failed peace

The next day, Netanyahu returned to Israel to find his immediate challenge was not to save the Middle East peace process but to stop violence from spiraling out of control. Three Palestinians were shot to death and more than 100 were injured as Palestinian-Israeli clashes erupted in the West Bank town of Hebron. It was the bloodiest day in three weeks of Palestinian-Israeli violence over “the walk-up rentals.”

POLITICS

Too nice

Remember those anonymous complaints against Washington state Insurance Commissioner Deborah Senn that materialized the week before last November’s elections? An independent investigation cleared Senn Tuesday of 27 of 28 charges. The charge that stuck: Senn had improperly granted three employees two days of paid leave while their offices were being moved from Seattle to Olympia. The $22,500 probe caught Senn red-handed being too nice to her employees.

Broad-minded of them

A Senate panel agreed Wednesday to broaden its investigation of potential Democratic fund-raising abuses to include GOP-linked tax-exempt organizations, the Republican Party and Bob Dole’s 1996 presidential campaign.

In the House, Majority Whip Tom DeLay and Wisconsin Democrat David Obey nearly came to blows over the same issue. In the end, the House panel decided to broaden its probe, too, sort of. One of Clinton’s biggest critics, panel chairman Dan Burton, R-Ind., has sole authority to issue subpoenas.

ENVIRONMENT

More bull than trout

On Wednesday, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service told a federal judge in Portland that it will propose listing bull trout as an endangered or threatened species despite everything Idaho has been doing to save them. On Thursday, Idaho Gov. Phil Batt responded: “Today, I am disappointed to learn that our efforts never were taken seriously or given an honest chance to succeed.”

COURTS

Try, try again One week after a mistrial was declared in the Spokane Valley bombing trial, a federal grand jury handed down new indictments against the Sandpoint trio, and added a fourth defendant, former Army sniper Brian E. Ratigan.

MILITARY

We had to ask

All week long the Air Force searched for a missing A-10 Thunderbird that disappeared over Colorado with its pilot, Capt. Craig Button, and four 500-pound bombs. Asked if the missing Thunderbolt might have been flying to Denver for Timothy McVeigh’s Oklahoma City bombing trial, the Air Force refused to speculate on where the plane was headed or why it was gone. By the end of the week, Pentagon officials said they were pretty sure Button wasn’t trying to steal the warplane and that it had probably run out of fuel and crashed somewhere near Vail.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Photo

MEMO: The week in review is compiled by News Editor Kevin Graman. For more information on these stories, see Virtually Northwest, The Spokesman-Review’s online publication, at www.virtuallynorthwest.com.

The following fields overflowed: CREDIT = Compiled by News Editor Kevin Graman