WINNERS & LOSERS

[September 17th, 2003] WINNERS

Nike settled a 5-year-old lawsuit with a light $1.5 million hit to its petty-cash drawer. The suit, levied by a labor-rights organization, accused the shoe giant of lying about conditions in its overseas plants. The underlying free-speech question (does the First Amendment protect corporate fibs?) remains unanswered.

Portland foes of world trade turned out an impressive 1,000 people Saturday to protest the WTO, which had a meeting that day in Mexico. As if to confirm their fears about the whole import-export thing, news broke Sunday that farm-raised Chilean salmon have turned up dirty in Canada and Europe.

Carlos Kalmar seized the Oregon Symphony's baton in no uncertain terms last week. The hotly anticipated new conductor, taking over for long-reigning James DePreist, triumphed with a gallop through Stravinsky, Berlioz and Torke. And that's not a law firm.

Smart-assed Powell's employees put one over on Winners & Losers last week. W/L plucked an item regarding the "American Phonetics Championship" from the bookstore's website, only to discover both the contest and its reported award to the word "Multnomah" to be fictitious. The effete and over-educated celebrated.

LOSERS

More than 800 middle- and high-schoolers bailed out of four poorly performing Portland public schools this week, thanks to the No Child Left Behind law. The affected schools will lose funding along with students--ensuring, under the feds' logic, their rapid improvement.

Portland's ever-hopeful Major League Baseball fans saw their dreams deferred again last week, when the city withdrew from consideration as an interim home for les Expos. Meanwhile, venal baseball commissioner Bud Selig says he'd rather see the unjustly unloved Montreal club move to D.C. than PDX.

Air travelers can now think of the world as a scarier place. A former Portland International security screener pleaded guilty to filching $1,300 from a passenger's purse. Nationally, the House Aviation Committee reported that undercover investigators smuggled weapons past checkpoints at undisclosed terminals around the country.

Voices in the heads of Portland's mentally ill are reciting an elegy for Woodland Park Hospital's psychiatric ward. State officials suspended the hospital wing indefinitely for chronic security and supervision problems. Censure came after one elusive 300-pound patient managed to escape not once but twice in less than a week.