* Winner: Long known for his charitable work, industrialist Jon M. Huntsman will be contributing even more to charity after selling off a large chunk of his plastics business. The nearly $1 billion deal will include a considerable amount of money to fund the Jon and Karen Huntsman Foundation, which supports various humanitarian and charitable causes, including hospitals, homeless shelters and the Huntsman Cancer Institute. Huntsman indicated last year that he wanted to divest some of his commodities operations to reduce debt and fund charities. This deal will allow him to do just that.
Loser: Files accounting for the gold that Nazis looted from Auschwitz and other death camps have disappeared, hindering the German government in its postwar attempts to come to terms with its Nazi legacy. The 26 lost folders, known as the Melmer files after the SS officer responsible for tallying the gold plundered from Jews exterminated in concentration camps, could have provided evidence in claims for damages against German and Swiss banks. Victims' gold, much of it from dental work, along with millions of dollars worth of gold ingots plundered from banks in Nazi-occupied countries, was put into the Reichsbank, Nazi Germany's central bank. It is now believed the records may have been destroyed as late as the 1970s.* Winner: The newly inaugurated president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, Salt Lake's Deedee Corradini, thinks the state of physical fitness today in American youths is lousy. Wednesday in New York, Corradini announced a new "FitKids" program with the hope of improving a group of children that she says "is in the worst shape ever." Done in conjunction with the U.S. Olympic Committee and USA Track & Field, the program is targeted toward children in grades four through six in an attempt to establish healthy habits early. It basically consists of a series of weekly goals of running, walking or biking certain distances. Many would do well to hop aboard Corradini's fitness express.
* Winner: Intel Corp., the world's largest microchip maker, has made a $24 million investment with a Salt Lake firm - Evans & Sutherland, a computer graphics specialist. The move is intended to accelerate development of high-end graphics and video subsystems for Intel-based workstations. What it also does is significantly expand Evans & Suth-er-land's commercial business. Evans & Sutherland's REAL image graphics technology has gained favor with major manufacturers of Intel Architecture-based workstations because of its ability to incorporate the continuous advancements introduced by Intel. That kind of performance is what led to the $24 million transaction.