BRIEFCASE JOBLESS CLAIMS SLOW 4TH WEEK IN A ROW.

Byline: - Staff and Wire Services

WASHINGTON - For four weeks in a row, fewer Americans filed new claims for state unemployment benefits, suggesting that the steep increase in layoffs after the terrorist attacks might be abating.

However, economists warn that the country is still in for a period of rising unemployment.

The Labor Department reported Wednesday that for the workweek that ended Saturday, new jobless claims dipped by a seasonally adjusted 15,000 to 427,000. That followed a drop of 10,000, according to revised figures, an even bigger decline than the government previously estimated.

The report comes as a couple of other encouraging economic indicators have emerged out of the gloomy economic picture.

FDA approves drug for treating sepsis

WASHINGTON - The government on Wednesday approved a drug that could save tens of thousands of lives a year from sepsis - the first treatment to directly attack these overwhelming bloodstream infections.

Doctors call Xigris a breakthrough, and Eli Lilly & Co. pledged to ship the medicine to hospital intensive-care units within days.

The Food and Drug Administration approved Xigris as a treatment for the most severe sepsis patients, those deemed least likely to survive. When given to such people, the drug can cut the chances of death by 13 percent.

Sepsis is a bacterial infection of the bloodstream that strikes about 750,000 Americans a year. Some 225,000 of them die when the infection sets off a chain of chemical reactions that destroy their organs.

Price controls set for power makers

WASHINGTON - Federal regulators are imposing new price controls on power producers that dominate their markets, hoping to head off electricity price spikes like the ones that crippled California a year ago.

The action by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission stunned the electricity industry. Three of the country's largest wholesale power suppliers were told they faced new price restrictions because they wielded too much market power in their home regions.

American Electric Power Co., based in Columbus, Ohio; Southern Company, based in Atlanta; and Entergy Corp., based in New Orleans, were found by the agency to have too much influence on electricity markets because their power was deemed essential to meet peak demand.

Shares of Enron continue to decline

HOUSTON - Shares of beleaguered Enron Corp. plummeted an additional 28 percent Wednesday even though it reached a critical agreement to extend a $690 million debt payment.

Analysts continued to question, however, whether Dynegy Inc.'s planned $8.9 billion acquisition of its larger rival Enron will survive, particularly as some traders are limiting business with Enron because they don't know whether more negative revelations are coming.

Enron shares have plunged more than 90 percent over the past several months following the departure of the company's chief executive and an accounting controversy that eventually caused it to restate its earnings since 1997, eliminating more than $580 million of reported income.

Money laundering prevention in works

WASHINGTON - The government is preparing anti-money-laundering rules for the securities industry under the sweeping new law to fight terrorism. And hedge funds for investments by wealthy individuals are coming under new scrutiny as possible vehicles for money laundering by terrorist groups.

For those looking to launder illicit money, the speculative hedge funds ``are probably one of those places where you can do that most efficiently and anonymously,'' Sen. Jon Corzine, D-N.J., the former chairman of Wall Street powerhouse Goldman Sachs & Co., said Wednesday.

Corzine wrote a provision in the anti-terror legislation, which President George W. Bush signed into law last month, requiring a government study of hedge funds and their potential use for laundering money.