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Miss Israel (35260)
Miss Israel

Miss Israel 2013, Yityish (Titi) Aynaw, visited Los Angeles’ Little Ethiopia Saturday as part of an effort by the African American, faith-based initiative Juneteenth Education Technology Mobile Arts Center (J.E.T.M.A.C.) to lay the groundwork for a 2014 Juneteenth Israel Reconciliation Tour, July 7-17. The goal is to build closer relationships with Israel through the Jewish Ethiopian community. The Ethiopian Community Development group, a project of the Southern California-based non-profit Community Partners, hosted a “meet and greet reception” on her behalf at the Little Ethiopia Cultural Center in Los Angeles.

The Ethiopian-Israeli beauty queen, a model who was the first Ethiopian Jew to win the contest, also attended Saturday morning service at a synagogue in Beverly Hills.

Miss Israel’s trip to America included stops in Washington, D.C., Virginia, Illinois, and California.

Paul Oliver (35255)

Paul Oliver, who played defensive back at the University of Georgia then in the NFL for the San Diego Chargers, was found dead Tuesday night from an apparently self-inflicted gunshot, police in suburban Atlanta said. He was 29.

Oliver apparently shot himself in front of his wife and young sons.

Police found Oliver’s body at the bottom of a set of stairs in a home in Marietta, Cobb County police spokesman Sgt. Dana Pierce said. He said the county medical examiner ruled the death a suicide by handgun and gave police authorization to release the cause.

Oliver played for the Chargers from 2007 to 2011, recording 144 tackles in 57 games.

USC fired Lane Kiffin early Sunday morning in its first mid-season football coaching change and assistant head coach Ed Orgeron was appointed interim coach.

Athletic Director Pat Haden informed Kiffin of his firing upon the team charter flight’s arrival at Los Angeles International Airport about 3 a.m., according to a four-paragraph statement released shortly after 4:30 a.m.

Haden said at an afternoon campus news conference he told Kiffin he wanted to see him when he returned to Los Angeles from Saturday night’s 62-41 loss to Arizona State in Tempe, Ariz.

“We met around 3 a.m. for about 45 minutes in a private room in the airport,” Haden said. “Lane was clearly disappointed and battled me. He tried to keep his job and I respect him for that. At the end of the day, I think it was the right decision.”

Jerry Sandusky’s effort to appeal his conviction was denied Wednesday. The former Penn State football coach was convicted last year of 45 counts relating to the sexual abuse of young boys.

Simone (35256)

Actress/singer Simone is suing her former lawyers for allegedly mishandling aspects of the estate of her mother, legendary Jazz and R&B singer Nina Simone.

Simone filed the breach-of-contract suit Friday on behalf of herself and her mother’s estate—for which she serves as administrator—against the Los Angeles law firm of Weinstock, Manion, Reisman, Shore & Neumann. She is alleging damages of at least $450,000 alone due to potential penalties and interest assessed by U.S. tax authorities.

According to the complaint, Simone, also known as Lisa Simone Kelly, hired the Weinstock firm in 2003 and used their services until November 2009 to help in the resolution of her mother’s estate. Nina Simone died in April 2003 in France at age 70 after suffering from breast cancer for several years.

According to the complaint, the Weinstock lawyers did not determine whether Nina Simone was a “French domiciliary” when she died, nor did they consider the impact on her daughter’s interests when the court instead determined that her mother was a California resident.

The firm also “failed to file the necessary estate tax returns or timely extension requests, or ensure that a procedure was set up such that the returns or requests were timely filed; did not seek to properly distribute the assets of the estate; initiated a will contest that was unlikely to be resolved in (Simone’s) favor;” and “sought to contest matters that should not have been contested.”

Simone filed a similar lawsuit against the Weinstock firm in June 2010, but then requested dismissal of the complaint 15 months later. The new complaint states that within the last year before filing the current suit, Simone learned that the defendants “failed to properly represent plaintiff in accordance with the standards in the community in numerous ways and manners.” Simone, 51, had a role in the stage play ‘“Jesus Christ Superstar.’”

Nina Simone’s career spanned parts of three decades beginning with her 1958 album “Little Girl Blue.” She also was active in the Civil Rights Movement.

The GI Film Festival, a community partner of the Hollywood studio-driven “Got Your Six” military support campaign and the nation’s only military film festival, will host its second annual GI Film Festival Los Angeles, Nov. 1-2 at The Walt Disney Studios in Burbank. GIFF, a 501c3 non-profit organization described as “Sundance for the Troops,” preserves the stories of veterans through film, television and training. GIFF LA will feature “best of GIFF” award-winning film screenings from previous GIFF festivals, new film premieres from military veteran filmmakers and workshops dedicated to helping military veterans find success in the entertainment industry.

The University of Southern California’s entering undergraduate student body is among the most diverse and academically talented in the university’s 133-year history.

Average standardized test scores for the incoming class lie in the 95th percentile. The vast majority of incoming freshmen were in the top 10 percent of their high school class. The average un-weighted GPA of the group was 3.73.

USC received 47,358 applications for 2,922 places in this fall’s freshman class. With this year’s freshman applicant pool, USC’s admission rate was 19.8 percent–the most selective admission rate in the university’s history.

The class represents a highly competitive and highly diverse group of students, with very broad geographic representation; the class ranks among the most ethnically diverse ever enrolled at USC, with 22 percent under-represented minority students, including 6 percent African American, 14 percent Latino, 2 percent Native American/Pacific Islander, and 19 percent Asian students. In addition, 13 percent of matriculating students are the first in their families to attend university.

California Attorney General Kamala D. Harris recently unveiled the first state-wide statistics on California’s truancy crisis which reveal that, last year alone, 1 million elementary school students were truant and 250,000 elementary school students missed 18 or more school days at a cost of $1.4 billion in lost funds to California school districts.

These findings are part of a report, “In School and On Track,” issued Monday by Attorney General Harris in Los Angeles where statewide education, public policy and law enforcement leaders were convened to discuss this crisis and identify concrete solutions.

“The California Constitution guarantees every child the right to an education, yet we are failing our youngest children, as early as kindergarten,” Attorney General Harris said. “These are children as young as five years old who are out of school, falling behind, and too many of them never catch up. This crisis is not only crippling for our economy, it is a basic threat to public safety. It’s time for accountability and to craft real solutions at every level—from parents to school districts, to law enforcement—to solve this problem.”

According to the report, elementary school truancy is at the root of the state’s chronic criminal justice problems. According to the report, missing large amounts of school is one of the strongest predictors of dropping-out, even more so than suspensions or test scores. Annually, dropouts cost California taxpayers an estimated $46.4 billion in incarceration, lost productivity and lost taxes.

Other key findings from “In School and On Track”:

  • In some California elementary schools, 92% of students were truant last year.
  • California school districts are losing $1.4 billion in funding due to truant students.

Solutions proposed from In School and On Track:

  • California must create a statewide system to collect student attendance records.
  • School districts must improve the way truant students are monitored.
  • School administrators must meet with parents or guardians immediately when a child is truant.
  • Law enforcement must focus on early, positive intervention to empower parents and students.
  • Parents must be held accountable, including prosecution in the most severe cases.

Monday the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California celebrates the nine-year anniversary of the historic Williams settlement with the release of a report, “Williams v. California: Lessons From Nine Years of Implementation.” The report examines the continuing impact of Williams, a class action lawsuit filed in 2000 by the ACLU, Public Advocates, and other civil rights organizations, along with the law firm Morrison & Foerster LLP, on behalf of public school students in California. The case argued that the state and its agencies were denying thousands of students their fundamental right to an education by failing to provide them with the basic tools necessary for a student to learn: clean, safe and functional school facilities; enough textbooks for all students; and teachers who are trained and qualified for the classes and students they teach.

The findings, based on data from the lowest-performing 30 percent of California schools, reveal that the standards and accountability systems established by the 2004 Williams settlement have significantly improved conditions in schools throughout the state. Specifically, the report finds that:

  • More schools have teachers who are qualified for the classes and students they teach. In 2005-2006, 29 percent of teachers in California’s low-performing schools were misassigned, according to the California Commission on Teacher Credentialing. By 2010-2011, that figure dropped to 13 percent. The improvement is largely attributable to increased efforts to ensure English Learner students are taught by appropriately trained and assigned teachers.
  • School facilities are reportedly cleaner, safer and more functional. In the first four years of Williams implementation, county offices of education found 11 to 13 percent of low-performing schools had unsafe facility conditions. By 2012-2013, that figure dropped to 4 percent, even as most school facility officials expressed strong concerns about the future impact of disinvestments in facilities maintenance.
  • More schools provide sufficient instructional materials and textbooks. In 2004-2005, 19 percent of low-performing schools did not have enough textbooks to go around; by 2012-2013, only 5 percent of schools in this category lacked sufficient textbooks. Overall, more than 215,000 new textbooks and instructional materials have been distributed to students in low-performing schools across the state, after problems with missing or inadequate materials were identified through Williams site visits.

The documented progress is particularly remarkable in light of the devastating budget cuts in recent years and indicates that the Williams standards have provided a counterbalance against budget pressures to ensure students receive basic necessities for educational opportunity.

Examining trends and data from the past nine years, the report offers insights into the effectiveness of the accountability systems Williams put in place and identifies necessary improvements as California begins to implement its new school finance and accountability system. That system, called the Local Control Funding Formula, reaffirms the state’s commitment to the Williams settlement by establishing compliance with Williams as the first of eight statewide education priorities.

“This report demonstrates why Williams remains the foundation on which California must build to provide every child a high-quality education,” said ACLU of Southern California Williams Implementation attorney Brooks Allen. “The settlement has provided millions of students with the basic essentials they need to succeed. Now we must address the challenges identified by educators across the state and heed their lessons.”

Among the top challenges identified in the report is inadequate investment in school facilities. For example, school districts have been waiting for years for the state to deliver more than half of the $800 million promised in the Williams Settlement for “emergency” repairs.

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