Over the vigorous objections of some teachers and vocational education leaders, the Los Angeles Board of Education approved a bold academic reform plan Tuesday that will require high school students to complete a set of college prep courses.Standing outside the Los Angeles Unified School District’s downtown headquarters with several hundred cheering parents, students and community members after the 6-1 vote, board President Jose Huizar called it a victory.”Thousands upon thousands of children will now have the opportunity to attend college, and that is an opportunity that wasn’t there for them for many years,” said Huizar, who introduced the plan, which was co-sponsored by board members Jon Lauritzen and David Tokofsky.Board member Marguerite LaMotte, who represents many of the schools that serve parents and students who support the plan, cast the lone dissenting vote.LaMotte said she was skeptical of how the district would implement the plan, including whether it could hire enough teachers for the additional courses when many schools were already relying on substitutes to instruct classes.”Too many of my students in my district will be negatively and adversely affected by this mandate,” she told the crowd, which was filled with students wearing red and blue T-shirts that read “Let Me Choose My Future.”"In their best interest, and in the best interest of some of your siblings, I cast a ‘no’ vote,” she said as the crowd booed.LaMotte’s concerns echoed those of teachers and other board members who worried that the plan would hurt students who were already struggling with coursework.Board member Julie Korenstein said: “I think about all of the students who may not get through high school because of this vote. Open.She won’t take the offered excuse that she just needs a little luck to break through.”It’s all skill,” she said. The bondholders trust said that meant it would receive a total of $400 million in the settlement.The deal still needs to be approved by the U.S. Smoltz (12-5), who hasn’t lost since June 6, gave up three runs and eight hits in eight innings.

It’s Exhibit A in the case for letting 42-year-old Glen Canyon Dam stand. A Masters spokesman, Glenn Greenspan, said the issue “hasn’t been discussed yet,” but it’s unlikely the devices would be allowed there.Still, ratifying their general use was inevitable, David Rickman, director of rules and equipment standards at Royal & Ancient, told Bloomberg.”Yardage information is already available through caddies, printed course guides, distance markers by fairways and from sprinkler heads,” Rickman told the news service, “so to outlaw these devices seemed no longer to be reasonable.”*Michelle Wie will compete in the Nov. It’s an earnest act of retrieval, taking what others have finished with and attending to it with the time and care associated with things of value.Several others in the show present work that’s neither ill-conceived nor poorly executed but simply slight. 6, 2005.Dickson had a career-high 37 points for South Florida (11-5, 1-2), which in its last 11 games has gone 1-4 against teams ranked in the top 25.No. He calculated the minimum coursework needed to make it over the 2.0 minimum grade-point average, and hit a 2.1.”I was disappointed I didn’t hit it right on the money,” he said.When he graduated, Laak spent time as a repo man and stock speculator, but neither career seemed to offer good odds for getting rich fast.For about five years, he played backgammon, traveling the world looking for the big-money games. He returns to Atlanta on Friday night and does it all again two days later.The 48-year-old from Marietta, Ga., is one of Delta Air Lines Inc.’s most prized customers — a super-elite frequent flier who travels 200,000 miles a year. The $700 million will provide about half the films’ expected costs, Relativity co-Chief Executive Ryan Kavanaugh said.The deal follows one in January in which the partners raised about $600 million for 18 movies.The studios and Beverly Hills-based Relativity didn’t give the names of investors or the films to be financed.The total production costs of the 19 films will be about $1.4 billion, Kavanaugh said.Like the first deal, investors will receive a share of profit from the films after studios recoup their distribution costs, he said.The movies will be released between the last quarter of 2006 and the end of 2007, the companies said.

From Beijing to Shanghai, Hong Kong and Seoul, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa has spent the last 16 days barnstorming East Asia in the name of bringing business home.Villaraigosa concludes his nine-city trade mission today, with a mix of hard deals and intangible agreements.Some questioned the merits of spending $500,000 in public money to send him and a retinue of aides on the longest overseas trip of his term, joined by business and labor leaders who paid their own way.But Villaraigosa said the trip was worthwhile because he secured important investments and established relationships that would “transcend time” in a part of the world where personal contact is key to investment opportunities.In Beijing, he announced the opening of a tourism office, making Los Angeles the only city in the world to have its own marketing operation in the Chinese capital.In Seoul, he publicized deals that he said would generate more than $300 million of foreign investment in Koreatown, including a new Korean consulate and cultural center, a three-screen movie complex and a condominium and retail development — although some of the projects had been in the works for months or years.And in Tokyo, Villaraigosa unveiled a program to promote Los Angeles tourism in 6,800 Japanese convenience stores and elsewhere in the region, and assured executives from a Starbucks-like chain that he would expedite their effort to open 20 to 30 stores around Los Angeles, an investment worth as much as $12 million.”We want to move this along and see you come to L.A.,” Villaraigosa told the businessmen, suggesting they consider sites in Hollywood, Sherman Oaks and the west San Fernando Valley.Villaraigosa also hyped deals in which he had little involvement.In Seoul, he touted a pact to bring as many as 100,000 more South Korean tourists to Los Angeles within three years. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s failure to persuade lawmakers to put a vast public works plan on the June ballot denies him a concrete achievement that he counted on using as a centerpiece of his reelection campaign.The setback is especially sharp for Schwarzenegger because both of the Democrats vying to replace him argue that he has accomplished little as governor and, more broadly, is unqualified for the job.Voter approval of a June ballot measure could have helped Schwarzenegger parry those attacks. That project, Schimmel says, cemented Hirst’s reputation as one of the most important of the so-called YBAs, for young British artists, noted for the shock value of their art.”I think many people were disturbed by the fact that he was creating a little science fair, growing butterflies and killing them,” Schimmel says.”In the art world, there are two extremes that are not that far apart: Tough, scatological, disturbing, morose imagery is held in almost as high disrespect as beauty, decorativeness, elegance, spectacle. “Raymond” has been a top-10 staple for the last five years.”I’m very sad it’s going off the air. 31, with “Napoleon Dynamite” tonight (citywalkhollywood.com). Inhofe (R-Okla.) dismissed criticism leveled by Democrats, saying, “I think we all know that the cut-and-run caucus is always alive and well.”Sen. Many are extremely rare: Chandler’s 1933 Packard 1006 Twelve Sport Phaeton, for instance, is one of only three in the world, said David Gooding, president and founder of Gooding & Co., the auction manager.Word of the sale triggered worldwide attention.