NEW LOOK: Taubman Centers Inc. continues on its $500 million Beverly Center makeover and in the meantime wants to give shoppers and passersby something nice to look at.
The shopping center owner announced a fresh round of artists for its temporary art installation program, which it’s using to dress up construction areas throughout the project site.
This latest round of art, curated by Jenelle Porter along with the Hammer Museum, includes pieces by Lisa Anne Auerbach, Ed Fella, Barbara Kruger, Anthony Lepore and Julian Hoeber. Kruger’s work, called “Untitled (Can Money Buy You Love?),” measures 60 feet tall on the outside of the center and viewable from the corner of Beverly and La Cienega Boulevards.
Taubman is spending about $500 million on the Beverly Center’s makeover, which is expected to be revealed by holiday of next year. Construction began on the center in March 2016 with the plan of completely overhauling the food-related offerings and adding more luxury and contemporary brands. It will also open up the center’s ground floor in hopes of creating greater connectivity with the nearby activity on 3rd Street.
“We’re breaking down the barrier that separates the project from the street,” chief operating officer William Taubman told WWD last year.
The

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London-based premium activewear brand Sweaty Betty is growing its footprint in California. On a recent visit to Los Angeles to see her four stores here, founder and creative director Tamara Hill-Norton talked about the Palo Alto store opening this month and the one on Union Street in San Francisco opening in July.
“We are partnering in San Francisco with the Body Image Movement for a big event in May, and one in New York in October,” she said of the organization. Since founding the company in 1998, Hill-Norton has kept a female-led executive and design team and has grown the “sports luxe” brand from selling other lines into its own branded running, snow sports, yoga and swim gear as well as pieces beyond fitness.

Sweaty Betty’s store at the Lido in Newport Beach. 

While 35 percent of Sweaty Betty’s sales are in leggings, with an average price point of $135, Hill-Norton is looking to grow her dressier gym-to-dinner collections as well. Half of the pieces are sourced in Taiwan, where Hill-Norton said the best technical fabrics are, and half are from Europe, while most are made in Asia.
“It’s changing the way women dress, particularly in the U.K., where ath-leisure is still a newer

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To mark the anniversary of the Rana Plaza Factory Collapse, Fair Trade USA will launch a digital photo campaign called “We Wear Fair Trade” with its apparel partners Patagonia, Outerknown, Obey, Athleta and Prana, on Fashion Revolution Day, April 24.
The trade group, which provides the Fair Trade mark to products that adhere to a strict checklist of sustainable and ethical labor practices, has moved beyond food products such as coffee, bananas and chocolate to apparel and home goods, starting in 2010.
With its brand partners, the group has created a photo campaign, shot by outdoor photographer Jeff Johnson, to encourage consumers to choose Fair Trade Certified clothing.
The series of still portraits features thought leaders and athletes wearing their favorite Fair Trade Certified products. These include Patagonia chief executive officer Rose Marcario, the brand’s freediving ambassador Kimi Werner and surfing ambassador Dan Malloy; Outerknown founder Kelly Slater and chief creative officer John Moore; Obey founder and artist Shepard Fairey; Athleta president and ceo Nancy Green; and Prana climbing ambassador Chris Sharma, and surfing ambassador Kelly Potts.
“We launched based on consumer demand,” said Maya Spaull, senior director of apparel and home goods at Fair Trade USA. “People were wanting to know where their

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PARIS — Naomi Campbell confessed she’s still a child at heart at the launch of her charity collaboration of the same name with Diesel on Thursday night at the brand’s Paris flagship on Rue Montmartre.
Part of the proceeds from the co-branded Child at Heart hookup, based on T-shirts and hoodies splashed with doodles of ladybugs and hearts made up of wobbly rainbow lines, will go to Campbell’s Fashion for Relief fund dedicated to the welfare of children globally.
“Children, who are the most innocent of all, are being caught in the crossfire. They’re traumatized. I’ve seen it for myself — I’ve been to the refugee camps. This is something I have wanted to do for years, and now we’re doing it,” said Campbell, who will stage her next Fashion for Relief show on May 21 in Cannes, France, with the proceeds going to Save the Children.
Signing T-shirts alongside Diesel and OTB Group owner Renzo Rosso, Campbell at the event, which was followed by a dinner at the Italian embassy, was in a playful mood, gamely resting her marker pen to pose for shots with starry-eyed guests including rising actress Karidja Touré and Maria Borges, the new face of L’Oréal Paris.

Maria Borges and Karidja Touré

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It was a record-setting Thursday for the boys at the Foothill Swim Games.

And Ayla Spitz made it a record-setting day for the Newport Harbor girls.

The boys combined to set three meet records during a blistering prelims session at the Foothill Swim Games.

Northwood’s 200-yard medley relay out-dueled Dana Hills in the third and final heat to set a meet-record with a time of 1 minute, 34.01 seconds. The team of Gabe Munoz, Henry Wu, Hwa Min Sim and Shawn Lou outdistanced Dana Hills by about half-a-second to break University’s 2014 record of 1:34.87.

The Dolphins also raced under the 2014 standard with a 1:34.52.

The teams will duel again at Saturday’s 10 a.m. finals.

Tesoro junior Daniel Kim set the second meet record in the 100 freestyle by the slightest of margins. He stopped the clock in 45.70, one one-hundredth of a second under the standard of 45.71 set by University’s Will Hofstadter in 2015.

Dana Hills’ Trent Pellini helped close the show in the 100 breaststroke. The Purdue-bound senior rattled the county record by touching in a meet-record 54.38, just .24 seconds off John Criste’s 2007 O.C. record of 54.14 for Mission Viejo.

Pellini smashed Daniel Kim’s meet record of 56.82 for Irvine in 1999. Calvary Chapel junior Andrew Koustik also raced under Kim’s record with a 56.73 in the heat following Pellini.

Foothill junior Zane Scott blazed a top-qualifying 20.46 in the 50 free to jump to fifth in county history in the two-lap race.

In girls swimming:

Newport Harbor 121, Corona del Mar 49: The Sailors won every event in the Battle of the Bay meet, highlighted by Spitz’s school-record 1:04.61 in the 100 breaststroke. The sophomore broke the 2000 record of Carly Geehr by almost a second.

Newport Harbor’s boys beat Corona del Mar, 96-74, for their first victory in the series since 2007. In 2007, the Sailors won, 94-76.

California’s graduation rate increased for the seventh year in a row with the class of 2016, reported the California Department of Education last week, hitting 83.2 percent of students who started high school in 2012–13. Orange County’s graduation rate topped 90.8 percent, making it the only county in California with at least 3,000 students to achieve graduation rates above 90 percent. Of course, such success should be lauded, because higher graduation rates at least indicate there’s a strong enough support system to encourage and enable students to graduate on time.

But increasing percentages of students making their way through the education system in four years is only one metric to consider. Even more important is whether students are actually receiving a quality education.

There are plenty of reasons for doubt about the quality of education in many of California’s schools. According to last year’s standardized test results, less than half of California students met state English standards, while only 37 percent met the standards for math. Orange County students fared better, with 57 percent meeting standards on English and 48 percent meeting them for math, with various districts doing better or worse.

Predictably, many students graduate from high school ineligible for admission to state universities. Statewide, just 45 percent of students who graduated last year had completed the “A through G” required courses for admission. In Orange County, only 51 percent of graduates had done so.

Also predictably, many students attending college are ill-prepared to do so. In the fall of 2016, only 56 percent of incoming freshman at California State University campuses were found to be college-ready in both English and math at the time of graduation, though this is up from 52 percent in 2011. This is why many graduates require remedial courses to teach them what they should have already learned.

So long as we have a compulsory education system, the least schools should do is properly educate students. While we should be proud that more students are graduating, we must always expect better of the schools they attend. We must be mindful of the various factors involved in educational outcomes, but we should always be guided by the evidence.

Kelly Osbourne is known as a lot of things. She’s a reality TV star, a fashion TV show and red carpet host, an actress, a singer and most notably the boisterous middle child of Sharon and Ozzy Osbourne.

Now at 32, Osbourne said she had previously assumed that because she grew up in the spotlight of Hollywood that the general public knew all about her life. However, she’s tired of people getting it all wrong.

She candidly shares some of the brightest and darkest aspects of her life, divulging on everything from her body, drug addiction and rehab, her lavender-colored hair and fashion  in her new memoir “There is No … Secret: Letters from a Badass Bitch.” She also reveals bits about her relationships with her mother, father, her brother Jack and the special bond she shared with the late Joan Rivers.

“I finally wanted the opportunity to tell people who I am because I’m sick and (expletive) tired of people telling me who I am,” she said during a recent phone interview before she discusses and signs her new release at Book Soup in West Hollywood on Saturday, April 29.

“People don’t know that I, like, lived in a hospital for two years with my mom and gave up my career so I could spend every second with her,” she said of Sharon Osbourne’s battle with colorectal cancer back in 2002. She also related stories about having her mom in one hospital and getting the call that her dad was in another following a near-fatal ATV accident, all of this while the family was still filming its reality TV series, “The Osbournes” for MTV.

“People didn’t see that my dad needed to shower so I was in a wetsuit, he was in a wetsuit and he had his neck brace on and we’re in the shower,” she said. “I’m like, isn’t it funny that I’m standing in the shower with you in a wetsuit and you’re in a wetsuit and the whole purpose of this is so you can get clean?”

Instead of being broken into chapters, the book is written as several letters on which Osbourne spent time being as honest as possible without rambling on. The former “Fashion Police” co-host said she went at it completely uncensored because “society has been so sanitized by this unattainable idea of perfection.

“There’s this idea that we all have to be perfect. But there is no such thing. It is a false idea and a great (expletive) lie.”

Even now, as she has grown from an angsty teenager with questionable hair and outfit choices into a more glamorous fashion and style icon, Osbourne said she still can’t believe the amount of airbrushing that goes into publications and ads as they attempt to achieve the “perfect” look.

“It’s a constant struggle that I have sometimes when I do a magazine cover and I’m like ‘That doesn’t look a (expletive) thing like me,’” she said with a laugh. “People know what I look like.”

In the book, Osbourne touches on the people who have had a profound impact on her life, including friends such as Nicole Richie, Amy Winehouse and family friends like Elton John and Robin Williams, who helped her through some of the toughest moments of her life.

“Nicole … that was one of those moments that we will always be kindred spirits because of it,” she explained, as Richie was with her when she got the call about her mother’s grim cancer diagnosis.

“I was lying on the floor at Nobu crying and she’s so small and she picked (me) up and carried me to a taxi. I ruined her like 20 grand Missoni dress with my mascara and I was wearing a lot of black eyeliner back then, but she didn’t care.”

Osbourne said she’s loyal to a fault, but considers herself lucky to have such caring friends and a strong family support system. Within the book she addresses her family members individually, something she said she allowed each person to read before she set it to be published.

“My mom has written a book, my dad wrote a book, Jack wrote a book and I’ve never got the opportunity to know what things were going to be in those books,” she said. “There were some things in there that I didn’t even know happened myself. I never want to hurt anybody, so I sent it out six months before it was to be finished and I said ‘Please read this and if there’s anything you don’t like about it, I’ll take it out, no questions asked.’

“I’m not in the business of hurting my family. I love them. We love each other so much. Plenty of people have tried to break us or something … they haven’t managed to do it. We’re not like most other celebrities because of that fact that when we (expletive) up, we admit it.”

The most difficult section to write, Osbourne admits, was about her father.  She openly discusses his addictions but applauds him for being a constant performer as even now, in his 60s, the Prince of Darkness is still running around on stage for two and a half hours a night, performing in front of thousands of loyal devotees.

“He’s my hero and he’s my best friend,” she said. “My dad tells me absolutely everything and sometimes I’m like ‘Oh my God, Dad, I didn’t want to know that!’ Or I say ‘scarred for life!’ But my dad and I wake up every day and send each other jokes via text messages.”

Kelly Osbourne book signing event

When: 2 p.m. Saturday, April 29

Where: Book Soup, 8818 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood

More info: Only books purchased at Book Soup ($27 hardcover) will be signed; the receipt is your ticket in line and will be checked. Due to the size of the store, only the first 60 people in line will be allowed in for the pre-signing discussion with Kelly Osbourne and Kelly Cutrone.

The crisis with North Korea may appear trumped up. It’s not.

Given that Pyongyang has had nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles for more than a decade, why the panic now? Because North Korea is headed for a nuclear breakout. The regime has openly declared that it is racing to develop an intercontinental ballistic missile that can reach the United States — and thus destroy an American city at a Kim Jong Un push of a button.

The North Koreans are not bluffing. They’ve made significant progress with solid-fuel rockets, which are more quickly deployable and thus more easily hidden and less subject to detection and pre-emption.

At the same time, Pyongyang has been steadily adding to its supply of nuclear weapons. Today it has an estimated 10 to 16. By 2020, it could very well have a hundred. (For context: the British are thought to have about 200.)

Hence the crisis. We simply cannot concede to Kim Jong Un the capacity to annihilate American cities.

Some will argue for deterrence. If it held off the Russians and the Chinese for all these years, why not the North Koreans? First, because deterrence, even with a rational adversary like the old Soviet Union, is never a sure thing. We came pretty close to nuclear war in October 1962.

And second, because North Korea’s regime is bizarre in the extreme, a hermit kingdom run by a weird, utterly ruthless and highly erratic god-king. You can’t count on Caligula. The regime is savage and cult-like; its people, robotic. Karen Elliott House once noted that while Saddam Hussein’s Iraq was a prison, North Korea was an ant colony.

Ant colonies do not have good checks and balances.

If not deterrence, then prevention. But how? The best hope is for China to exercise its influence and induce North Korea to give up its programs.

For years, the Chinese made gestures, but never did anything remotely decisive. They have their reasons. It’s not just that they fear a massive influx of refugees if the Kim regime disintegrates. It’s also that Pyongyang is a perpetual thorn in the side of the Americans, whereas regime collapse brings South Korea (and thus America) right up to the Yalu River.

So why would the Chinese do our bidding now?

For a variety of reasons.

• They don’t mind tension but they don’t want war. And the risk of war is rising. They know that the ICBM threat is totally unacceptable to the Americans. And that the current administration appears particularly committed to enforcing this undeclared red line.

• Chinese interests are being significantly damaged by the erection of regional missile defenses to counteract North Korea’s nukes. South Korea is racing to install a THAAD anti-missile system. Japan may follow. THAAD’s mission is to track and shoot down incoming rockets from North Korea but, like any missile shield, it necessarily reduces the power and penetration of the Chinese nuclear arsenal.

• For China to do nothing risks the return of the American tactical nukes in South Korea, withdrawn in 1991.

• If the crisis deepens, the possibility arises of South Korea and, most importantly, Japan going nuclear themselves. The latter is the ultimate Chinese nightmare.

These are major cards America can play. Our objective should be clear. At a minimum, a testing freeze. At the maximum, regime change.

Because Beijing has such a strong interest in the current regime, we could sweeten the latter offer by abjuring Korean reunification. This would not be Germany, where the communist state was absorbed into the West. We would accept an independent, but Finlandized, North.

During the Cold War, Finland was, by agreement, independent but always pro-Russian in foreign policy. Here we would guarantee that a new North Korea would be independent but always oriented toward China. For example, the new regime would forswear ever joining any hostile alliance.

There are deals to be made. They may have to be underpinned by demonstrations of American resolve. A pre-emptive attack on North Korea’s nuclear facilities and missile sites would be too dangerous, as it would almost surely precipitate an invasion of South Korea with untold millions of casualties. We might, however, try to shoot down a North Korean missile in mid-flight to demonstrate both our capacity to defend ourselves and the futility of a North Korean missile force that can be neutralized technologically.

The Korea crisis is real and growing. But we are not helpless. We have choices. We have assets. It’s time to deploy them.

Charles Krauthammer is a columnist for The Washington Post.

It has now been over five years since the University of California launched its three-year plan to upgrade the computer technology that manages payroll and human resources for the UC system

And the project has just been delayed again.

UCPath — an acronym for payroll, academic personnel, timekeeping and human resources — was supposed to launch at some sites in August, but that date has been pushed back to December, with subsequent phases now scheduled to begin in July and December of 2018.

The Board of Regents was told in January 2012 that UCPath would be online in one year. When that deadline passed, a new launch date of July 2014 was announced. It came. It went.

UCPath was originally budgeted at $156 million but has already cost $327 million, and it’s expected to cost as much as $504 million before it’s finally completed. Announced in 2011 as part of the university’s “Working Smarter” initiative, the project was expected to save $100 million per year by replacing a collection of separate 30-year-old payroll systems for 10 campuses, five medical centers and UC central administration.

It’s an embarrassment to the state of California, home to Silicon Valley, that yet another state computer upgrade is wildly over budget and behind schedule.

In 2006, the state began a payroll modernization project designed to manage payments, administration and timekeeping for 240,000 state government employees. It was never completed. In 2010, the State Controller’s Office brought in SAP Public Services, Inc., to develop and implement the MyCalPAYS system, also called the 21st Century Project. But after three years of work ended with a failed eight-month pilot test, the controller terminated SAP’s $90 million contract. Lawsuits followed, ending with SAP agreeing to repay the state $59 million.

Taxpayers spent a total of $250 million on the unsuccessful effort.

UC President Janet Napolitano has cited the state’s payroll computer problems as evidence that it’s “difficult” to upgrade “big, complicated” payroll systems, telling the Sacramento Bee in 2015 that the university has “some very strict management milestones we will meet” to finish UCPath. But two years later, the system has gone live only in Napolitano’s own office, where it cuts payroll checks for the 1,800 employees in the Office of the President.

It’s hard to imagine the executives of a Silicon Valley company coming to investors with a story like that.

Taxpayers in California have reason to wonder if they are paying too much for overhead in the UC system. Financial pressures have led the campuses to increase nonresident enrollment to more than 20 percent at UC Berkeley, UC San Diego and UCLA, when 10 years ago, nonresident enrollment in the UC system was just 5 percent. And in January, Napolitano led the effort to end the six-year freeze on tuition, calling it “unsustainable.”

What’s unsustainable is Californians’ confidence that the UC system is being efficiently run for the benefit of Californians. The UCPath project is proceeding with a blank check and no accountability. The problem may not be limited to payroll computers.