German fashion brand Hugo Boss says its strategic realignment is beginning to take effect as the company made “good” progress in the second quarter, with its US business expanding for the first time in two years.

Italy’s Sportswear Co SpA, the company that owns luxury designer brand Stone Island, has refused to be drawn into speculation the company is planning a global expansion following investment from Singapore-based private equity firm Temasek.

Acquisitions helped to drive second-quarter growth for Hanesbrands, as the apparel maker posted sales and earnings growth in line with company guidance.

Chemical footprinting is now moving to the mainstream as companies such as Adidas, Levis Strauss & Co and Walmart continue work to reduce the hazardous use of chemicals in their products.

Laguna Niguel families got the chance to meet members of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department and Orange County Fire Authority on Tuesday, Aug. 1, for National Night Out.

The annual event is aimed at enhancing cooperation between the community and police.

Kory Minor and Austin Pettis were standout high school football players in Southern California and went on to play in college and in the NFL.

Both now are rookie assistant coaches on Orange County high school football coaching staffs.

Minor, who was an All-American at Bishop Amat and played linebacker at Notre Dame and for the Carolina Panthers, is an assistant coach at St. Margaret’s.

Pettis is back at his alma mater, Orange Lutheran, coaching receivers. Pettis was All-Orange County at Lutheran, then played at Boise State before going on to the St. Louis Rams and, briefly, the San Diego Chargers.

SEAL BEACH – Police have arrested a 32-year-old employee of Clancy’s, a bar in town where a 46-year-old man was found bleeding with a head injury out back in July and later died.

Matthew Meier, of Seal Beach, was taken into custody at 3 a.m. Wednesday, Aug. 2, in regard to the July 18 death of James Tinsman, a Seal Beach resident found unconscious behind the bar on Main Street.

Meier was arrested on suspicion of assault by means likely to produce great bodily injury.

Seal Beach Sgt. Michael Henderson said it was unclear if the suspect was working the night Tinsman was discovered. Henderson would not disclose how Meier was identified as the suspect or provide details that led up to Tinsman’s death but said no weapons were found at the scene.

“After the district attorney reviewed the evidence as presented by Seal Beach police detectives, it was their determination that this was the most appropriate charge,” Henderson said.

Meier is expected in court Thursday, Aug. 3. Jail records show say he is a bartender and was being held in lieu of $250,000.

The death came just two days after a police captain and his girlfriend were found shot to death inside an apartment just a couple of blocks away. The deaths, now considered a murder-suicide by the captain, cast attention to the usually quiet beach town.

By Charlie Savage

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is preparing to redirect resources of the Justice Department’s civil rights division toward investigating and suing universities over affirmative action admissions policies deemed to discriminate against white applicants, according to a document obtained by The New York Times.

The document, an internal announcement to the civil rights division, seeks current lawyers

interested in working for a new project on “investigations and possible litigation related to intentional race-based discrimination in college and university admissions.”

The announcement suggests that the project will be run out of the division’s front office, where the Trump administration’s political appointees work, rather than its Educational Opportunities Section, which is run by career civil servants and normally handles work involving schools and universities.

The document does not explicitly identify whom the Justice Department considers at risk of discrimination because of affirmative action admissions policies. But the phrasing it uses, “intentional race-based discrimination,” cuts to the heart of programs designed to bring more minorities to university campuses.

Supporters and critics of the project said it was clearly targeting admissions programs that can give members of generally disadvantaged groups, like black and Latino students, an edge over other applicants with comparable or higher test scores.

The project is another sign that the civil rights division is taking on a conservative tilt under President Donald Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions. It follows other changes in Justice Department policy on voting rights, gay rights and police reforms.

Roger Clegg, a former top official in the civil rights division during the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations who is now the president of the conservative Center for Equal Opportunity, called the project a “welcome” and “long overdue” development as the United States becomes increasingly multiracial.

“The civil rights laws were deliberately written to protect everyone from discrimination, and it is frequently the case that not only are whites discriminated against now, but frequently Asian-Americans are as well,” he said.

But Kristen Clarke, the president of the liberal Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, criticized the affirmative action project as “misaligned with the division’s long-standing priorities.” She noted that the civil rights division was “created and launched to deal with the unique problem of discrimination faced by our nation’s most oppressed minority groups,” performing work that often no one else has the resources or expertise to do.

“This is deeply disturbing,” she said. “It would be a dog whistle that could invite a lot of chaos and unnecessarily create hysteria among colleges and universities who may fear that the government may come down on them for their efforts to maintain diversity on their campuses.”

The Justice Department declined to provide more details about its plans or to make the acting head of the civil rights division, John Gore, available for an interview.

“The Department of Justice does not discuss personnel matters, so we’ll decline comment,” said Devin O’Malley, a department spokesman.

The Supreme Court has ruled that the educational benefits that flow from having a diverse student body can justify using race as one factor among many in a “holistic” evaluation, while rejecting blunt racial quotas or race-based point systems. But what that permits in actual practice by universities — public ones as well as private ones that receive federal …(Continued on next page)

Yorba Linda Water District customers will soon be getting a $44.46 conservation credit.

The district’s board at its July 25 meeting unanimously voted to refund about $1.1 million in the water conservation reserve fund to customers. The penalties were collected from customers who missed the mark on conservation from July 2015 to May 2016.

“This action followed a careful review and restructuring of the district’s finances, completion of a new budget for fiscal year 2017-18 without a water service charge increase, and successfully closing out the just completed fiscal year,” Board President J. Wayne Miller said.

The district, which serves Yorba Linda and part of Placentia, is issuing the credit this month to 24,872 active water accounts, General Manager Marc Marcantonio said.

The board is hoping customers will use the credit to make an investment in future water conservation.

“Customers are to be congratulated for exceeding the 36 percent mandate during the drought and are now encouraged to use this conservation rebate to permanently decrease their ‘water footprint,’” Miller said, adding that information about water saving devices and low-water use landscaping is available on the district’s website and will be included in the August billing statement.

“We never wanted to penalize anyone,” Marcantonio said. “We just needed people to pay attention to how much water they were using.”

Also, the Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified School District is receiving a $47,700 health and safety refund from the conservation reserve fund and $100,000 will be set aside to ensure future compliance with Gov. Jerry Brown’s new plan, “Making Water Conservation a California Way of Life.”

The board is exploring recommendations made by an 11-member ad hoc committee formed to study the agency’s rate structure after voters in November overhauled the board. A $25 monthly water rate increase in October 2015 met with fierce public outcry.

One of the recommendations includes a rate rebate from the district’s water reserve account to help restore public trust.

That is expected to be discussed at a future meeting.

NEW HORIZONS: Suggesting short tenures are the new norm in fashion, Paule Ka is the latest fashion house with a change in creative direction.
According to market sources, Alithia Spuri-Zampetti and the French firm are to part ways after a two-year collaboration. Officials at Paule Ka declined to comment.
Spuri-Zampetti worked to extend the brand’s appeal in daywear and separates, bringing to the task a passion for fabric innovation and a sense of elegance rooted in the classic French fashions of the Fifties and Sixties.
Formerly the head designer in charge of women’s ready-to-wear collections at Lanvin, she was the first designer at Paule Ka since the departure in 2014 of founder and creative director Serge Cajfinger. Spuri-Zampetti also has stints at Valentino and Bottega Veneta under her belt.
The Italian-American designer grew up in Rome and the U.S. She is a graduate of Central Saint Martins in London.
Paule Ka has targeted expansion in the United States, Middle East and Asia since Change Capital Partners bought a 70 percent stake in the firm in 2011. “We have a global objective of doubling in size in the next five years,” Catherine Vautrin, chairman and chief executive officer of Paule Ka, told WWD last year.
The label’s

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