Schools United States

Product promoters are increasingly gaining easy access to American schools with advertising and often are including self-serving plugs for their wares in donated teaching materials, a consumer group said Tuesday. Consumers Union said the developments threaten the integrity of the educational process and urged teachers, parents and school officials to ban ads from schools and be more demanding about donated educational materials.

Product promoters are increasingly gaining easy access to American schools with advertising and often are including self-serving plugs for their wares in donated teaching materials, a consumer group said Tuesday. Consumers Union said the developments threaten the integrity of the educational process and urged teachers, parents and school officials to ban ads from schools and be more demanding about donated educational materials.

The Weingart Foundation has selected Pepperdine University as one of 14 Southern California colleges to benefit from a new multimillion-dollar loan program. The program will provide $3.5 million annually in interest-free loans to the colleges, which have established a trust fund to make loans available to students. To be eligible, students must be graduates of Southern California high schools and United States citizens.

Congressman Anthony Beilenson, whose district includes the Conejo Valley, has appointed graduates from two Ventura County high schools to United States service academies. Michael S. Gordon, son of Steven and Susan Gordon of Agoura, has been appointed to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y. Gordon is a 1996 graduate of Oak Park High School. The U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md.

A meeting to discuss The American Conference, a proposed National Collegiate Athletic Assn. Division I basketball affiliate, has been scheduled for Sunday in Marco Island, Fla. But it's likely to take place without Bob Hiegert, the Cal State Northridge athletic director. "I don't have a plane reservation or a hotel reservation," Hiegert said Tuesday morning. "Unless something dramatic happens, I'm not going." Which might mean there will be no new conference.

When the members of my family were students in the San Diego city schools, United States history was taught to us as anything that happened anywhere but here. We graduated knowing that history happened in Massachusetts at the Boston Tea Party, in Pennsylvania where Ben Franklin flew a kite, and in Virginia at Mt. Vernon, Monticello and Williamsburg.

To outsiders, the move appears suicidal, a recipe for ruining the economy and possibly returning to war. But on the streets of Juba, the capital of South Sudan, the decision to turn off the flow from oil wells that produce 98% of the government's revenue has triggered bursts of defiance and national pride. "The oil was shut down because it's our oil. We need our rights," said truck driver Nimeiry Thomas, 30, his face dripping with sweat in Juba's Konyo Konyo market. One of the world's poorest countries, South Sudan made the move last month in an escalating dispute with northern neighbor Sudan, from which it seceded in July.

It's that time of year again--maybe even a little late--for me to prepare my list for Santa. So here are my 1999 Christmas wishes, a diverse grab bag of hopes for next year and beyond. Open Source: Perhaps the biggest news of 1999, maybe even bigger than the Microsoft antitrust trial, was the tidal wave of investment money that swept into Linux software companies such as Red Hat and VA Linux. The latter company broke all records with its Dec.