She Company

The designer: SHE is designed by Sheri Bodell, 31. Born in Salt Lake City, Sheri started her career there as a buyer at Nordstrom. Three years later, in 1989, the company promoted her and moved her to Los Angeles. The local history: "I grew up in Salt Lake City and there's not a lot to do for a living there. Let's face it, working for Nordstrom is glamorous in Utah. So I was learning the ropes as a buyer, learning about the customer and the product and learning how to merchandise."

The designer: SHE is designed by Sheri Bodell, 31. Born in Salt Lake City, Sheri started her career there as a buyer at Nordstrom. Three years later, in 1989, the company promoted her and moved her to Los Angeles. The local history: "I grew up in Salt Lake City and there's not a lot to do for a living there. Let's face it, working for Nordstrom is glamorous in Utah. So I was learning the ropes as a buyer, learning about the customer and the product and learning how to merchandise."

Renae Williams Niles is a name that stirs little recognition, but she is the most powerful person in dance in Los Angeles. It is her job, as director of programming, to select the companies and repertory for each season of Glorya Kaufman Presents Dance at the Music Center. But that description sells short her impact and influences in this city's dance life. Niles is highly regarded for her business acumen and knowledge of the art. Her unpretentiousness and sunny disposition have also won her fans.

Taiwan Company Denies Jet Deal: Taiwan Aerospace Corp. denied a newspaper report that it had reached an agreement with British Aerospace to co-produce passenger jets. "We have not reached an agreement and discussions are still continuing," company spokeswoman Suzanne Wu said. She said company President Denny Ko was in Britain attending an air show but declined to say whether he would meet with British Aerospace officials. The two companies have been discussing possible cooperation for months.

One woman died and 21 others were injured when a tour bus en route from Culver City to Laughlin, Nev., overturned Saturday on an isolated stretch of Interstate 40 in the Mojave Desert, officials said. Six helicopters and at least nine emergency vehicles, some recruited from nearby military bases, shuttled injured passengers to area hospitals. Eight of the victims were severely hurt and 13 others suffered minor to moderate injuries.

A Federal judge Wednesday sentenced Leona Helmsley, convicted of evading $1.7 million in taxes, to four years in prison, starting April 15--the deadline for filing tax returns. The 71-year-old self-proclaimed hotel queen sobbed and begged U.S. District Judge Thomas P. Griesa for mercy, citing the ill health of her husband, millionaire real estate and hotel magnate Harry Helmsley, 83, whose properties include the Empire State Building.

Gretchen Clarke, who with her husband, Waltah, built what was once the nation's largest retailer of aloha wear, has died. She was 78. Clarke died Jan. 22 of kidney failure at Eisenhower Medical Center in Rancho Mirage, her son Cameron said. Waltah Clarke's Hawaiian Shops started in the 1950s and grew to more than 30 stores on the mainland and in Hawaii. His first store opened in Palm Springs in 1952 before the Clarkes met, but over the years Gretchen designed most of the company's clothes and prints and "ran the business," Cameron said.

Glass could not have entered Lady Lee ice cream during the manufacturing process, state food and agriculture investigators said, and officials with Lucky Stores Inc. announced they will resume production of the frozen desserts at their Buena Park factory.

A Washington, D.C.-based Islamic advocacy group has helped a Florida woman gain the right to wear the Islamic headdress for women while at work. Fatimah Herman, a Muslim worker with National Maintenance Inc. in Crestview, Fla., was sent home in early September and told she violated company dress policy by refusing to remove her head scarf while at work, according to the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

Former Sanwa Employee Files Sex Discrimination Suit: Janice Harmeier, a former vice president and market strategist at Sanwa Securities Co. in New York, the U.S. brokerage arm of Sanwa Bank of Japan, filed the lawsuit in U.S. District Court in New York. Harmeier alleges that she was denied equal pay and that the company knowingly created an atmosphere of open, widespread sexual discrimination. She seeks damages of more than $4 million. Sanwa officials were not immediately available for comment.

As sometimes happens here in the Wimbledon tennis tournament, a woman's underwear became somewhat more interesting than her game Friday. How else to account for the men hanging in the cherry trees along Somerset Road. "Quiet in the trees," the umpire on Court 6 kept demanding. How else, for that matter, to account for the cluster of photographers, the clatter of their high-speed cameras perhaps more bothersome than even the young men. It was Barbara Potter, this time.