Shelters

Khadijah Williams stepped into chemistry class and instantly tuned out the commotion. She walked past students laughing, gossiping, napping and combing one another's hair. Past a cellphone blaring rap songs. And past a substitute teacher sitting in a near-daze. Quietly, the 18-year-old settled into an empty table, flipped open her physics book and focused. Nothing mattered now except homework. "No wonder you're going to Harvard," a girl teased her. Around here, Khadijah is known as "Harvard girl," the "smart girl" and the girl with the contagious smile who landed at Jefferson High School only 18 months ago. What students don't know is that she is also a homeless girl.

Dear Liz: A few years ago I finished paying off my debt and now am in the very low-risk credit category. I have savings equal to about three months' worth of bills and am working to get that to six months' worth. I'm wondering, though, about an emergency that may require me to pay in cash (such as a major power outage that disables debit or credit card systems, or the more likely event that I forget the ATM or credit card at home). How much cash should a person have on hand? Is there a magic number?

In these troubled economic times, it's not hard to understand why people might want to protect their life savings by purchasing a hard asset like gold or silver. At least, that's the pitch of Monex, the big Newport Beach investment firm, which bills itself as "America's trusted name in precious metals investments" and assures clients that it's "committed to customer service. " So let's take a look at the experiences of some customers who say their trust in Monex was misplaced.

MEXICO CITY - Mexico's giant Popocatepetl volcano may generate lava flows, explosions of "growing intensity" and ash that could reach miles away, the National Center for Disaster Prevention said Monday. Officials were preparing evacuation routes and shelters for thousands of people who live in the shadow of Popocatepetl, located 40 miles southeast of Mexico City. Officials have created a 7.5-mile restricted zone around the cone of the volcano. Popo, as the volcano is known, has displayed a "notable increase in activity levels" in the last few days, including tremors and explosive eruptions, according to a statement from the federal government.

MEXICO CITY - Mexico's giant Popocatepetl volcano may generate lava flows, explosions of "growing intensity" and ash that could reach miles away, the National Center for Disaster Prevention said Monday. Officials were preparing evacuation routes and shelters for thousands of people who live in the shadow of Popocatepetl, located 40 miles southeast of Mexico City. Officials have created a 7.5-mile restricted zone around the cone of the volcano. Popo, as the volcano is known, has displayed a "notable increase in activity levels" in the last few days, including tremors and explosive eruptions, according to a statement from the federal government.

On May 17, 1987, Gene Ackley was carried by friends from a sea of wine bottles in a Gardena motel room to the safe harbor of a Costa Mesa white clapboard house. There--with the help of fellow alcoholics at Charlie Street, a free 10-day program run entirely by volunteers--he came off a three-week blackout bender into the beginning of a new life.

Michelle Ellis works and lives in Mission Viejo. But home for Ellis, 23, and her 10-month-old son, Ryan, is not one of the expensive houses that have mushroomed in this sprawling, affluent South County community. It's her tan 1983 Toyota Camry parked on the street in front of the home where she works as a housekeeper during the day. Ellis is among a growing number of low-income single mothers who can no longer afford the high cost of housing and child care in South County.

On a day when President Obama toured tornado-ravaged Tuscaloosa and declared that he'd never seen devastation like it, residents of DeKalb County — a lesser-known region of corn and chicken farms about 150 miles northeast — were quietly counting the cost of their own tragedy. There were 33 dead and more than 200 hurt in the county so far, making DeKalb one of the hardest-hit regions in the multi-state tornado siege that has killed at least 333 people and injured more than 2,000 this week, the deadliest twister outbreak since 1925.

The German shepherd was lashed to a fence inside an abandoned junkyard. With no food and water, he began drinking his own urine. Part of his right ear was torn or bitten off. A too-small collar was embedded into his skin. Lesions and scabs dotted his back where there should have been fur. When an unidentified good Samaritan brought the dog through the front door of the Emergency Pet Clinic of San Gabriel Valley last winter, a stench filled the room. Dr. Jeffrey Patlogar took one look and thought the animal needed to be euthanized, immediately, to end its suffering.

Re "Woof, bark, bowwow," Opinion, Feb. 10 As John Homans points out, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals won't shy away from reminding everyone that Westminster, and the breeding industry it props up, contribute to the need for shelters to euthanize millions of dogs and cats. Nor will we turn away suffering animals, as many shelters with no-kill policies do to improve their statistics. When adoptable animals come our way, we send them to high-traffic open-admission shelters, where they will have the best chance of being adopted.

The teenager showed up in a panic on Thursday, cradling a wounded puppy in arms spattered with blood. A stray dog had attacked his 2-month-old pit bull on a walk near their South Los Angeles home. The city animal shelter nearby was the only place he knew to go. He ran over to Amanda Casarez, pleading for help. She took one look at the puppy's bloody gash and pulled out her cellphone. Within hours the pup was in surgery, the vet bill guaranteed by strangers from a pool of volunteers working with Downtown Dog Rescue, which sponsors an intervention program at the shelter.

When the showroom floor of a West, Texas, auto dealership began to shake Wednesday night, general manager Ronnie Sykora knew something was very wrong. Then Sykora heard the news: A nearby fertilizer plant had caught fire and exploded. He rushed to prepare for people whose homes had been destroyed. “We were ready,” Sykora said. “We figured they could sleep on the floor. But nobody came.” In West and the small towns that surround it, businesses and churches opened their doors to people made homeless by the deadly fertilizer plant explosion.

Circumcision is known to reduce a man's risk of HIV infection by at least half, but scientists don't know why. A new study offers support for the theory that removing the foreskin deprives troublesome bacteria of a place to live, leaving the immune system in much better shape to keep the human immunodeficiency virus at bay. Anyone who has ever lifted a rock and watched as the earth beneath it was quickly vacated by legions of bugs and tiny worms...

Officials at Riverside County Animal Services had a hunch the story of Banjo the dog would get some attention. But this? So many people turned to the department's website looking for information on the fluffy poodle-terrier mix rescued from train tracks that the site went down Wednesday afternoon -- and still isn't up and running. "Banjo's causing some serious technical issues," spokesman John Welsh said. Interest in the dog exploded after the department revealed Tuesday he was rescued this month when a 78-year-old man apparently tied him to some train tracks in the Mecca area.

Customized TV Listings are available here: www.latimes.com/tvtimes Click here to download TV listings for the week of April 7 -13, 2013 in PDF format This week's TV Movies     SERIES NCIS A Navy reservist comes home to find her living room covered with blood and her husband missing, in this new episode. Mark Harmon, Michael Weatherly, Cote de Pablo and David McCallum star. 8 p.m. CBS The Voice Blind auditions continue.

Brenda Barnette, the general manager of the Los Angeles Department of Animal Services, ignited a firestorm of protest when she sent out an email last month explaining why she intended to eliminate animal care technicians on the midnight to 6 a.m. shifts and move them onto day and swing shifts. That would have left some 1,500 animals in six municipal shelters unattended in the wee hours of the night. The outcry was so intense that Barnette - wisely - postponed implementing the move of ACTs, as they are known, and scheduled a meeting for the public to meet with her and discuss this (and some other issues, probably)

Re "County Keeps Shelters Open Until April 30. The article on the shutdown of the shelters for the homeless caught my attention. Most of the homeless out there are either drug and alcohol abusers or mentally ill. In either case, they do not have to be a burden on the community. I have a small (16-bed) nonprofit center, [Mountain View Recovery Center]. I have no funding and am nearly self-supporting. I rent a house, paying too much money, and men work and pay enough to keep us open.

Work schedules at Los Angeles city animal shelters won't change, at least for now, after animal activists and union workers protested a plan to eliminate overnight staffing. Brenda Barnette, general manager of Animal Services, has announced she will delay a plan to cut the graveyard shift at six shelters operated by the city. The move, which could affect as many as 22 animal shelter workers, will be reviewed during an April 8 town hall meeting, Barnette said in a letter released Thursday.

Work schedules at Los Angeles city animal shelters won't change, at least for now, after animal activists and union workers protested a plan to eliminate overnight staffing. Brenda Barnette, general manager of Animal Services, has announced she will delay a plan to cut the graveyard shift at six shelters operated by the city. The move, which could affect as many as 22 animal shelter workers, will be reviewed during an April 8 town hall meeting, Barnette said in a letter released Thursday.

Work schedules at Los Angeles city animal shelters won't change, at least for now, after animal activists and union workers protested a plan to eliminated overnight staffing. Brenda Barnette, general manager of Animal Services, announced she will delay a plan to cut the graveyard shift at six shelters operated by the city. The move, which could affect as many as 22 animal shelter workers, will be reviewed during an April 8 town hall meeting, Barnette said in a letter released Thursday.