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Avon Products Inc., the embattled cosmetics giant that has been trying to fight off uninvited overtures, said today that it has agreed to nominate two directors proposed by unwanted suitor Chartwell Associates LP to its board. Chartwell, an investment group that includes much smaller rival Mary Kay Cosmetics, oil heir Gordon Getty and the Fisher real estate family of New York, previously said it would make a bid for Avon if the group's candidates were elected to Avon's board.

Art teacher Bruce Kanegai received the greatest compliment from one of his students not too long ago. She said he taught her mother 20 years ago at Simi Valley High School, and she considers him the best teacher she ever had. "That's what it's all about," Kanegai said. Perhaps the second-greatest compliment came this week when Amgen Inc. named Kanegai one of five recipients of its annual Amgen Award for Teacher Excellence. The prize comes with a $10,000 prize.

A former employee filed a lawsuit against Cineplex Odeon and its Universal City Cinemas on Thursday, charging that the management of the movie theater complex at Universal Studios condoned a "pervasive environment of sexual harassment." Karen Kenney, 26, who worked as a personnel manager for Universal City Cinemas for about a year and a half before she was fired, said she was fondled and subjected repeatedly to crude jokes and explicit accounts of their sexual exploits by other employees.

Pasadena businessman Ming Hsieh learned the value of education through some very tough lessons. As a child in China, he missed school for 10 years during the Cultural Revolution, when his family was sent to a remote village to work on a rice farm. His parents, both college graduates, improvised with scavenged textbooks, teaching Ming and his brother by candlelight in their one-room shanty.

With Wednesday's announcement of Apple Computer's new iMac machines, interim Chief Executive Steve Jobs delivered what appears to be a credible bid to move new buyers--perhaps even some Windows users--into the Apple camp. If the company's internal test results are independently validated, the $1,299 iMac, shorthand for Internet Mac, will offer the performance of Windows-based PCs that sell for much higher prices.

Prepare for some sticker shock. When Apple Inc. releases its iPad tablet computer Saturday, some shoppers may be surprised to find that prices for some applications have been super-sized overnight, while others will remain free. According to several websites, including AppShopper, Appolicious and Silicon Alley Insider, some apps are expected to cost 50% to 500% more on the iPad than they do on the iPhone. Fieldrunners, a game by Subatomic Studios, goes for $2.99 for iPhone but is expected to be $7.99 for the iPad.

Perched on gray boulders that seem to jut out of the Santa Monica Freeway, the Jeep Wrangler looks as if it is about to thunder off the side of an old garment warehouse in Downtown Los Angeles, flattening oncoming cars. The ad, part of a nationwide trend in wall murals featuring hamburgers a giant would choke on, bottles of beer that would flood a stadium and jeans that would blanket a small town, is whipping up a controversy just as colossal.

Larchmont Village splits the difference between Los Feliz and Beverly Hills -- more upscale than the former, but less snooty than the latter. This happy middle ground is centered on a stretch of cafes and boutiques in the heart of Hancock Park on Larchmont Boulevard between 1st and 3rd streets. It radiates history (at least by Southern California standards) and -- despite the arrival of a Starbucks and a Rite-Aid drugstore -- retains a small-town charm.