Mom's the world: Women share the best marital advice they got from their mother

Santhanam's Server Sundaram to release in theatres

Sanjay Raut took to his official Twitter handle on Sunday to let know his suggestion via a post regarding the situation.

The coronavirus lockdown has separated many of us from our families, including our mothers. However, Sophie Choudhry is one lucky celeb who is able to spend her quarantine and Mothers' Day with her supermom. In fact, she told us all about her plans for the day.

'Surrey swarm' quakes 'not caused by oil extraction'  BBC News

'Surrey swarm' earthquakes not caused by nearby oil extraction, study suggests  Science Daily

'Sonic boom' as small earthquake shakes Cornwall  ITV News

The title compound, C12H21NO7, (I), is conformationally unstable; the predominant form present in its solution is the β-pyran­ose form (74.3%), followed by the β- and α-furan­oses (12.1 and 10.2%, respectively), α-pyran­ose (3.4%), and traces of the acyclic carbohydrate tautomer. In the crystalline state, the carbohydrate part of (I) adopts the 2C5 β-pyran­ose conformation, and the amino acid portion exists as a zwitterion, with the side chain cyclo­pentane ring assuming the E9 envelope conformation. All heteroatoms are involved in hydrogen bonding that forms a system of anti­parallel infinite chains of fused R33(6) and R33(8) rings. The mol­ecule features extensive intra­molecular hydrogen bonding, which is uniquely multicentered and involves the carboxyl­ate, ammonium and carbohydrate hy­droxy groups. In contrast, the contribution of inter­molecular O⋯H/H⋯O contacts to the Hirshfeld surface is relatively low (38.4%), as compared to structures of other d-fructose-amino acids. The 1H NMR data suggest a slow rotation around the C1—C2 bond in (I), indicating that the intra­molecular heteroatom contacts survive in aqueous solution of the mol­ecule as well.

Benzo[1,2-c:3,4-c':5,6-c'']tri­thio­phene (D3h-BTT) is an easily prepared electron donor that readily forms charge–transfer complexes with organic acceptors. We report here two crystal structures of its charge–transfer complexes with 7,7,8,8-tetra­cyano­quinodi­methane (TCNQ) and buckminsterfullerene (C60). The D3h-BTT·TCNQ complex, C12H6S3·C12H4N4, crystallizes with mixed layers of donors and acceptors, with an estimated degree of charge transfer at 0.09 e. In the D3h-BTT·C60·toluene complex, C12H6S3·C60·C7H8, the central ring of BTT is `squeezed' by the C60 mol­ecules from both faces. However, the degree of charge transfer is low. The C60 unit is disordered over two sites in a 0.766 (3):0.234 (3) ratio and was refined as a two-component inversion twin.

In the crystal structures of the title com­pounds, namely μ-aqua-κ2O:O-di-μ-di­phenyl­acetato-κ4O:O'-bis­[(di­phenyl­acetato-κO)bis­(pyridine-κN)nickel(II)], [Ni2(C14H11O2)4(C5H5N)4(H2O)] (1) and μ-aqua-κ2O:O-di-μ-di­phenyl­acetato-κ4O:O'-bis­[(2,2'-bi­pyridine-κ2N,N')(di­phenyl­acetato-κO)nickel(II)]–aceto­nitrile–di­phenyl­acetic acid (1/2.5/1), [Ni2(C14H11O2)4(C10H8N2)2(H2O)]·2.5CH3CN·C14H12O2 (2), the com­plex units are stabilized by a variety of intra- and inter­molecular hydrogen bonds, as well as C—H⋯π and π–π contacts between the aromatic systems of the pyridine, dipyridyl and di­phenyl­acetate ligands. Despite the fact that the di­phenyl­acetate ligand is sterically bulky, this does not inter­fere with the formation of the described aqua-bridged dimeric core, even with a 2,2'-bi­pyridine ligand, which has a strong chelating effect.

The structure of the title compound, [CrCl2(C10H24N4)][Cr(HCONH2)2(C10H24N4)][ZnCl4]2 (C10H24N4 = 1,4,8,11-tetra­aza­cyclo­tetra­decane, cyclam; HCONH2 = formamide, fa), has been determined from synchrotron X-ray data. The asymmetric unit contains two independent halves of the [CrCl2(cyclam)]+ and [Cr(fa)(cyclam)]3+ cations, and one tetra­chlorido­zincate anion. In each complex cation, the CrIII ion is coordinated by the four N atoms of the cyclam ligand in the equatorial plane and two Cl ligands or two O-bonded formamide mol­ecules in a trans axial arrangement, displaying a distorted octa­hedral geometry with crystallographic inversion symmetry. The Cr—N(cyclam) bond lengths are in the range 2.061 (2) to 2.074 (2) Å, while the Cr—Cl and Cr—O(fa) bond distances are 2.3194 (7) and 1.9953 (19) Å, respectively. The macrocyclic cyclam moieties adopt the centrosymmetric trans-III conformation with six- and five-membered chelate rings in chair and gauche conformations. The crystal structure is stabilized by inter­molecular hydrogen bonds involving the NH or CH groups of cyclam and the NH2 group of coordinated formamide as donors, and Cl atoms of the ZnCl42− anion as acceptors.

The enanti­opure monopyrrolidine derivative (2S)-methyl (Z)-5-(2-tert-but­oxy-1-cyano-2-oxo­ethyl­idene)pyrrolidine-2-carboxyl­ate, C13H18N2O4, (1), represents a potential ligand and an attractive inter­mediate for the synthesis of chiral metal com­plexes. At the mol­ecular level, the com­pound features an intra­molecular N—H⋯O hydrogen bond; neighbouring mol­ecules inter­act via N—H⋯N contacts to form chains along [100]. Due to its elemental com­position, resonant scattering of the target com­pound is entirely insignificant for diffraction experiments with Mo Kα and small even for Cu Kα radiation. A preliminary study with the harder radiation type confirmed the chiral space group and the suitability of the single crystal chosen; as expected, the results concerning the absolute structure remained com­pletely inconclusive. A second data collection with the longer wavelength gave satisfactory quality indicators for the correct handedness of the mol­ecule, albeit with high standard uncertainties. The absolute configuration has been assessed independently: CD spectra for both enanti­omers of the target mol­ecule were calculated and the spectrum for the S-configured stereoisomer was in agreement with the experiment. The Cotton effect of (1) may be ascribed to π–π* transitions from HOMO to LUMO and from HOMO to LUMO+1. As both independent techniques agree with respect to the handedness of the target mol­ecule, the absolute structure may be assigned with a high degree of confidence.

The com­pound poly[2-hy­droxy-N-methyl­ethan-1-aminium [μ3-cyanido-κ3C:C:N-di-μ-cyanido-κ4C:N-dicuprate(I)]], {(C3H10NO)[Cu2(CN)3]}n or [meoenH]Cu2(CN)3, crystallizes in the tetra­gonal space group P43. The structure consists of a three-dimensional (3D) anionic CuICN network with noncoordinated protonated N-methyl­ethano­lamine cations providing charge neutrality. Pairs of cuprophilic Cu atoms are bridged by the C atoms of μ3-cyanide ligands, which link these units into a 43 spiral along the c axis. The spirals are linked together into a 3D anionic network by the two other cyanide groups. The cationic moieties are linked into their own 43 spiral via N—H⋯O and O—H⋯O hydrogen bonds, and the cations inter­act with the 3D network via an unusual pair of N—H⋯N hydrogen bonds to one of the μ2-cyanide groups. Thermogravimetric analysis indicates an initial loss of the base cation and one cyanide as HCN at temperatures in the range 130–250 °C to form CuCN. We show how loss of a specific cyanide group from the 3D CuCN structure could form the linear CuCN structure. Further heating leaves a residue of elemental copper, isolated as the oxide.

Rob Marshall is either the bravest director in Hollywood or the most foolhardy. Three of his five theatrical films — the musicals "Chicago," "Nine" and now "Into the Woods" — don't just invite comparison to the eccentric genius of other artists, they insist on it.

Originally a Bob Fosse stage project, "Chicago" was so imbued with Fosse's vitriolic spirit that even in Marshall's more straightforward hands the movie version felt like the missing piece in a triptych with Fosse's "Cabaret" and "All That Jazz."

"Nine" is the musical created from Fellini's masterpiece "8 1/2."

(Marcello Mastroianni in Fellini's "8 1/2")

Odd enough that someone thought Fellini's intimate but epic fugue on his own creative doubts and sexual fantasies should be adapted by others for Broadway; stranger still to re-import the hybrid back to the screen, in the workmanlike form Marshall gave to it.

And now we have "Into the Woods," a film placing Marshall in the long line of moviemakers defeated by Sondheim's difficult musical brilliance and penchant for challenging material. It's distinguished company, reaching back all the way to "A Hard Day's Night" director Richard Lester's re-invention of "A Funny Thing Happened (On the Way to the Forum)" as a kind of psychedelic Keystone Cops movie, and forward to Tim Burton's more adept but still wrong-headed Murnau-meets-Hammer-Horror approach to "Sweeney Todd."

Even director Hal Prince, the principal theatrical collaborator during Sondheim's most fertile and formative period, made an absolute hash of their shared stage success "A Little Night Music" in a film version later disavowed by both men, and mostly remembered for Elizabeth Taylor's chirpy and discernibly flat rendition of "Send in the Clowns."

Liz singing "Send in the Flat Clowns"

It's just possible that the real problem is that Sondheim's self-reflexive and deconstructive impulse (his musicals are almost always and to varying degrees commentaries on the Musical itself) makes his projects unfit for screen adaptation. In movies, we miss the artifice of the proscenium, the sweat on the actor's brow. But if any of Sondheim's late-period projects held out the hope of a successful movie version it was surely "Into the Woods," a droll recombination of the fairytale form's literary DNA into something like Sondheim's masterpiece "Company," set in a realm of magic beanstalks and slippers made of glass.

The characters are straight out of the Disney pantheon (or "Shrek"): Cinderella meets Rapunzel meets Red Riding Hood meets Jack and his Beanstalk, with a generic Wicked Witch, a couple of not so charming Prince Charmings, plus a peasant couple thrown in. But the issues at stake — marital fidelity, raising children, the fear of aging and death — are complicated, and filled with gray tones which Sondheim and librettist James Lapine masterfully etched across the fairytale's Manichean black and white.

What seemed audacious when Sondheim and Lapine conceived it in 1987 ought to fit comfortably into the era of "Sleepy Hollow" and "Maleficent," but in Marshall's hands, it does not. The good news is that though populated by what old school TV shows used to call a Galaxy of Today's Brightest Stars (Anna Kendrick as an appealingly unglamorous Cinderella; Chris Pine as the nymphomaniac Prince who stalks her; Meryl Streep quite moving in the Wicked Witch role made famous on Broadway by Bernadette Peters) this is mostly a very well-sung movie. There have been controversial excisions and revisions (enabled by Lapine, who is Marshall's screenwriter), but as an introduction to one of Sondheim's more beloved scores, "Into the Woods" makes for a solid musical primer.

WATCH: The "Into the Woods" trailer

But though Marshall has taken a lot of flack for daring to cut out characters (most notably the stage production's Narrator, who served as a kind of Greek Chorus in the original) and for softening plot points (Rapunzel died onstage), the big problem is that Marshall isn't nearly ruthless enough in rethinking "Into the Woods" as an honest-to-God movie. There are many moments (Johnny Depp ending a scene with a stagy howl at the Moon that virtually screams "and... fade out!;" the unseen death of a major character) where Marshall embraces the limitations of stagecraft when something bigger and more cinematic is needed, as if afraid to mar the pedigree of Broadway with Hollywood's debased visual stamp.

"Giants in the Sky," Jack's coming-of-age number, where he describes finding manhood in the sexual and physical dangers available above the clouds in the Giant's Castle, is a showstopper onstage, where we're willing to accept rhetoric in place of physical immediacy. Onscreen, it's simply frustrating for a character to suddenly appear and tell us he's just had the adventure of a lifetime, and that it's too bad we missed it.

The Woods themselves — both character and symbol onstage, a kind of living maze representing moral confusion — are lush here and geographically nondescript, like a particularly plush unit set, done up in a generic Lloyd Webber-meets-Disney house style.

Perhaps most unfortunately of all, Marshall seems constitutionally incapable of conveying the pervasive satiric impulse at the heart of the Sondheim/Lapine original, which could have been called "What Happens After Happily Ever After." Without ironic distancing, the film's second half, where the characters betray each other in decidedly contemporary sexual and self-interested terms, plays as non-sequitur.

It's possible to imagine a more idiosyncratic movie director who both understands and embraces the arsenal of cinematic effects available through editing, camera movement and design transforming "Into the Woods" into a rousing cinematic triumph — the young Terry Gilliam comes to mind. But Hollywood doesn't really embrace its daring cranks and visionaries very often, as Gilliam's difficult career demonstrates. Whenever possible, today's studios like to import genius at a safe remove, and then hand it off to a reliable journeyman who won't make waves or piss off the suits. The limitations of that approach are visible in every scene of "Into the Woods," and perhaps they explain its failure best of all. It's one thing not to be up to the task of adapting a work of odd brilliance. It's something else again to not even take it on.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

; Credit: smartboy10/Getty Images

A for-profit college received millions of dollars from the federal government to help low-income students whose lives have been upended by the coronavirus outbreak, but that same school, Florida Career College (FCC), is also accused of defrauding students.

A federal class-action lawsuit filed on behalf of students in April calls FCC "a sham" and alleges that, long before the pandemic, the college was targeting economically vulnerable people of color. The plaintiffs say the vocational school enticed them with false promises of career training and job placement — but spent little on instruction while charging exorbitant prices and pushing students into loans they cannot repay.

The lawsuit comes as thousands of colleges across the country are receiving federal emergency relief in response to the coronavirus pandemic. Through the CARES Act, FCC has been allotted $17 million. The law requires that at least half of that money goes directly to students, but makes few stipulations for the rest of it.

Experts say the complaint against FCC raises serious concerns about the college's ability to safeguard taxpayer dollars, as well as its ability to serve its own students.

In a statement to NPR, Florida Career College General Counsel Aaron Mortensen says: "This lawsuit is baseless legally and factually. Though we cannot comment because the matter is in litigation, we will aggressively fight these false allegations."

Equipment was "at best limited, and at worse, nonexistent"

Plaintiff Kareem Britt was working as a cook when he noticed a Facebook ad for FCC.

"Are you tired of working minimum wage jobs? Eating ramen noodles?" the ad asked. "Are you ready to step up to steak? HVAC degrees make $16 to $23/hr."

An FCC representative told Britt that a degree could change his life and that the school would help him land a job. He qualified for a $6,000 federal Pell Grant and an FCC "scholarship loan" for $3,000. Britt decided to enroll in the HVAC training program.

After classes began, though, Britt says equipment necessary to learn the trade was in short supply. "Tools, machinery, and other learning devices were at best limited, and at worse, nonexistent," according to the complaint.

When it came time for the school to help Britt find a job, he says, FCC found him just two, two-week placements, and he failed to find HVAC work on his own. Making matters worse, once he'd finished school, Britt learned that he had also taken on federal loans worth $9,500, which he must now pay back as a hotel cook, the same kind of job he'd held before enrolling.

Reverse redlining

The complaint alleges that Florida Career College, along with its parent company, specifically targets economically vulnerable people of color.

"They are recruiting at majority Black high schools," says Toby Merrill, director of the Project on Predatory Student Lending at the Legal Services Center of Harvard Law School, one of the organizations representing the plaintiffs. "They are putting up billboards in towns where the population is mostly Black. And they're doing a lot of advertising on social media where you can choose to target your ad essentially by race."

Stephen Stewart is Jamaican and says he was drawn to an FCC ad on Instagram. He decided to visit campus, and says one word captures his experience: "pressure."

Like Britt, Stewart was considering FCC's HVAC program. After his tour, when a representative told him the program would cost more than $20,000, Stewart balked. He remembers the representative pushed, telling him: "'I know so many students that have went here... I'm talking about people with five, six kids in a worse situation than you're in.'" Stewart was 20 at the time and childless. "'You're telling me that they can go through this, make their payments and pay off their tuition, and you can't?'"

Stewart enrolled in FCC's HVAC program after being promised that, within a year, the school would find him a job in his field.

The complaint takes aim at these recruiting practices. It alleges that FCC is selling the promise of a career and financial success to cash-strapped communities of color where college feels out of reach, "discriminating against students on the basis of race by inducing them to purchase a worthless product by taking on debt they cannot repay."

According to Education Department data, 85% of FCC's students are people of color.

This practice of discriminating by targeting students of color has a name: Reverse redlining — a reference to the historical practice of excluding African-American families from home ownership and denying them access to services. Reverse redlining is illegal, and it's what sets this suit apart from previous legal battles over alleged predatory practices by for-profit colleges.

"In a weekly memo to my board last Friday, I said, 'So the new angle of attack against our sector is that we are predatory to minority communities,'" says Steve Gunderson, head of Career Education Colleges and Universities, an organization that serves as the national voice for career education schools like FCC.

"We have always celebrated the fact that approximately 45 to 50% of the students in our schools are African American and Hispanic," he says. "We're proud of that."

"Classes were a scam"

Long before the federal government granted FCC $17 million in pandemic relief, the school was already largely government-dependent. According to federal data, the lion's share of FCC's revenue — 86% — comes from federal financial aid funds, namely Pell Grants and student loans.

At the same time, federal data also suggest that the college fails to prepare many students for their chosen professions. Under an Obama-era rule known as "gainful employment," schools could lose access to federal aid if graduates don't earn enough income to repay their student debts. According to the complaint, 16 of the 17 FCC programs evaluated under the gainful employment rule failed that metric, meaning graduates weren't able to repay their loans. (The gainful employment rule was repealed in 2019.)

The median annual earnings of FCC graduates who ultimately found employment ranged from $8,983 to $32,871, according to the suit, which helps explain why, according to the most recent federal data, just 23% of FCC students have been able to pay down any of their loans' original balance within three years of leaving.

"Classes were a scam, a waste of time," says Stephen Stewart. The equipment was "limited" and "outdated," he says, and the instructor admitted to the class that he had little experience with HVAC. Stewart's worst day, though, came near the end of his nine-month program when he visited the career services department to ask when they'd help him find a job as they had promised.

Stewart says he was given a list of possible HVAC companies and told, "'You gotta get your job.'" So he did, with no help. But Stewart says it was clear that FCC hadn't given him the skills he needed to keep up in the job, let alone succeed, and he ultimately left. Today, Stewart is $15,000 in debt and says he feels "shattered" by the whole experience.

"The thing that upsets me the most about this is how much it preys upon people's hopes and dreams," says Ben Miller, who studies higher education accountability at the left-leaning Center for American Progress. "You know, you have a lot of folks who want to make a better life for themselves. They have maybe one shot at college, and you rip them off and basically ruin it."

But Gunderson takes a very different view, as head of the national association for postsecondary career colleges.

"[This lawsuit] is so frustrating, because this is nothing more than an organized national effort to destroy the reputation of the [career college] sector," he says.

Gunderson insists that career colleges, including FCC, have been held to unrealistic standards. He points to the gainful employment rule, which he says measured students' incomes relatively soon after graduation. "You've got to go into the five- or 10-year mark before most of these occupations have what you and I would call our respectable salaries."

But federal data also show that, even 10 years after enrolling in FCC, more than half of its students still didn't earn more than the typical high school graduate.

Gunderson says this lawsuit is just the latest salvo in a decade-long fight to discredit for-profit, career colleges — a fight he calls "monotonous and disappointing."

"Even if you're doing a terrible job"

The law requires that at least half of the $17 million FCC is receiving through the CARES Act must go directly to students, but makes few stipulations for the rest of those funds. In a letter, U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos said institutions have "significant discretion" on how to award the assistance to students.

"We stand ready to deliver these funds," said Fardad Fateri, the head of FCC and its parent company, International Education Corporation, in a press release. "It is important we get these grants into the hands of our students right away, so they can better deal with this crisis."

FCC's $17 million is a small piece of the more than $14 billion lawmakers set aside in the CARES Act to help colleges and vulnerable students during the coronavirus pandemic. But Ben Miller says, in Congress' haste to help schools that serve low-income students, lawmakers are giving money to many schools with questionable records like FCC's.

"When there's no consideration of quality or outcomes, it's potentially a big award, even if you're doing a terrible job," Miller says.

Meanwhile DeVos has also championed separate policies that have made it easier for schools like FCC to continue to enroll students and receive federal student aid even as their graduates struggle. In 2019, DeVos repealed the Obama-era gainful employment rule that would have denied low-performing schools access to federal student aid.

Under the Trump administration, the Education Department has also changed the College Scorecard, a website meant to help prospective students compare colleges by price and performance. The department has removed easy access to schools' loan repayment rates. In 2018, it also removed another important metric: How the earnings of a school's graduates compared to the earnings of high school grads.

"Rather than highlighting institutions that show the best employment and loan repayment outcomes for students, this administration has made a concerted effort to hide this information from students with no explanation as to why," says Michael Itzkowitz, who was director of the College Scorecard during the Obama administration. "What's become more transparent is their willingness to prioritize certain institutions — namely for-profits — even if those aren't the best options for students choosing to pursue a postsecondary education."

The Education Department did not respond in time to requests for comment.

When students filed suit against the now-defunct for-profit Corinthian Colleges, claiming, like Britt and Stewart, that their schools had made promises about job placement and future earnings that they simply did not keep, DeVos revised another rule, known as "borrower defense," to make it more difficult for defrauded borrowers to get their money back. But the revision was so strict that 10 Senate Republicans joined with Democrats in March to rebuke the education secretary and reverse her decision.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

; Credit: smartboy10/Getty Images

A for-profit college received millions of dollars from the federal government to help low-income students whose lives have been upended by the coronavirus outbreak, but that same school, Florida Career College (FCC), is also accused of defrauding students.

A federal class-action lawsuit filed on behalf of students in April calls FCC "a sham" and alleges that, long before the pandemic, the college was targeting economically vulnerable people of color. The plaintiffs say the vocational school enticed them with false promises of career training and job placement — but spent little on instruction while charging exorbitant prices and pushing students into loans they cannot repay.

The lawsuit comes as thousands of colleges across the country are receiving federal emergency relief in response to the coronavirus pandemic. Through the CARES Act, FCC has been allotted $17 million. The law requires that at least half of that money goes directly to students, but makes few stipulations for the rest of it.

Experts say the complaint against FCC raises serious concerns about the college's ability to safeguard taxpayer dollars, as well as its ability to serve its own students.

In a statement to NPR, Florida Career College General Counsel Aaron Mortensen says: "This lawsuit is baseless legally and factually. Though we cannot comment because the matter is in litigation, we will aggressively fight these false allegations."

Equipment was "at best limited, and at worse, nonexistent"

Plaintiff Kareem Britt was working as a cook when he noticed a Facebook ad for FCC.

"Are you tired of working minimum wage jobs? Eating ramen noodles?" the ad asked. "Are you ready to step up to steak? HVAC degrees make $16 to $23/hr."

An FCC representative told Britt that a degree could change his life and that the school would help him land a job. He qualified for a $6,000 federal Pell Grant and an FCC "scholarship loan" for $3,000. Britt decided to enroll in the HVAC training program.

After classes began, though, Britt says equipment necessary to learn the trade was in short supply. "Tools, machinery, and other learning devices were at best limited, and at worse, nonexistent," according to the complaint.

When it came time for the school to help Britt find a job, he says, FCC found him just two, two-week placements, and he failed to find HVAC work on his own. Making matters worse, once he'd finished school, Britt learned that he had also taken on federal loans worth $9,500, which he must now pay back as a hotel cook, the same kind of job he'd held before enrolling.

Reverse redlining

The complaint alleges that Florida Career College, along with its parent company, specifically targets economically vulnerable people of color.

"They are recruiting at majority Black high schools," says Toby Merrill, director of the Project on Predatory Student Lending at the Legal Services Center of Harvard Law School, one of the organizations representing the plaintiffs. "They are putting up billboards in towns where the population is mostly Black. And they're doing a lot of advertising on social media where you can choose to target your ad essentially by race."

Stephen Stewart is Jamaican and says he was drawn to an FCC ad on Instagram. He decided to visit campus, and says one word captures his experience: "pressure."

Like Britt, Stewart was considering FCC's HVAC program. After his tour, when a representative told him the program would cost more than $20,000, Stewart balked. He remembers the representative pushed, telling him: "'I know so many students that have went here... I'm talking about people with five, six kids in a worse situation than you're in.'" Stewart was 20 at the time and childless. "'You're telling me that they can go through this, make their payments and pay off their tuition, and you can't?'"

Stewart enrolled in FCC's HVAC program after being promised that, within a year, the school would find him a job in his field.

The complaint takes aim at these recruiting practices. It alleges that FCC is selling the promise of a career and financial success to cash-strapped communities of color where college feels out of reach, "discriminating against students on the basis of race by inducing them to purchase a worthless product by taking on debt they cannot repay."

According to Education Department data, 85% of FCC's students are people of color.

This practice of discriminating by targeting students of color has a name: Reverse redlining — a reference to the historical practice of excluding African-American families from home ownership and denying them access to services. Reverse redlining is illegal, and it's what sets this suit apart from previous legal battles over alleged predatory practices by for-profit colleges.

"In a weekly memo to my board last Friday, I said, 'So the new angle of attack against our sector is that we are predatory to minority communities,'" says Steve Gunderson, head of Career Education Colleges and Universities, an organization that serves as the national voice for career education schools like FCC.

"We have always celebrated the fact that approximately 45 to 50% of the students in our schools are African American and Hispanic," he says. "We're proud of that."

"Classes were a scam"

Long before the federal government granted FCC $17 million in pandemic relief, the school was already largely government-dependent. According to federal data, the lion's share of FCC's revenue — 86% — comes from federal financial aid funds, namely Pell Grants and student loans.

At the same time, federal data also suggest that the college fails to prepare many students for their chosen professions. Under an Obama-era rule known as "gainful employment," schools could lose access to federal aid if graduates don't earn enough income to repay their student debts. According to the complaint, 16 of the 17 FCC programs evaluated under the gainful employment rule failed that metric, meaning graduates weren't able to repay their loans. (The gainful employment rule was repealed in 2019.)

The median annual earnings of FCC graduates who ultimately found employment ranged from $8,983 to $32,871, according to the suit, which helps explain why, according to the most recent federal data, just 23% of FCC students have been able to pay down any of their loans' original balance within three years of leaving.

"Classes were a scam, a waste of time," says Stephen Stewart. The equipment was "limited" and "outdated," he says, and the instructor admitted to the class that he had little experience with HVAC. Stewart's worst day, though, came near the end of his nine-month program when he visited the career services department to ask when they'd help him find a job as they had promised.

Stewart says he was given a list of possible HVAC companies and told, "'You gotta get your job.'" So he did, with no help. But Stewart says it was clear that FCC hadn't given him the skills he needed to keep up in the job, let alone succeed, and he ultimately left. Today, Stewart is $15,000 in debt and says he feels "shattered" by the whole experience.

"The thing that upsets me the most about this is how much it preys upon people's hopes and dreams," says Ben Miller, who studies higher education accountability at the left-leaning Center for American Progress. "You know, you have a lot of folks who want to make a better life for themselves. They have maybe one shot at college, and you rip them off and basically ruin it."

But Gunderson takes a very different view, as head of the national association for postsecondary career colleges.

"[This lawsuit] is so frustrating, because this is nothing more than an organized national effort to destroy the reputation of the [career college] sector," he says.

Gunderson insists that career colleges, including FCC, have been held to unrealistic standards. He points to the gainful employment rule, which he says measured students' incomes relatively soon after graduation. "You've got to go into the five- or 10-year mark before most of these occupations have what you and I would call our respectable salaries."

But federal data also show that, even 10 years after enrolling in FCC, more than half of its students still didn't earn more than the typical high school graduate.

Gunderson says this lawsuit is just the latest salvo in a decade-long fight to discredit for-profit, career colleges — a fight he calls "monotonous and disappointing."

"Even if you're doing a terrible job"

The law requires that at least half of the $17 million FCC is receiving through the CARES Act must go directly to students, but makes few stipulations for the rest of those funds. In a letter, U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos said institutions have "significant discretion" on how to award the assistance to students.

"We stand ready to deliver these funds," said Fardad Fateri, the head of FCC and its parent company, International Education Corporation, in a press release. "It is important we get these grants into the hands of our students right away, so they can better deal with this crisis."

FCC's $17 million is a small piece of the more than $14 billion lawmakers set aside in the CARES Act to help colleges and vulnerable students during the coronavirus pandemic. But Ben Miller says, in Congress' haste to help schools that serve low-income students, lawmakers are giving money to many schools with questionable records like FCC's.

"When there's no consideration of quality or outcomes, it's potentially a big award, even if you're doing a terrible job," Miller says.

Meanwhile DeVos has also championed separate policies that have made it easier for schools like FCC to continue to enroll students and receive federal student aid even as their graduates struggle. In 2019, DeVos repealed the Obama-era gainful employment rule that would have denied low-performing schools access to federal student aid.

Under the Trump administration, the Education Department has also changed the College Scorecard, a website meant to help prospective students compare colleges by price and performance. The department has removed easy access to schools' loan repayment rates. In 2018, it also removed another important metric: How the earnings of a school's graduates compared to the earnings of high school grads.

"Rather than highlighting institutions that show the best employment and loan repayment outcomes for students, this administration has made a concerted effort to hide this information from students with no explanation as to why," says Michael Itzkowitz, who was director of the College Scorecard during the Obama administration. "What's become more transparent is their willingness to prioritize certain institutions — namely for-profits — even if those aren't the best options for students choosing to pursue a postsecondary education."

The Education Department did not respond in time to requests for comment.

When students filed suit against the now-defunct for-profit Corinthian Colleges, claiming, like Britt and Stewart, that their schools had made promises about job placement and future earnings that they simply did not keep, DeVos revised another rule, known as "borrower defense," to make it more difficult for defrauded borrowers to get their money back. But the revision was so strict that 10 Senate Republicans joined with Democrats in March to rebuke the education secretary and reverse her decision.

This content is from Southern California Public Radio. View the original story at SCPR.org.

The technical update on the asset, which Wheaton Precious Metals owns a production stream on, is explored in a CIBC report.

With the supply/demand balance moving in favor of miners, the outlook for uranium stocks is the brightest it has been in years, according to McAlinden Research Partners.

With the supply/demand balance moving in favor of miners, the outlook for uranium stocks is the brightest it has been in years, according to McAlinden Research Partners.

The new agreement and its potential impact on Point Loma Resources are discussed in a Mackie Research Capital Corp. report.

Regulators should establish a process to consider the full lifecycle greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of electric vehicles, according to a new US study. This would help ensure that vehicle emissions regulations are placed on a sound scientific basis, manufacturers continue to improve the efficiency of electric vehicles, and the full benefit of regulations to limit GHG emissions from vehicles are realised, say the researchers.

New research suggests that reducing the value of clean development mechanism (CDM) emission credits according to a country’s wealth and their emissions could encourage advanced developing nations, such as China and India, to leave the CDM, but would not necessarily accelerate CDM projects in the least developed nations.

Big infrastructure and cost requirements have long kept data analytics a fiefdom of large enterprises; however, the advent of cloud tech has made it possible for SMEs to use data analytics with a fraction of a cost.

To mark the new decade, Bushey Museum’s latest exhibition plays on the phrase “20/20 Vision”. It has nothing to do with being able to see perfectly, but concentrates on items in the museum’s collection from 1820 and 1920 with additional loan items completed in 2020.

A COLLECTION of work exploring artists’ responses to the Battle of Britain and the Blitz is set to go on display at the Royal Air Force Museum London next month.

A museum’s new exhibition will feature work by one of the most influential British book illustrators.

It's the latest example of an oil and gas deal running into snags amid the unprecedented plunge in crude prices.

A photographer, a body painter, and a pregnant woman team up to show what it looks like inside the womb.

Time can be rough on a dam: as it ages, repairs are more costly and it risks catastrophic breakage. But removing one can also be a major eco-hazard.

Five years in the making, the film takes audiences on an interfaith journey through one of the world's 'most storied' cities.

The organic produce company may sell nationally, but it still keeps a roadside stand in Central California where people can buy organic produce and much more.

Smoked watermelon "ham," the most bizarre viral dish of 2018, sets its sights on the holidays.

The new and highly Instagrammable interactive exhibition in Miami Beach receives a violation for generating marine debris.

Utilizing her 18 years of military experience, U.S. Air Force veteran Angela Cody-Rouget started a professional service to help people become organized.

Debuted earlier this month at the International Space University, this short film invites a new generation to imagine and explore the universe's secrets.

Can a vacuum suck up China's smog? Daan Roosegaarde will test his new technology soon in Beijing's parks.

Preference for "cleaner" male trees and plants in urban settings may trigger extra sneezing and wheezing. That's botanical sexism, says Thomas Ogren.

A testing lab finds genetically modified cotton in H&M and other European brands' eco-friendly lines.

The granola guru John Mackey has a new book and is once again making waves with his outspoken views.

Watson will help doctors diagnose and treat cancer patients.

Officials in Australia quarantine imported versions of the pop singer Katy Perry's latest album due to its seed-paper packaging.

The Rolling Stones keyboardist and MNN co-founder sheds light on the band's new single, which includes a reference to hydraulic fracturing, aka 'fracking.'

Steven Pasquale stars in a dual role on NBC series 'Do No Harm'. Show aims to do less harm to the environment via eco-friendly production practices.