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Show 4- WORLD NEWS - DIXIE SUN WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 8, 2R Rosa Parks will live rent-fre- e after string of financial woes TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICE Civil rights k on Rosa Parks, vho in 2002 faced eviction from her home, will have a free place to live for the rest of her life Riverfront Associates, which owns the downtown Riverfront Apartments where Parks has lived since EMM, quietly decided in early October to allow Parks to stay there rent free permanently "I thought it was the right thing to do," managing partner Peter Cummings said Friday "This woman is an icon She deserves an enormous amount of respect. In a way, I think it's an honor to be able to accord her that respect " Days after the previously undisclosed gift, the Detroit Free Press reported on Oct. 15 that some of Parks' relatives were worried about her finances and whether she was being properly cared for A Nov. 23 article chronicled lawsuits against two charities associated with Parks, the repossession of a vehicle and two eviction notices the Riverfront Apartments sent her in 2002 The Free Press obtained an Oct 11 letter from Cummings regarding the rent free arrangement that also disclosed that I lartford Memorial Baptist Church in Detroit hud been paying Parks' rent, which had been as high as $1,800 a month The Rev. Charles Adams said Friday that his church discovered Parks needed financial help and began paying her rent in August 2003 'ONES of it ... It TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICE B D Studi was a simple act of butions and relieved it of the monthly obligation. Parks now is responsible only for her utilities, Cummings wrote. Her longtime caretaker and friend, Elaine Steele, said again Friday that the 91 year-old Parks is feeble but doing well. Steele, who also manages the nonprofit Rosa & Raymond Parks Institute, said Parks gets proper care and that the eviction notices were sent in error. "We've not mismanaged anything," she said. "We have said that this is a difficult financial period. It has been for some time. It has been for some other organizations." She said the rent-freoffer is "very wonderful." Parks is best known for refusing to give up her seat to a white man on a Montgomery, Ala., bus in 1955 Her action is credited with sparking a bus boycott that helped trigger the modere n-day civil rights move- ment. More recently she has been involved in a $5 billion lawsuit against record companies over the use of her name in a song by the hip-hoduo Outkast p as president goes to Moscow Outgoing Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma flew to Moscow on Thursday for emergency talks seeking a way out of his country's election crisis, a move that raised tensions back home, v here Russia is seen as a strong advocate of the man accused of rigging 3 million votes and stealing the election In Kiev, eyes were on the Ukrainian Supreme Court, which is expected to make a decision on the election at any minute. People followed the court proceedings on large televisions set up around the city, sometimes in the middle of streets packed with protesters, sometimes in shop windows, sometimes in meeting rooms. lu ; kindness " In his letter to Adams, Cummings thanked the pastor for the church's contri- Ukrainians await election ruling - 2n "We did not want her set oul in the street," Adams said of' Parks, who is not a member of Hartford "We said we will do it for as long as is necessary. We didn't want to make a big noise out "It may not look exciting, but these men hold the future of our country in their hands. Of course we watch," said Rostyslav Lutsyshyn, stand- ing near a television set up on a busy commercial street. The justices have a number of options. They could throw out the election results and call for new elections. They could throw out only results found to be fraudulent and large-scree- declare a winner based on the remaining votes. They also could certify the election as legal, although that looks unlikely since both candidates have asked for it to be see UKRAINE page 7 stre rcomi : to pi lief I to n ,e Me! xari enter Dave Moore, chairman and chief executive officer of Corinthian Colleges Inc., based in Santa Ana, Calif. Corinthian Colleges CEO says campuses can help where state schools won't for-pro- fit TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICE - Corinthian Colleges Inc., the Santa Ana company that oper- ates trade schools and colleges, has attracted headlines lately, mostly for its rapid growth through acquisitions and because federal and state regulators have been scrutinizing the company and its competicareer-onente- d tors. But David Moore, the company's chief executive, prefers to talk about his vision of schools providing job training to what he says is a for-prof-it growing population of young adults who aren't being served by state-supporte- schools and colleges. Moore and five members of his management team visited the newspaper's offices Thursday to talk with reporters. Corinthian was founded in 1995 by Moore and others who worked at National Education Corp, then based in Irvine, Calif., which had decided to exit the schooling business. The executives bought 15 schools from their former employer, using money put up by a venture-capita- l investor and a bank. Since then, Corinthian has purchased more than 100 schools across the United States and Canada and opened 31 more on its own. Corinthian today has more than 64,000 students, most of whom receive government loans or grants to help pay the tuition. The company gets more than 80 percent of its revenue through federal financial aid programs. Moore, 66, spent 20 years in the Army, including three tours of duty in Vietnam He observed young men arrive for basic training with no skills, then leave the military three or four years later trained and "ready to become a contributing member of the economy." After retiring as a colonel in 1980, Moore became an administrator at Mott Community College in Flint, Mich., where he eventually became president. The experience soured him on traditional state-ruschools, he said. At the time. General Motors Corp. had recently laid off about 65,000 local workers, many of whom had little formal education but who had been able to achieve comfortable, middle-clas- s lifestyles working for the automaker, Moore said. Now middle-agethese people needed retraining for jobs in other fields, he said. But the unionized faculty at Mott "had absolutely no interest in helping these people who had been laid off," Moore said. "The faculty would not put together an academic program that would help these adults who had not finished high school." So Moore moved into the field of education, taking positions at DeVry Inc. and National Education Corp. before Corinthian. Now Moore is turning part of his attention to trying to loosen California's regulations on schools, which he says are stymieing an industry that could help hundreds of thousands more unskilled Californians get into the work force or boost their incomes. In California, the company must get state approval before introducing a new course of study at one of its schools, even if it has successfully administered the same course at other campuses. That's not true in other states, Moore n for-prof-it said. California has the "most draconian set of rules" of any state, said Moore, who hopes lid ar .ents a .any o 'ven tu jcohol , prov ents li nth th Gov. Arnold Schwarzeneggt jrren plan to streamline govern- ear. ment will include bringing th For state's Bureau for Private Pci fright Secondary and Vocational neir fi Education "into the 21st ceni nd mi ry, if you will" ow to Moore said a current m- tress. into and Corinthian In or itigation other education companies ents I the California Attorney l.nals. General's office was promp Center by the company's efforts to ut No lobby for changes in state ccantri males, blaming "a small cadi alls a of people who are best described as activists who believe education l the devil's work." Tom Dresslar, a spokesnir for Attorney General Bill Lockyer, called Moore's cha acterization of the investiga tion "ridiculous " "We launched the investig tion to carry out our author to enforce consumer-prote- c tion laws no more, no less, he said. This isn't some ideologically driven investigatioi Dresslar said Lockyer's office hasn't "made any dete mination one way or anotht about whether to take actior against any education comp-ruesfor-prof-it The probe has focused or whether the companies are misrepresenting the quality nature of the courses they offer, Dresslar has said. "We don't have a problem with vocational schools that are private. We have a profc-lewith vocational schools that rip off students and tax payers," Dresslar said. Legal issues aside, Moore proud of the nearly 100,000 students who have graduate from Corinthian's schools dt ing the past five years, most whom were placed in jobs, b said. Most of those people wouldn't have qualified for admission to colleges, he said. hey w ut br nform ;uden yrepai Ther cents before 'he me ! is to gi Ma until o i state-supporte- l |