2009 Year

Toyota Motor Corp. announced two safety recalls for its flagship Prius hybrid. The automaker said the steering intermediate extension shafts in 670,000 Prius cars sold in the U.S. need to be inspected and in some cases replaced. And 350,000 of those hybrids also will have to have their electric water pumps replaced. Toyota will recall another 2 million vehicles worldwide, including the Prius and the Corolla, to fix the same problems.   The gas-sipping Prius has become an important vehicle for Toyota, giving the company a reputation for producing fuel-efficient, green vehicles and quietly becoming one of the best sellers in the automaker's lineup.

Culver City Councilman Andy Weissman won reelection last spring while touting his role in helping secure employee pension and benefit reforms that put the town on a "sounder financial footing. " In his personal affairs, however, he has been struggling to gain his own balance: Weissman, now mayor, owes the federal and state governments at least $550,000 in unpaid taxes, penalties and interest, according to liens filed with the Los Angeles County registrar-recorder's office. The tax liens - some of which were filed against Weissman and his wife - cover federal income taxes and either state personal income tax or state corporate taxes, as well as federal payroll taxes, the documents show.

For nearly half a century, the UCLA Hannah Carter Japanese Garden in Bel-Air has served as a serene stopover for visitors from locations as varied as Newhall, Nashville and the Netherlands. But the decision by UCLA to sell the steep hillside property and an adjoining house to raise money for endowments and professorships has the garden world in an un-Zen-like uproar. The Garden Conservancy, an organization based in New York and San Francisco, has lambasted the university's transfer to the Fowler Museum of a five-tiered stone pagoda and other garden objects and has urged the public to contact UCLA Chancellor Gene Block.

California is preparing to label new autos to show for the first time the vehicles' annual emissions of so-called greenhouse gases linked to global warming. The stickers, the first in the U.S., should be approved by the California Air Resources Board by June and should start appearing on 2009 model cars and light trucks, board spokesman Jerry Martin said. The board will hold a hearing next month on the labels.

If you are in the market for a late-model used car, look for Japanese-built vehicles, be selective of American brands, and buy European with caution. That's the message of the 2012 vehicle dependability study from research firm J.D. Power & Associates, which looked at the reliability of autos sold during the 2009 model year. Cars built in Japan were the most likely to lead their segments. Ford Motor Co. vehicles also did well. But anything built by Chrysler Group was at the bottom of the ratings, and of the European cars, only Mercedes-Benz scored above average.

It's fast becoming the money-laundering method of choice for Mexican drug traffickers, U.S. and Mexican officials say, and it involves truckloads not of cash, but of fruit and fabric. Faced with new restrictions on the use of U.S. cash in Mexico, drug cartels are using an ingenious scheme to move their ill-gotten dollars south under the guise of legitimate cross-border commerce. U.S. and Mexican authorities say trade-based money-laundering may be the most clever — and hardest to detect — way in which traffickers are washing and distributing their billion-dollar profits.

The brain drain continues: Rebecca Morse is leaving her job as associate curator at MOCA for a post with the same title within LACMA's photography department. She will start her new position on Feb. 1, replacing Edward Robinson and reporting to photography head Britt Salvesen. Her departure leaves only two curators at MOCA (Alma Ruiz and Bennett Simpson), down from a high of seven curators in early 2009. That year the museum implemented various cost-cutting measures and layoffs, following a financial crisis and bailout by trustee Eli Broad.

How much do rock fans love the Dave Matthews Band? Pollstar has counted the ways, and it's more than half a billion dollars' worth, enough to land the relentlessly touring group at the top of the concert industry tracking publication's ranking of the decade's highest-grossing North American concert tours. It's a textbook example of sure and steady triumphing in the end. "Dave Matthews has never had the No. 1 tour of the year," Pollstar editor Gary Bongiovanni told The Times on Friday.

Fun., the quirky New York City band with a hip-hop-inspired approach to classic pop songwriting, was named best new artist at the 55th Grammy Awards Sunday, capping a whirlwind year in which its song "We Are Young" became an inescapable No. 1 smash. The new artist nomination was just one of four Fun. received in the Grammys' major categories: "We Are Young" is also up for song (which it won) and record of the year, while the band's "Some Nights" is in competition for album of the year.