Equipment

Van Nuys sporting equipment maker Easton-Bell Sports Inc. has acquired lacrosse goods manufacturer Talon Lacrosse for an undisclosed amount, the companies said Monday. The deal will result in a new Easton Lacrosse division, to be based in Scotts Valley, Calif. The more than 2,000 employees at Easton-Bell produce equipment for sports including baseball, ice hockey, cycling and football. Talon founders Doug Appleton, Cort Kim and Blake Kim, who launched the private firm in San Carlos, Calif.

County health officials staged a daylong crackdown on illegal street vendors in the San Fernando Valley Saturday, confiscating three truckloads of cooking equipment and prompting an outcry from vendors who say their livelihoods have been taken from them. Although there were no arrests in the L.A. County Health Department operation, it resulted in the confiscation of seven propane stoves and other paraphernalia from illegal street vendors in Panorama City and Van Nuys, said Lt.

As many as 6 million votes went uncounted in the 2000 presidential election because of deficiencies in ballots, equipment and voter registration records, a study released Monday showed. "They found the problem more serious than we imagined . . . with perhaps 3 million to 6 million voters disenfranchised by the complications and uncertainties inherent in present technology," Caltech President David Baltimore said.

California regulators want to expand a pilot program under which utilities offer interest-free loans to small businesses that want to buy energy-efficient gear. The three big utilities that tried the program last year are on board to enlarge the effort.

The government of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak was plunged into crisis late Friday, but not by the peace process, the severe drought or even a troubling summer crime wave. Instead, the first real threat to Barak's 5-week-old coalition came in the form of a 300-ton electric turbine, after the government defied warnings from Israel's largest religious party and decided to transport the giant piece of equipment to a power plant during the Jewish Sabbath.

The blame for the horrific plunge in technology stocks over the last year can be laid partly at the door of companies such as 21st Century Insurance. The Woodland Hills-based firm spent the last three years developing a Web site and a pair of sophisticated telephone call centers-- and, in the process, boosted its spending on technology equipment by a heaping 30% to 40% annually.

State and local firefighters and chiefs who gathered Tuesday to discuss last year's wildfires blasted Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, saying he has not done enough to provide the equipment and staffing needed to battle a fire disaster. The criticism came during a special California Senate hearing in San Bernardino to discuss the progress made since last October's fires and ways to reduce the threat of out-of-control blazes in the state's increasingly populated mountains and hillsides.

Linda Kelly earns plenty of frequent-flier mileage traveling to corporate auctions where she bids on such industrial-strength used equipment as Class 100 clean rooms and nitrogen belt furnaces. But as the $100-billion business of disposing of excess corporate assets moves online, the Microsemi Corp. executive plans to spend more time in her Santa Ana office.

As he stood in 3 inches of slush on the tarmac at Chicago's O'Hare International Airport in the wee hours of the night, Mark O'Neill's day was winding down. Or had just begun. The distinction is rarely clear. Wherever the Mighty Ducks go, 1 1/4 tons of equipment must follow, and two men, O'Neill and assistant equipment manager John Allaway, are responsible for all of it. There are skates, of course, two pairs for every player. Helmets, gloves, hockey pants.

A jury in Bakersfield ordered the McDonald's Corp. to pay the major share of $700,000 in punitive damages awarded Tuesday to the family of a 9-year-old girl whose leg was broken while she was using playground equipment at one of the chain's restaurants. On Monday, the same Kern County Superior Court jury had held McDonald's and JBI Inc. of Long Beach, manufacturers of the equipment, liable for $43,900 in general damages for the injury Marlena Escalera suffered Dec.