Firms

Los Angeles police will not pursue through the courts scores of motorists with unpaid tickets from the city's defunct red-light camera program. The city Police Commission voted this week to end its contract with the company that operated L.A.'s cameras until they were shut off last summer. And authorities are now planning to reassign a small group of officers who regularly appeared in court to testify in contested photo enforcement cases. With the cancellation of the contract, officers will no longer have easy access to the photo and video evidence that courts require.

Resolving a key issue in a $890-million transit contract, federal officials announced Wednesday that a Japanese firm's plan to build up to 235 cars for Los Angeles-area light-rail lines complies with requirements that American workers be used for final assembly. In its decision, the Federal Transit Administration rejected assertions by local labor organizations, community activists and two competing companies that Kinkisharyo International's production plan would violate "Buy America" requirements by climate-testing a few rail cars in Japan and not the United States.

On summer nights in the mid-1960s, while black-and-white television crackled elsewhere in his Staten Island home with news of Southern violence and Vietnam, Bobby Lasnik would stretch out in his bedroom to let the righteous soundtrack of the civil rights movement waft into his impressionable teenage soul. Tuned in to WBAI-FM, coming across the water from Manhattan, he heard baleful laments about injustice that he would carry with him for a lifetime. "Suddenly there was someone speaking a certain kind of truth to you. You'd say, 'Wow!

Top agents at International Creative Management on Wednesday completed the buyout of the agency from longtime Chairman and Chief Executive Jeff Berg and private equity firm Rizvi Traverse Management - ending a long-running management drama at one of Hollywood's leading agencies. Staff members of the 400-person firm celebrated with a champagne breakfast. Twenty-nine agents are now partners who will own and control the Century City-based firm, which has been renamed ICM Partners.

Bob Kahl slips in through a side door of the vast, abandoned hangar and looks at what's left of the assembly plant where he worked for nearly 40 years. He remembers the hum of power tools, the biting aroma of cutting oil, swarms of workers plugging away on a labyrinth of yellow scaffolding. All that's left is a few piles of broken concrete and a sea of colorless dust that coats a Palmdale factory floor the size of two football fields. "Welcome to the birthplace of America's space shuttle fleet," said Kahl, 60, smiling.

Homeowners more deeply underwater on mortgages handled by five major U.S. banking firms are prime candidates for getting help from a $25-billion nationwide settlement over alleged foreclosure abuses. That's because the settlement gives the nation's largest mortgage servicers more incentives to help those who owe 40% to 75% more than the value of their homes, according to details of the settlement filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Washington. In a complex series of formulas designed to maximize the effect of the deal reached last month, banks will get more than six times the credit for reducing loans for severely underwater borrowers than they would for helping those who owe 5% to 15% more than the value of their homes.

Danielle Bemoras showed up for her job interview with a social networking company prepared for some tough questions. Instead, she found herself in the middle of a psychology experiment. The company had invited a fellow job seeker to the dinner meeting in Chicago, looking to see how the rivals would handle the pressure of a joint interview. Awkward? No question. But Bemoras just rolled with it. She avoided alcohol to keep her head clear. She skipped the sushi to prevent chopsticks mishaps.

WASHINGTON - The Obama administration ordered tariffs of 31% and higher on solar panels imported from China, escalating a simmering trade dispute with China over a case that has sharply divided American interests in the growing clean-energy industry. The Commerce Department announced the stiff duties Thursday after making a preliminary finding that Chinese solar panel manufacturers "dumped" their goods - that is, sold them at below fair-market value. The widely anticipated ruling, if affirmed by U.S. trade officials this fall, is expected to have significant implications for both the global production of solar cells, now largely in China, and the growth of the solar energy industry in the U.S., which employs about 100,000 people in manufacturing, installation and services.

Companies founded by Todd DeStefano, the former events manager at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum Commission, received payments of at least $10,000 in the years shown from: 2008 Tool of North America: Filmed commercials at the Coliseum or Sports Arena University of California: Hosted a UCLA pregame event in 2007 at the city-owned swim stadium, which neighbors the Coliseum "An American Carol": A film that shot scenes at...

For U.S. military firms, the latest revelations of highly sophisticated hacker attacks on Google Inc. are highlighting a new reality, and a potentially lucrative business: The battlefield is shifting to cyberspace. Google's admission last week that it and other large companies were infiltrated by cyber-spies is bolstering prospects for major military contractors that in recent years have been intensifying their focus from developing weapons to defending computer systems and networks.

Andrew Bynum and Pau Gasol were in the Lakers' training facility on the same day, possibly for the last time. They arrived several hours apart for their exit interviews Wednesday and then stepped into the sunshine afterward, though nothing looked overly bright about the Lakers' future. "There will be some change," said Lakers General Manager Mitch Kupchak, the sting still fresh from another ouster in the Western Conference semifinals. "When you lose before you think you should have lost, you have to open up all opportunities.

Chinese conglomerate Dalian Wanda Group's landmark deal to buy AMC Entertainment Inc. for $2.6 billion could be a catalyst for similar acquisitions of American theater chains and other U.S. entertainment properties, industry analysts said. The deal announced Sunday — which pairs China's biggest theater operator with the second-largest chain in the U.S. — marks the largest investment to date by a Chinese company in the U.S. entertainment industry. Most of the deal making has been Hollywood companies striking business deals in China.

SACRAMENTO — Nearly a year after a Kern County oil worker was sucked underground and boiled to death, state authorities have turned to the two leading oil companies involved in the incident to investigate it. On Monday, the Division of Oil, Gas and Geothermal Resources released a report outlining the circumstances of the worker's death, and subsequent oil spills and eruptions, in a field where Chevron and another operator were using steam extraction....

WASHINGTON - Europe's top antitrust official said that Google Inc. may have abused its dominance to squelch online competition and urged the company to settle allegations to avoid formal charges that could carry a hefty fine. A quick resolution to the investigation that began in 2010 would benefit the fast-moving online marketplace, Joaquin Almunia, head of competition policy for the European Commission, said in a rare public call to end the case quickly. A settlement "at an early stage is always preferable to lengthy proceedings," Almunia said.

The gig: As a kid Jamon Hicks spent many afternoons in courtrooms where his mother was a clerk. He still spends a lot of his time in courtrooms, but now Hicks, 32, is a trial attorney with the Cochran Firm in Los Angeles. Also, last month Hicks became president of the California Assn. of Black Lawyers, an organization founded in 1977 that now has more than 6,000 members, including lawyers, judges, law professors and students. Growing up in court: Hicks was raised in Inglewood and Baldwin Hills, and after day care or school he was often whisked to courtrooms where his mother was finishing her workday.

A Chinese conglomerate took a big leap forward into the U.S. market late Sunday by acquiring AMC Entertainment Inc., the nation's second-largest theater chain. It was the latest in a flurry of high-profile deals between the nations' entertainment industries. Dalian Wanda Group said in a statement it had reached an agreement to acquire AMC's 5,034 screens in 346 multiplexes in the U.S. and Canada. AMC, based in Kansas City, Mo., is owned by several investment firms, including JPMorgan Partners, Apollo Investment Fund and Bain Capital Investors.

Back when feuding couples had equity in their homes and investments worth fighting over, Scott Sagaria made a good living as a divorce lawyer. But the recession cut deep into his family law business, causing the San Jose practitioner to redirect his talents. Now he makes a good living as a bankruptcy attorney. Like solo and small boutique law practitioners across the country, Sagaria has been better able to adapt to a shifting legal landscape than Big Law firms that had to shed more than 4,600 lawyers nationwide last year.

Three days after a private equity firm bought the San Diego Union-Tribune in mid-2009, it did what private equity firms frequently do: It cut a lot of jobs. The cost savings from the 192 layoffs announced that day, and 150 or so others over the next year, helped Beverly Hills-based Platinum Equity more than triple its money when it sold the newspaper in November. It wasn't nearly so rosy for people thrown out of work in a punishing economy. That's life in the private equity world, where layoffs are part of the playbook that elite investment firms use to squeeze cash out of struggling companies.

SACRAMENTO - The state paid a $74,400 settlement to a company co-owned by the husband of state Sen. Mimi Walters (R-Laguna Niguel) after her office repeatedly called the prisons agency to check on a claim filed by the firm. The senator's husband, David Walters, co-owns a company that provides pharmacists to the California corrections system. The firm filed a claim with the state last year contending that the business was underpaid for its services. A spokesman for Mimi Walters said this week that the aide who made the calls, D. Everett Rice, was following the senator's policy to aggressively help constituents deal with state red tape.

Social media start-up Pinterest has raised $100 million in a recent financing round led by a Japanese online retailer, increasing the estimated value of the virtual scrapbooking company to $1.5 billion. Japanese e-commerce firm Rakuten Inc. led the fundraising for the Palo Alto company, which is now ranked by Experian as the third-most-popular social network behind Twitter and Facebook. Pinterest users check out thousands of images collected by fellow users and "pinned up" on their online scrapbooks.