Home Company

Things have changed in my life. In the old days, the first thing I would do upon moving into a new place would be to unpack and reconnect the stereo equipment. I might not know where the dishware was, but at least I had my Stan Getz. Now I have kids and there's a stereo in my car, so the first thing I did last month on moving into a new home was to unpack and wire up the television and VCR (for them) and the computer (for me).

Pavel Popovich Former Soviet cosmonaut Pavel Popovich, 79, a former Soviet cosmonaut who was best known for a space first in 1962 -- piloting one of two manned satellites that orbited the Earth at the same time -- died Wednesday of a stroke at a Ukraine sanatorium, said Boris Yesin of the Russian astronaut training center. The front-page headline in The Times lauded Popovich and his colleague, Andrian Nikolayev, as "Space Twins" after they landed in August 1962.

PHOENIX -- The Home Depot Center is getting a new name. The 125-acre multi-sport complex on the campus of Cal State Dominguez Hills in Carson will be known as the StubHub Center starting on on June 1, when the naming rights transfer from the chain of home improvement stores to one of the nation biggest ticketing companies. The $150-million complex, designed and built by Anschutz Entertainment Group, has a 27,000-seat main stadium, a 2,450-seat velodrome, an 8,000-seat tennis stadium and an outdoor track facility.

It sounds too good to be true: A residential system that allows people to make fuel from old beer, leftover wine and other waste products and use it to run their vehicles. That's what inventors of the E-Fuel MicroFueler claim, and there's support for the idea in government, industry and pop culture. MicroFueler buyers are eligible for a $5,000 tax credit. Former L.A. Laker Shaquille O'Neal is an investor in the system's distributor. The $10,000 E-Fuel MicroFueler consists of a 250-gallon tank for organic feedstock, such as waste wine and beer, and a still that converts it to pure ethanol, or E-Fuel.

A Superior Court jury in Los Angeles has awarded $2.5 million to a former executive of bankrupt Newport Beach home builder Baldwin Co. after finding that the owners reneged on a promise to make him a partner in the company. The jury found that brothers James and Alfred Baldwin breached their contract with Robert B. Burns, who headed their company's Los Angeles-Ventura division. However, the jury awarded damages only against James Baldwin, who directly supervised Burns' division.

New homes are rarely perfect. Houses are giant puzzles with hundreds of parts, manufactured at different locations and carried to the building site. And try as they might to put together a flawless product, builders and their numerous subcontractors don't always get things right. Luckily, buyers are more likely to have to deal with cosmetic defects than out-and-out structural failures. Scratched refrigerators, broken bathroom tiles and faulty electrical outlets are far more prevalent than badly cracked foundations or sagging roofs.

A San Juan Capistrano nursing home firm has filed suit accusing a former executive and his wife of defrauding the company and using the proceeds to build a Laguna Beach mansion. The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in Orange County Superior Court by Covenant Care Inc., seeks damages of $2 million plus punitive damages against Stephen Edward Samuelian and his wife, Susan Deeann Samuelian.

Nursing home operator Beverly Enterprises Inc. said Wednesday that it accepted a sweetened takeover bid from North American Senior Care Inc. that values the company at more than $1.9 billion and narrowly tops a counteroffer made last week by a rival bidder. Under the revised deal, North American Senior Care would pay $13 a share in cash to acquire Beverly, whose directors have voted in favor of the proposal because they say it is in the best interests of its shareholders.

In a business where people are supposed to be soothing and supportive, the world's biggest funeral-home company on Tuesday made what was viewed as an unfriendly, expensive bid for even more power. Service Corp. International, the Houston-based owner of more than 2,800 funeral homes worldwide, disclosed it had approached Canada's Loewen Group, its rapidly expanding rival, with a proposed takeover valued at just over $2 billion.

When Melissa Allen came home to Yorba Linda this week, she brought a dance company with her. At 19, Allen is a four-year veteran of American Ballet Theatre. Like other young members of the renowned New York company, she has held some small roles with ABT but mostly has danced in disciplined anonymity as part of the corps de ballet.

Former KB Home Chief Executive Bruce Karatz pleaded not guilty in federal court Monday to charges that he secretly backdated stock options to enrich himself, then concealed the scheme from regulators and investors. Karatz, 63, entered the plea during a brief court appearance before U.S. District Magistrate Judge Jeffrey W. Johnson in Los Angeles. Johnson scheduled a trial date for May 19.

This wintry week surprised Southern California with shape-shifting clouds hitched to chilly wind, rain in the valleys, snow in the mountains -- just right for a cozy Valentine's Day spent corralled around the hearth, logs ablaze. Or is it? These days, environmental concerns and new governmental regulations about wood-burning fireplaces give some people pause. Burn wood logs and you create pollution. Burn natural gas and you consume a nonrenewable resource.

A strong economy will spark a housing market rebound after excess inventory from speculators is shaken out, perhaps very soon, the chief executive of the nation's largest luxury home builder said Thursday. At a meeting with analysts in New York, Robert Toll of Toll Bros. Inc. said pent-up demand would drive the housing market after the current housing slowdown passes. Demand will be driven by buyers who are biding their time waiting for better incentives or lower prices.

Nursing home operator Beverly Enterprises Inc. said Wednesday that it accepted a sweetened takeover bid from North American Senior Care Inc. that values the company at more than $1.9 billion and narrowly tops a counteroffer made last week by a rival bidder. Under the revised deal, North American Senior Care would pay $13 a share in cash to acquire Beverly, whose directors have voted in favor of the proposal because they say it is in the best interests of its shareholders.

It was never a secret. Chevron officials have planned for more than 30 years to develop the rolling Coyote Hills on the northern edge of Fullerton -- once the site of bountiful oil wells -- and build hundreds of new homes. Maybe the city's 126,000 residents forgot or figured it would never happen, hoping their once-rural town could cling to its last major stretch of open land even as homes sprung up all around. But it soon might.

Things have changed in my life. In the old days, the first thing I would do upon moving into a new place would be to unpack and reconnect the stereo equipment. I might not know where the dishware was, but at least I had my Stan Getz. Now I have kids and there's a stereo in my car, so the first thing I did last month on moving into a new home was to unpack and wire up the television and VCR (for them) and the computer (for me).

It can be a bit delicate to ask a furniture shopper: "Oh, sir, um, maybe, ah, you'd like to see something a bit, hmmm, sturdier?" We are, as a people, as a sitting-in-chairs public, big. Bigger than we ought to be, health authorities frequently tell us. And bigger than many standard chairs of years past were made to hold comfortably. So the scale of furniture has increased over the last decade — to suit both the size of homes and the size of their occupants, said Max Shangle, professor and chairman of the furniture design department at Kendall College of Art and Design in Michigan.

The settlement of a major class-action suit is shedding new light on a controversial real estate practice that home buyers and sellers typically know little about: fees paid to realty brokers and agents for promoting home warranty policies. The case involves potentially thousands of buyers and sellers who bought warranty coverage from American Home Shield Corp. between May 2008 and March of this year. American Home Shield is the dominant player in the home warranty field, with sales of $657 million in 2010, according to the company.

A San Juan Capistrano nursing home firm has filed suit accusing a former executive and his wife of defrauding the company and using the proceeds to build a Laguna Beach mansion. The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in Orange County Superior Court by Covenant Care Inc., seeks damages of $2 million plus punitive damages against Stephen Edward Samuelian and his wife, Susan Deeann Samuelian.

The Teamsters union asked federal labor officials to hold an election to determine whether the union can represent about 60 workers at Bloomingdale's Home Store at Fashion Island Newport Beach. A company spokesman said Monday that the department store chain will fight the move, arguing that the store is part of the larger department store nearby rather than a separate location.