Longs

Some Longs Drug Stores Corp. shareholders said they would oppose CVS Caremark Corp.'s $2.7-billion offer to buy the company if Longs didn't tell them more about the value of its real estate. CVS Caremark agreed to pay $71.50 a share for Longs to gain more than 500 stores. CVS valued Longs' real estate at about $1 billion. But CtW Investment Group said the price was too low by as much as $260 million, and two major Longs shareholders said they wanted to know more about how the real estate was valued.

Changes to the rules of golf don't come often. But when they do, it's sure to create plenty of discussion. On Tuesday, as expected, the talk started as both the U.S. Golf Assn. and the Royal & Ancient Golf Club banned what is commonly referred to as belly putting, or anchoring a club against your body while making a stroke. The long club is not being outlawed, just that stroke. The ban takes effect in 2016. "The traditional stroke involves swinging the club with both the club and the gripping hands held away from the body, requiring the player to direct and control the movement of the entire club," USGA President Glen Nager said in a statement.

Longs Drug Stores Corp. repeated its refusal to enter buyout talks with Walgreen Co. or to share information with its larger rival. Longs said Walgreen "has not presented a clear road map to completion" of a deal, and was not willing to assume any risk that the deal could be rejected or delayed by antitrust regulators. Walgreen has offered to buy Longs for $75 a share, or $2.8 billion. But Longs has accepted CVS Caremark Corp.'s lower bid of $71.50 a share, or $2.7 billion. Longs' shares rose $1.58, or 2.1%, to $76.09, indicating that investors believe the company is worth even more than Walgreen has bid for it. Longs said the CVS bid -- which has already been approved by regulators -- was more likely to be completed.

MILWAUKEE - Matt Kemp and Andre Ethier have felt responsible for the Dodgers' stagnant offense. On Monday, they did something about it. Kemp and Ethier each hit long home runs in the Dodgers' 3-1 victory over the Milwaukee Brewers at Miller Park. BOX SCORE: Dodgers 3, Milwaukee 1 "If things get going, it's going to revolve around us," said Ethier, who began the game batting .255. Kemp, who is coming back from an off-season shoulder operation, had hit only one home run. That came April 24 against the New York Mets, when he barely cleared the right-field wall at Citi Field.

Longs Drug Stores Corp., which has agreed to be bought by CVS Caremark Corp., said fiscal second-quarter profit rose on gains at its pharmacy-benefits division. Net income for the period that ended July 31 jumped to $27.5 million, or 76 cents a share, from $26.6 million, or 71 cents, a year earlier, Longs said. Sales increased to $1.33 billion from $1.27 billion. Shares of Longs, which is based in Walnut Creek, Calif., gained 50 cents to $72.10.

Longs Drug Stores Corp. recommended in a regulatory filing that shareholders approve its $2.7-billion purchase by CVS Caremark Corp. even as activist investor Bill Ackman hired a firm to explore getting a higher price.

Longs Drug Stores said its first-quarter profit rose 81%, as revenue rose in both its retail drug stores and pharmacy benefit services divisions, and the company spent less shutting down underperforming stores. For the three months ended May 1, the Walnut Creek, Calif.-based drug store chain earned $23.5 million, or 65 cents a share, compared with $13 million, or 34 cents, a year earlier. Last year's results reflected more than $9 million spent on store closings and asset impairments.

Drugstore giant Walgreen Co. launched a surprise, $3-billion bid Friday night for Longs Drug Stores Corp., hoping a $75-per-share offer is enough to take the West Coast chain away from CVS Caremark Corp. Deerfield, Ill.-based Walgreen said in a statement that buying Longs would strengthen its presence in fast-growing markets and broaden its exposure in the "highly attractive" Hawaii market. "We believe the combination of Walgreens and Longs is a highly compelling transaction that is superior to the pending transaction with CVS Caremark, accelerates Walgreen's expansion into high-growth markets and delivers meaningful cost synergies," Walgreen Chief Executive Jeffrey Rein said in a statement.

'My son likes a pancake syrup that is carried locally by a Longs Drug store. My guess is that in the future I'll have to ask some store to special order it for me because CVS won't carry it. Bigger is better only for the owners.' -- Warren Cereghino, Pacific Palisades, on Wednesday's story about CVS Caremark Corp.'s $2.6-billion bid to buy Longs Drug Stores Corp.

Regarding Larry Stewart's Nov. 13 column, I haven't found one person who thinks Channel 7 didn't make the right decision in bringing in Bill Weir. He is a funny writer, shows offbeat highlights and has actually added a personality to "Monday Night Live." Apparently Mr. Stewart longs for such sports innovations as "high five" or "take a hike" or the always popular "look-alikes." Now which sportscaster is corny? KEVIN FITZPATRICK, Pasadena

In a flurry of letters late last year, Southern California Edison and the manufacturer that designed the steam generators at the now-dark San Onofre nuclear power plant appeared to be at odds over a long-term plan to repair the troubled facility. In the exchange, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries proposed a repair plan that it said could have the plant back online at full power in about a year and also suggested a far more aggressive and expensive repair job that would take more than five years to complete.

A two-year campaign that has drawn record spending will see either the first woman or the first Jew elected as Los Angeles mayor. But despite those milestones, candidates Wendy Greuel and Eric Garcetti sped around the city Sunday trying to avoid another distinction: drawing the lowest turnout for an open mayoral seat in modern history. The two candidates reached out to voters in churches, at a pizza parlor and in a bowling alley on a long day of campaigning - their last extended opportunity to connect directly to voters before Tuesday's election.

Officials at Bloomberg, the New York financial news and information service, scrambled to deal with an unfolding customer privacy scandal after admitting its journalists had snooped on business clients for years through its network of terminals ubiquitous on Wall Street. Seeking to calm Bloomberg's 315,000 subscribers worldwide, the editor in chief of Bloomberg News said Monday: "Our reporters should not have access to any data considered proprietary. " "Last month, we immediately changed our policy so that reporters now have no greater access to information than our customers," Matthew Winkler said in a post on Bloomberg's website.

WASHINGTON - The federal deficit is shrinking more quickly than expected, and the government's long-term debt has largely stabilized for the next decade, the Congressional Budget Office said Tuesday in a report that could strengthen the Obama administration's hand in the budget battles with congressional Republicans. The budget office continues to say the federal government faces a long-range budget problem - mostly caused by the costs of an aging population - but its new forecast pushes the crunch point for that problem off into a considerably more distant future: well after the 2020 presidential election.

Dependable and steady, Maribel Ramos was a hard-charging Army veteran just a couple of weeks away from graduating from college with a degree in criminal justice. Beyond all else, friends agree, she was not the kind of person who'd simply walk away. But Ramos, 36, has been missing for 11 days, seen last on surveillance footage turning in her rent check at her apartment complex in Orange on May 2. She was reported missing the next day, a Friday, after she failed to show up for a speaking commitment at a veterans group event and then never showed at the softball game she'd played weekly for almost six years.

KABUL, Afghanistan - Diplomats from the United States and Afghanistan met formally Saturday for just the second time since the two countries signed a Strategic Partnership Agreement a year ago as they sought to hammer out a pact defining Washington's 10-year commitment to the war-ravaged country. A senior diplomat from each nation spoke of progress afterward, but the talks come at a time of tension over Afghan President Hamid Karzai's criticism of U.S. actions in his country as the NATO combat mission winds down.

Dear Malik Sealy, I heard the other day you're excited to leave the Clippers for a "real" NBA team. Well, Malik, remember to thank the Clippers for resurrecting what was left of your career, and giving you the opportunity to become a team leader, something you rarely did. So now you're off to the Pistons, to sit on the bench and fall into obscurity and probably out of the league like several other ex-Clippers who thought they had it made, like...

Joel Heilbrunn (Opinion, March 22) seriously overstates the meaning and consequences of Rep. Joe Kennedy's decision to retire from the House of Representatives. The Kennedy dynasty, as it were, is alive and well with Patrick Kennedy and Kathleen Kennedy Townsend still in office; there are new political dynasties being created (e.g., the Jacksons--Jesse, not Michael); and old ones still giving (e.g., the Bush family to name but one). But if the era of governance by familial dynasties--by the Tylers, Lodges, Longs, Stevensons, as well as the families Adams, Roosevelt and Kennedy--was coming to a close, there would be no good reason for lament.

SOLANA BEACH, Calif. - As befits its name, issues of sand and surf loom large in this seaside community north of San Diego. For more than three decades, controversy has surrounded the proliferation of privately built sea walls meant to protect bluff-top homeowners along the city's approximately 1.7 miles of oceanfront. Property owners say the walls are the only way to keep the pounding waves from inexorably undercutting the tall bluffs and imperiling their pricey homes. Environmentalists view the sea walls - built on public and private property - as abominations that shrink the beach and place private interests above the right of the public to enjoy the coast.

The Aquarium of the Pacific's newest exhibit introduces visitors to an eerie world beyond the reach of sunshine: the bottom of the ocean, a strange seascape of crushing pressure, volcanic fissures and an abundance of cryptic creatures. The Wonders of the Deep gallery, which is scheduled to open to the public May 24, will be one of the few places where visitors can marvel over bioluminescent fish and opportunistic scavengers that inhabit the biological oases created by dead marine mammals that sink to the bottom.