Star Inc

The call for help came late one night in early April. Agents from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, who had confiscated hundreds of Jackson chameleons smuggled into the country in burlap sacks, were urgently looking for someone to take the hungry, slow-footed creatures off their hands. Help came when volunteers from Star Inc., a storefront wildlife sanctuary in Culver City, organized a rescue operation for 200 of the lizards who were clinging to life.

Hoping not to go bust again, intimate-apparel retailer Frederick's of Hollywood said Tuesday that it had agreed to be acquired by New York apparel maker Movie Star Inc. for about $34.4 million in stock. Executives of the two companies said the deal would help Frederick's tap into growing consumer demand for unconventional underwear. Movie Star plans to offer $20 million in new shares to its current shareholders.

For foster children, the prospect of ever completing college is remote: 24% of the general population will someday wear a university cap and gown, but fewer than 3% of all foster children ever earn a degree. But a privately funded pilot program at UCLA hopes to improve the odds. The First Star UCLA Bruin Guardian Scholars Summer Academy is a 5 1/2-week program that sponsors and fundraisers hope will one day develop into a year-round boarding school for college-bound foster children in Los Angeles County.

The call for help came late one night in early April. Agents from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, who had confiscated hundreds of Jackson chameleons smuggled into the country in burlap sacks, were urgently looking for someone to take the hungry, slow-footed creatures off their hands. Help came when volunteers from Star Inc., a storefront wildlife sanctuary in Culver City, organized a rescue operation for 200 of the lizards who were clinging to life.

Accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers has agreed to move its downtown Los Angeles offices in a 15-year deal with landlord Brookfield Office Properties Inc. As part of its agreement to rent six floors -- about 135,000 square feet -- the firm will have its PwC logo attached to the top of the 53-story building at 601 S. Figueroa St. About 1,450 employees will move to the new offices in May from 350 S. Grand Ave. The new quarters will have less...

As warehouses go, there are few like Skechers USA Inc.'s new 1.82-million-square-foot distribution center. This warehouse is so big that it takes half a minute to drive from one end to the other at 60 miles per hour. The setup is so advanced that human hands will hardly touch the cargo as it is unpacked, categorized, stacked and prepared for delivery. The building is so green that it uses prevailing winds for ventilation instead of air conditioning. For its new North American operations warehouse, the nation's No. 2 footwear company chose the Inland Empire's Moreno Valley.

Hoping not to go bust again, intimate-apparel retailer Frederick's of Hollywood said Tuesday that it had agreed to be acquired by New York apparel maker Movie Star Inc. for about $34.4 million in stock. Executives of the two companies said the deal would help Frederick's tap into growing consumer demand for unconventional underwear. Movie Star plans to offer $20 million in new shares to its current shareholders.

Graphix Zone Inc., a multimedia company known for its aggressive pursuit of top show business talent, announced Monday that it intends to merge with a San Francisco-based CD-ROM producer through an exchange of stock valued at $39 million. The merger will bring together Graphix Zone, a developer of music and other entertainment CD-ROMs, and StarPress, a leading developer of reference CD-ROMs. StarPress Inc.

It's not often a tobacco company gets released from government regulation without asking. But that's apparently what happened to Star Scientific Inc. after it asked the Food and Drug Administration to treat two versions of its smokeless, dissolvable tobacco lozenges as "modified risk" because they contain lower levels of carcinogens than other tobacco products. The FDA responded that the products aren't considered smokeless tobacco at all and don't come under the 2009 tobacco law, according to a Star Scientific announcement on Wednesday.

Tom Byron used to spend a couple of hours each day playing games on Facebook, attending to his virtual diners in "Restaurant City" and waging war against the Raven in "Empires & Allies. " "I'd check into these games every chance I got," said the 50-year-old marketing executive in San Rafael, Calif., who played four or more Facebook games at a time. "Now I spend most of my game time on my iPhone. It's just more convenient to be able to grab my phone. " It's not just players such as Byron who have wandered away from Facebook.

Graphix Zone Inc., a multimedia company known for its aggressive pursuit of top show business talent, announced Monday that it intends to merge with a San Francisco-based CD-ROM producer through an exchange of stock valued at $39 million. The merger will bring together Graphix Zone, a developer of music and other entertainment CD-ROMs, and StarPress, a leading developer of reference CD-ROMs. StarPress Inc.

PageStar Inc. said Tuesday that it has agreed to buy Communication Transmitting Service from Orange-based paging carrier Paging Dimensions Inc. for $200,000 in cash and 800,000 shares of common stock. PageStar markets wholesale and customized wireless telecommunications services to customers of other businesses through co-marketing promotions. Communication Transmitting's assets include its common carrier paging license and network equipment in the Southern California market.

In one of the largest real estate sales since the last boom, investors have purchased the Pasadena headquarters of engineering company Parsons Corp. for $320 million. The 22.7-acre campus on the northern edge of Old Pasadena was bought from Parsons by Morgan Stanley Real Estate Investing and Lincoln Property Co. The international engineering firm has agreed to remain in its signature 12-story headquarters tower as a tenant for 15 years. The sale was the largest office transaction in Los Angeles County since Aon Center in downtown Los Angeles sold for $327 million at the peak of the real estate cycle in 2007, according to real estate brokerage statistics.