Business highlights

On an unusually clear fall afternoon at Vandenberg Air Force Base near Lompoc, Calif., Matt Hartman lugged a tripod, camera and heavily-modified plastic Home Depot bucket to the edge of a hill overlooking a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on a launch pad.

Even before their latest rent increase, Barbie Thompson and her husband, Juan, could barely afford the Rancho Santa Margarita apartment where they raised two children.

If you wanted to work for Leonardo DiCaprio’s company Greenhour Corp. a few years ago, you would have had to sign a document crucial to the Oscar winner’s “personal safety, well being and business.”

By day, Justin Gillen works on a satellite-launching aircraft with a wingspan longer than a football field.

Filmmaker James Toback has long had a bad reputation with women.

Harvey Weinstein. Bill O’Reilly. Roger Ailes. Bill Cosby. The Catholic Church.

When Elon Musk talks about the future of factory automation at Tesla, he envisions new breeds of robots and smart machines compressed in dense factories with little room for human operators, guided by self-learning software.

Major League Baseball wants to turn its first superstar, New York Yankees slugger Babe Ruth, into TV’s next big anti-hero.

Negative headlines. Congressional inquiries. Corporate apologies.

For the Weinsteins, it had always been Bob and Harvey against the world.

Home and corporate Wi-Fi networks — and all the data, photos and messages transmitted across them — could be vulnerable to hackers, according to a computer security researcher in Belgium.

Inside the shops along Melrose Avenue, there’s plenty to appeal to fashionable young customers such as Melissa Wang.

Well before the Harvey Weinstein scandal broke, Rose McGowan was already, in her words, a “feminist whistleblowing badass.”

Christian Palmaz used hoes, shovels and rakes to keep flames from his family’s 19th-century vineyard estate home on the flanks of Mt.

A circus-themed haunted maze at the Queen Mary’s Halloween festivities offers the usual spooky fare: creepy clowns and crazed carnies jumping out from dark corners.

Before fads such as the fidget spinner and Furby, when the world was just getting acquainted with the Backstreet Boys and clamoring to watch “Titanic” in movie theaters, there was the Tamagotchi.

As the public face and pugnacious spirit behind his company, Harvey Weinstein made himself synonymous with a kind of prestige cinema that was designed to attract discerning audiences and scoop up Oscars by the armful.

A University of Chicago professor whose research integrating psychology into economics has had broad influence on public policy has been awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in economics, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said Monday.

The latest addition to the Nordstrom roster looks nothing like a department store and more like an exclusive boutique crossed with a hipster coffee and juice bar.

As Amazon established its dominance in online retail, logistics and cloud computing, the company’s headquarters in Seattle grew appropriately massive.

SpaceX Chief Executive Elon Musk envisions a time in the near future when long-distance travelers on Earth can hop on a rocket to go across the globe in less than an hour.

Bill and Liz Barlak have carried earthquake insurance on their three-bedroom house in Burbank since the couple bought the property 30 years ago.

Marc Westcott stands a beefy 6 feet 3, and he figures that might just be the best marketing tool he’s got.

In the San Fernando Valley, there are plans to level a nearly vacant mall and replace it with some 1,400 homes, boutique retail shops and a concert venue.

When Jose F.

Since it began airing in 2010, “The Walking Dead” has resurrected far more than just the dearly departed.

Chili’s Grill & Bar is going on a diet to fatten its sales — just one of the strategies casual-dining chains are using to reverse a slowdown in growth.

With a $20 ice cream maker and a hunger for a more healthful indulgence, Los Angeles lawyer Justin Woolverton concocted a dessert that quickly developed a cult-like following.

Alaska Airlines employees have long received bonuses for helping reach on-time arrival goals and improve passenger satisfaction scores.

At the 69th Primetime Emmy Awards on Sunday, Hollywood glitterati probably will bestow TV’s highest honors on dark, edgy programming such as the dystopian dramas “Westworld” on HBO and Hulu’s “The Handmaid’s Tale.”

When Amazon rolled out its public search for a second headquarters last week, the tech giant detailed attributes it deems key in selecting a winner: a large metropolitan area, an international airport, recreational opportunities and a top-notch university system.

Your passcode can be cracked, but your face is yours and yours alone.

After a long period of plodding economic growth, significant earnings gains over the last two years have finally enabled the average American household to surpass the peak income level it reached in 1999.

Under the banner of clean energy growth, lawmakers are working to change oversight of the state’s power grid to include other Western states — a move critics say will surrender California’s control over its own electricity system.

Perry Smith tried to race Hurricane Harvey. He lost.

Newly married and in their mid-20s, San Clemente residents Josh and Kayleigh Hyink were ready for the next step in their “master plan.”

Before dawn six days a week, Norma Ulloa left the two-bedroom apartment she shared with four family members and boarded a bus that took her to a stifling factory on the outskirts of downtown Los Angeles.

As Hollywood wraps up the all-important summer box-office season this Labor Day weekend, a sobering reality has gripped the industry.

As a prominent Bear Stearns Cos. executive, Donald Tang used his deep connections in China to broker deals and grow the company’s business in Asia.

In its search for a new chief executive, Uber’s board of directors could have chosen a leader with national name recognition and decades of experience at the helm of some of the world’s best-known companies — someone like Hewlett Packard Enterprise CEO Meg Whitman or departing General Electric chief Jeff Immelt.

Carla Zuniga is punching a heavy bag as if she were preparing for a title fight, although she’s really a 35-year-old hair stylist doing her regular workout.

Like so many independent musicians, singer-songwriter Ashley Dudukovich is used to crashing on a stranger’s couch.

Jessica Mata wasn’t even a year old when “The Golden Girls” ended its broadcast run on NBC in 1992.

When it was first published in 1998, “The Professor and the Madman” by Simon Winchester was a book that seemed destined to become a prestige movie: it features a 19th century British setting, colorful characters and a story with cultural pedigree recounting the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary — the definitive resource for the English language.

For years, Richard Spencer’s white nationalist think tank, the National Policy Institute, was able to accept donations online through its PayPal account and through credit card payments processed by San Francisco start-up Stripe.

A skyscraper that would be the tallest residential building in California has been proposed for downtown Los Angeles as the neighborhood’s housing boom rolls on.

At the height of their love affair, Bridget Henry visited online clothing store ModCloth’s app every day.

Conservative protesters scuttled plans to gather outside Google’s offices this weekend, putting on hold an effort to take America’s culture wars directly to Silicon Valley.

Netflix’s aggressive strike to lure one of television’s most prolific producers from ABC Studios sent shock waves throughout the industry on Monday and ratcheted up television’s arms race for talent.

Chanje’s vision sounds a lot like Tesla’s: electric vehicles recharged via clean rooftop solar power.

In a country known for its reverence of free speech, in a state strict with labor codes, in an industry steeped in libertarian and progressive ideals, if an employee has something to say, he should just be able to say it, right?

Like many teens, John Dumoulin passed the summer before his senior year of high school in front of a computer screen.

NBC News recently began production on “Stay Tuned,” a twice-daily newscast produced exclusively for users of the social media platform Snapchat.

The next generation of presidential jetliners will reportedly be two modified Boeing 747 jumbo jets that were originally set for service with a now-defunct Russian airline.

Joining the Standard & Poor’s 500 — an index of the nation’s biggest and most popular stocks — has long been an important mark of validation for businesses.

Apple Inc. has removed dozens of virtual private network services from its App Store in China, dealing a blow to Internet users there hoping to evade censorship to reach a host of banned sites, such as Facebook, YouTube and Twitter.

The $84-billion back-to-school shopping season is back just in time as far as beleaguered mall merchants are concerned.

Local election officials are looking for some good hackers.

Hotels have been sold out for years. Eclipse viewing glasses are back-ordered on Amazon.

At an after-party for the red carpet premiere of the seventh season of “Game of Thrones” at Walt Disney Concert Hall, partygoers watched as Westeros came to life on the building before them.

From California to the Midwest, billionaire investor Warren Buffett is steadily building an energy powerhouse.

Driscoll’s is so secretive about its robotic strawberry picker it won’t let photographers within telephoto range of it.

When publicly traded companies are caught behaving badly, markets can hold their feet to the fire.

An Airbnb host who canceled a woman’s reservation because of her race has agreed to pay $5,000 in damages and take a course in Asian American studies, a state regulatory agency announced Thursday.

By selling Thin Mints and Tagalongs in kindergarten, Elizabeth Lewelling earned Girl Scout badges for customer service and managing money.

Slip a fresh $20 bill under the bulletproof teller window of Donnie Anderson’s Medex marijuana dispensary on Century Boulevard — perhaps for a gram of cannabis or some THC-infused toffees — and the legal tender is transformed into something else: drug money.

Buy a smartphone, use it for a couple of years, then ditch it for something new and improved.

Not long ago, Elon Musk was making fun of short-sellers — investors who bet a company’s stock will decline.

Chinese billionaire Wang Jianlin arrived in Los Angeles in October to a reception befitting a true Hollywood mogul.

Not long after the pizzeria Zume opened for business last year, its kitchen staff noticed a problem with some of its pizzas: they had holes in them.

When people think of Volvo, they tend to think of safety.

As he prepared to launch his fishing boat from the dock at Castaic Lake, longtime angler Dan Curtis recalled conditions two years earlier when the state’s worst drought shriveled the reservoir to nearly a third of its total capacity.

Mark Suster, among Los Angeles’ most well-known venture capitalists, says he never fathomed that fellow investors would cross a line and sexually harass entrepreneurs.

More than half a million Angelenos stand to get a raise this weekend, making the city the latest testing ground in the drive to boost incomes of bottom-rung workers.

Travis Kalanick never ran away from a fight.

A giant in the technology industry had a bold idea: reinvent the way people shop, rendering grocery stores a quaint reminder of the past.

Amazon revolutionized the sale of books, electronics and other products.

The Senate could reduce regulations for small and midsized banks, but Wall Street may be out of luck.

Over the last decade, entrepreneurial space companies in Southern California have set their sights on such goals as launching small satellites, carrying space tourists and colonizing Mars.

Longtime Eagle Rock resident Allenby Arakielian remembers when the little mall on Colorado Boulevard was the neighborhood hot spot for shopping and dining.

With the financial system imploding in 2008, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke implored Congress to authorize $700 billion to bail out the banks or risk a total meltdown.

Alamo Drafthouse Cinema, a quirky beer-selling theater chain, has formally agreed to open an outpost in downtown Los Angeles — news that comes with a sigh of relief for a local real estate developer laboring to overhaul an aging mall.

California energy officials are, for the first time, rethinking plans to build expensive natural gas power plants in the face of an electricity glut and growing use of cleaner and cheaper energy alternatives.

The “urban farm homes” nestled along a cul-de-sac off an old farm road in Nipomo, Calif., had lofted floor plans with more than 2,500 square feet of living space — “perfect … for multi-generational living,” the advertisements boasted.

Mari Villaluna never wanted to be a stay-at-home mom.

An Orange County jury awarded $256.5 million to a former Southern California car dealer who alleged that Nissan’s financing arm forced him out of business as car sales plunged during the 2008-09 recession, the dealer’s lawyers announced Tuesday.

Like most large corporations, major Hollywood studios are fond of outsourcing.

In the latest sign that driverless cars and other revolutionary new technologies are shaking automakers to their roots, the chief executive of Ford Motor Co. just got tossed.

Californians, blessed with the natural resources to ski and surf in the same day, may be able do both deep into summer for the first time in years.

Umami Burger edged its way into Southern California’s hyper-competitive burger market with an ultra-savory take on the American classic inspired by Japanese flavors such as seaweed and shiitake mushrooms.

It’s big. It’s nasty.

By the end of December, a lethal bacterium had swept through UC Irvine Medical Center’s intensive care unit, sickening seven infants.

The last time transportation expert Seth Kaplan was bumped from a flight, he walked away with $800 and a good excuse for missing the first session of a San Diego business conference.

Cybersecurity researchers said a malicious program that disabled computers at Britain’s National Health Service, Russia’s Interior Ministry and companies and homes across dozens of countries Friday originated with the National Security Agency.

Wells Fargo & Co. may have opened as many as 3.5 million unauthorized checking, savings and credit card accounts over the last 15 years — far more than originally reported by the bank and federal regulators, according to a new estimate from attorneys representing bank customers.

The entertainment industry marches to the tune of box-office receipts and TV ratings, but the chorus of union pride can still be heard loud and clear at the highest echelons of corporate Hollywood.

Sinclair Broadcast Group Inc., the Baltimore-based company that has kept a low profile, will become a nationwide player with the planned acquisition of Tribune Media and its 42 TV stations, giving it a powerful platform to potentially launch a right-leaning programming service to rival Fox News.

In 2011 as Facebook inched ever closer to 1 billion active monthly users, it faced a vexing crisis: uproar about a facial recognition algorithm that tagged people in photos without their consent.

In a surprise shake-up Tuesday, Molina Healthcare Inc. — a major player in Obamacare health insurance markets — ousted its two top executives, both sons of the firm’s founder.

If airlines don’t work to fix customer service issues on their own, the government will need to step in, U.S. lawmakers told several airline executives Tuesday.

Wages are growing and surveys show consumer confidence is high.

It was a pulse-pounding climax that a Hollywood screenwriter might have conceived.

Don’t expect Buzz Lightyear, Elsa or Toothless the dragon to go on strike next week.

Less than four years after its billionaire chairman, David H.

David Liu made his first fortune more than two decades ago, exporting American scrap metal to his rapidly industrializing home country of China.

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau sued Ocwen Financial Corp., one of the nation’s largest mortgage servicers, on Thursday, alleging the company engaged in “significant and systemic misconduct” that caused borrowers to lose their homes.

Heather Milne Barger and her husband knew it was about time to replace their 12-year-old Honda Civic hybrid this year — not only because it was showing its age, but because they knew there were bargains to be had.

How do you stay sharp and fit despite fatigue and age?

The nation’s top bank regulator knew about problems with Wells Fargo & Co.’s sales practices as far back as 2010, but did little to put an end to the bank’s abuses, an internal agency review has concluded.

Eddie Ybarra and Francisco Martinez, both in their 40s, work side by side building the walls of two of the newest condo buildings in downtown Los Angeles.

On the 70th floor of the U.S.

The state’s largest grower of peaches and other fruit bargained in bad faith with the United Farm Workers of America and wrongly tried to exclude as many as 1,500 employees from a collective bargaining agreement, a judge has ruled.

One of the country’s biggest apartment developers is working on plans for a grand residential complex in downtown Los Angeles that includes what appears to be an ordinary garage.

Huntington Beach residents Chris Birtwistle and Allison Naitmazi were about to get married and decided it was time to buy a home.

Duran Parsi headed to Pepperdine’s law school three years ago with a mission: By the end, he’d either practice law or commit to his fledgling e-sports business.

Over the course of eight months, a lethal bacteria infected 10 already critically ill infants in UC Irvine Medical Center’s neonatal intensive care unit – an outbreak that the public is only finding out about now.

Weekday afternoons, millions of Americans — many stuck in rush-hour traffic — learn the business news of the day from Kai Ryssdal, a former Navy pilot and host of the public radio show “Marketplace.”

The number of on-location movie shoots in the Los Angeles area plummeted in the first quarter of the year despite generous California tax incentives designed to lure more big-budget film productions from out of state.

The abrupt closure of Westech College in Southern California marks the latest in a string of failed for-profit trade schools – a disappearing act sparking debate over whether there’s a growing training gap for those seeking skilled work.

Elon Musk is gloating.

Wells Fargo & Co. has been ordered to rehire a former Los Angeles-area bank manager who federal officials say was fired because he reported potential fraud to his superiors and to a bank ethics hotline — a claim the bank denies even as it has acknowledged problems with its hotline.

SpaceX on Thursday launched and landed a first-stage rocket booster that had previously flown — a milestone that could signal a new era of low-cost space transportation.

If you’re into cars, you’ve certainly heard of Bob Lutz, no matter what your age.

The union founded on the principle of protecting farmworkers from wage abuses will have to shell out more than $800,000 in back pay to its own organizers, a Monterey County judge ruled this week.

It is the most famous street in one of Los Angeles’ most coveted neighborhoods.

Confronted with dwindling home entertainment profits, major Hollywood studios are pressuring theater chains to let people watch new movies much earlier than usual.

The operators of the struggling Queen Mary tourist attraction in Long Beach say the best way to make it financially viable again is to beef it up with more dining, shopping, concerts and adventures such as zip-lining.

If Los Angeles International Airport already feels like a confusing mess to navigate, you may want to stay clear in mid-May.

U.S. officials, citing intelligence information about terrorist threats, have banned electronic devices larger than a smartphone in the passenger cabins of international flights to the U.S. from eight Middle Eastern and African countries.

After a barrage of lawsuits directed at the online shopping industry, it appeared Amazon Inc. was quietly phasing out list pricing, a controversial practice accused of deceptively inflating how much consumers save through the e-commerce giant.

American Apparel bit the dust. So did Nasty Gal.

Hollywood didn’t believe in the power of teenage superheroes in spandex suits.

Arnulfo Solorio’s desperate mission to recruit farmworkers for the Napa Valley took him far from the pastoral vineyards to a raggedy parking lot in Stockton, in the heart of the Central Valley.

A year ago Mendocino Farms didn’t offer delivery at any of its 15 Southern California locations.

The Russian spies wanted secrets; the hacker was motivated by money.

Adult entertainment mogul Larry Flynt is no stranger to controversy, and less than eight months after taking over a struggling Gardena casino, his new enterprise has already sparked its share of strife.

Famed investor Warren Buffett called the airline business a “death trap” for investors back in 2013.

Your credit scores might go up this summer — and not because you’ve gotten better at paying bills on time.

Iranians love Telegram.

The wide-bodied Boeing 747 was once known as the queen of the skies, an instantly recognizable behemoth revered for its luxury and spaciousness.

It was just another day at the office for Peanut, a cocky little mutt who swaggers around Playa Vista ad agency 72andSunny, socializing with employees and other dogs who pass their days there.

Tesla Inc.

Despite concerns from the public about safety, the private group that oversees physician training voted to allow young doctors to work shifts as long as 28 hours.

Big deals are coming on new vehicles in spring and summer as automakers try to shave bloated inventories.

For the past seven years or so, Joseph Armendariz of West Covina has watched the price of his annual Disneyland pass creep higher, prompting him to wonder when the cost finally would be out of reach.

SpaceX, the upstart company, and NASA, the government agency, both have plans to venture to Mars and orbit the moon.

Along many Los Angeles thoroughfares, large apartment complexes are replacing parking lots, strip malls and warehouses, as builders provide new homes in a city grappling with a persistent housing shortage.

Uber founder Travis Kalanick has run his hyper-competitive business under the assumption the ride-hailing service that reigns supreme will be the one with the cheapest rates and best service.

BCBG Max Azria Group, the once-glamorous retailer that has dressed the likes of Drew Barrymore and Kate Winslet, filed for bankruptcy protection Wednesday.

Wells Fargo & Co.

It’s a dream job for those who normally toil in obscurity poring over rows of dry financial statements and complex tax returns.

When the first astronauts traveled to the moon, they were experienced military fliers riding NASA rockets and capsules, backed by the U.S. government.

It’s often said the stock market hates uncertainty, so one might assume Wall Street would be very skittish about President Trump.

Nobody wants to be Uber right now.