Avis buying Zipcar in deal worth nearly $500M

Avis is buying Zipcar for $491.2 million, expanding its offerings from traditional car rentals to car sharing services.

Car sharing has become a popular alternative to traditional rentals in metropolitan areas and on college campuses, allowing members to quickly procure a vehicle for quick trips. Zipcar, which was founded in 2000, has more than 760,000 members. It went public in 2011.

“By combining with Zipcar, we will significantly increase our growth potential, both in the United States and internationally, and will position our company to better serve a greater variety of consumer and commercial transportation needs,” said Avis Chairman and CEO Ronald Nelson.

Bringing the Avis fleet into play will also help Zipcar meet high demand on weekends, Avis said, when most people make a run to the grocery store or run other errands.

Avis Budget Group Inc. will pay $12.25 per share, which is a 49 percent premium to Zipcar's Friday closing price. The companies put the total value of the deal at approximately $500 million.

Zipcar Inc. has about 40.1 million outstanding shares, according to FactSet. It will become an Avis subsidiary and have headquarters in Boston Shares jumped more than 47 percent in premarket trading Monday.

The boards of both companies unanimously approved the buyout.

Avis anticipates $50 million to $70 million in annual savings. The Parsippany, N.J. company also expects the acquisition will add to its adjusted earnings per share in the second year after it is complete.

Avis said that it expects certain members of Zipcar management, including Chairman and CEO Scott Griffith and President and Chief Operating Officer Mark Norman, to help run its day-to-day operations.

If Zipcar shareholders approve the deal, it's expected to close in the spring.

Avis also maintained its 2012 adjusted earnings forecast Monday of about $2.35 to $2.45 per share on revenue of approximately $7.3 billion.

Analysts predict earnings of $2.42 per share on revenue of $7.3 billion.

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Ruling over bumper-car injury supports amusement park

SAN FRANCISCO — The California Supreme Court, protecting providers of risky recreational activities from lawsuits, decided Monday that bumper car riders may not sue amusement parks over injuries stemming from the inherent nature of the attraction.

The 6-1 decision may be cited to curb liability for a wide variety of activities — such as jet skiing, ice skating and even participating in a fitness class, lawyers in the case said.

"This is a victory for anyone who likes fun and risk activities," said Jeffrey M. Lenkov, an attorney for Great America, which won the case.

But Mark D. Rosenberg, who represented a woman injured in a bumper car at the Bay Area amusement park, said the decision was bad for consumers.

"Patrons are less safe today than they were yesterday," Rosenberg said.

The ruling came in a lawsuit by Smriti Nalwa, who fractured her wrist in 2005 while riding in a bumper car with her 9-year-old son and being involved in a head-on collision. Rosenberg said Great America had told ride operators not to allow head-on collisions, but failed to ask patrons to avoid them.

The court said Nalwa's injury was caused by a collision with another bumper car, a normal part of the ride. To reduce all risk of injury, the ride would have to be scrapped or completely reconfigured, the court said.

"A small degree of risk inevitably accompanies the thrill of speeding through curves and loops, defying gravity or, in bumper cars, engaging in the mock violence of low-speed collisions," Justice Kathryn Mickle Werdegar wrote for the majority. "Those who voluntarily join in these activities also voluntarily take on their minor inherent risks."

Monday's decision extended a legal doctrine that has limited liability for risky sports, such as football, to now include recreational activities.

"Where the doctrine applies to a recreational activity," Werdegar wrote, "operators, instructors and participants …owe other participants only the duty not to act so as to increase the risk of injury over that inherent in the activity."

Amusement parks will continue to be required to use the utmost care on thrill rides such as roller coasters, where riders surrender control to the operator. But on attractions where riders have some control, the parks can be held liable only if their conduct unreasonably raised the dangers.

"Low-speed collisions between the padded, independently operated cars are inherent in — are the whole point of — a bumper car ride," Werdegar wrote.

Parks that fail to provide routine safety measures such as seat belts, adequate bumpers and speed controls might be held liable for an injury, but operators should not be expected to restrict where a bumper car is bumped, the court said.

The justices noted that the state inspected the Great America rides annually, and the maintenance and safety staff checked on the bumper cars the day Nalwa broke her wrist. The ride was functioning normally.

Reports showed that bumper car riders at the park suffered 55 injuries — including bruises, cuts, scrapes and strains — in 2004 and 2005, but Nalwa's injury was the only fracture. Nalwa said her wrist snapped when she tried to brace herself by putting her hand on the dashboard.

Rosenberg said the injury stemmed from the head-on collision. He said the company had configured bumper rides in other parks to avoid such collisions and made the Santa Clara ride uni-directional after the lawsuit was filed.

Justice Joyce L. Kennard dissented, complaining that the decision would saddle trial judges "with the unenviable task of determining the risks of harm that are inherent in a particular recreational activity."

"Whether the plaintiff knowingly assumed the risk of injury no longer matters," Kennard said.

maura.dolan@latimes.com

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Olympics, elections and horsing around in odd 2012

LONDON (Reuters) – Presidential preening, golden Olympic gaffes, a royal windfall for a skydiving British queen on her diamond jubilee and the endless end of days marked the odd stories in 2012 which pranced across the news in Gangnam Style.

The year opened with a tale that flocks of magpies and bears had been spotted in mourning for North Korea‘s “Dear Leader”, Kim Jong-il who died in December 2011 and was succeeded by his 20-something son Kim Jong-un.

Winter weather was so cold in Brussels that the Manneken-Pis, a bronze statue of a young boy urinating had to stop peeing because of sub-zero temperatures.

There was slightly warming news about Mondays in Germany, where crematoriums are struggling to adapt to an increasingly obese population and a boom in extra-large coffins.

“We burn particularly large coffins on Monday mornings when the ovens are cold,” one crematorium said.

In March Polish media reported that kite surfer Jan Lisewski fought off repeated shark attacks and overcame thirst and exhaustion in a two-day battle of survival on the Red Sea with just his trusty knife as protection.

“I was stabbing them in the eyes, the nose and gills.”

In other animal news, dairy cows across the world mourned the loss of “Jocko”, the world’s third most-potent breeding bull and Yvonne the German cow who evaded helicopter searches and dodged hunters landed a film deal: “Cow on the Run”.

A Nepali man who was bitten by a cobra snake bit it back and killed the reptile after it attacked him in his rice paddy.

“I could have killed it with a stick but bit it with my teeth instead because I was angry,” Mohamed Salmo Miya said.

A scathing resignation letter of a Goldman Sachs executive published in the New York Times inspired a sheaf of online spoofs, including Star Wars villain Darth Vader.

“The Empire today has become too much about shortcuts and not enough about remote strangulation. It just doesn’t feel right to me anymore,” Vader wrote in a published letter.

Austerity in Europe saw a once-thriving Greek sex industry become the latest victim of the country’s debt crisis with Greeks spending less on erotic toys, pornography and lingerie.

But lust appeared to be in the rudest of health elsewhere.

Turkish emergency workers rescued an inflatable sex doll floating in the Black Sea and a German disc jockey vowed to press charges against a woman who locked him in her apartment and ravaged him for hours until he rang the police.

“She was sex mad and there was no way out of the flat,” Dieter S. told police.

@ROYALFETUS

Britain’s Queen Elizabeth celebrated her 60th year on the throne with Diamond Jubilee celebrations that saw a 1,000-ship rain-sodden flotilla sail down the River Thames, a massive party in front of Buckingham Palace, street parties across the country and a spoof incarnation of her majesty on Twitter.

“OK, fire up the Bentley. Let’s rock,” tweeted “Elizabeth Windsor“, the comic online alter ego of the British monarch in a typical tweet from the spoof Twitter account @Queen_UK, a virtual monarch with a razor-sharp wit and a penchant for gin.

And Twitter positively exploded with spoof royal accounts later in the year when Elizabeth’s grandson William and his wife Kate announced she was pregnant with a future monarch.

“I may not have bones yet, but I’m already more important than everyone reading this,” was the tweet from @RoyalFetus.

Leadership and change was a theme which ran through a year in which socialist Francois Hollande defeated incumbent Nicolas Sarkozy and Mimi the clown to become French president, Vladimir Putin was elected Russian president again and U.S. President Barack Obama won re-election over Republican Mitt Romney.

Amid the tight election race, Obama met a gaffe-prone Romney for an exchange at a charity dinner ahead of the November poll, where America’s first black president poked fun at Hollywood actor Clint Eastwood for lecturing an empty chair as if it were Obama during the Republican convention.

“Please take your seats,” Obama told the crowd, “or else Clint Eastwood will yell at them.”

“THE MODFATHER”

Sporting news was dominated by the London Olympics during the summer, where the opening ceremony included a vignette of Queen Elizabeth being escorted by James Bond before apparently skydiving into the Olympic stadium for her arrival.

“Good evening Mr. Bond,” was her only line.

Olympic embarrassments were few, but they began early with organizers forced into apologies for displaying the South Korean flag on a video screen for North Korea‘s women’s soccer team.

British cycling sensation Bradley “the Modfather” Wiggins became the first Briton to win the Tour de France, sparking a craze among fans for cutout cardboard sideburns modeled on his own and shouting “here Wiggo” as he raced to Olympic gold.

London’s eccentric and loquacious Mayor Boris Johnson fell rather awkwardly silent when he got stuck dangling from a zip wire, waving two Union flags in drizzling rain.

Olympic chiefs urged youthful athletes to drink “sensibly”.

But there was anything but restraint for Jamaican sprinter Usain Bolt, who declared an early night at one point only to be photographed later with three members of the Swedish women’s handball team. Early one Sunday morning Bolt also dazzled dancers at a London night club with a turn in the DJ booth.

“I am a legend,” Bolt shouted out to a packed dance floor from the decks with his arms raised in the air.

Towards the close of the year, tens of thousands of mystics, hippies and tourists celebrated in the shadow of ancient Maya pyramids in southeastern Mexico as the Earth survived a day billed by doomsday theorists as the end of the world.

“It’s pure Hollywood,” said Luis Mis Rodriguez, 45, a Maya selling obsidian figurines and souvenirs.

Finally, a chubby, rapping singer with slicked-back hair and a tacky suit became the latest musical sensation to burst upon the world from South Korea, via a YouTube music video that has been seen more than a billion times.

Decked out in a bow tie and suit jackets varying from pink to baby blue, as well as a towel for one sequence set in a sauna, Psy busts funky moves based on horse-riding in venues ranging from playgrounds to subways.

The video by Psy has been emulated by everyone from Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei to students at Britain’s elite Eton College, gurning politicians, spotty teens and embarrassing dads worldwide.

“My goal in this music video was to look uncool until the end. I achieved it,” Psy told Reuters.

(Reporting by Paul Casciato; editing by Mike Collett-White)

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DiDonato a luminous Mary Stuart at Met

NEW YORK (AP) — The Metropolitan Opera may have pretty much turned opening night over to the glamorous Anna Netrebko, but New Year's Eve belongs to a very different diva — Joyce DiDonato.

Last year the Kansas-born mezzo-soprano headlined a starry lineup in the baroque pastiche "The Enchanted Island." On Monday night she brought a gala audience to its feet with a luminous performance in the title role of Donizetti's "Maria Stuarda."

Never before performed at the Met, this second opera in the composer's so-called "Three Queens" trilogy portrays the lethal conflict between Mary, deposed queen of Scotland, and Queen Elizabeth I of England.

From the moment she makes her entrance in the second scene, singing of her joy in strolling outside her prison in Fotheringay Castle, DiDonato rivets attention. She imbues every syllable with a concentrated eloquence that makes her compact voice seem larger than it is. She displays seemingly effortless command of coloratura embellishments throughout a wide vocal range. And she is equally impressive in fiery outbursts and in hushed, long-held phrases — like the ones she spun out as she sang through the chorus in the final scene.

The opera's dramatic heart is a confrontation between the two queens that never took place in history but that figures in the Friedrich Schiller play on which the libretto is based. Mary at first abases herself in hope of winning a pardon; then, as Elizabeth hurls insults, her pride reasserts itself and she seals her doom by denouncing her rival as "figlia impura di Bolena" ("impure daughter of Anne Boleyn") and "vil bastarda" ("vile bastard").

DiDonato was impressive in this scene when she sang the role for the first time last spring in Houston, but her performance Monday night was even better — more confident and more filled with vocal and dramatic shadings. There was a wonderful touch when, after she had spent her fury, she allowed herself a beatific smile, as if to convey: "There! I said it and I'm glad!"

Of course, it takes two to stage a confrontation, and DiDonato's partner at the Met is Elza van den Heever, a South African soprano making her debut. She has a voice that's impressive in many respects, with a large and vibrant upper register. But she tended to fade out in the lower part of her range, where much of Elizabeth's music lies.

More damagingly, she was victimized by a quirk of David McVicar's production that has Elizabeth lurching awkwardly about the stage for much of the evening, as if thrown off balance by John Macfarlane's elaborate period costumes. Perhaps this bizarre gait is intended to contrast with Mary's immaculate poise, but it mainly proves distracting.

The opening scene in Elizabeth's palace is garishly staged, with what look like red rafters hanging down from the ceiling and gratuitous acrobats in devil costumes, but once past this, matters improve. For the scene outside Fotheringay, Macfarlane fills the stage with spindly trees barren of leaves and provides a painted backdrop that evokes a cloudy landscape. The final tableau is also striking: Mary, shorn of her long hair and wearing a simple red dress, climbs a staircase with her back to the audience to meet her executioner and the chopping block.

Though the two queens dominate the opera, there are some other characters, and they are all in extremely good hands. Having the elegant tenor Matthew Polenzani take on the thankless role of the ineffectual Leicester is luxury casting indeed. Bass Matthew Rose is warmly sympathetic as Mary's confessor, Talbot; baritone Joshua Hopkins sings with robust tone as her nemesis, Cecil; and mezzo Maria Zifchak lends her customary strong support as Mary's attendant, Anna.

Maurizio Benini conducts a lithe and lively performance of the score, even if he can't quite disguise the fact that the second half of the opera is decidedly anti-climactic.

There are seven more performances, including a matinee on Saturday, Jan. 19, that will be broadcast live in HD to movie theaters around the world.

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Hispanic Pregnancies Fall in U.S. as Women Choose Smaller Families

ORLANDO, Fla. — Hispanic women in the United States, who have generally had the highest fertility rates in the country, are choosing to have fewer children. Both immigrant and native-born Latinas had steeper birthrate declines from 2007 to 2010 than other groups, including non-Hispanic whites, blacks and Asians, a drop some demographers and sociologists attribute to changes in the views of many Hispanic women about motherhood.

As a result, in 2011, the American birthrate hit a record low, with 63 births per 1,000 women ages 15 to 44, led by the decline in births to immigrant women. The national birthrate is now about half what it was during the baby boom years, when it peaked in 1957 at 122.7 births per 1,000 women of childbearing age.

The decline in birthrates was steepest among Mexican-American women and women who immigrated from Mexico, at 25.7 percent. This has reversed a trend in which immigrant mothers accounted for a rising share of births in the United States, according to a recent report by the Pew Research Center. In 2010, birthrates among all Hispanics reached their lowest level in 20 years, the center found.

The sudden drop-off, which coincided with the onset of the recession, suggests that attitudes have changed since the days when older generations of Latinos prized large families and more closely followed Roman Catholic teachings, which forbid artificial contraception.

Interviews with young Latinas, as well as reproductive health experts, show that the reasons for deciding to have fewer children are many, involving greater access to information about contraceptives and women’s health, as well as higher education.

When Marucci Guzman decided to marry Tom Beard here seven years ago, the idea of having a large family — a Guzman tradition back in Puerto Rico — was out of the question.

“We thought one, maybe two,” said Ms. Guzman Beard, who gave birth to a daughter, Attalai, four years ago.

Asked whether Attalai might ever get her wish for a little brother or sister, Ms. Guzman Beard, 29, a vice president at a public service organization, said: “I want to go to law school. I’m married. I work. When do I have time?”

The decisions were not made in a vacuum but amid a sputtering economy, which, interviewees said, weighed heavily on their minds.

Latinos suffered larger percentage declines in household wealth than white, black or Asian households from 2005 to 2009, and, according to the Pew report, their rates of poverty and unemployment also grew more sharply after the recession began.

Prolonged recessions do produce dips in the birthrate, but a drop as large as Latinos have experienced is atypical, said William H. Frey, a sociologist and demographer at the Brookings Institution. “It is surprising,” Mr. Frey said. “When you hear about a decrease in the birthrate, you don’t expect Latinos to be at the forefront of the trend.”

D’Vera Cohn, a senior writer at the Pew Research Center and an author of the report, said that in past recessions, when overall fertility dipped, “it bounced back over time when the economy got better.”

“If history repeats itself, that will happen again,” she said.

But to Mr. Frey, the decrease has signaled much about the aspirations of young Latinos to become full and permanent members of the upwardly mobile middle class, despite the challenges posed by the struggling economy.

Jersey Garcia, a 37-year-old public health worker in Miami, is in the first generation of her family to live permanently outside of the Dominican Republic, where her maternal and paternal grandmothers had a total of 27 children.

“I have two right now,” Ms. Garcia said. “It’s just a good number that I can handle.”

“Before, I probably would have been pressured to have more,” she added. “I think living in the United States, I don’t have family members close by to help me, and it takes a village to raise a child. So the feeling is, keep what you have right now.”

But that has not been easy. Even with health insurance, Ms. Garcia’s preferred method of long-term birth control, an IUD, has been unaffordable. Birth control pills, too, with a $50 co-payment a month, were too costly for her budget. “I couldn’t afford it,” she said. “So what I’ve been doing is condoms.”

According to research by the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health, the overwhelming majority of Latinas have used contraception at some point in their lives, but they face economic barriers to consistent use. As a consequence, Latinas still experience unintended pregnancy at a rate higher than non-Hispanic whites, according to the institute.

And while the share of births to teenage mothers has dropped over the past two decades for all women, the highest share of births to teenage mothers is among native-born Hispanics.

“There are still a lot of barriers to information and access to contraception that exist,” said Jessica Gonzáles-Rojas, 36, the executive director of the institute, who has one son. “We still need to do a lot of work.”

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Optimistic stock investors reaped rewards worldwide in 2012

Wall Street closed out the year with a surge in the final trading session, betting on a last-minute resolution of the so-called fiscal cliff.

The market may have jumped the gun, but investors' hopefulness fit the pattern of 2012: It was a year of solid stock price gains worldwide, as various predictions of Armageddon fell flat.

That has reinforced many market pros' conventional cautious optimism as the new year begins. Bears can still find plenty to be dour about, but the bulls have called it right in three of the last four years since the 2008 financial-system crash.

On Monday, the Dow Jones industrial average jumped 166 points, or 1.3%, to end the year at 13,104. Stocks rallied late in the session as rumors spread that Congress would approve a deal to limit the tax increases and spending cuts otherwise set to kick in Tuesday.

But after the closing bell, a deal to avert the fiscal cliff appeared uncertain — raising fears of a blistering market sell-off Wednesday.

Still, investors who had expected a sustained slump in stocks in 2012 found themselves left behind as most world markets posted double-digit percentage gains, underpinned by a resilient U.S. economy and by central banks' efforts to keep interest rates at rock bottom.

Wall Street optimism about 2013 remains rooted in expectations that the U.S. economy will continue to expand, albeit slowly, and with it corporate earnings.

"Absent a complete failure from Washington, growth should remain positive," said Russ Koesterich, global chief investment strategist at money management giant BlackRock Inc. in New York.

That bet paid off in 2012: The Standard & Poor's 500 index, a popular benchmark for many Americans' retirement accounts, rose 1.7% to 1,426 on Monday and was up 13.4% for the year.

That was the biggest advance since the index rose 23.4% in 2009. Stocks' gains last year also beat returns on most kinds of bonds and on low-yielding short-term cash accounts.

The S&P index now has rebounded 111% from its decade low in March 2009, restoring most of the wealth lost by investors in the Great Recession — if they held on.

In Europe, the Stoxx index of 600 big-name shares rose 14.4% for the year, also the biggest rally since 2009. Japan's main market index soared 22.9%. Most so-called emerging markets also were up sharply, including those in India, Mexico and Turkey.

The 30-stock Dow index was a relative laggard, rising 7.3% for the year. It was hurt by weakness in major energy stocks as crude oil prices fell and by a collapse of shares of troubled tech giant Hewlett-Packard Co.

Markets worldwide had rallied in the first few months of 2012, then dived in spring as doubts multiplied about the global economy.

Europe, gripped for a third year by its government-debt crisis, was the epicenter of those fears: Many investors expected the Eurozone to finally break up under its debt strains, consigning Greece, Spain, Portugal and perhaps other nations to economic death spirals.

But the doomsday predictions were thwarted by the European Central Bank. In late July, ECB President Mario Draghi shocked markets by declaring that the central bank would do whatever was necessary to preserve the Eurozone. "And believe me, it will be enough," Draghi said.

The ECB followed that pledge with a commitment to buy unlimited sums of Eurozone governments' bonds, if necessary, to pull down countries' borrowing costs — similar to the U.S. Federal Reserve's ongoing program of buying Treasury debt.

The ECB's move sparked a sharp rally in the euro that buoyed confidence in European stocks as well, despite deep recessions in the Continent's hardest-hit economies.

The U.S. economy, meanwhile, confounded expectations that it would slide back into recession. The economy grew at a 3.1% annualized rate in the third quarter after slowing to a 1.3% rate in the second quarter. Growth was supported in part by the housing market's continuing rebound.

"Housing got us into this mess. Now it's one of the sectors to get us out," said Sam Stovall, chief investment strategist at S&P Capital IQ in New York.

Housing-related stocks were some of the year's biggest winners, with builder PulteGroup Inc. up 188%, appliance maker Whirlpool Corp. rising 114% and paint producer Sherwin-Williams Co. up 72%.

Worldwide, investors' confidence also benefited as worries dissipated about a war between Israel and Iran. And late in the year, hopes rose that China's slowing economy would avoid a so-called hard landing — which could have put it in a recession — and instead would help drive global growth in the new year. The Shanghai stock market rocketed nearly 15% in December alone.

Emerging markets such as China could be a big lure for global investors in 2013, some experts said. Many governments in those markets have more leeway than developed economies to bolster growth with fiscal stimulus measures and with lower interest rates, said Jack Ablin, chief investment officer at BMO Private Bank in Chicago.

By contrast, Ablin worries that U.S. economic growth and corporate earnings growth will be much slower than many investors are anticipating in the new year.

Whatever the ultimate workout of the fiscal cliff, Ablin said, "We are going to see taxes go up incrementally and spending go down incrementally," weighing on the economy.

Market pessimists believe that stock markets since 2009 have been driven largely by cheap credit supplied by central banks, particularly the Federal Reserve. Critics say the Fed's latest decision to ramp up purchases of Treasury bonds, aimed at pumping more money into the economy, smacks of desperation.

Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke, however, has insisted that the Fed still has plenty of tools left to help the U.S. recovery gain speed. Wall Street, by and large, believes Bernanke.

"If they can print money," Stovall said, "are the central banks ever really out of bullets?"

business@latimes.com

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This Rose Parade marks a major step for a young float designer

Charles Meier pulled his first all nighter when he was 11 years old. His mother found him asleep in a flower box.

It was the night before final judging for the 1990 Rose Parade. Meier, a volunteer, had been running around for hours helping float decorators fill vials of water, scrape seeds and glue last-minute details. Exhausted, he finally crawled into a box that still smelled of orchids.

His parents snapped a picture, not knowing that their son would go on to win South Pasadena's float design contest just two years later, making him the youngest designer in Rose Parade history.

Nor did they imagine he would one day break through a tight-knit institution and start his own float company. When the 124th Rose Parade rolls out Tuesday, Meier's company will be the event's first new professional builder in almost two decades.

"I basically traded in stuffed animals for Rose Parade floats," said Meier, 34. "Other kids were at home reading comic books, and I'm here organizing my float pictures into photo albums. It was what captured my imagination."

::

Meier still remembers the moment he fell in love.

He was 9 years old, sitting in grandstand seats his parents had won in a raffle. It was sensory overload: Booming marching bands. Floats adorned with tractors and dancers on a giant piano. And color. So much color.

He started drawing floats that day. He studied flowers, memorized parade brochures and, accompanied by his parents, joined float decorating committees. He couldn't stop talking about his ideas.

"I don't want to hear you describe another float," his mother, Carol, told him. "Just draw one and send it in and see if they will build it."

Every year, he submitted designs to his hometown float committee. On his 13th birthday, South Pasadena selected his drawing. Instead of letting the experts take over, he insisted on working with the graphic designer on his vision of two aliens playing tug-of-war with a spaceship.

"It was really kind of funny. He was so young. I mean, he was 13, just a kid," said Dex Regatz, 82, the graphic designer who took Meier under his wing.

"Before they knew it, I had insisted I do the complete floral plan," Meier said. "And they actually took most of those ideas and ran with them."

He quickly became a live encyclopedia of flowers and colors.

He once exercised his mental floral database by designing a Valentine-themed float with 94 types of roses, an unmatched feat in Rose Parade annals. He juggled hot pink Hot Ladys, bicolored Panamas and King Kongs with hints of green.

He experiences his life through the prism of floats. Walking across moss inspired the furry texture for an animal. Coconut flakes, so white he thought they sparkled, looked perfect for celestial stars and eyeballs.

::

To pay his bills, Meier worked as a senior caretaker and freelance floral designer.

But on the side, he continued to volunteer for South Pasadena and Sierra Madre. He won fans with his enthusiasm, many said, and he treated each float as an intricate work of art.

"I'm always so impressed with his floats. You can stand anywhere, from any angle, and it looks good," said Gwen Robertson, a longtime Sierra Madre volunteer.

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Kanye West, Kim Kardashian expecting 1st child

ATLANTIC CITY, N.J. (AP) — A kid for Kimye: Kanye West and Kim Kardashian are expecting their first child.

The rapper announced at a concert Sunday night that his girlfriend is pregnant. Kardashian was in the crowd at Revel Resort's Ovation Hall with her mother, Kris Jenner, and West's mentor and best friend, Jay-Z. West told the crowd of more than 5,000 in song form: "Now you having my baby."

The crowd roared. And so did people on the Internet.

The news instantly went viral on Twitter and Facebook, with thousands posting and commenting on the expecting couple.

Most of the Kardashian clan also tweeted about the news, including Kim's sisters. Kourtney Kardashian wrote: "Another angel to welcome to our family. Overwhelmed with excitement!"

West, 35, also told concertgoers to congratulate his "baby mom" and that this was the "most amazing thing."

Representatives for West and Kardashian, 32, didn't immediately respond to emails about the pregnancy.

The rapper and reality TV star went public in March.

Kardashian married NBA player Kris Humphries in August 2011 and their divorce is not finalized.

West's Sunday-night show was his third consecutive performance at Revel. He took the stage for nearly two hours, performing hits like "Good Life," ''Jesus Walks" and "Clique" in an all-white ensemble with two bandmates.

___

AP Writer Bianca Roach contributed to this report.

___

Follow Mesfin Fekadu on Twitter at http://twitter.com/MusicMesfin . Follow Bianca Roach at http://twitter.com/B__Roach

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Chinese Firm Is Cleared to Buy American DNA Sequencing Company

Ramin Rahimian for The New York Times

DNA sequencing machines at Complete Genomics in California. The firm dismissed concerns about its acquisition.

The federal government has given national security clearance to the controversial purchase of an American DNA sequencing company by a Chinese firm.

The Chinese firm, BGI-Shenzhen, said in a statement this weekend that its acquisition of Complete Genomics, based in Mountain View, Calif., had been cleared by the federal Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, which reviews the national security implications of foreign takeovers of American companies. The deal still requires antitrust clearance by the Federal Trade Commission.

Some scientists, politicians and industry executives had said the takeover represented a threat to American competitiveness in DNA sequencing, a technology that is becoming crucial for the development of drugs, diagnostics and improved crops.

The fact that the $117.6 million deal was controversial at all reflects a change in the genomics community.

A decade ago, the Human Genome Project, in which scientists from many nations helped unravel the genetic blueprint of mankind, was celebrated for its spirit of international cooperation. One of the participants in the project was BGI, which was then known as the Beijing Genomics Institute.

But with DNA sequencing now becoming a big business and linchpin of the biotechnology industry, international rivalries and nationalism are starting to move front and center in any acquisition.

Much of the alarm about the deal has been raised by Illumina, a San Diego company that is the market leader in sequencing machines. It has potentially the most to lose from the deal because BGI might buy fewer Illumina products and even become a competitor. Weeks after the BGI deal was announced, Illumina made its own belated bid for Complete Genomics, offering 15 cents a share more than BGI’s bid of $3.15. But Complete Genomics rebuffed Illumina, saying such a merger would never clear antitrust review.

Illumina also hired a Washington lobbyist, the Glover Park Group, to stir up opposition to the deal in Congress. Representative Frank R. Wolf, Republican of Virginia, was the only member of Congress known to have publicly expressed concern.

BGI and Complete Genomics point out that Illumina has long sold its sequencing machines — including a record-setting order of 128 high-end machines — to BGI without raising any security concerns. Sequencing machines have not been subject to export controls like aerospace equipment, lasers, sensors and other gear that can have clear military uses.

“Illumina has never previously considered its business with BGI as ‘sensitive’ in the least,” Ye Yin, the chief operating officer of BGI, said in a November letter to Complete Genomics that was made public in a regulatory filing. In the letter, Illumina was accused of “obvious hypocrisy.”

BGI and Complete said that Illumina was trying to derail the agreement and acquire Complete Genomics itself in order to “eliminate its closest competitor, Complete.”

BGI is already one of the most prolific DNA sequencers in the world, but it buys the sequencing machines it uses from others, mainly Illumina.

Illumina, joined by some American scientists, said it worried that if BGI gained access to Complete’s sequencing technology, the Chinese company might use low prices to undercut the American sequencing companies that now dominate the industry.

Some also said that with Complete Genomics providing an American base, BGI would have access to more DNA samples from Americans, helping it compile a huge database of genetic information that could be used to develop drugs and diagnostic tests. Some also worried about protection of the privacy of genetic information.

“What’s to stop them from mining genomic data of American samples to some unknown nefarious end?” Elaine R. Mardis, co-director of the genome sequencing center at Washington University in St. Louis, said in an e-mail.

Dr. Mardis could not specify what kind of nefarious end she imagined. But opponents of the deal cited a November article in The Atlantic saying that in the future, pathogens could be genetically engineered to attack particular individuals, including the president, based on their DNA sequences.

BGI and Complete Genomics dismissed such concerns as preposterous.

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His stunts drive Web traffic

Race car driver Ken Block speeds down a narrow band of asphalt in his souped-up Ford Fiesta, careening through the "Back to the Future" set on Universal Studios' back lot.

The speedometer flies toward 80. Block's eyes are fixed on the road as he accelerates toward an invitation-only crowd of gear heads in town for the Los Angeles Auto Show.

When he whips around the corner toward Courthouse Square in Marty McFly's hometown, Block sees a sea of undistinguishable faces. He plants his foot on the accelerator, then pulls back on a massive hand brake on his right side.

Instantly, the rear wheels skid and Block muscles the car into a tight circle. The car spins once, then twice, in a succession of doughnuts. The pungent smell of burning rubber fills the air as clouds of blue smoke billow off the tires.

After the third spin, Block wrestles the race car free of the tight turn. He steers toward the wide-eyed crowd that inches forward for a closer look.

Block zooms past and circles the set another time. He ends the routine with a sweeping drift that brings the car within four feet of the crowd before shuddering to a stop.

The growling engine quiets as the crowd applauds. Before stepping out to meet his fans, Block jerks off his helmet and replaces it with a black baseball cap.

"How are you guys doing?" Block asks, as if nothing had happened.

There's small talk, a few photos, autographs and the obligatory promotion for the Fiesta idling behind him. Ford was the sponsor of the event. For Block, this is more than just a performance; it's his job.

An athletic 45-year-old adrenaline junkie, Block has parlayed his doughnut-carving skills into a lucrative business. His YouTube videos have become Internet sensations, drawing advertisers such as Ford and energy drink company Monster.

His talents have turned him into a motor star for a new generation, unlike NASCAR drivers who appeal to a different, if not older, crowd. Millions of viewers have posted Block's short films on their Facebook and Twitter accounts. According to Mashable, a social media news website, two of Block's videos are among the four most shared advertisements in the world.

In one video, Block can be seen speeding down an empty Oakland Bay Bridge, ripping a set of tire-smoking doughnuts between two trolley cars, and seemingly breaking the laws of physics by twisting the car in mid-flight on a 90-degree turn after jumping a hill.

Within 24 hours, the video was viewed more than 5 million times.

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Block's routine is called "gymkhana," and it has more in common with board sports than car races. Instead of competing for a good lap time, Block is trying to perform a set of uniquely choreographed maneuvers on an open course much in the same way that he tried to pull off tricks on a skateboard when he was younger.

Growing up in Long Beach in the 1970s, Block often tagged along with his brothers as they got involved in the emerging skateboard scene. When he was 10, his older brother bought him a skinny wooden board with fat wheels.

Almost immediately, Block began practicing at skate parks in Long Beach and Lakewood. He was hooked and began diversifying his skills. He raced amateur motocross until he was 17. He snowboarded the jumps, half pipes and rails at Mammoth Mountain.

As he got older, Block realized he didn't have the talent to become a professional. While attending Palomar College, he learned graphics design and screen printing and designed T-shirts that he was able to sell to local skate shops.

After talking his parents into a $10,000 loan, he started a small business in 1991 with friend Damon Way. The company, Eight Ball, specialized in simple, mostly monochromatic apparel and used an advertising campaign that pictured friends, including superstar skateboarders Rob Dyrdek and Damon's brother Danny Way, wearing the clothing line.

The clothes had an urban feeling yet were functional for skaters. The shoes used non-slip material on the soles and laces that couldn't come undone. The shoe line ultimately became known as DC Shoes.

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