Buildings

Ford is headed to Mother Russia. The American automaker announced Thursday that the first Explorer SUV built from the ground up outside of the U.S. rolled off the assembly line in Elabuga, Russia. Previously, the Explorer was built in large chunks at Ford's plant in Chicago, and then shipped to Russia for final assembly. Ford said the Chicago facility will continue to build Explorers for the U.S. market and for export to 64 countries. The Russian-built Explorers are built by Ford Sollers, a joint venture between Ford and Sollers.

Will the Academy's big bubble pop before it has a chance to be built? Italian architect Renzo Piano, Los Angeles architect Zoltan Pali and officials from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences unveiled preliminary designs Thursday for a $300-million film museum at Wilshire Boulevard and Fairfax Avenue. The architectural centerpiece of the 290,000-square-foot complex, just west of the campus of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, would be a giant glass-enclosed dome, which Piano refers to as the "sphere" and the "soap bubble.

Pakistan is beset by a torrent of maladies. Its government is bankrupt. Its economy is mired in stagflation as the population booms. Terrorists strike all corners of the country. Civil conflict in its largest city, Karachi, has evolved from feuds between ethnic political parties into a Taliban war against them all, exacerbated by ever-powerful criminal mafias. The cancer of extremism is spreading deeper and the death toll mounts. But there is opportunity for change. Pakistan's political leaders have taken major steps toward institutionalizing civilian, democratic rule.

A day after winning the franchise's first Pacific Division title, the Clippers let it all soak in by resting Monday. The Clippers have a 51-26 record, the best in franchise history. They swept the four-game series from the Lakers, the first time that has been done since the 1974-75 season when the franchise was known as the Buffalo Braves. All in all, the Clippers, who resume practice Tuesday, feel upbeat about their play and where they are headed. "This is how it felt in the beginning of the season," Jamal Crawford said.

CYPRESS, Texas - A male student who fantasized about stabbing people was charged Tuesday in connection with an attack that injured 14 people, two critically, at a Houston-area community college, authorities said. Dylan Quick, 20, faces three counts of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. He is suspected of acting alone in what one official described as a "building-to-building" attack at the Lone Star College-CyFair campus about 30 miles northwest of Houston. "According to the statement the suspect voluntarily gave investigators, he has had fantasies of stabbing people to death since he was in elementary school," the Harris County Sheriff's Office said in a statement late Tuesday.

For the brief moment that she stood atop the eight-story building at UCLA on Friday evening in the soft light of the setting sun, she looked as though she belonged there. This was, after all, the Eli and Edythe Broad Art Center, and the woman might have been, say, an Antony Gormley artwork. She surely seemed a sculpture as she began to tip over. But once at a 90-degree angle to the ground, she walked, casually and with slow ease, down the side of the building as if this were a perfectly normal thing to do. For spectators watching from below, things became confused.

When Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa announced a $229-million upgrade to Terminal 5 at Los Angeles International Airport last week, he said the money would double the size of the lobby and pay for new carpeting, new baggage carousels and new facilities for international passengers. The terminal is dedicated mostly to Delta Air Lines, which is putting $12 million into the modernization project. What the mayor didn't mention were the new fixes planned for Delta Sky Club, the exclusive lounge were VIPs can order a free drink, munch on snacks and watch cable television while waiting for their flights.

The gaudy yellow-and-red signs have been painted over and the huge album cover posters that once covered the windows are long gone. There's little left at the Sunset Boulevard street corner that speaks to the crowds that gathered here for free concerts by Elton John and Duran Duran or the faithful who sifted through the racks of vinyl or eight-track tapes inside. Still, the West Hollywood Historic Preservation Commission would like to set the record straight and acknowledge the significance of the Sunset Strip's legendary Tower Records building.

Vin Scully is luring us back to the Dodgers with wonderful old stories and the promise of a new season, and the Angels will introduce new acquisition Josh Hamilton to their home fans Tuesday, but winter sports haven't relaxed their hold on us just yet. Sunday is rivalry day in Southern California, a gift from the schedule makers of the NBA and the NHL. It's enough to keep us indoors when summer sports are trying to draw us out into the sunshine....

Mexican art and Mexican American art often have treated each other more like strangers or distant cousins than like the fraternal twins they really are. In the United States, apart from in California and the Southwest, many museums and art professionals until relatively recently tended to isolate or ignore Mexico's contributions to global movements such as Modernism or Conceptual and performance art. Similarly, in Mexico, U.S. Chicano art of...