Continents

There was a time when all there was of the Pacific Southwest were a few volcanic peaks sticking up out of the ocean just a few miles from this modern desert city. The Earth was already half its current age of about 4.6 billion years when those island mountains first appeared, but they were the beginning of the Pacific Southwest.

Sandy Valdivieso and her husband intended to fly from Los Angeles to Dakar, Senegal. They ended up almost 7,000 miles off-course in Dhaka, Bangladesh. How something this bizarre could happen illustrates how a single mix-up on an airline's part can cascade into a travel nightmare of epic proportions. It also highlights how customer service can be found lacking, particularly in light of the fact that Valdivieso spent months trying to secure some sort of compensation from the carrier, Turkish Airlines, but received nothing but runaround.

The largest sustained volcanic eruption in Earth's history--so powerful it split an ancient super-continent and created the Atlantic Ocean--spewed millions of square miles of searing lava that extinguished much of life on ancient Earth, according to research made public Thursday. From hundreds of basalt outcrops that rim the Atlantic coasts, scientists have pieced together evidence of the titanic eruption 200 million years ago.

Three years after it approved a version of the opioid analgesic OxyContin designed to discourage the painkiller's abuse, the Food and Drug Administration has effectively barred the original form of the drug from ever reaching the legal U.S. market. The agency says it will approve no new applications from generic drug manufacturers to produce cheaper versions of OxyContin in its original form. OxyContin has been one of the nation's most abused prescription painkillers, in part because as those addicted to the potent drug built up tolerance for it, they could easily ground it up or dissolve it in water, making the potent extended-release drug easy to snort or inject for a faster, more intense high.

Geology 1: Quakes lift; crusts rift; oceans shift; continents drift. HARRY LEVIN Woodland Hills

Scientists piecing together the geological history of the Earth have added another important piece to the mosaic: More than half a billion years ago, North America's Pacific Southwest bordered the east coast of Antarctica. This represents the first real evidence of the origins of the North American continent, according to scientists who presented their findings Tuesday to the Geological Society of America and the Seismological Society of America.

"Indigo" book review: A review of the book "Indigo: In Search of the Color That Seduced the World" in the June 10 Calendar section included this sentence: "As history, it wanders, sometimes too hastily, through millenniums and contents to trace the reach and power of indigo dye and fabric. " The word "contents" should have been "continents. "

Hilburn's article is among the most inane that I have ever read in Calendar. Does he truly believe that a popularity poll conducted among the same folks who really care how many buckles Michael Jackson wears will influence millions of English speakers on six continents to change their vocabularies? Or is this just a ruse so that Hilburn could get Bruce Springsteen's name in print on a slow news day? HOWARD WILSON Fullerton

The message came through loud and clear in your article "Classic Southland Homes, Just 9,000 Miles From Downtown L.A." (Jan. 7): American architects, starved for work in their own country, are more than willing to rape large swaths of Asia. Just when we finally document what a total failure the placeless, sprawling, auto-oriented communities of Orange County are, we start exporting the philosophies underlying their design to other continents. Have we no shame? TOM HOUG South Pasadena

Feeling bad that you missed U2 at the Rose Bowl concert Sunday? The band has extended its 360 Tour and will be back in Southern California on June 6, performing at Angel Stadium in Anaheim. Ticket information has not yet been released. You can still see the Pasadena performance, of course. The live broadcast Sunday night generated 10 million streams across seven continents and, since being archived on YouTube on Monday, has tallied more than 1 million streams, a spokesman for the site reports.

Despite efforts by law enforcement and public health officials to curb prescription drug abuse, drug-related deaths in the United States have continued to rise, the latest data show. Figures from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reveal that drug fatalities increased 3% in 2010, the most recent year for which complete data are available. Preliminary data for 2011 indicate the trend has continued. The figures reflect all drug deaths, but the increase was propelled largely by prescription painkillers such as OxyContin and Vicodin, according to just-released analyses by CDC researchers.

A top DEA official is calling on federal regulators to impose tougher rules on the way pharmaceutical companies market narcotic painkillers to physicians, noting that such drugs are involved in more than twice as many deaths as heroin and cocaine combined. Joseph T. Rannazzisi, who heads the Drug Enforcement Administration's Office of Diversion Control, urged the Food and Drug Administration in a letter to adopt stricter limits on OxyContin, Vicodin and similar medications to "safeguard the American public.

People tend to think of heart disease as a scourge of modern life, brought on by vices such as greasy fast food, smoking and the tendency to be a couch potato. But 21st century CT scans of 137 antique mummies gathered from three continents show that hardened arteries have probably plagued mankind for thousands of years - even in places like the Aleutian Islands, where hunter-gatherers subsisted on a heart-healthy marine diet and occasional snacks of berries. Fully a third of the mummies examined - who lived in the American Southwest and Alaska as well as Egypt and Peru as much as 5,000 years ago - appeared to have the same vascular blockages that cause heart attacks and strokes in Americans today.

There is a store I visit from time to time for convenience's sake, or to indulge in nostalgia, where I can find all of Latin America on display. Under the roof of this one vast supermarket I savor the presence of the continent where I was born; I go back, so to speak, to my own plural origins. On one shelf: Nobleza Gaucha, the yerba maté my Argentine parents used to sip every morning in their New York exile - my mother with sugar, my father in its more bitter form. Even to contemplate the bag that this herb comes in allows me to recall how anxiously mi mamá y mi papá awaited shipments from the authoritarian Buenos Aires they had escaped in the '40s.

During the sultry days and nights of his Venezuelan youth, Gustavo Dudamel constantly heard the masters' music blasting from radios or pouring out of Caracas nightclubs and concert halls: the jazz-inflected salsa of Eddie Palmieri, the merengue-bachata fusions of Juan Luis Guerra and, of course, the Afro-Cuban and Latin pop philosophizing of Rubén Blades. Although the burgeoning classical conductor was consumed with absorbing Beethoven, Tchaikovsky and Mahler, he also was internalizing the tropical rhythms that were his hemispheric birthright.

When a woolly mammoth cops an attitude and smirks, "It's not like it's the end of the world," there is certain to be trouble ahead. Or in the case of the 3-D animated"Ice Age: Continental Drift,"a whole lotta trouble. A whole lotta shakin' too, especially after Scrat, that acorn-obsessed saber-toothed squirrel (voiced by Chris Wedge), manages to crack the ice, which creates the continents and triggers the breakup of the polar icecaps. So much for global warming. The film was co-directed by Steve Martino ("Robots")

Joseph Rosenstock, a child prodigy forced by a World War I injury to abandon the piano in favor of the podium, is dead at age 90. Rosenstock, whose musical career spanned seven decades and won him accolades from critics on three continents, died Thursday at his home in New York City. He will probably be best remembered as the conductor of the German wing at the Metropolitan Opera and general manager and director of the New York City Opera. But he also was revered in Germany and Japan.

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa - Africa's rapid economic growth has helped change the stereotype of a hopeless continent of starving people waiting to be rescued, but it has also created an intense need for strong managers, according to a report released Tuesday. Poor management is hurting the effectiveness of global multinational corporations, major local companies, governments and charitable foundations in many African countries, says the report by the African Management Initiative, a nonprofit organization focused on training managers to help business development on the continent.

British tycoon Sir Richard Branson has made a career out of bucking conventions — opening a recording studio in a country estate, building an affordable, premium airline service with soft violet mood lighting and seat-back entertainment screens, and even launching a space tourism company. Now Branson's Virgin Group is breaking the mold in the movie business. Virgin's America, Atlantic and Australian airlines have teamed up with the company's new film and TV company to shoot a half-hour movie filmed and edited entirely aboard regularly scheduled commercial flights — believed to be a first.