Damages

A stream of highly charged particles from the sun is headed straight toward Earth, threatening to plunge cities around the world into darkness and bring the global economy screeching to a halt. This isn't the premise of the latest doomsday thriller. Massive solar storms have happened before - and another one is likely to occur soon, according to Mike Hapgood, a space weather scientist at the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory near Oxford, England. Much of the planet's electronic equipment, as well as orbiting satellites, have been built to withstand these periodic geomagnetic storms.

Apparently, Alabama lawmakers felt they hadn't gone far enough last year when they enacted the most draconian immigration law in the nation, which, among other things, required schools to determine the immigration status of their students. Now, the Legislature has revised the law to ensure that it does further damage to the state's reputation and stirs even more fear among Latinos. Under the revised law, known as HB 658, all undocumented immigrants who appear in court for any violation of state law will find their names published on the official state website, along with the names of the judges assigned to their cases and the dispositions.

First of three parts Tiffany Lee wanted a car. She was weary of the two-hour bus ride to her job at a UCLA Health System clinic. She hated having to ask friends to drive her 7-year-old son to his asthma treatments. But as a single mother with three children, bad credit and a $27,000-a-year salary, she couldn't find a bank or dealership willing to give her a loan. Then a friend steered her to Repossess Auto Sales in Hawthorne. Another buyer might have balked at the deal she was offered.

In the year since President Obama approved a successful raid against Osama bin Laden, public opinion has been shifting. While many Westerners still celebrate the targeted killing - along with the killing several months later of Anwar Awlaki - some are expressing doubts. European politicians, human rights lawyers and members of some East Coast think tanks have posited that these terrorists were actually more dangerous dead than alive. Death, the reasoning goes, martyred the leaders, thus immortalizing their ideas and appeal.

A former student at exclusive Chaminade High School who was kicked out for alleged drug use won a $20,000 judgment Friday against the school for wrongful expulsion. Cara-Mia Kobzeff, 20, denied any involvement with drugs and accused the school of not following its own procedures. She alleged the school never called her mother, as required by Chaminade policy, and ignored a drug test she passed the day after being accused of using narcotics.

Nursing home operator Skilled Healthcare Group Inc. was ordered Tuesday to pay more than $670 million in damages for understaffing at its 22 assisted-living facilities in California. The verdict against the Foothill Ranch company came in Humboldt County Superior Court in a class-action lawsuit brought by patients and family members. The jury found that Skilled Healthcare violated the California health and safety code that requires nursing homes to maintain 3.2 nursing hours per patient per day, said Tim Needham, one of the plaintiff group's lawyers.

A Los Angeles Superior Court judge on Friday dismissed a multimillion-dollar libel and slander suit filed more than nine years ago against two ministers of the Pasadena-based Worldwide Church of God and the estate of the church's late founder, Herbert W. Armstrong. Superior Court Judge Richard A. Lavine granted a summary motion on behalf of Raymond McNair and Roderick Meredith, who had been named in an action filed in July, 1979, by McNair's former wife, Leona.

A prolific inventor who has spent more than a decade proving toys aren't all fun and games has been awarded millions of dollars by a federal jury, which said toy giant Mattel Inc. infringed on his patent with its popular "Hot Wheels." "I am floating on cloud nine," 66-year-old Jerome Lemelson said Friday, a day after the judgment. "My hope is that as a result of it, toy inventors will get a fair shake from the industry." The jury awarded Lemelson $24.

'Damages' Where: FX When: 10 Monday Rating: TV-MA-LV (may be unsuitable for children under the age of 17 with advisories for coarse language and violence)

NFL players asked Thursday that the league be slapped with $707 million in damages for cutting TV deals that would have paid owners $4 billion if the current lockout caused this season's games to be canceled. U.S. District Judge David Doty , who in March ruled that owners violated their agreement with the players by negotiating those provisions into their TV contracts, conducted a two-hour hearing on the case Thursday but isn't expected to rule on damages until next week at the earliest.

The NFL Players Assn. has accused the NFL of putting a secret salary cap in place in the uncapped 2010 season — a violation of antitrust laws — and is seeking monetary damages that could climb into the billions. The union filed suit against the league Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Minnesota, accusing the NFL of collusion for conspiring to set a $123-million cap for 2010, when owners would have required the consent of players to do so. The NFL flatly denied the claim.

The magnitude 6.0 earthquake that hit northern Italy early Sunday has claimed the lives of six people and has caused widespread damage. Among the most badly hit sites were a number of cultural heritage structures, according to reports. Italy's cultural ministry said that "after an initial survey, damage to cultural patrimony appears significant. " One of the hardest hit areas was San Felice sul Panaro, a town near Bologna, which saw serious damage to a 14th century castle and to churches that housed valuable paintings and frescoes.

The parents of two USC graduate students slain near the campus last month have filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the university, saying the school misled them when it claimed that it ranks among the safest in the nation. Ming Qu and Ying Wu, both 23-year-old electronic engineering students from China, were fatally shot April 11 while sitting in a parked BMW in the 2700 block of Raymond Avenue. No arrests have been made, but Los Angeles police say they believe the killings were the result of a robbery gone wrong.

SACRAMENTO - Sensitive personal information for more than 700,000 people who provide or receive home care for the elderly and disabled may have been compromised when payroll data went missing in the mail, state officials revealed Friday night. The breach occurred whenHewlett-Packard, which handles the payroll data for workers in California's In-Home Supportive Services program, was shipping information including Social Security numbers to an office in Riverside last month. The package arrived damaged and incomplete.

WASHINGTON - The $2-billion trading loss at JPMorgan Chase & Co. rekindled fears about the stunning risks still being taken on Wall Street, reviving demands for tougher financial rules and calls for the nation's biggest banks to be broken up. U.S. and British regulators said they were investigating the huge loss in a trading portfolio at JPMorgan. The bank saw its stock tumble 9% on Friday, the day after it disclosed that traders in New York and London had made misguided investments in complex derivatives in an effort to hedge against losses.

Despite strong opposition from environmentalists, the state Assembly on Thursday approved controversial legislation that allows a solar energy developer to bypass local agencies in seeking to build a large-scale power plant in a valley that is home to desert tortoises, golden eagles and bighorn sheep. The nation's leading environmental groups see K Road Power's proposed 663-megawatt Calico Solar plant as one of the most ecologically damaging renewable energy projects in the California desert.

Frontier Airlines canceled 65 flights Friday and Saturday after some of its planes were damaged by golf-ball-sized hail that swept through Denver on Wednesday, the airline said in a statement . Frontier is waiving change fees for travelers booked on flights through Tuesday. The airline said the damaged planes were on the ground at its hub in Denver International Airport (DEN) when the storm hit. It said that crews were continuing to inspect aircraft and repair any damaged ones, The airline canceled more than 60 flights on Thursday.

The Obama administration warned BP in a strongly worded letter Saturday that the federal government expects the oil giant -- and not taxpayers -- to pay all damages associated with the ongoing Gulf of Mexico oil leak, even if they exceed the $75-million liability cap under federal law. Two Cabinet secretaries, Ken Salazar of Interior and Janet Napolitano of Homeland Security, wrote to BP chief executive Tony Hayward to reiterate the administration's position...

It wasn't the best news, but it wasn't the worst news either. The Clippers announced Thursday afternoon that Blake Griffin and Chris Paul will be game-time decisions for Friday's Game 6 of the NBA first-round playoff series against the Memphis Grizzlies because of their injuries. Griffin had an MRI exam on his sprained left knee Thursday that the Clippers said revealed no structural damage. The All-Star power forward was injured during the third quarter of Game 5 Wednesday night in Memphis.

WASHINGTON - In a pointed response to images of Marines urinating on corpses and soldiers posing with body parts, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta appealed to American troops to refrain from misconduct that has complicated the war effort in Afghanistan. Panetta, speaking Friday to an Army brigade at Ft. Benning, Ga., was blunt in his assessment of the breakdown of discipline within the ranks, saying these incidents "show a lack of judgment, a lack of professionalism and a lack of leadership.