Deserts

Paolo Soleri, an Italian-born architect who created a visionary prototype for a new kind of ecologically sensitive city in the remote Arizona desert four decades ago, only to watch the suburban sprawl he detested begin to creep near it in recent years, has died. He was 93. Soleri died of natural causes Tuesday at his home in Paradise Valley, Ariz., according to an official with the architect's foundation . PHOTOS: Paolo Soleri | 1919-2013 A onetime apprentice at Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesin West compound on the edge of Scottsdale, Ariz., Soleri founded his own desert settlement, called Arcosanti, in 1970 at a site roughly 70 miles north of downtown Phoenix.

BrightSource Energy has suspended its application to build a $2.7-billion solar power plant at Hidden Hills, saying it needed to redesign the Inyo County project and the delay would lead to financial uncertainty. With the project nearing final stages of approval from the California Energy Commission, BrightSource considered adding power storage to the 500-megawatt facility. But doing so would trigger another round of time-consuming and costly engineering and environmental analyses.

CODY, Wyo. - The drive east of Cody is through high desert, and the February weekend of my visit was bitterly cold. But I was wearing a heavy down coat, snow pants and boots, and riding in a cozy, warm SUV. That's not how nearly 14,000 earlier visitors had arrived in Cody. They came by train from California in late August, and they weren't wearing down or fleece, nor did they have a comfy hotel room awaiting them. They were among the 100,000 Japanese Americans relocated from the West Coast to the interior of the U.S. at the beginning of World War II, shortly after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor.

David Sanden captures the sun reflected in a friend's glasses when " something seriously funny happened " during his bachelor party at Ocotillo Wells on Feb. 24. The image was taken with a Canon 40D.  Follow Armand Emamdjomeh on  Twitter  or  Google+ . Each week, we're featuring photos of Southern California submitted by readers. Share your photos on our  Flickr page  or  reader submission gallery .  Follow us on Twitter  or visit  latimes.com/socalmoments  for more on this photo series.

Humans could learn a thing or two from lowly sand termites about managing the Earth's natural resources. Mysterious African "fairy circles," up to 55 yards across, are created by these creatures, according to a study published in Friday's edition of the journal Science.  Fairy circles are formations that appear along a 1,200-mile belt that stretches along the southwestern edge of Africa, from the middle of Angola to Namibia to the northern edge...

A series of earthquakes hit the California desert area Wednesday, near the site of a larger earthquake earlier this month. An initial shallow magnitude 3.6 earthquake was reported 13 miles from Anza, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. The temblor occurred at 11:17 a.m. PDT at a depth of 1.9 miles. It was followed by more than 20 other smaller quakes, the USGS said. There were no reports of damage or injuries. According to the USGS, residents in nearby communities, including Indio, reported feeling the 3.6 temblor.

There's no strong evidence of an association between living within walking distance of places to buy food and being overweight or not, researchers said after interviewing nearly 100,000 Californians. Given the attention to the idea of food deserts - areas with limited access to healthful food - and their effect on people's health, the researchers wanted to find how much it mattered to have stores and restaurants within walking distance, which they defined as a mile from home. But the number of fast-food outlets within three miles of home was associated with eating more fast food, fried potatoes and caloric soft drinks, and with less frequent consumption of produce, the researchers said.

Jamaal Franklin is used to it, being questioned about whether he ever killed snakes with a basketball or saw coyotes out his back door. San Diego State's star guard, one of the best players on the West Coast, just smiles and shakes his head. "If it's possible to be an unknown star," Aztecs Coach Steve Fisher said, "that was Jamaal. " The reason: Franklin was raised and played his high school basketball in Phelan, Calif., a small, rural town near the base of the Wrightwood ski area.

With the March Madness college basketball tournament getting underway Tuesday, Sin City is a slam-dunk for hoops fans who can't afford costly courtside seats. Throughout the tournament, Vegas resorts are offering special enticements for a fraction of the cost of a trip to Atlanta for the Final Four action. At the Cosmopolitan , the fun gets underway during the second- and third-round games March 21-24, when the hotel's Brera Ballroom takes on the look and feel of a live sporting event.

PHOENIX - If you blinked, you might have missed the first half of the NHL's painfully compact post-lockout schedule. If that's the case, know that, for the Kings, it went a little better than last season's first half. The team passed the halfway point Tuesday fourth in the Western Conference - three places better than last year - and riding a wave of momentum that had carried it to nine wins in 11 games. But then, just like last year, the Kings started the second half with a thud, plodding through a listless 5-2 loss to the Coyotes at Jobing.com Arena.