England

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.

Gilt A Novel Katherine Longshore Penguin: 416 pp., $17.99, ages 12 and up King Henry the Eighth, to six wives he was wedded. One died, one survived, two divorced, two beheaded. If there's anyone in history who personifies the treacheries of marriage, it's King Henry VIII of England, who is best known for the beheadings he inflicted during a reign of nearly 38 years. What led to such a barbaric punishment for the sexual indiscretions of his betrothed is the central theme of "Gilt," which tells the fictionalized history of wife No. 5: Catherine Howard, "the forgotten daughter of the forgotten third son of the man who had once been Duke of Norfolk," writes novelist Katherine Longshore.

Researchers have some reassuring news for the legions of coffee drinkers who can't get through the day without a latte, cappuccino, iced mocha, double-shot of espresso or a plain old cuppa joe: That coffee habit may help you live longer. A new study that tracked the health and coffee consumption of more than 400,000 older adults for nearly 14 years found that java drinkers were less likely to die during the study than their counterparts who eschewed the brew. In fact, men and women who averaged four or five cups of coffee per day had the lowest risk of death, according to a report in Thursday's edition of the New England Journal of Medicine.

DALLAS -- Anna Tunnicliffe was born and raised in England. And she has the British accent to prove it. "With certain words it comes out," she acknowledged. But that does not, she insists, make this summer's Olympic Games a homecoming. "I'm American," said Tunnicliffe, who became a U.S. citizen in 2003 and an Olympic gold medalist five years later. "I've spent more than half my life in America. I'm going to England to compete. "I love the country. But no, I'm not going home.

Hard-core Harry Potter fans who devoured the books, camped out for the movies and trekked through the theme park now have a new way to relive the boy wizard's adventures. PHOTOS: Making of Harry Potter studio tour Debuting Saturday, the Making of Harry Potter behind-the-scenes tour at theWarner Bros.studios in England will let wizards, mudbloods and muggles pull back the curtain on the movie-making secrets of the most successful film series of all time. Located 20 miles outside of London, the three-hour self-guided tour will take visitors past sets, props, costumes, models and special effects exhibits from the eight "Harry Potter" movies.

The biggest home in Los Angeles County is ready for a new nickname: The 56,500-square-foot Manor, dubbed Candyland after owner Candy Spelling, has been sold to another wealthy socialite, British heiress Petra Ecclestone, in an all-cash deal for $85 million. As steep as that price is, it's not a record or even close to what Spelling was asking. The priciest Southland home transaction was the 2000 sale of an 8-acre estate in Bel-Air to financial executive Gary Winnick in a deal that included the trade of other land, for a total value of about $94 million.

A new study showing an estimated 7% of American teens and adults carry the human papillomavirus in their mouths may help health experts finally understand why rates of mouth and throat cancer have been climbing for nearly 25 years. The evidence makes it clear that oral sex practices play a key role in transmission. The new data, published online Thursday by the Journal of the American Medical Assn., are the first to assess the prevalence of oral HPV infection in the U.S. population.

So how many omega-3 fatty acids are enough — and how should you get them? That likely depends on your age and your specific health concerns. The United States does not yet have guidelines for DHA or EPA, and consensus among nutrition experts is elusive. But specialty groups, some governmental agencies and individual experts have started to take a stand. For healthy adults without major medical issues, the European Food Safety Agency recommends a daily dose of 250 milligrams of combined EPA and DHA, while the National Heart Foundation of Australia suggests 500 milligrams.

Watching Alzheimer's disease steal away the memory, talents and very selves of its victims is hard enough for the people who love them. Now, a new pill formulated by a respected pharmaceutical company and approved by the Food and Drug Administration will do little to help most patients and will bring misery to some, say two medical investigators. The drug, Aricept 23 mg, is no more effective on the whole than the disappointing ones already on the market - but is more likely to cause gastrointestinal problems, wrote Drs. Steven Woloshin and Lisa Schwartz of Dartmouth Medical College in an article published Thursday in the medical journal BMJ. The new formulation was devised to serve commercial objectives, they say, and was approved despite a poor showing in company-sponsored tests.

On the high street of the lovely Cotswold village of Chipping Campden, just next to the 12th century stone marketplace, sits an unobtrusive but intimidating sign. "Cotswold Way, the beginning and the end," it reads. "Bath 100 m. " The "m" stands for miles. The sign marked the starting point of our 10-day walk through the Cotswolds, along a trail that loosely follows the route that monks in ancient times walked each year to pay tribute to Bath Abbey. My husband, Carl, and I had been planning the trip for months, but as we set off on an overcast day in late April, we were both nervous.

Nobody thought much about the locked metal cabinet in the medical school at the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom. It was another forgotten fixture in the anatomy department - until a researcher last year found seven skulls with yellowing labels indicating the remains were those of Native Americans from California's Central Coast. Earlier this month, the skulls and several bone fragments were boxed and gingerly placed aboard a jet to LAX at London's Heathrow Airport.

A Newport Beach woman who arranged for a former NFL player to kill her wealthy boyfriend in a 1994 plot to collect $1 million in insurance money was sentenced Friday to life in prison. But sentencing for onetime New England Patriot linebacker Eric Naposki was continued to Aug. 10 after he refused to leave his courthouse holding cell. The prosecutor called Naposki's actions "a final blaze of no class and cowardice" by the man who fired six gunshots into the chest of Bill McLaughlin, who died in his Balboa Coves home.

As if the Summer Olympic Games and the Queen's Diamond Jubilee weren't reason enough to go to England this summer, here's one more: a "Downton Abbey" tour . The itinerary includes filming locations for the British BBC TV series set during the first World War. It starts in London with visits to the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Imperial War Museum, perfect places to learn more about wartime Britain in the early 20th century....

A polite comedy about a potentially rude subject,"Hysteria"takes its title from the medical condition diagnosed to women in Victorian England for any number of unrelated symptoms. As a treatment, doctors would stimulate a woman to orgasm, referred to as "manual massage to paroxysm," leading one beleaguered physician, essentially as a labor-saving device, to invent the vibrator. In the film, which opens in Los Angeles on May 18, the progressive young doctor Mortimer Granville (Hugh Dancy)

Patricia Medina, a British-born actress whose Hollywood career as a leading lady in the 1950s spanned the talking mule comedy "Francis" and Orson Welles' crime-thriller "Mr. Arkadin," has died. She was 92. Medina, the widow of actor Joseph Cotten, died Saturday at Barlow Respiratory Hospital in Los Angeles, said Meredith Silverbach, a close friend. She had been in declining health. A petite, dark-haired beauty who launched her film career in England in the late 1930s, Medina was married to actor Richard Greene when she arrived in Hollywood after World War II. "She was a stunning woman," said Silverbach.

  England's Football Assn. on Tuesday selected veteran West Bromwich manager Roy Hodgson to coach its national soccer team, replacing Fabio Capello, who resigned under pressure in February. Hodgson, 64, has coached 18 teams -- including the national squads of Switzerland, Finland and the United Arab Emirates -- during a 36-year career. His current 16-month contract with West Brom doesn't expire until next month, but the club has agreed to release him when the season ends May 13 so that Hodgson can begin preparing for Euro 2012.

It already seems like 2013 is shaping up as a great year for ride enthusiasts around the world, as a number of new theme parks are planned for Asia and several major attractions are in the works for Europe. > Photos: Best new international theme park rides for 2013 Consider this a tentative and fluid list of new attractions on tap at international parks (outside the United States). A number of oft-delayed projects have been given new 2013 opening dates that could get postponed again, while several recently announced theme parks may never advance past the planning stages.

World Cup 2010: ENGLAND FIFA ranking: 7 Overall World Cup record: 25-13-17 Coach: Fabio Capello Best performance: Winner, 1966 Overview: Forty-four years have passed since Bobby Charlton, Geoff Hurst, Bobby Moore, Nobby Stiles and the rest of the gang made English football history. England's last two World Cup campaigns have come to grief in the quarterfinals. An Italian coach is being counted on to clear that hurdle, along with a soccer brain in midfielder Frank Lampard and a lethal striker in Wayne Rooney.

A few hours before a wary Landon Donovan ran onto the practice field at the Home Depot Center on Thursday, a funeral took place in Bergamo, Italy. And those two events may have more in common than you think. Piermario Morosini, a 25-year-old midfielder for Livorno in Italy's Serie B, collapsed and died of cardiac arrest in the first half of his team's match last weekend. He was laid to rest Thursday, with thousands of fans packing the streets of his hometown as his coffin, draped in numerous jerseys passed.

The right to roam in Wales I was pleased to see John Flinn's excellent piece on walking the Offa's Dyke Path with Bill Bryson ["Strolling Over Hill and Dale in Wales," April 1], particularly the picture of one-eyed Llewelyn Morgan, who I have known for some 25 years. (He lost his eye, by the way, practicing the traditional craft of hedge-laying, when the hedge bit back.) At the risk of seeming picky, I'd like to clarify Flinn's reference to trespass and the right to roam.