Europe

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.

New home sales are up. The unemployment rate is falling. Companies are buying one another, signaling confidence in the economy. But investors are turning their back on positive economic signs, looking nervously at Europe's seemingly never-ending debt troubles and Facebook's flat IPO, wondering whether the global economy is beginning yet another deep dive. "Although better economic data did not go unnoticed, investors look forward and not backward," said David Dietze, president and chief investment strategist at Point View Wealth Management in Summit, N.J. "All eyes are looking across the pond and seeing a bit of a meltdown in terms of the European sovereign debt crisis.

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.

LONDON - With investor confidence draining away and the value of the euro plunging, Europe struggled anew Wednesday to come up with a united game plan to keep its currency union intact and its economies from collapsing. Competing visions embraced by the continent's political heavyweights, France and Germany, clashed at an informal summit of European Union leaders with little chance of reconciliation even as fears grew that Greece could be forced out of the Eurozone and into a chaotic default.

Often film sequels are slam dunks at the box office, a seamless continuation from where a previous hit left off. But as the new installment of the 15-year-old franchise "Men in Black" proves, getting to the big screen isn't always a cakewalk. One of the most troubled productions in recent Hollywood memory, Sony Pictures' latest movie in the Will Smith-Tommy Lee Jones sci-fi-comedy franchise encountered multiple script rewrites, a discontented star and a three-month production shutdown as writers and studio executives scrambled to fix a project that nearly fell apart . By the time it was over, the studio had run up a tab of nearly $250 million - making "Men in Black 3" one of the most expensive releases of the summer.

BMW has been striving to reconcile its dueling images for years. Best known for its luxurious, sport-oriented cars, the German manufacturer's motorcycles are only beginning to shed their reputation as wheels for safety-conscious old men, thanks to exciting new bikes like the S 1000 RR and K 1600 LT. At this weekend's International Motorcycle Shows event in Long Beach, BMW is likely to confuse its image even further when its first scooters make...

The alarm over potential bank runs in Greece and Spain this week has highlighted an often-overlooked fact: Europe's debt crisis is also, in many ways, a major banking crisis. In capitals such as Athens, Madrid and Rome, large portions of the sovereign debt racked up by spendthrift governments are owed to the countries' own banks, locking governments and the banks in an embrace so tight that disaster for one would almost certainly spell doom for the other. International bailouts for Greece, Ireland and Portugal have helped to keep not just their governments but also their banks afloat, as well as financial institutions in other parts of Europe with large exposure to those nations' debts.

After Svetlana Ivanova and her husband moved to this village in southwestern Russia 17 years ago, they laughed when they found out what locals called the $4 monthly payment for living in the contaminated Chernobyl zone: funeral money. Then one warm spring afternoon three years ago, her husband, Pyotr Ivanov, came home from a job-seeking trip to Moscow, put on a clean white shirt, stepped out into the garden "for a smoke" and hanged himself. "I remembered this sad joke when I buried my husband," she said.

Ford Motor Co. will offer about 90,000 U.S. salaried retirees and former employees vested in its pension plan a lump-sum payment to buy them out of monthly benefits. Ford, which also reported lower first-quarter earnings Friday because of losses in Europe and Asia, said the plan was an innovative strategy to reduce its pension obligations. The automaker won't put up any operating cash but rather will make the one-time payments from existing pension plan assets. "We believe this is the first time a program of this type and magnitude has been done in an ongoing pension plan," said Bob Shanks, Ford's chief financial officer.

Something is rotting in the state of Denmark. Lots of things, actually, and it's a bit of an embarrassment for this Scandinavian nation as it prepares to host a widely anticipated global environmental summit this week. Denmark is proud of its image as one of the greenest countries in the world; it's probably why it was chosen as the site of the 15th United Nations Conference on Climate Change. But beneath the gloss lurk some inconvenient truths, including the fact that, pound for pound, Denmark produces more trash per capita than any other country in the 27-member European Union.

BERLIN - If it seems to German Chancellor Angela Merkel that the world is against her, she may be right. Her insistence that debt-ridden European nations cut their way out of financial crises helped cost her conservative political party two state elections this month, exposed her to criticism as an inflexible taskmaster across the Eurozone and unleashed a torrent of anti-austerity venting that has toppled like-thinking national and regional leaders...

The current debate over Mitt Romney's tenure at Bain Capital is shaping up to be a centerpiece of the presidential campaign. The Romney campaign should have seen this coming. If Newt Gingrich and Rick Perry were willing to rip Romney for being too capitalistic in a Republican primary, it doesn't take a lot of imagination to expect that Barack Obama and Joe Biden would happily do the same in the general election. Moreover, if you are going to campaign on the idea that you were a private-sector job creator, it's certainly fair game for your opponents to investigate the claim.

WASHINGTON - Europe's top antitrust official said that Google Inc. may have abused its dominance to squelch online competition and urged the company to settle allegations to avoid formal charges that could carry a hefty fine. A quick resolution to the investigation that began in 2010 would benefit the fast-moving online marketplace, Joaquin Almunia, head of competition policy for the European Commission, said in a rare public call to end the case quickly. A settlement "at an early stage is always preferable to lengthy proceedings," Almunia said.

EUROPE Presentation Experts will help first-time visitors to Europe plan a realistic budget and devise a workable itinerary as well as discuss security and safety issues. When, where: 7:30 p.m. Monday at Distant Lands, 20 S. Raymond Ave., Pasadena. Admission, info: Free. RSVP to (626) 449-3220. BICYCLING Presentation Want to tour the California coast or another destination by bike? Experts will offer tips on gear and clothing as well as tours.

The alarm over potential bank runs in Greece and Spain this week has highlighted an often-overlooked fact: Europe's debt crisis is also, in many ways, a major banking crisis. In capitals such as Athens, Madrid and Rome, large portions of the sovereign debt racked up by spendthrift governments are owed to the countries' own banks, locking governments and the banks in an embrace so tight that disaster for one would almost certainly spell doom for the other. International bailouts for Greece, Ireland and Portugal have helped to keep not just their governments but also their banks afloat, as well as financial institutions in other parts of Europe with large exposure to those nations' debts.

When Germany'schancellor, Hannelore Kraft, met France's president, Francois Hollande, in a sunny Berlin earlier this week, they agreed on a compelling strategy to save the Eurozone. With no elections due in any Eurozone country for the next two years, they were able to stretch the austerity timeline for Greece, Spain and Italy, add some elements of growth stimulus but also keep up the essential pressure for fiscal discipline and structural reform. As a result, even devastated Greece began to glimpse light at the end of the tunnel.

A fossil jawbone, rudimentary tools and animal skeletons from a cave in Spain extend the earliest occupation of Europe by human ancestors back to as much as 1.3 million years ago, half a million years earlier than previously believed, researchers reported Wednesday. The findings suggest that early hominids swept out of Africa, through the Near East and into Europe much more rapidly than previously believed, said Spanish researchers who reported the find in the journal Nature.

In ABC's new thriller "Missing," a former CIA agent whose child has been kidnapped springs out of retirement with guns, martial-arts skills and primal parental passion blazing. If that sounds familiar, well, it was also the plot of the 2008 film "Taken," which had Liam Neeson tearing through Paris to extricate his daughter from the clutches of a sex-trafficking ring. In "Missing," the gender roles are reversed. When Michael (Nick Eversman), a student studying abroad in Rome, goes missing, his mother, Becca Winstone (Ashley Judd)

PARIS - France's new president, Francois Hollande, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel have opposing ideas of how to solve Europe's crippling public debt crisis - she austerity, he spending and growth - so a clash was in the cards Tuesday. Instead, Hollande's welcome to Berlin just hours after he took office was brisk but warm, even if he was late for dinner. Hollande - whose initial flight to Berlin was hit by lightning, causing him to briefly return to an air base outside Paris to switch planes - and Merkel met for an hour before dining together.

EUROPE Presentation Susan Hickman, Distant Lands' rail agent, will help you plan your itinerary, from purchasing a ticket and boarding your train to exiting at your destination. When, where : 7:30 p.m. Monday at Distant Lands, 20 S. Raymond Ave., Pasadena. Admission, info: Free. RSVP to (626) 449-3220. ROCK CLIMBING Workshop Rock-climbing instructors will teach assisted-rescue skills no climber should be without. When, where: 6 p.m. Tuesday at the REI store in Manhattan Beach, 1800 Rosecrans Ave., Suite E. Admission, info: $60; (310)