Generation

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.

Barack Obama wanted to be a transformational president, and as we head into the general election, he may have gotten his wish - just not the way he or his supporters might have thought. Obama seems to have transformed the cohort of 18- to 29-year-olds, a whopping 66% of whom preferred him over John McCain, from passionate voters who thought Obama really did offer change they could believe in, into people feeling, in the words of veteran political analyst Charlie Cook, "disappointment and disillusionment.

If you think Bluetooth is a rare dental condition and an app is what you eat before the entree, you might not be a candidate for today's high-tech, whiz-bang smart phones. Instead, you might be happier with a mobile phone geared toward seniors. Those phones typically don't have Web-surfing capability, GPS maps and video games. Instead they have large buttons, oversized digital readouts and hearing-aid compatibility, along with a relatively simple calling plan. Although senior-friendly phones aren't new, their lower prices and variety are. A recent price skirmish among wireless companies means seniors can get an easy-to-use cellphone and cheap service to go with it, said Mac Haddow, senior fellow on public policy for the independent and nonprofit Alliance for Generational Equity.

California's energy grid operator announced that two mothballed generators at a natural-gas-powered plant on the Huntington Beach coastline are back in service, a critical piece of the plan to replace power from the shuttered San Onofre nuclear power plant this summer. San Onofre has been shut down for three months because of equipment issues, and it's unclear when it will return to operation. Officials have expressed concern that in the event of a heat wave or transmission outage, parts of Los Angeles County, south Orange County and San Diego County could face power shortages over the summer without the plant's 2,200 megawatts of energy.

CINCINNATI - The Rev. Chris Beard is a theological conservative, make no mistake about it. He believes the Bible is the word of God. He believes the Holy Spirit speaks to him directly. He believes, as an article of faith, that abortion and same-sex marriage are wrong. Still, when a group of religious leaders in Ohio held two days of meetings in Cincinnati recently to talk about economic and racial justice, issues usually associated with the political left, there was Beard, a fourth-generation Pentecostal preacher with a disarming smile, a shaved head and a set of convictions that knock holes in the stereotypes about white evangelical Protestants.

How and when did humans "journey from Asia into a vast, seemingly unpopulated landmass" that has come to be known as "the Americas"? This is how Brian M. Fagan phrases the question that, in one form or another, has puzzled Western civilization as far back as the earliest arrivals by European explorers on this side of the Atlantic. To answer the question, Fagan concentrates upon significant archeological studies representing more than four centuries of research.

Aging members of America's middle class worry about retirement, and for good reason. When the TV talking heads aren't reminding us about plummeting house prices, they're speculating about not whether but by how much politicians will cut Social Security and Medicare benefits. And the financial and economic crises of the last several years have left the country 10% poorer, obliterating $6.1 trillion in wealth, a healthy chunk of which was in retirement savings. The country's financial crisis came at a particularly bad time.

Bob Kahl slips in through a side door of the vast, abandoned hangar and looks at what's left of the assembly plant where he worked for nearly 40 years. He remembers the hum of power tools, the biting aroma of cutting oil, swarms of workers plugging away on a labyrinth of yellow scaffolding. All that's left is a few piles of broken concrete and a sea of colorless dust that coats a Palmdale factory floor the size of two football fields. "Welcome to the birthplace of America's space shuttle fleet," said Kahl, 60, smiling.

Apple's new iPad just landed at the L.A. Times and it is sleek, slender, fast and beautiful -- not much of a surprise, really. AT&T shipped over a 4G LTE version of the third-generation iPad, which also runs on AT&T's HSPA+ network, 3G network, old 2G Edge network and, of course, Wi-Fi. As you can see in the video above, we unboxed the new iPad immediately. The packaging, what's included with the iPad and even the iPad itself are nearly indistinguishable from the iPad 2 -- at least until you turn the new iPad on. The new iPad's 2,048 x 1,536-pixel resolution (up from the iPad 2 and the first-generation iPad's 1,024 x 768-pixel displays)

The mockumentary style of ABC's new dramedy "My Generation" is both the best and worst thing about it. By chronicling nine members of the class of 2000 in Austin, Texas, creator Noah Hawley intertwines the lives of unlikely archetypes and injects their story lines with social significance — the Bush-Gore election, 9/11, Enron — as if it were Botox. Yet despite such heavy-handed manipulation, the characters and camera-aware performances of "My Generation" are precisely what make the show surprisingly fresh, vivid and touching.

SACRAMENTO — Let's begin with the basics: Tobacco companies are inherently evil. They peddle poison that causes cancer and addicts people to their killer products. Second, smoking is nuts. Smokers know that. Spare the lectures. Can't stop, they say. Nonsense. Millions have. They'll stop eventually when the nurse thrusts the ventilator tube down their throat. I've been blessed. Never smoked. But for much of my generation, lighting up was a rite of passage.

The problems at the San Onofre nuclear power plant are serious enough that the facility will not be able to operate at full capacity when it reopens, perhaps as early as June. The announcement comes as officials continue to investigate problems in the reactors that have forced the plant to remain shut for three months, the longest closure in San Onofre's history. Southern California Edison estimated that the company's cost for inspections and repairs at the plant would be between $55 million and $65 million.

The nine young women of Girls' Generation sauntered onto the performance stage of "Late Show With David Letterman. " Flanked by a DJ and live drummer, the South Korean pop group wore lacy black mini-dresses and thigh-high leather boots, as if they were hosting a goth cocktail party. It was a rare American network television performance from a South Korean music group. The song they performed on the January show, a slinky bit of minor-key dance-pop called "The Boys," owed an obvious debt to Kelis' catcalling hit "Milkshake.

In 1966, Eyrie Vineyards founder David Lett planted Pinot Noir vines in Oregon's Willamette Valley, hoping he'd found a place that shared traits with his beloved Burgundy. Four years later, the man who would come to be known as "Papa Pinot" made his first commercial harvest. Within the decade, half a dozen families, every bit as intrepid, followed him to the land, an unlikely collection of former engineers and liberal arts majors with a perceptible countercultural streak. Their perseverance and collaboration resulted in one of the great success stories in modern American winemaking, a robust industry composed largely of small family wineries excelling in cool climate varieties.

SANTIAGO, Cuba — The way Cesar Cruz and his buddies see it, the "revolution of our grandparents" just doesn't cut it anymore. The 19-year-old student and his friends gather every Saturday in leafy Cespedes Park in the shadow of Santiago de Cuba's cathedral, listening to music and sharing spins on an old scooter, and dreaming of an impossible future. "We don't have the chance to think of a better life, without misery," Cruz said. "The only option is to leave the country.

Police in downtown Los Angeles have seen cellphone thefts soar as smartphones like the iPhone become easily turned into pay-as-you-go phones. In the first quarter of this year, thefts of cellphones increased 32% in the downtown area. In the one-mile-square area of skid row, the increase is even more pronounced, said Los Angeles Police Lt. Paul Vernon. Individuals reported 54 cellphones taken in crimes within skid row in the first three months of 2012, compared with 115 during all of 2011.

As the U.K. folk-revival quartet Mumford & Sons, all of whom are in their early 20s, stared out on the 70,000 people or so gathered to watch their set at the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival on Saturday night, they couldn't help but remark on how much had changed for them. "In 2008, I was a punter sneaking in here for Rage Against the Machine," one of the Mumfords' string players cracked in disbelief. That a kid could go from sneaking in the side gate to playing the main stage at nightfall in a span of three years says everything about this year's iteration on the 12-year-old desert bacchanal, the first in recent memory to draw its star power mostly from artists who formed, grew careers and scaled to the peak of their profession within the 2000s.

Cleveland fans who'd assumed that LeBron James would remain unfailingly devoted to the Cavaliers are mortified that he's packing his bags for Miami. But his move simply puts him in step with others of his generation. If younger workers have displayed anything as employees, it's that they prize mobility more than they do fidelity to their employers. "Stability and company loyalty are high values for . . . those whose worldviews were shaped by experiencing the Great Depression in their formative years," Chip Espinoza, Mick Ukleja and Craig Rusch write in their new book, "Managing the Millennials."

When Martin A. Gordon talks to his 19-year-old son about the history of race relations in America, he invokes the Black Panthers, Martin Luther King Jr.and the watershed moments of the civil rights era. It's a story of hard-won rights that fills the '60s-era activist with pride. Then the conversation turns urgently personal, survival its theme: On the wrong street, at the wrong time of day, he tells his son, pride might be his undoing. "I know my son can be a moment away from being killed if he acts the wrong way, if he's arrogant," Gordon said.