Massive

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.

Pocket doors slide away to connect the indoors and outdoors at this sleek contemporary. Designed for entertaining, the modern house features a massive concrete fireplace, a glass-walled loft and walls of glass looking out onto the swimming pool and deck. Location: 1060 Woodland Drive, Beverly Hills 90210 Asking price: $6.995 million Year built: 2009 House size: Four bedrooms, 41/2 bathrooms, 5,868 square feet Lot size: 20,420 square feet Features: Porcelain tile floors, walnut floors, bar, breakfast bar, office, recessed lighting, media room, service entrance, alarm system About the area: In the first quarter, 60 single-family homes sold in the 90210 ZIP Code at a median price of $2.85 million, according to DataQuick.

washington -- Mitt Romney twice emphasized his unique business background when he and eight other Republican presidential candidates faced off in a debate last week in Iowa. "I've spent the last, as I've told you, 25 years in the private sector," former Massachusetts Gov. Romney declared at one point. "I understand why jobs come and why jobs go. I've done business in 20 countries."

SAN DIEGO - Poor planning, failure to share critical information and a series of human errors led to the massive blackout in September that plunged a swath of Southern California, Arizona and Baja California into darkness, according to a report issued Tuesday by two energy agencies. The 150-page report, produced after an eight-month study by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the North American Electric Reliability Corp., portrays the complex electrical grid as vulnerable to a single small-sized failure - in this case, a transmission line in Arizona that went down and triggered a "cascading and uncontrolled" blackout that left 2.7 million customers in the dark.

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.

The doors to the Forum in Inglewood opened Tuesday to a massive mobile hospital, the largest and longest-running free clinic ever attempted in the 25-year history of Remote Area Medical Foundation, a Tennessee-based nonprofit more accustomed to serving rural America. Each day since, more than 750 patients have been served, many waiting for hours and some sleeping overnight in their cars for a chance at a free exam. In the first three days of the clinic's eight-day run, the foundation provided 1,640 fillings, performed 706 tooth extractions and 141 mammograms and doled out more than 550 eyeglasses.

In the '80s, environmentalism swept the field in its campaign for the hearts and wallets of the American public. Polls show overwhelming support for cleaning up the country. Membership in conservation groups has soared dramatically. Politicians and corporations now flaunt their environmental credentials. In the next decade, new generations of technically sophisticated conservationists and government regulators will deal with business leaders who accept environmentalism as a fact of life as they undertake the practical work of this green revolution.

You need not worry about Deborah Norville. She may be beautiful, but her voice is strong and no-nonsense, unlike 13 years of Jane Pauley's pleasant soft-headedness. In the take-no-prisoners world of television, Ms. Norville can hold her own with anyone, as witness her early-morning news before the "Today" show. The only problem I foresee is Bryant Gumbel's massive ego running rampant. DONALD SOMMERFIELD Santa Barbara

The candidates' prescriptions for the country's economic wounds: Dr. Bush: "Let them fester and heal." Dr. Clinton: "Massive medical intervention." Dr. Perot: "Amputate." ERIC P. HANSEN Eagle Rock

Now that the academy has spoken and anointed this engrossing Austrian film as the best foreign language film of the year, it wouldn't be fair to ignore it just because a certain Romanian film got left off the list. Based loosely on real events, "The Counterfeiters" deals, as its title hints, with a massive Nazi plot to counterfeit both British pounds and American dollars on such a massive scale that the economies of both countries would be destroyed. The film's style is mainstream and straight-ahead, but because the counterfeiting was done largely by Jews in concentration camps, the film presents some provocative moral dilemmas.

Sometimes an old movie line says it best. Such a line came to mind when I read the Assembly speaker's assertion that political money doesn't influence legislative voting. "I know people love to try to create that impression," Speaker John A. Pérez (D-Los Angeles) was quoted as saying in a Times article Sunday about AT&T's wide-ranging lobbying operation. "But the reality is, that's not the way things happen. People give money because of whatever reasons motivate them, and we evaluate legislation regardless.

In preparation for the start of demolition this summer of the now-closed 936-room Wilshire Grand Hotel in downtown Los Angeles, the hotel will reopen its doors Thursday for the start of a massive sale of its furniture, plates, towels and television sets, among thousands of items in the building. Everything must go, including the kitchen sinks, which are priced at $350. "But our kitchen sinks are a little bigger than most," said Frank Long, president of International Content Liquidations Inc., the Ohio firm that is running what is expected to be a $2-million liquidation sale starting at 9 a.m. Long lines are expected.

WASHINGTON — President Obama's top economic advisors pushed back hard Sunday against a charge by Republican presidential challenger Mitt Romney that American women have suffered the brunt of the weak economy over the last three years. Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner called Romney's claim that women have accounted for 92% of the jobs lost since Obama took office "ridiculous and very misleading. " The broadside came after a week in which the two campaigns had traded barbs over which candidate was more supportive of working women.

NEW YORK -- A massive brush fire driven by high winds and low humidity was burning out of control on Long Island east of New York City on Tuesday. Two more fires broke out in New Jersey, but firefighters managed to contain a third one that erupted at a landfill on Staten Island. The blazes broke out Monday as winds gusted at more than 40 mph across New York, New Jersey and the rest of the region. The winds, combined with low humidity and extra-dry conditions caused by a nearly snow-free winter, fed the flames, which forced some evacuations, closed roads and destroyed at least two homes.

A coalition of environmental groups has filed suit against Los Angeles County, claiming the county's decision to allow the development of a massive residential project along the Santa Clara River would harm the waterway, destroy wildlife habitat and despoil cultural sites. According to the suit, filed Thursday in Los Angeles County Superior Court, the county would allow irreversible damage by approving the first phase of the Newhall Ranch development. Construction would also involve unearthing and desecrating American Indian burial sites and would threaten the California condor and the rare San Fernando Valley spineflower, the suit alleges.

A giant crater at the moon's south pole may hold the answer to a long-standing mystery about why portions of the lunar crust have a magnetic field and other parts don't. After running sophisticated computer models, a trio of researchers is suggesting that mysterious magnetic material detected on the surface was delivered by a 120-mile-wide asteroid that crashed into the moon about 4.5 billion years ago. The collision left behind a gaping hole on the far side of the moon that is one of the largest-known impact craters in the solar system.

R. H. Macy Co., which owns Bullock's and I. Magnin in Southern California, dropped its legal challenge to Proposition 13, California's property-tax-cutting initiative (front page, June 8). Business organizations in California had attacked Macy's move. They said it had the potential to force a massive increase in tax bills. Unless all of us have a massive increase in tax bills, the federal and state governments will collapse and the American dream will end. T. WILLARD HUNTER, Claremont

Amazon.com started advertising for a senior wine buyer in its specialty foods group and might start offering wine as part of a new line of groceries. The buyer would be responsible for the "acquisition of massive new product selection," building it "from the ground up," Amazon said.

A powerful solar flare Tuesday evening caused the surface of the sun to shudder. A second smaller flare followed about an hour later, and the blasts caused by those flares have hurled a “big blob of magnetized material” toward Earth. So says Alex Young, solar physicist at NASA Goddard, who spoke with The Times on Wednesday about the flares and their predicted impact . The results of the coming geomagnetic storm may be pleasant -- auroras as far south as Illinois -- or unpleasant, such as GPS and communications problems, according to Young.