SCIENCE
February 24, 2014 | By Deborah Netburn
The oldest known material on Earth is a tiny bit of zircon crystal that has remained intact for an incredible 4.4 billion years, a study confirms. The ancient remnant of the early Earth may change the way we think about how our planet first formed. The crystal is the size of a small grain of sand, just barely visible to the human eye. It was discovered on a remote sheep farm in western Australia, which happens to sit on one of the most stable parts of our planet. "The Earth's tectonic processes are constantly destroying rocks," said John Valley, a professor of geoscience at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who discovered and dated the crystal.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
February 23, 2014 | By Steve Chawkins
When Alice Herz-Sommer played the piano at Theresienstadt her audience was enthralled. As she approached the end of Chopin's difficult Revolutionary Etude, the piece's mounting musical turbulence exploded. "Alice's hands slid furiously over the keys, zig-zagging up and down from the heights to the lowest registers, with the final four chords ringing out, like so many shrieks of despair," biographers Melissa Muller and Reinhard Piechocki wrote in 2006. The next day, she was given an extra ladle of watery soup - a privilege at a Nazi concentration camp, but one that made the pianist distinctly uncomfortable.
SPORTS
February 17, 2014 | Chris Dufresne
The only thing not completely stupefying about Sunday's men's Olympic super giant slalom was that Norway won. Kjetil Jansrud became the fourth straight Norwegian to claim the super-G gold, so just go ahead and pencil in a Kjetil, Aksel or Lasse for 2018. Everything else about Sunday's result was pulled out of a magician's hat. America's Andrew Weibrecht, four years after stunningly taking super-G bronze in Vancouver, and having done absolutely nothing since, stole silver from his back-of-the-snowpack No. 29 start position.
SPORTS
February 11, 2014 | By Ben Bolch
The oldest player in the NBA isn't worried about staying in front of quicker counterparts or piling up assists or leading his team to the playoffs. Steve Nash just wants his body to cooperate so he can get through a game. It was too much to ask again Tuesday night, the Lakers point guard departing prematurely because of discomfort in his leg and back. He was done at halftime after 17 unremarkable minutes, leading one to wonder just how many are left on the odometer of a 40-year-old who continues to creak his way toward the Hall of Fame.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
December 17, 2013 | By Martha Groves and Louis Sahagun
To see teacher Rose Gilbert - a nonstop, 5-foot dynamo - in front of a high school classroom was to see a master at work. "I'm on fire," she would tell her 12th-graders in Room 204 at Palisades Charter High School, emphasizing the point by wearing a red plastic firefighter's helmet. Yet, even after more than half a century of imparting a love of Homer, Camus, Faulkner and Joyce to her youthful charges, she never seemed to burn out. Each semester for more than 50 years, into her 90s, Gilbert lectured on dozens of classic works, including "The Great Gatsby," "The Iliad" and "The Stranger.
NATIONAL
December 14, 2013 | By Saba Hamedy
They are both African Americans, World War II veterans, Texas natives and, oh yes, 107 years old. And for the last six decades, they lived about 200 miles away from each other but had never met -- until now. The nation's oldest known veterans, Richard Overton of Austin, and Elmer Hill of Henderson, spent Friday bonding over barbecue ribs and trading stories about their service. Their meet-up, held in Austin, was “history in the making,” Karen Lucas, a vice president with Emeritus Senior Living, which arranged the get-together, told the Los Angeles Times. It took two weeks to plan and coordinate the event, she said, which was received with enthusiasm by both Hill and Overton.