Pacific Coast

A proposal by Occidental Petroleum Corp. to build a refinery on Panama's Pacific Coast moved closer to reality this week with the signing of a memorandum of understanding with Qatar's state oil company to form a partnership to build the $7-billion project if feasibility studies prove positive. In a signing ceremony Tuesday in Panama City attended by Panamanian President Martin Torrijos, executives of Westwood-based Occidental and Qatar Petroleum Co.

The most infamous sports gaffe of 2006 is set to become the "in" fashion statement of 2007. Italian entrepreneur Alessandro Ferrari has developed a line of sweatshirts inspired by Zinedine Zidane's head-butt during the World Cup final, with two stick figures depicting the incident printed on the back. The line's brand name is "Xqua," a play on the French word pourquoi, or "why" in English.

An 8-foot-deep sinkhole swallowed part of the northbound Pacific Coast Highway early Saturday when an underground water main burst. Northbound traffic was temporarily diverted onto one of the southbound lanes near Big Rock Drive.

A 16-year-old Huntington Beach girl is dead after being struck by a pickup truck while crossing Pacific Coast Highway, authorities said Tuesday. Her name was not released, a police spokesman said. The girl was walking north across PCH at 6th Street with a male companion about 8:30 p.m. Monday when the pair were struck, authorities said. She was taken to Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian in Newport Beach, where she died.

With political anxiety on Capitol Hill rising along with gasoline prices, the Senate voted Tuesday to open a large section of the Gulf of Mexico to oil and gas drilling, advancing the energy bill that stands the best chance of approval this year. The bill, approved 71-25, now must be reconciled with a broader and more controversial House measure that would relax the decades-long ban on drilling in most coastal waters, including along the Pacific coast.

Take New York, remember Paris or sing of Chicago, but don't ever forget that Southern California is the leading landscape of pop-music dreamers. From the days when Bing Crosby crooned of the San Fernando Valley as a giddy heaven on Earth (how's that going?) to N.W.A's slightly less rosy "Straight Outta Compton" and beyond, the lyrics on the radio have long reminded us that Southern California -- for better or worse -- is best mapped in lyrics.

The freight train that left Mexico's Pacific coast on Monday inaugurated daily service to the U.S. Midwest and points beyond, carrying the high-roller hopes of a U.S. railroad and a small Mexican harbor to grab a share of the Asian cargo boom. The 7,000-foot train is run by Kansas City Southern, which spent $1.5 billion for a controlling interest in every foot of track from the port of Lazaro Cardenas to Laredo, Texas.

The headline is a stopper: "Angels Clout Nine Homers, Win 22-5." It was June 22, 1957, and Roger Osenbaugh still remembers every pitch. He should. He was the opposing pitcher. "It's the best memory I have," he said of the game between the Sacramento Solons and the Los Angeles Angels at Wrigley Field, which stood at 42nd Street and Avalon Boulevard and was the West Coast copy of the Chicago Cubs' home. "Twenty-two runs, 18 earned runs, nine home runs, five home runs in one inning," he recalled.

Fishermen and coast guard crews rushed to rescue 101 people aboard a ferry sinking in rough weather near Vancouver Island early Wednesday. Authorities said all were believed to have escaped safely and injuries were minor. The 409-foot Queen of the North hit a rock about 12:30 a.m. off the Queen Charlotte Islands, about 85 miles south of Prince Rupert, a British Columbia mainland town near the southern tip of Alaska.

This is a neighborhood people hurtle past at 60 miles an hour (though the posted speed is 45), where houses are built just a few yards from a major six-lane highway, yet residents can step out their back gates and walk barefoot to the local restaurant on the beach. The neighborhood starts just north of the pier with tall slivers of houses flaunting their differences.