Rooftops

A fire in the Santa Clarita Valley this morning destroyed an apartment building under construction and spread to 22 rooftops in a nearby housing tract, causing major damage to at least two homes. Two firefighters suffered scrapes, back injuries and smoke inhalation fighting the 9:30 a.m. blaze, which was brought under control in about an hour, said Los Angeles County Fire Department spokeswoman Deborah Shackelford.

Rihanna tour guitarist Nuno Bettencourt has bought a home in the Hollywood Hills for $2.15 million. The contemporary features a rooftop swimming pool, spa and cabana with 360-degree views that take in the Hollywood sign. There are high ceilings, a bar, a sauna, four bedrooms, five bathrooms and 5,255 square feet of living space. Grandest pool around? Malibu has it The Portuguese guitarist singer-songwriter and producer, 46, gained notice with the hard rock band Extreme, which had the early '90s hits “More Than Words” and “Hole Hearted.” He went on to found numerous bands and has a line of guitars.

Every night at 9, Golaleh goes to the top of her five-story apartment in northern Tehran, where she has a view of the whole city. "It's like a date," she said of the nightly rendezvous, because like clockwork voices of opposition protesters start calling out from rooftops in all directions. One man usually starts. God is great, he will shout. Then hundreds respond. Their cries remain faceless. People stay hidden in the dark so that police cannot track them.

The bank heist crew didn't carry demand notes or ever see a bank teller. Their tools of choice were a powered cutting saw, hand-held radios and ladders. They walked away with millions of dollars in recent years by simply cutting through the rooftops of San Gabriel Valley banks under cover of darkness. They made holes in the roofs to access the money and slipped away with bags of cash unnoticed before dawn. They have been responsible for three rooftop heists since August 2011, L.A. County Sheriff's Department officials said.

Four men toting at least 50 fur pelts across mid-Manhattan rooftops were arrested early Sunday by police looking into a pattern of repeated fur robberies, officials said. The area had been hit several times recently by fur robberies, with losses in excess of $800,000, police said.

JERUSALEM - Beyond the Old City's Jewish Quarter, with its picturesque flower boxes and blue-and-white Israeli flags, past the devout Christian tourist groups laboring up the Via Dolorosa, the 13 members of the Sidawi family share a dank 250-square-foot room with just one tiny window. Living in the Old City's Muslim Quarter, by far the most densely populated area in Jerusalem, the family has learned to do everything in shifts: using the bathroom, eating, studying and even sleeping.

Rescuers plucked bodies from muddy floodwaters and saved drenched survivors from rooftops after a tropical storm tore through the northern Philippines and left at least 83 people dead and 23 missing. It was the region's worst flooding in more than four decades. The government declared a "state of calamity" in metropolitan Manila and 25 storm-hit provinces. Tropical Storm Ketsana roared across the northern Philippines on Saturday, dumping more than a month's worth of rain in just 12 hours and triggering landslides and flooding.

The Chicago Cubs traditionally have not minded their neighbors watching games free from their rooftops adjacent to Wrigley Field, but they do object to a private club charging for rooftop parties. Club President Donald Grenesko says he has asked the Cubs' architect to design a barrier to be erected behind an outfield bleacher section that will block the view of the Lakeview Baseball Club, organized by ERTA Development, which owns the building. "It's not the money," Grenesko said.

Violent storms soaked parts of Phoenix with almost as much rain as it usually gets in a year, flooding more than 20 homes and stranding motorists on car rooftops. Authorities said hospital emergency rooms had treated a small number of people for minor injuries, but the exact number was not immediately known. Telephone and electrical service was temporarily cut off to large swaths of the city and its suburbs, which have a population of about 2 million.

Adams Canyon has problems that the leaders of Santa Paula seem to be glossing over. Here are just a few issues that affect both potential residents of the proposed 5,400-acre development (that's twice the size of Santa Paula) and those who live outside and below it: Water: From where and how would enough be obtained for 1,280 houses, 180 condos, 90 apartments, two schools, two hotels and, especially, two golf courses? Yet in a severe rainstorm, a barranca cannot handle the current runoff--let alone additional runoff from paved-over land.

On an astonishingly busy weekend of dance, Angelenos had the good fortune Saturday to experience two exceptional site-specific performances: the local debut of Trisha Brown's historic “Roof Piece” at the Getty Center and the premiere of Stephan Koplowitz's “Red Line Time,” a marathon circuitous journey on the downtown-to-North Hollywood Metro line. Though sorely overused, the term “experience” is appropriate and deliberate for these pieces. Audiences certainly may choose to watch a site-specific dance with the same mind-set they would if sitting in a comfortable auditorium (minus the cushy chair)

The first time David O. Russell phoned Bradley Cooper, it was midafternoon on a fall day a few years ago, and the topic, ostensibly at least, was Cooper's possible involvement in either the adaptation of the horror-lit mash-up "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies" or a couple of other movies Russell had recently written. The connection was spotty, so the actor climbed out onto the roof of his house to keep the conversation going. By the time they said goodbye, the sun had nearly set. Cooper and Russell didn't end up collaborating on any of those projects, but their lengthy exchange that day and subsequent meetings led to Cooper eventually winning the role of Pat Solitano, the bipolar protagonist in Russell's chaotic comedy "Silver Linings Playbook.

The developers of a proposed $31-million hotel near Staples Center in downtown Los Angeles are ready to seek city approval to construct an indoor-outdoor complex in the brick shell of a condemned apartment building. Plans call for gutting the empty three-story building at 1130 S. Hope St. that was erected more than a century ago and is no longer structurally sound. The developers would build inside the perimeter of the old exterior walls, creating a landscaped open-air courtyard leading to a new tower with 44 guest rooms.

A new drive-in movie theater is opening atop downtown Los Angeles. On Oct. 28, Electric Dusk Drive-In will debut on the rooftop of a parking garage at the corner of 4th Street and Broadway. The drive-in will project a wide selection of classic films, cult favorites and contemporary blockbusters on a 24 foot by 18 foot screen, complete with carhops taking orders from a snack bar, according to a statement from Electric Dusk Drive-In. Audio from the movie will be transmitted directly to patrons' car radios, but patrons without cars can also watch movies in a designated seating area.

JERUSALEM - Beyond the Old City's Jewish Quarter, with its picturesque flower boxes and blue-and-white Israeli flags, past the devout Christian tourist groups laboring up the Via Dolorosa, the 13 members of the Sidawi family share a dank 250-square-foot room with just one tiny window. Living in the Old City's Muslim Quarter, by far the most densely populated area in Jerusalem, the family has learned to do everything in shifts: using the bathroom, eating, studying and even sleeping.

Former "Baywatch" babe Pamela Anderson is looking for a summer renter with $50,000 a month to spare for her place in a gated community in Malibu. The teak-sided house, built in 1959, is entered through a gated courtyard planted with lavender and olive trees. Some 2,750 square feet of living space includes an open plan living room and kitchen, a home theater and furnishings such as a baby grand piano. There are three bedrooms, 21/2 bathrooms and a sauna. Outdoor amenities include a rooftop deck and a swimming pool.

From 1,000 feet up, it looked like a scar on the airport runway -- a jagged line snaking across the slick asphalt at New Orleans Lakefront Airport. Then, as a relief helicopter dropped down from leaden skies Thursday, the runway scene came into focus: a twisting column of refugees who had been plucked from rooftops across the flooded city.

On bright days, the rooftop of the Anaheim Hilton is so blindingly white that it looks like a mirror positioned directly at the sun. That dazzling glare might just be the greenest thing to happen to the top of a building since solar panels. The white coating deflects nearly 85% of the heat that hits it, reducing the surface temperature by as much as 50 degrees. That means less energy is needed to cool the hotel's interior, cutting air-conditioning costs and carbon emissions.

SACRAMENTO - California is poised to more than double its targeted electricity output from rooftop solar panels. The state Public Utilities Commission on Thursday tweaked its rules to authorize an increase in the number of residential, commercial and government buildings that can participate in a program that allows solar users to lower their electricity bills by getting credit for excess power sent back to the grid. The move raises the maximum total capacity of all the state's rooftop solar systems to about 5,200 megawatts from a current 2,400 megawatts.

Backers of a Little Tokyo gymnasium Saturday showcased their long-awaited site for an array of basketball, martial arts and art activities that they hope will revitalize the historic heart of Southern California's Japanese American community. Community volunteers laid out a full-sized high school basketball court over the site, a city-owned parking lot on Los Angeles Street near 2nd Street. Then they led youth athletes, first- to ninth-graders, in a basketball clinic, followed by an Okinawan karate demonstration.