Scrap Metal

WCS International, an Anaheim scrap metal exporter, said it has filed a registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission for the sale of 3 million shares and 1.5 million warrants in an effort to raise from $12 million to $15 million. The company, whose name is being changed to Adams International Metals Corp., wants to sell the shares and warrants in an offering of 1.5 million units.

Naomi Wormell is a vicar, not a vigilante. But these days, she finds it hard to choose Christian charity over some swift -- and terrible -- retribution. The centuries-old church she leads in this quiet English village has fallen victim to a plague sweeping across Britain. Like hungry locusts, metal thieves have repeatedly attacked St. Mary's Church, swooping down on its roof in the dead of night and stripping away large sections of its Victorian-era lead cladding. Six times over a four-month period, the heartsick residents of Hatfield Broad Oak awoke to discover yet another piece of their history stolen, most likely to be melted down and sold for scrap.

A downtown scrap metal company containing volatile titanium and magnesium erupted in flames Tuesday, creating huge billows of smoke, forcing employees of nearby businesses to flee and causing a massive traffic jam on a nearby freeway during rush hour. The fire broke out about 4:30 p.m. in a scrap yard at Monico Alloys Inc. when sparks from a welding torch landed on titanium shavings, said Los Angeles City Fire Capt. Steve Ruda.

Rebecca Black's infamous "Friday" video has topped all other YouTube videos of 2011 with 180 million views. The Google Inc. video-sharing site announced its most-viewed clips of the year Tuesday. The 14-year-old Black was turned into a viral video celebrity after her parents paid a production company to make the music video for her. "Friday" became an unlikely, off-key global hit. Because of a legal dispute with Ark Music Factory, the video has had two YouTube incarnations, both of which were tabulated in the year-end count.

A downtown scrap metal company containing volatile titanium and magnesium erupted in flames Tuesday, creating huge billows of smoke, forcing employees of nearby businesses to flee and causing a massive traffic jam on a nearby freeway during rush hour. The fire broke out about 4:30 p.m. in a scrap yard at Monico Alloys Inc. when sparks from a welding torch landed on titanium shavings, said Los Angeles City Fire Capt. Steve Ruda.

Wilmington boat owner Claire Randall used to clean her 39-foot trimaran with a magnet. She would pick up tiny metal filings from her deck every time the scrap metal company a few hundred feet across the water loaded a ship. And she recently bought earplugs to help block the noise made by Hugo Neu-Proler's operations at all times of the day and night. For two years, Randall and the L.A. Harbor Boatowners Assn.

An employee of a Wilmington scrap metal shop has been booked on murder charges in the shooting death of a man who had loaded his pickup truck with stolen scrap metal, police said Saturday. Richard Zacher, 43, whose family owns the scrap shop, was held without bail at the Los Angeles Police Department's Parker Center Jail after the shooting, which occurred about 1 p.m. Friday, said Police Sgt. Dan Pugel of the department's Harbor Division.

Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca has a special interest in supporting two state bills aiming to stop the widespread and rampant theft of valuable metals, including copper wiring and pipes. Sometime around 4 a.m. July 26, thieves climbed the walls of four office buildings in Santa Fe Springs and stripped large air-conditioning units of their copper wires, insulation and fans. One of the buildings hit: the sheriff's Commercial Crimes Bureau.

They're stealing this small town's history. The bronze plaques that marked the wheres and noted the whos and whispered the back story of Selma, "raisin capital of the world," are disappearing. Gone are the testaments that an elementary school was a public works project built during the Great Depression and that the women's club has stood since 1911. There are no longer etched letters gracing the town mural in loving memory of Mr. Snodgrow, or a bronzed list of those who donated money to build the church hall at St. Joseph's.

For the second time in four months, suspected scrap metal thieves have stolen a bronze statue in Covina, part of a collection of public art funded by a local developer. The theft occurred in front of a bank building late Friday or early Saturday. The thieves apparently used a truck to drag the 300-pound statue until it broke loose from its base, said Sgt. Ray Marquez of the Covina Police Department.

They're stealing this small town's history. The bronze plaques that marked the wheres and noted the whos and whispered the back story of Selma, "raisin capital of the world," are disappearing. Gone are the testaments that an elementary school was a public works project built during the Great Depression and that the women's club has stood since 1911. There are no longer etched letters gracing the town mural in loving memory of Mr. Snodgrow, or a bronzed list of those who donated money to build the church hall at St. Joseph's.

At first, Marc Handler ignored the pickup trucks loaded with scrap metal, machine components and other junk parked on the street outside his North Hollywood home. He hoped they would simply go away. But the number of trucks only increased, from three to as many as 15. Sometimes the clanging and banging would stir Handler from his sleep in the wee hours. "I feel that I am now living in a blighted area full of smashed-up vehicles and piles of scrap metal and junk — an industrial area of workmen and industrial materials, not a neighborhood," said Handler, who lives in a house he bought from his grandparents 20 years ago. "This is in my face every day."

Aging metal detectors at Los Angeles County's Men's Central Jail frequently break down, posing safety concerns for deputies who routinely confiscate weapons that inmates make from scrap metal, sheriff's officials said. "We're stuck with old technology and stuff that breaks down regularly," said Sheriff's Capt. Daniel Cruz, who oversees the jail. Cruz said that of seven machines at the jail, only one is operational at the moment. After a Times inquiry into the faulty machines Wednesday, the Sheriff's Department committed to replacing three of the seven machines.

He had the look. The man wore an orange vest, drove around in a white pickup truck with cones in the back and carried a foot-long "key" for the purpose at hand. That's how Inland Empire investigators allege 45-year-old Brian Burian stole dozens of fire hydrants, cutting them into pieces and then selling them as scrap metal. Police said his luck ran out this week, when Mike Hurst, an 11-year veteran of the West Valley Water District, saw Burian driving on a south Rialto street.

In the smoke and dust along Rue La Saline, at the edge of a rubble-strewn dump, a little man with missing front teeth hammered away at a shattered pillar of concrete. Jean Robert Lemer, 45, had been laboring for hours to extract a piece of the iron rebar that ran through it. But he wasn't making much progress. If he had a hacksaw, he could cut off the exposed metal. But he only had a little household hammer. The sun was taking a toll, searing through a pall of white cement dust and the black smoke of smoldering trash.

For a new three-part PBS special called "The Human Spark," actor and science lover Alan Alda visits a number of far-flung places -- Germany, a Caribbean island, the home of the Lascaux cave paintings -- in pursuit of just what it is that makes us different from the Earth's other creatures. But his scariest moment came from somewhere closer to home: his own mind. For the program's final chapter, on the human brain, Alda was getting an MRI to get a clearer sense of the way the mind works.

From boat level in the Los Angeles Harbor, the mountains of shredded metal at the Hugo Neu-Proler Co. rise high enough to obscure the sunrise for several minutes each morning. It is less the unsightly heaps of former cars, washing machines and iron pipes that concern neighbors and environmentalists, however, than what goes unseen--industrial toxins that have seeped into the soil and washed into the bay during the company's 33 years in the scrap metal business.

Like many entrepreneurs, Nathan Frankel sees money where others see nothing. In the last five years, he has built a $15-million-a-year business selling scrap metal from abandoned appliances, assembly line discards and used car parts. So when Chinese companies offered to pay a 30% premium a few years ago for scrap to feed their booming factories, Frankel jumped at the opportunity.