Swarm

The Swarm winged coaster at the United Kingdom's Thorpe Park will take riders through post-apocalyptic scenes of war and destruction when the $29.5 million ride opens in spring 2012. > Photos: The Swarm coaster at Thorpe Park The Bolliger & Mabillard Wing Rider would be the second coaster of its kind in the world following the 2011 debut of Raptor at Italy's Gardaland . Billed as the U.K.'s first winged coaster with riders sitting on either side of the track in a "winged" formation, Swarm has salivating fans eagerly waiting to see if the cutting edge ride is also the U.K.'s first fourth dimension coaster featuring rotating seats (like Six Flags Magic Mountain's X2)

HOUSTON -- Authorities in North Texas searched the homes of a former justice of the peace and his relatives Friday in connection with the killings of a local district attorney, his wife and a top prosecutor. Eric Williams, a former justice of the peace in Kaufman County, was convicted last year of stealing county equipment in a case prosecuted by slain Kaufman County Dist. Atty. Mike McLelland and Assistant Dist. Atty. Mark Hasse. Williams is appealing the conviction. McLelland, 63, was found shot to death at his home near Forney, Texas, about 20 miles east of Dallas on March 30 along with his wife Cynthia, 65. Hasse, 57, was shot and killed on his way to work outside the county courthouse Jan. 31 in Kaufman, about 30 miles southeast of Dallas.

In advance of tonight's vote on President Obama's jobs package, unemployed Americans are gathering outside the Capitol to press for passage, reflecting Occupy Wall Street protests in major cities across the country.  Jobless workers and their supporters are planning a candlelight vigil and prayer at 3 p.m. EDT, several hours before the vote in the Senate. Nearly 100 protesters converged this morning on the Hart Senate office building, chanting in the atrium. ( Watch video below.

As a member of the New Jersey Institute of Technology's Swarm Lab , Simon Garnier studies how living things coordinate their behavior in large groups. The assistant biology professor recently used a swarm of micro-robots to dissect the behavior of invasive Argentine ants (read the robot ant story here ), and has also studied nomadic army ants in the jungles of Panama to observe their extraordinary bridge-building capability. In one of two papers published in PLOS Computational Biology on Thursday, Garnier and colleagues from Princeton University described the mechanics of how army ants use their own bodies to erect a bridges over gaps, allowing their fellow ants to walk over them.

A swarm of 14 earthquakes, the strongest a magnitude 4.3, struck an area near U.S. 395 in Inyo County on Tuesday, Caltech seismologists said. There were no reports of damage or injuries. The strongest of the temblors, all of which were centered four miles southeast of Coso Junction in the volcanic Coso range, occurred at 7:19 a.m. It was followed by three other quakes of magnitudes 3.6, 3.2 and 3.3 within eight minutes. Two other quakes, at 3.4 and 3.1, occurred later in the day.

A swarm of small earthquakes, the strongest magnitude 4.0, rattled an area of the Imperial Valley near the town of Brawley on Friday, the U.S. Geological Survey reported. The first of at least 30 quakes occurred at 10:03 a.m., and the sequence intensified several hours later. A 3.5 quake took place at 4:53 p.m., followed by a 3.0 temblor about half an hour later and a 4.0 quake at 7:04 p.m. Between 5 p.m. and 7 p.m.

The vanguard of Africanized honeybees--sometimes referred to as "killer bees" because of their aggressive behavior--has been positively identified in a Kern County oil field, the state Department of Food and Agriculture announced Wednesday. The species, which began moving northward from South America 30 years ago, has arrived in California several years ahead of the schedule predicted by experts who worry about their impact on agricultural production.

A University of Miami graduate student was attacked and stung to death last week by a swarm of Africanized bees while on a field trip in a Costa Rican jungle, officials said Friday. Inn-Siang Ooi, a 24-year-old Malaysian who was working on his doctorate in biology, died July 31 during a field trip with 11 other students about 100 miles northwest of San Jose.

David Bradley began his relationship with bees nearly 57 years ago in Murray, Neb., a farming town in the heart of the rich Midwestern agricultural belt. A swarm had lit in a neighbor's mulberry hedge. The bees were not unwanted, though. It became a matter of how to capture the swirling throng. Help was sought and David, then 18, volunteered. Very delicately, but with little fear, he approached the hedge and shook the bees into a wooden egg crate.

A swarm of bees attacked an elderly woman who was walking near a high school in Santa Ana and then stung two men who stopped to help her, officials said Thursday. The unidentified woman was walking near Foothill High School at Foothill Boulevard and Old Foothill Road about 7:45 p.m. Wednesday when she was stung 30 to 50 times by the swarm. She was taken to Western Medical Center for treatment. Two men who witnessed the attack were also stung after they ran to help her, said Capt.

A swarm of bees attacked three workers at a golf course in Costa Mesa, authorities said Sunday. Responding firefighters used foam to disperse the bees that attacked the workers who were suspended in a lift about 40 to 50 feet above the ground to work on a tower, according to the fire department. The incident occurred at about 2:30 p.m. The workers suffered multiple bee stings. They were treated and taken to a hospital.  A bee company crew responded to the scene and was able to spray the hive using a ladder.  ALSO: Hiker killed at Eaton Canyon was 17-year-old girl Pain doctor's office raided in prescription drug abuse probe Bauhaus rocker Peter Murphy denies he was drunk when arrested lauren.williams@latimes.com

Early Tuesday morning, Metta World Peace was awakened to a bizarre scenario. "I'm in my underwear and my son says, 'Hey dad, there's police at the door,'" World Peace said in an interview with The Times after the Lakers beat the Boston Celtics on Wednesday evening. "So I jump out, I'm nervous. I see these police with rifles and scopes. "I'm like, 'What happened?' I don't know what's going on at this point. 'What happened, what happened?' And then the police was like, 'The building is being taken over by guys downstairs.'" Apparently the guys downstairs were three actors in a movie that World Peace's company, Artest Media Group, is producing about life on the streets.

Irwin Allen's universe The producer-director was behind these famous disaster flicks and TV series: " Lost in Space" Allen created this 1965-68 CBS series about a stranded space colony family. "The Towering Inferno" This 1974 thriller with Paul Newman and Steve McQueen was a best picture Oscar nominee. "The Swarm" Allen directed this 1978 action-packed monster flick about African bees on the attack.

NEWTOWN, Conn. - Just before 10 a.m. Friday, Robert Licata's wife called in a panic. The Newtown school district had sent an alert to parents. All the schools had been locked down, it said. There were reports of gunfire. Licata's wife, who'd been on her way to the gym, swung by a high school. Nothing. Then she drove to Sandy Hook Elementary, where their 6-year-old son and 7-year-old daughter went to school. That's when she knew. She couldn't even get close - too many police cruisers, too many ambulances.

Allergan Inc. is considering selling its Lap-Band weight-loss unit amid rapidly declining sales and a swarm of negative publicity about patient deaths and a criminal investigation of one of its former customers. Word of the potential sale came the same day Allergan disclosed that Lap-Band revenue fell for the fifth consecutive quarter. Sales from weight-loss products fell to $37.4 million during the third quarter, down 25% from last year and 53% from its peak four years ago. It marks a major turnaround for a product that delivered annual sales of $296 million in 2008 for the Irvine company.

He's only 11. Still, BJ Bae blended in with the thousands of people of Korean heritage who swarmed an Orange County college fair this weekend. He stopped to sign up for a concentration test so "I can know what job might be good for me. " Angela Kim, 10, headed straight for the Stanford University table, then UC Berkeley, then Columbia University. "We have lots of choices," she said confidently. The mothers of both children tagged along, stuffing handbooks into their bags, promising to review them together when they get home.

You could say that the West Valley League baseball opener between Chatsworth and Lake Balboa Birmingham high schools created quite a buzz. Literally. The game was suspended in the top of the first inning Tuesday when bees swarmed the field and eventually locked onto a chain-link fence down the third base line at Chatsworth. Observers found it hard to BEE-lieve. "I've heard of all kinds of cancellations, but never a bee-out," Birmingham Coach Matt Mowry said.

It's never just a simple bear hug when President Obama is involved. For Florida pizza parlor owner Scott Van Duzer, lifting the president off the floor this weekend has wrought an onslaught of impassioned political commentary from customers on Yelp . When Obama on Sunday unexpectedly dropped by Van Duzer's eatery, Big Apple Pizza in Fort Pierce, the registered Republican and Obama supporter was so excited that he swept the commander in...

Ever since hundreds of earthquakes began rippling through southeastern California over the weekend, many asked the question: Could this be a precursor to the Big One? The answer: Probably not - at least, if this swarm of quakes follows past patterns. Certainly, the weekend's quakes were troubling for Imperial County, which is located in one of California's most earthquake prone regions. More than 400 earthquakes have been detected since Saturday evening, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.