Tunnels

U.S. and Canadian authorites weren't taking any chances Thursday: They temporarily closed an underwater tunnel linking the two nations after a bomb threat was phoned in to officials in Canada. The Detroit-Windsor Tunnel -- the world's only underwater vehicular tunnel that runs through an international border -- was closed about 2 p.m. Thursday afternoon. No bomb was detected, however, and the tunnel was expected to be reopened in both directions for evening rush hour, officials said.

As authorities in Yuma, Ariz., on Thursday announced the discovery of a significant cross-border drug tunnel, a federal expert on such passageways discussed the significance of the find -- as well as the cat-and-mouse game of border drug smuggling. Lauren Mack, a spokeswoman for Immigration and Customs Enforcement in San Diego, told the Los Angeles Times that 156 tunnels have been uncovered along the United States' southwestern border with Mexico since the early 1990s. Three out of four were discovered after 2001, the majority of which were incomplete.

SAN LUIS, Ariz. - The powerful Sinaloa drug cartel is believed to be behind one of the most sophisticated and well-engineered smuggling tunnels ever found along the U.S.-Mexico border, according to U.S. drug enforcement officials who announced the discovery Thursday in Yuma. The “fully operational” tunnel is a 755-foot passageway, tall enough for a 6-foot person to walk through, that burrows under the border fence, a park and a water canal. It connects a small, nondescript warehouse on the U.S. side to an inoperative ice manufacturing plant behind a strip club in Mexico.

WASHINGTON - Responding to an increase in smuggling tunnels along the California and Arizona borders, the House on Wednesday passed legislation aimed at helping law enforcement combat underground drug trafficking. In a rare bipartisan vote, the House overwhelmingly approved the Border Tunnel Prevention Act. President George W. Bush in 2006 signed legislation making it a federal crime to build or finance a cross-border tunnel to smuggle drugs, illegal immigrants and weapons.

Los Angeles County transportation officials set the stage Thursday for a showdown with Beverly Hills leaders over a small portion of the much-anticipated Westside subway extension. Officials on Thursday certified environmental documents for the entire $5.6-billion project, moving a step closer to construction of nine miles of rail that would mostly run underneath Wilshire Boulevard. But the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority board only formally approved the first 3.9 miles of the project — as far west as La Cienega Boulevard — because of a request for a hearing from the city of Beverly Hills, where many school officials and city leaders hope to derail efforts to build part of the line underneath Beverly Hills High School.

The $26-million OzIris roller coaster at Parc Asterix will dive underwater in front of a sorcerer's temple as part of the French theme park's new Egyptian-themed land. PHOTOS: OzIris inverted coaster at Parc Asterix Debuting April 7, the Bolliger & Mabillard inverted coaster's elaborate Egyptian themes include an obelisk monument, pictogram carvings and sphinx statues that maintain the characteristic humor of Asterix, a popular French comic book and the theme park's titular character.

Pressure is mounting on the California Department of Transportation to sell 460 homes it acquired decades ago in Pasadena, South Pasadena and El Sereno to make way for an extension of the 710 Freeway that has been stalled ever since. But officials say it could be years before any decision is made on the properties. Caltrans bought the homes in the 1950s, '60s and '70s to accommodate plans to extend the northern end of the Long Beach Freeway from Alhambra, where it ends now, to the Foothill Freeway in Pasadena.

On Wall Street, it's 2008 again. But what year is it on your street? Even with Friday's sell-off, major stock market indexes are up from 5% to 11% this year, lifting the Dow Jones industrial average back to where it was in the spring of 2008. If only we could say the same for the housing market. In 2008, the median home price in Southern California was $340,000. Home prices are still nowhere close to that level and, in fact, continue to fall. The median annual price in 2011 was $280,000.

The sudden death of Kim Jong Il is forcing North Korea's prosperous southern neighbor to confront a class divide deep in its midst. People like Son Jeong Hun, a defector from the north struggling to fit in amid modern, bustling Seoul, hope the dictator's demise signals a light at the end of the tunnel for their backward homeland. Others such as South Korean-born Kim Chi-guk, who sells imported chocolate at an exclusive department store, are afraid a train is barreling straight for them — maybe bristling with weapons, maybe jammed with millions of unwashed cousins who will cost them a lot of money.

California's proposed bullet train will need to soar over small towns on towering viaducts, split rich farm fields diagonally and burrow for miles under mountains for a simple reason: It has no time to spare. In the fine print of a 2008 voter-approved measure funding the project was a little-noticed requirement that trains be able to rocket from Union Station in downtown Los Angeles to San Francisco in no more than two hours and 40 minutes. It was an aggressive goal, requiring cutting-edge technology, and was originally intended to protect the sanctity of the bullet train concept from political compromise.