Aged

Two 17-year-old girls have been sentenced for torturing and butchering an elderly woman, less than three weeks after a pair of 10-year-olds were charged with murdering a toddler. Again, a troubled nation is asking, how could this happen? Edna Phillips, 70, was throttled with her dog's leash and stabbed or slashed 86 times. The mental images of the crime have shocked the nation just as the video pictures of little James Bulger being led to his death did last month.

In the end, the mountain lion was probably looking for a place to call his own. Scientists believe the male mountain lion roamed his way down the Santa Monica Mountains early Tuesday, likely following a runoff channel. When daylight broke, he found himself in the middle of the city and scared. The lion was 3, and experts said that was the age to carve out his own territory. "These young guys are looking for a home of their own," said Jeff Sikich, a biologist with the National Park Service.

"Oh, you mean the guy with the 70-year-old head and the 20-year-old body-builder body? That picture has got to be Photoshopped." Dr. Jeffry Life smiles when I tell him about the general reaction I get about the famous picture of him with his shirt off, the shot that turned a mild-mannered doctor in his mid-60s into a poster boy for super-fit aging and controversial hormone replacement Appearing in medical-clinic ads in airline magazines and...

When he stayed at the Beverly Hills Hotel, the famously reclusive Howard Hughes would have roast beef sandwiches left for him in a crook of a tree, go on 2 a.m. treasure hunts for freshly baked pineapple upside-down cakes that were hidden on the grounds, and keep a phone booth inside his bungalow. "They'd switch different booths in and out of different bungalows because he [Hughes] didn't want to go through the hotel operator," says producer Richard D. Zanuck, who was told about Hughes by his father, 20th Century Fox co-founder Darryl F. Zanuck, also a frequent visitor to the picturesque pink hotel.

So how many omega-3 fatty acids are enough — and how should you get them? That likely depends on your age and your specific health concerns. The United States does not yet have guidelines for DHA or EPA, and consensus among nutrition experts is elusive. But specialty groups, some governmental agencies and individual experts have started to take a stand. For healthy adults without major medical issues, the European Food Safety Agency recommends a daily dose of 250 milligrams of combined EPA and DHA, while the National Heart Foundation of Australia suggests 500 milligrams.

Hard-core Harry Potter fans who devoured the books, camped out for the movies and trekked through the theme park now have a new way to relive the boy wizard's adventures. PHOTOS: Making of Harry Potter studio tour Debuting Saturday, the Making of Harry Potter behind-the-scenes tour at theWarner Bros.studios in England will let wizards, mudbloods and muggles pull back the curtain on the movie-making secrets of the most successful film series of all time. Located 20 miles outside of London, the three-hour self-guided tour will take visitors past sets, props, costumes, models and special effects exhibits from the eight "Harry Potter" movies.

Helen Jones sits in a wheelchair, surrounded by strangers who control her life. She is not allowed to answer the telephone. Her mail is screened. She cannot spend her own money. A child of the Depression, Jones, 87, worked hard for decades, driving rivets into World War II fighter planes, making neckties, threading bristles into nail-polish brushes. She saved obsessively, putting away $560,000 for her old age.

Macular degeneration, a leading cause of blindness in the elderly, appears to be yielding to new laser treatments that seal off destructive blood vessels behind the retina. Although doctors caution that the treatments do not offer a cure, they say the therapies have in many cases arrested the downward course of a disease that ordinarily robs people of their sight. Next month, the U.S.

Do middle-aged men smell worse than everyone else? Shoji Nakamura, chief perfumer with Japan's exclusive cosmetics firm, Shiseido, certainly thinks so. And he's out to change that. Nakamura, whose million-dollar nose is reputedly able to distinguish among some 2,000 different odors, says he first noticed a distinctive smell among middle-aged and older men in 1987 and spent the next decade thinking about it. "I'm very interested in body odor," he says.

Men over the age of 75 should no longer be screened for prostate cancer because the potential harm from the test results -- both physical and psychological -- outweighs any potential benefit from treatment, a federal panel said Monday. Most oncologists already argue against treating most men in that age group for prostate cancer because they are more likely to die from some other cause than from their tumor.

OKLAHOMA CITY -- Andrew Bynum was right. Close-out games can be easy. The Oklahoma City Thunder stepped all over the Lakers in the fourth quarter of their 106-90 Game 5 victory Monday night at Chesapeake Energy Arena, ending the Lakers' season yet again in the Western Conference semifinals. It wasn't as bad as last season's 36-point blowout loss in Dallas, and there won't be any carry-over suspensions for next season, but the two-championship run the Lakers put together couldn't have seemed any further in the past.

Like a bad love affair, they kept it a secret from their families as long as they could. Because in 2012, who can admit the thing they want more than anything in the world is to open a bookstore? Now they know. Pop-Hop Books & Print is holding its grand opening on Sunday with readings, music, printing and refreshments. Located in Highland Park on a stretch of York Boulevard that sparkles with new shops and restaurants, the store is a celebration of books as print artifact, with used literary and art books for sale and, tucked behind movable shelves, a screen-printing salon.

OK, so I recognize that guy. Of course, absolutely, that's him. Still clutch, still fearless, still talented enough to throw his aging body in front of a defeat and almost single-handedly stop it, spin it on its axis, and turn it into a victory. Yeah, Kobe Bryant is still the one. Two days after giving away a second-round playoff game against the Oklahoma City Thunder, Bryant grabbed one back for the Lakers on Friday night, controlling the momentum and creating the magic that gave the Lakers a 99-96 home victory in Game 3. With memories of Bryant's fourth-quarter collapse Wednesday still fresh, Bryant scored 14 points in this fourth quarter to give the Lakers new life, if only for 24 hours.

OKLAHOMA CITY - Is it over? It's just the first game in two weeks' worth of them, the earliest hours in a brawl that could last all day, but I know what everyone is thinking, so we might as well ask it. Is this first punch a knockout punch? How on earth can the Lakers peel themselves off the floor to win four of the next six games against an Oklahoma City team that just beat them by 29 points, two dozen sprints, a dozen floor burns, six dunks, five tongue-wagging celebrations, and one glaring Derek Fisher?

As self-consciously precocious teens go, the high schooler at the center of"Girl in Progress"is an exceptionally contrived example. But contrivance is the engine of this young-adult comedy, which pretends to deconstruct storytelling clichés while never really transcending them. The transparent postmodern manipulation of Hiram Martinez's screenplay revolves around Ansiedad (Cierra Ramirez), responsible daughter to an aimless mother, Grace (Eva Mendes), who had her when she was just a teen herself.

With one high-profile haircut on the Paramount Studios lot, Vidal Sassoon vaulted to fame in Hollywood. Flown in from London, he trimmed the tresses of Mia Farrow for her role in the film "Rosemary's Baby" - a $30 haircut that he calculated cost $5,000, including airfare. The 1967 event was staged inside a makeshift "salon" in a boxing ring. The film's director, Roman Polanski, looked on as Sassoon gave the actress a pixie cut that would be copied by women the world over.

Age is just a number. But for men, that number says a lot about what's going on in their bodies. Starting at about age 30, men start producing less testosterone, the hormone that helps spark sex drive, build muscle and stoke energy, ambition and aggression. In short, it helps men feel manly. For all of the talk about "male menopause," the loss of testosterone isn't anything like the hormonal nose dive that women go through. Instead of essentially disappearing all at once, testosterone levels usually decline by about 1% every year (although they can drop more dramatically, especially if a man becomes ill)

Charles Barnes, the 92-year-old Glendale man who was barred from seeing his 84-year-old sweetheart, has won the right to visit her at will. Barnes had eloped with Constance Driscoll and brought her to his home in Glendale. He was cited for contempt for violating court orders that she not be moved from a residential care facility in Northern California.

WASHINGTON - Days before Christmas 2010, Congress was in a foul mood. Republicans had just swept the midterm elections, but Democrats were intent on finishing the year with a landmark lame-duck session on President Obama's top priorities. One measure, a revamped nuclear nonproliferation treaty with Russia, faced Republican opposition and an uncertain fate. Key GOP leaders opposed it. But Sen.Richard G. Lugarof Indiana, the party's elder statesman on foreign policy issues, was in favor.

That stereotypical image of the American teenager glued to the phone needs an update. A new study from the Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project found that 37% of Internet users ages 12 to 17 participate in video chats using such applications as Skype, Google Talk and iChat - and girls are more likely to engage in them than boys. "As more and more devices in our lives have video capabilities - as laptops and computers come with built-in video cameras, and many smartphones have cameras that allow for video chatting, for taking videos - teens are taking advantage of that," said Amanda Lenhart, senior research specialist with Pew Research Center.