Bodyguard

The mob-style rub-out of Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel 50 years ago today at the Beverly Hills mansion of his street-wise, auburn-haired mistress has endured as one of Los Angeles' most romanticized murder mysteries.

Whitney Houston is getting a lot of mileage out of her hit movie "The Bodyguard." Last week fans were obviously buying the soundtrack after they saw the movie, since both the album and the love-theme single, "I Will Always Love You," sit atop The Times' Southern California charts. Ice Cube's second-ranked "The Predator" had a strong second week, as did pop-jazz instrumentalist Kenny G, whose album "Breathless" moved up a notch to No. 3.

Every time Luis Moncada blinks, he curses, thanks to the unprintable expletive tattooed onto his eyelids at age 18. A gang member at the time, he was convinced he wouldn't make it to 21 and wanted to deliver this angry message to the world when he was gone. Fourteen years later, Moncada is telling a different kind of story with his eyes. He and his brother Daniel have recurring roles on AMC's "Breaking Bad," where they've spent much of this third season playing silent-assassin types — cartel members from Mexico who've come to kill Walter White ( Bryan Cranston)

As Evander Holyfield flipped through the pages of a children's book with his daughter in the back of a stretch limo, en route to an appointment with a documentary film maker in Hollywood, the people traveling with the heavyweight champion were earning their pay in crisis management. Did Jack Nicholson, as rumored, have flu, they asked via their cell phones. If so, did he still plan to attend Friday night's Laker game against Seattle?

When bodyguards around the nation flocked to San Diego recently, the talk was all about paparazzi, terrorists and the latest tech gizmos, with seminars like "Surviving the Kill Zone ? Human Factors Are the Key. " Guards trained in martial arts showed the latest techniques for subduing nightclub troublemakers, joked about the challenges of guarding celebrities like Paris Hilton and compared notes on the latest technology borrowed from the military. The 29th annual Executive Protection Institute Conference this month came at a time when demand for bodyguards has soared in lockstep with increasing global unrest spurred by wars and economic turmoil and rising public curiosity about the private lives of celebrities.

Four gunmen believed to be Sikh terrorists today assassinated a leading Hindu politician and his bodyguard when their car pulled into a gas station, Punjab state police said. Police said Joginder Pal Pandey, 50, the Punjab general secretary of Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi's governing Congress Party, and his bodyguard, also a Hindu, were slain in Ludhiana city, the Punjab's largest city. The gunmen escaped after opening fire from a white foreign-made car that was following Pandey's car.

Unidentified assailants firing from a speeding car Friday assassinated an army intelligence agent who served as a bodyguard for former military ruler Gen. Augusto Pinochet, police said. Pinochet stepped down from power last March after ruling 16 1/2 years, but remains commander in chief of the army. No one claimed responsibility for the attack.

A bodyguard for Britney Spears must face a battery charge after he scuffled with two men trying to photograph the singer and her young sons at a Las Vegas Strip resort, police said Friday. The bodyguard, Cesar Julio Camera, 37, was accused of grabbing and punching one photographer and pushing another into a wall about 11:30 a.m. Thursday at the spa at the Wynn Las Vegas hotel-casino. Camera was issued a misdemeanor battery summons after the scuffle. No serious injuries resulted, police said.

A bodyguard hired to protect Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) on his current trip to Latin America was arrested on weapons charges hours before Kennedy's plane took off last week. Charles J. Stein Jr., 47, was arrested Jan. 7 when he asked U.S. Capitol police where he could store his automatic weapons and ammunition while he went to Kennedy's office, a police spokesman said Tuesday. Despite the arrest, Stein was allowed to accompany Kennedy on the trip, officials said.