Decline

The biggest home in Los Angeles County is ready for a new nickname: The 56,500-square-foot Manor, dubbed Candyland after owner Candy Spelling, has been sold to another wealthy socialite, British heiress Petra Ecclestone, in an all-cash deal for $85 million. As steep as that price is, it's not a record or even close to what Spelling was asking. The priciest Southland home transaction was the 2000 sale of an 8-acre estate in Bel-Air to financial executive Gary Winnick in a deal that included the trade of other land, for a total value of about $94 million.

As cities and schools across California celebrated the 82nd birthday of slain gay rights activist Harvey Milk, Orange County elected leaders remained steadfastly silent. Activists, for the second year, asked Orange County supervisors Tuesday to recognize Milk's birthday with a proclamation, but the board declined the opportunity, as it did last year. One of the supervisors, Janet Nguyen, walked from the board room shortly after the activists began their presentation. Last year, Nguyen also left the meeting as the activists spoke.

"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...

GREENSBORO, N.C. — A federal jury in the political corruption trial of former presidential candidate John Edwards deliberated for a second day Monday without reaching a verdict, as Edwards quietly awaited his fate inside a federal courthouse. The jury of eight men and four women requested seven prosecution exhibits. Among them were emails in 2006 and 2007 that discussed $725,000 provided to Edwards by wealthy heiress and supporter Rachel "Bunny" Mellon, now 101, during Edwards' campaign for the 2008 Democratic nomination.

Gasoline prices are keeping up their record-setting ways. California drivers paid an average of $4.358 for a gallon of regular gasoline, up 6.6 cents from a week earlier, the Energy Department said Monday. That's a fresh record high for this time of year and is 48.4 cents above the year-earlier price. Nationally, the average rose 7.2 cents to $3.793, also a record for this week, according to Energy Department statistics. A year earlier, the average U.S. price was 27.3 cents lower.

BEIJING - "Beijing power struggle heralds end of China Communist Party," screams one headline. More sensational headlines purport to reveal how the wife of recently sacked Politburo member Bo Xilai poisoned an Englishman, who may have been her lover. And if that weren't enough, other stories claim that "Bo planned airline crash" and "slept with more than 100 women. " It's payback time for Chinese exiles, especially those with a printing press, television station or just a computer at their disposal.

Bob Kahl slips in through a side door of the vast, abandoned hangar and looks at what's left of the assembly plant where he worked for nearly 40 years. He remembers the hum of power tools, the biting aroma of cutting oil, swarms of workers plugging away on a labyrinth of yellow scaffolding. All that's left is a few piles of broken concrete and a sea of colorless dust that coats a Palmdale factory floor the size of two football fields. "Welcome to the birthplace of America's space shuttle fleet," said Kahl, 60, smiling.

Despite the wince factor associated with the news last week that a paintball caused a British woman's breast implant to explode, paintball injuries have actually fallen in the United States. The federal government says that hospital emergency visits due to air and paintball guns fell 20% from 2006 to 2008. The numbers don't indicate why paintball injuries may be declining, but there is more awareness about injury prevention these days. According to the stats , from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, most injuries occur in males and people under age 17. More than 25% were in kids ages 10 to 14. Low-income children and adults are more likely than higher-income people to be treated for paintball and air gun injuries.

The Dodgers on Tuesday declined club options for next season on third baseman Casey Blake and pitcher Jon Garland. The moves were expected. Blake's season ended with a neck operation and Garland's with shoulder surgery. Blake's option was for $6 million and Garland's for $8 million. The Dodgers will pay Blake a $1.25-million buyout and Garland $500,000. Both players will become free agents five days after the end of the World Series. The Dodgers also removed record-breaking utility man Eugenio Velez from their 40-man roster and demoted him to triple-A Albuquerque.

U.S.-based companies raised $6.3 billion through 717 venture capital deals during the first quarter of 2012, an 18% decline in capital and 9% decline in deals compared with the same period last year, according to Dow Jones VentureSource. "The declines were pretty evenly spread across industries so there weren't any big winners or big losers in the quarter, but there were some surprises. Investment in consumer Internet companies fell after two exceptional investment years, while the IT industry fared well thanks to strong interest in software start-ups," said Jessica Canning, global research director for Dow Jones VentureSource.

Dear Mom: It's always been impossible to buy you a gift for Mother's Day or any other occasion, because there's so little you ever wanted or needed, and how many flannel nightgowns can any woman use? There must be half a dozen stores within 10 miles of your house where you set records for returning gifts from family members. And so we switched to flowers, which even the Queen of Returns can't give back. I hope they've arrived by now. But here's a little something extra.

When Austin Beutner entered the mayor's race last year, it looked like the wealthy former investment banker and onetime city jobs czar might give the Los Angeles business community its best chance in years at regaining influence at City Hall. His abrupt exit from the campaign this week after struggles with fundraising and a poor showing in the polls highlights the decline of political power that was once wielded by the city's business elite. That weakening comes as the business sector's traditional rivals - organized labor and environmental activists - are enjoying increasing influence.

Continuing its uncanny ability to surf from one blockbuster hit to another, Activision Blizzard Inc. posted first-quarter revenue and profit that exceeded Wall Street's expectations, thanks in large part to the success of Skylanders: Spyro's Adventure, a popular children's game with a suite of collectible physical toys. Still, the Santa Monica games giant's net income for the quarter that ended March 31 dropped 23.7% to $384 million, or 33 cents a share, from $503 million, or 42 cents a share a year earlier.

WASHINGTON - The number of U.S. satellites watching Earth is expected to plummet by 2020, and weather forecasting, including hurricane tracking, could suffer as a result, a new report warns. The study, released last week by the nation's top science advisors, estimated that the fleet of science satellites operated by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration would "decline precipitously" from a peak of 110 probes last year to fewer than 30 in 2020. The drop is a result of several factors, including budget problems and rocket accidents, and scientists said the United States risked blurring its vision of Earth if it did not act quickly to replace satellites expected to die during the next eight years.

The number of eligible California high school graduates entering the state's public four-year universities has plunged in the last five years, as budget-strapped institutions increasingly adopt practices to reduce enrollment, a new study has found. At University of California and California State University campuses, enrollment rates dropped by one-fifth, to fewer than 18% of all state high school graduates in 2010, from about 22% in 2007. The report, released Wednesday by the Public Policy Institute of California, found that these declines have occurred even as demand has risen: The number of high school graduates in California reached an all-time high of 405,000 in 2010; the number of seniors who completed college admission requirements increased dramatically, as did the number of students taking and passing Advanced Placement exams.

FORT LUPTON, COLO. - Before President Obama announced "I think same-sex couples should be able to get married" in an interview with ABC News, presumptive GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney declined comment on the matter Wednesday when asked about it by reporters. “Not on the ropeline,” he said while shaking supporters' hands after an energy-themed event here. Gay marriage is a hot topic this week. North Carolinians overwhelmingly voted Tuesday in favor of a state constitutional amendment defining marriage as between one man and one woman.

One in five high school students in the U.S. is still smoking, and the rate of decline in smoking has slowed, according to a new report released Thursday from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Smoking rates among high school students slowed dramatically from the late 1990s through the early 2000s. But those rates of decline decreased more gradually from the early to late 2000s. The CDC analyzed data from the National Youth Risk Behavior Survey of high school students in public and private schools in all states and the District of Columbia.

The number of U.S. movies showing people smoking has declined since 2005, but cigarettes still feature in far too many films and could be influencing young people to take up the habit, according to a report released Thursday. The report's authors recommended that movie ratings also consider whether the film depicts smoking and suggested that strong advertisements about the dangers of smoking precede movies that show tobacco use. "The results of this analysis indicate that the number of tobacco incidents peaked in 2005, then declined by approximately half through 2009, representing the first time a decline of that duration and magnitude has been observed," the team at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, UC San Francisco and elsewhere wrote.

PITTSBURGH - Rick Santorum dropped his presidential bid nearly a month ago, so his meeting here Friday with presumptive GOP nominee Mitt Romney would have seemed like the perfect opportunity to offer Romney his endorsement. But even before the 90-minute meeting took place, everyone knew that no such nod would be coming anytime soon. Santorum, like pretty much everyone else who has run in the Republican presidential contest, has embraced the party's standard-bearer with a stiff arm. Of course they will work to defeat President Obama, they say. Yet few have been willing to get behind their party's winner with anything approaching enthusiasm.