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washington -- Mitt Romney twice emphasized his unique business background when he and eight other Republican presidential candidates faced off in a debate last week in Iowa. "I've spent the last, as I've told you, 25 years in the private sector," former Massachusetts Gov. Romney declared at one point. "I understand why jobs come and why jobs go. I've done business in 20 countries."

Hewlett-Packard Co., battered by declining profits and tech rivals with flashier hand-held devices, is slashing 27,000 jobs, or 8% of its workforce. The Silicon Valley tech firm, one of the world's largest computer makers with nearly 325,000 employees, said the job reductions - through layoffs and a voluntary early retirement program - would occur by the end of fiscal 2014. The cuts are expected to save the company $3 billion to $3.5 billion annually. "Workforce reductions are never easy," Chief Executive Meg Whitman said in a call with analysts.

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.

Shaquille O'Neal, a four-time member of NBA championship teams, may be adding another job to his basketball resume. O'Neal will meet with Orlando Magic officials next week to talk about becoming the team's new general manager, according to ESPN. It's a long shot considering that O'Neal has no front-office experience. But hey, the man is an honorary U.S. marshal who received a doctorate earlier this month from Barry University. He's definitely driven. O'Neal spent four seasons in Orlando after the Magic selected him with the top overall pick in 1992.

First of three parts Tiffany Lee wanted a car. She was weary of the two-hour bus ride to her job at a UCLA Health System clinic. She hated having to ask friends to drive her 7-year-old son to his asthma treatments. But as a single mother with three children, bad credit and a $27,000-a-year salary, she couldn't find a bank or dealership willing to give her a loan. Then a friend steered her to Repossess Auto Sales in Hawthorne. Another buyer might have balked at the deal she was offered.

"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...

What are the advantages and disadvantages of using the supplement nitric oxide? Richard Sunland Nitric oxide is a gas naturally found in the body; its function is conveying information between cells. One of its main jobs is increasing blood flow by dilating blood vessels, and that's why it's sometimes given in supplement form to heart patients, orally and intravenously. In at least one study it's been shown to be effective for lowering blood pressure.

As warehouses go, there are few like Skechers USA Inc.'s new 1.82-million-square-foot distribution center. This warehouse is so big that it takes half a minute to drive from one end to the other at 60 miles per hour. The setup is so advanced that human hands will hardly touch the cargo as it is unpacked, categorized, stacked and prepared for delivery. The building is so green that it uses prevailing winds for ventilation instead of air conditioning. For its new North American operations warehouse, the nation's No. 2 footwear company chose the Inland Empire's Moreno Valley.

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.

Moving to deliver on their promise to create thousands of jobs with proceeds from a voter-approved tax for transportation projects, Los Angeles County officials Thursday approved a sweeping employment program. Officials say it will dramatically increase the number of workers hired from communities near upcoming transit projects expected to cost at least $10 million. Special attention will be given to applicants who live in areas of high unemployment. "We are demonstrating that we are serious about job creation and job opportunity, and jobs that are good-paying jobs with benefits that support families," said county Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas, who is also on the Metropolitan Transportation Authority board that approved the measure, 11 to 1. The opposing vote came from Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich, who said he preferred studying a limited system before expanding.

Hewlett-Packard Co., the world’s largest PC maker, will cut 27,000 jobs, or about 8 percent of its staff, by 2014 to bring down costs and make the company more competitive in a changing marketplace. The move comes as consumer demand for the company's PCs plummets, and shifts toward tablets and smartphones. The Palo Alto company also reported second quarter earnings of $1.59 billion, or 80 cents a share. That’s down from last year’s $2.3 billion, or $1.05 a share.

Justin Timberlake has taken to Twitter to scold some paparazzi after a run-in with photographers allegedly left his friend and business partner Trace Ayala's car door dented. According to Timberlake, a frustrated photographer kicked Ayala’s truck Tuesday afternoon after failing to snap photos of the singer and actor. In addition to reprimanding the paparazzi, Timberlake also offered some career advice, telling overzealous photographers to “get a real job.

A presidential campaign is never just two people slugging it out on the national stage. It is always a battle of narratives, and the struggle, when all is said and done, is over which candidate can craft the most persuasive story. For Mitt Romney, the story is about a businessman with sterling credentials and a profound knowledge of how jobs are created, facing off against a nice guy who is in over his head, has no idea how to fix the economy and is spending the country into oblivion.

General Mills Inc. will get rid of 850 jobs in an attempt to cut costs and boost productivity as items such as Cheerios cereal, Progresso soups and Hamburger Helper become costlier to make. The downsizing will affect 2.4% of the Minneapolis company’s workforce of 35,000 people. Including employee severance, General Mills expects $109 million in pretax restructuring charges. Of that, $94 million will be recorded in the fourth quarter, which ends May 27.

The Los Angeles City Council passed a $7.2-billion budget Monday, voting to cut 400 unfilled city staff positions but putting off difficult decisions on layoffs, park funding and Fire Department resources. On a 15-0 vote, council members agreed to wait until January to determine whether layoffs are necessary, and which positions could be eliminated, saying that more study is needed. They took that step despite a warning from the city's top budget official that some of the revenue being used to balance spending isn't a sure thing.

If success had dulled the Kings' memory of what it felt like to lose, if eliminating the Vancouver Canucks in five games, sweeping the St. Louis Blues and taking the first three games of the Western Conference finals against the Phoenix Coyotes had made them forget how deeply a defeat can sting, it all came back to them Sunday afternoon. On the day they could have clinched a berth in the Stanley Cup finals, they instead had to pack for another trip to the desert to face a team that rediscovered its identity in a scrappy 2-0 victory at Staples Center.

Hollywood High School keeps its doors open 12 months a year to ease overcrowding. The year-round schedule allows the campus to run hundreds more students through its cramped classrooms. It also chips away at their education. Teachers skip pages of material, assign less homework and give fewer tests because their school year has been slashed by 17 days. Hundreds of pupils take the Stanford 9 exam shortly after returning from an eight-week vacation.

Just after 6 one recent morning, Los Angeles Trade Technical College appeared abandoned but for a light shining through an open door on the northwest side of the downtown campus. Inside, several dozen students, all men, leaned against their lockers and shot the breeze, welding helmets in hand. At 6:50 a.m. sharp, the door at the front of the room swung open, and Lisa Legohn appeared, hair tied back, thick plastic glasses over her eyes, her name stitched in gold across her jacket.

LAFAYETTE, La. - Visitors to this oil town might be forgiven for wondering whether the BP oil spill and subsequent drilling moratorium ever happened. "Now hiring" signs are plastered on billboards around town, and hotels such as the Crowne Plaza are chock full of seminars training students to work on offshore rigs. Many offshore companies can't find enough workers for the jobs they're listing. This parish has the lowest unemployment rate in Louisiana, 4.8%. Such is the opportunity on the offshore rigs that Sheila Clark, whose husband, Donald, died in the Deepwater Horizon explosion two years ago, said her 22-year-old son recently asked her how she'd feel if he went to work on a rig. "I can't stop him," said Clark, who moved to Baton Rouge after her husband's death.

College graduation is typically a time to tally accomplishments and to look ahead. But for many graduates, it is also a time to tally student loans and figure out how to repay them. About two-thirds of college graduates have some student loans to pay off, and their average debt is about $25,000 to $28,700, according to estimates by education experts and organizations. (About 10% of those with loans owe more than $50,000 or so.) Many college seniors say they had not thought much about their debt until they received summaries just before graduation.