Land

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.

WASHINGTON — Rusty Hardin, lead attorney for Roger Clemens, got the former pitcher's chief accuser to admit to a series of lies in a day of aggressive cross examination, but did not undermine his credibility with a single grand stroke. Clemens is on trial for perjury, accused of lying to Congress about his use of performance enhancing drugs. Brian McNamee, a former trainer who worked closely with Clemens, admitted that in 2007 he lied to federal agent Jeff Novitzky and the Mitchell Commission, which was investigating performance-enhancing drugs in baseball.

If you think Bluetooth is a rare dental condition and an app is what you eat before the entree, you might not be a candidate for today's high-tech, whiz-bang smart phones. Instead, you might be happier with a mobile phone geared toward seniors. Those phones typically don't have Web-surfing capability, GPS maps and video games. Instead they have large buttons, oversized digital readouts and hearing-aid compatibility, along with a relatively simple calling plan. Although senior-friendly phones aren't new, their lower prices and variety are. A recent price skirmish among wireless companies means seniors can get an easy-to-use cellphone and cheap service to go with it, said Mac Haddow, senior fellow on public policy for the independent and nonprofit Alliance for Generational Equity.

Is citizenship a commodity, to be bought and sold when the price is right? Eduardo Saverin, co-founder of Facebook, thinks so. After becoming an American 14 years ago, he has traded his citizenship in the country that helped make him rich for the low-cost Singapore product. According to the New York Times, he denies making the switch for pecuniary reasons, but it's hard to believe. He stands to gain $4 billion from Facebook's imminent public offering, which has to make Singapore tax laws enticing.

When the White House sent a last-minute invitation for Asif Ali Zardari to attend the two-day NATO summit, they were taking a highly public gamble. Would sharing the spotlight with President Obama and other global leaders induce the Pakistani president to allow vital supplies to reach alliance troops fighting in Afghanistan? But long before the summit ended Monday, the answer was clear: No deal. Zardari's refusal to reopen the supply routes left a diplomatic blot on a summit that NATO sought to cast as the beginning of the end of the conflict in Afghanistan.

J. Paul Reddam might not be the type of businessman for whom people suffering through the recession can bring themselves to root. Reddam, 56, is president of Anaheim-based CashCall, the mortgage refinancing and high-interest personal loan company who critics say has unfairly capitalized upon people's financial woes during the country's economic and employment crisis. But the Sunset Beach resident is also owner of Kentucky Derby winner I'll Have Another, who could provide horse racing with a huge shot in the arm Saturday with a victory in the Preakness Stakes at Pimlico.

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.

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.

For more than 20 years, a retired judge and his lawyer wife trespassed on a vacant lot next door to their home. They planted a garden there and stacked their firewood. They say they held parties there and walked the land so often they wore a path in the grass. Last year, Richard McLean and Edith Stevens claimed the land as their own under Colorado's adverse possession law, once known as squatters' rights.

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.

CADIZ, Calif. - Three decades ago a group of businessmen pored over NASA satellite imagery as part of a worldwide hunt for large groundwater reserves they could tap to grow desert crops. They found the signs they were looking for here in the sun-blasted mountain ranges and creosote-freckled valleys of the Mojave Desert, 200 miles east of Los Angeles. The group, which founded Cadiz Inc., bought old railroad land, drilled wells and planted neat grids of citrus trees and grapevines, irrigating them with water that bubbled out of the desert depths at the rate of 2,000 gallons a minute.

If you can't decide between a European tour and a transatlantic cruise this year, YMT Vacations offers a fall trip that combines both. It starts with four days in Amsterdam touring the canals, the Skinny Bridge and a diamond factory.  From there it's on to the German cities of Bremen and Hamburg, before hopping a ferry to Denmark. After seeing the Little Mermaid and other landmarks in Copenhagen, the 14-day transatlantic cruise on the Norwegian Sun begins. Ports of call include Lisbon and Funchal, Madeira, before arrival in Miami.

At times"God Bless America"feels more like an assault weapon than a movie, possibly an AK-47. This funny, sick twist of social satire is certainly locked and loaded, even if its aim is sometimes off. The central character is Frank (Joel Murray), a vigilante of virtue who targets the irritants of modern times - reality TV stars, bratty teens, people who check cellphones in movies and a judge on a talent show who sounds a lot like Simon Cowell. The commentary that runs through Frank's head is accompanied by a ton of blood and guts splattered all over the place because, frankly, writer-director Bobcat Goldthwait has a lot he wants to get off his chest.

Dino Land theme park in China recently unveiled the $20-million Dinoconda , a thrilling fourth-dimension roller coaster with independently rotating seats. PHOTOS: Dinoconda 4-D coaster at China's Dino Land Located in Changzhou about two hours west of Shanghai, the Chinese park known as the "Jurassic Park of the East" features roller coasters, thrill rides and attractions themed to dinosaurs and mythical creatures. The mechanically complex coaster boasts wing-shaped vehicles with seats that rotate head over heels, both forward and backward.

Already the largest cable television provider in Los Angeles, Time Warner Cable Inc. now wants to become the dominant sports programmer in the region. On Oct. 1, the New York company will launch two regional sports networks: Time Warner Cable SportsNet and Spanish-language network Time Warner Cable Deportes. The cable operator has shelled out billions of dollars to snag the Los Angeles Lakers away from Fox Sports West and now has its eye on the Dodgers too. The company is tired of being held hostage by high-priced sports channels and has decided to stop fighting the competition and begin imitating it. The cable operator, which has about 2 million subscribers in Southern California, is taking steps to cut out the middle man. That middleman is News Corp., parent of local cable channels Fox Sports West and Prime Ticket and a formidable opponent.

The Dodgers' new owners will pay $14 million per year to rent the parking lots from an entity half-owned by Frank McCourt, according to land-use documents intended to "facilitate the orderly development" of the property surrounding Dodger Stadium. The potential uses for the property include shops and restaurants, homes and offices, and another sports venue, according to documents obtained Friday by The Times. The documents also discuss the possibility of parking structures on the land.

Ill Fares the Land Tony Judt Penguin Press: 238 pp., $25.95

In the Land of Believers An Outsider's Extraordinary Journey Into the Heart of the Evangelical Church Gina Welch Metropolitan: 334 pp., $25

KABUL, Afghanistan — Putting a symbolic seal on a long and brutal conflict, President Obama made a dramatic overnight visit to the Afghan capital, signing an accord meant to offer assurances that the United States is not abandoning Afghanistan but also acknowledging that the massive Western military presence is coming to a close. After landing on a darkened runway late Tuesday night, Obama rushed to the heavily fortified presidential palace of Afghan President Hamid Karzai to sign a strategic partnership accord that sets the broad outlines of U.S. engagement for a decade beyond the completion of NATO's combat role in 2014.

May 4 The Avengers A team of superheroes including Iron Man, Captain America, the Hulk and Thor unite to save the world. With Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Mark Ruffalo and Chris Hemsworth. Written and directed by Joss Whedon. In Imax 3-D. WaltDisney Pictures The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel A group of British retirees travel to India to spend their golden years at a newly restored hotel but find the accommodations to be less than palatial. With Judi Dench, Bill Nighy, Dev Patel and Tom Wilkinson.