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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.

SACRAMENTO — A data breach that jeopardized the personal information of more than 700,000 people has spurred California officials to change the way they transport sensitive material. Packages of payroll data, including Social Security numbers, will be delivered by courier rather than dropped in the mail. And officials are examining ways to transmit encrypted data rather than store it on microfiche. "We're looking to improve the process," said Oscar Ramirez, a spokesman for the California Department of Social Services.

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.

SACRAMENTO - Sensitive personal information for more than 700,000 people who provide or receive home care for the elderly and disabled may have been compromised when payroll data went missing in the mail, state officials revealed Friday night. The breach occurred whenHewlett-Packard, which handles the payroll data for workers in California's In-Home Supportive Services program, was shipping information including Social Security numbers to an office in Riverside last month. The package arrived damaged and incomplete.

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.

Auto leasing deals abound these days, with offers that often seem too good to be true. How about a well-equipped Honda Accord for $250 a month with no down payment or any other drive-off fees? Or better yet, $199 a month for a Chevrolet Malibu? So, what's the catch? There isn't any if you know what you're getting into. There are always details. You need top-tier credit to qualify. You pay a penalty if you turn that Honda in with more than 36,000 miles. And the payment is not $250 a month because of that little matter of tax. It is more like $275, depending on where you live.

Most voters have by now received their sample ballots, and those who plan to vote by mail are sending in their applications. The June 5 election is underway right now. It is noteworthy for several reasons. Los Angeles County voters will be selecting a new district attorney, and this is the first time since 1964 that there is no incumbent trying to hold onto the seat. The field is wide open. To win outright in this nonpartisan race, a candidate must get more than 50% of the vote.

A small wooden cabinet went up for auction on EBay. Inside were two locks of hair, one granite slab, one dried rosebud, one goblet, two wheat pennies, one candlestick and, allegedly, one "dibbuk," a kind of spirit popular in Yiddish folklore. The seller, a Missouri college student named Iosif Nietzke, described the container as a "haunted Jewish wine cabinet box" that had plagued several owners with rotten luck and a spate of bizarre paranormal stunts.

Americans spend billions on hair-care products each year, a remarkable investment for a part of the body with no real function. We clean it, nourish it and style it -- and we definitely mourn its loss. Lots of products and procedures promise to restore thinning or disappearing hair. One especially intriguing option is the HairMax LaserComb, a hand-held laser device that supposedly revives hair follicles.

Lipitor is the most prescribed name-brand drug in America - nearly 3.5 million people take it every day to control their cholesterol. Since the statin entered the market in 1997, it's earned New York-based pharmaceutical giant Pfizer Inc. $81 billion, making it the best-selling prescription drug of all time, according to IMS Health, a Danbury, Conn.-based healthcare information company. So when Lipitor's patent protection came to an end Nov. 30 and a generic alternative became available, an awful lot of patients had a decision to make: Should they stick with the drug they knew or switch to something less expensive?

Election officials have begun sending out vote-by-mail ballots for the June 5 primary. The forms can be requested from county registrars until May 29. But May 21 is the last day to register to vote in this year's primary, which will mark the first widespread use of California's new election system, approved by state voters in 2010. Party primaries are a thing of the past for all but the office of president and for county central committees. This year, all voters will get a single ballot listing every candidate for their congressional and state legislative districts.

Responding to letters to the editor on the dust-up between the Vatican and a group of American nuns, reader Joseph S. David of Brea wrote: "Is it liberal bias that The Times had one columnist and four letter writers castigate the Vatican for its recent call to liberal American nuns to reform, but no one to defend it? "In truth, defense is unnecessary for the offense that is the liberal nuns: flaunting of Roman Catholic doctrines, unfaithfulness to religious vows and a misinterpretation of Vatican II. They forget that when the church's Magisterium (its teaching office)

The Senate passed a bill aimed at salvaging the United States Postal Service, which is hemorrhaging millions of dollars a day as fewer people send letters and conduct business by mail. The legislation would allow the postal service to reduce its pension and retiree benefit costs and pave the way for service changes. The bill passed by a vote of 62 to 37 Wednesday, after two days of voting on amendments. Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), one of the bill's sponsors, said it would put the postal service back on course to financial health.

YouMail recently updated its app to include the ability to easily ditch a telemarketer or stalker's call. It turns out that YouMail will be ditching BlackBerry. The company announced that it will suspend further development for the platform . "This was a tough decision, especially since the BlackBerry is what got us our first million registered users and put us on the map as a company," YouMail said in a blog post. "But over the past year we've seen our BlackBerry audience steadily shrink, with a steady exodus of those users moving to the iPhone and to Android.

A wise man learns from his foe. Democrats have carefully studied Republicans, and now Gov. Jerry Brown may be benefiting. Or maybe not. "Talk to me in a month," says Democratic guru Gale Kaufman, who recommended that Brown emulate the longtime GOP strategy of mailing ballot-measure petitions directly to voters for their signatures. More than 1 million California voters — mainly reliable Democrats — received a Brown blurb at home last week, preceded by a robocall from the governor announcing it was in the mail.

The woman's voice in telephone messages left for singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen was low and steady. "You are a sick man....You are a thief....You are a common thief. " Prosecutors say the voice mails were from Cohen's former business manager, Kelley Lynch, 55, who is on trial for allegedly making harassing phone calls to Cohen, sending him, his attorneys and other people he knew thousands of emails and violating restraining orders. Lynch, sitting next to her attorneys, occasionally smiled as voice mails from 2011 were played for jurors in L.A. County Superior Court on Friday.

Pity the poor Costa Rican postman. Sure, he doesn't have to deal with sleet or snow. But consider what passes for an address here: From the Tibas cemetery, 200 meters south, 300 meters west, cross the train tracks, white two-story house. That's actually a pretty easy one. Making his rounds on the outskirts of this capital city one recent morning, carrier Roberto Montero Reyes pulled envelopes from his canvas sack whose addresses read like treasure-hunt clues or lines of haiku.

On a recent Saturday I got two pieces of mail. One was an advertisement from a hearing aid company to alert "a select few" that a "factory trained" representative would be available for "five days only" to conduct free hearing tests. "Your problem may just be wax!" the flier informed me optimistically. But just in case, I was being offered $1,000 off the purchase of a hearing aid. I already have hearing aids, and I don't need another, so I tossed the ad in the trash. The other piece of mail was the umpteenth reminder from Chase bank, where I have a checking account, that beginning Aug. 15, if I don't sign up for debit card overdraft coverage my debit card purchases will be denied if I don't have sufficient funds.

SACRAMENTO - Political treasurer Kinde Durkee is expected to plead guilty to mail fraud charges and could face up to 12 years in prison for allegedly pilfering more than $7 million from at least 50 candidates and nonprofit groups, according to people close to the case. Durkee is scheduled to appear Friday in federal court in Sacramento to face five counts of mail fraud involving the misuse of campaign accounts for clients including U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.). Federal prosecutors have approved a plea agreement in which they will recommend that the judge consider a sentencing range of 8 to 12 years, said people with knowledge of the deal.