Telephone

It was billed as a "shocking tell-all" and a "world exclusive," but the National Enquirer's March 26 cover story landed with a thud. TMZ, Page Six and other major players in celebrity gossip ignored the article in which a masseur claimed John Travolta offered money for sex. FOR THE RECORD: An earlier version of this article used the term "masseuse"; it should have said "masseur. " Five weeks after the issue left the checkout aisle, a DUI attorney from Pasadena put the anonymous masseur's tawdry tale in a lawsuit and it became an overnight pop culture sensation, topping Google News, trending on Twitter and meriting a segment on "Good Morning America.

SACRAMENTO — Members of the California Public Utilities Commission are criticizing a bill that would strip their agency of authority to regulate basic telephone services. Meeting Thursday in San Francisco, the five-member board expressed doubts about proposed legislation backed by AT&T Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc. The measure, SB 1161, would ensure that state agencies have "no regulatory jurisdiction or control" over telephone calls that involve sending voice signals over the Internet.

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."

After growing up in a rough part of Bellflower, Arturo E. Rodriguez enlisted in the Army soon after high school. Later, deployed to Afghanistan, Rodriguez sometimes drew joking parallels between the conflict he witnessed there and in his hometown. During a firefight last year, he joked with a close friend, an Army buddy from a similar neighborhood in Los Angeles, saying they'd gone "from one war zone to another," the friend said later. Although he was just 19, the baby-faced soldier carried himself like a man several years older, those close to him said.

New figures from Gallup place President Obama's reelection bid in a precarious gray zone between the one-term exit of presidents like George H.W. Bush, and successful second-term victories like those of Bill Clinton and George W. Bush. Combining Obama's job approval rating with several evaluations of public sentiment on the economy, Gallup's indicators show that the president is performing better than he was just a year ago, but his numbers are nonetheless lackluster compared with those of his predecessors.

Rats fed fructose-laced drinking water for six weeks performed more slowly in a maze-navigating task, UCLA researchers have found. (Read this L.A. Times opinion article .) They think the effect is due to changes in the way the brain responds to insulin as a result of exposure to fructose. “Our study shows that a high fructose diet harms the brain as well as the body,” study senior author and UCLA professor Fernando Gomez-Pinilla said in a release about the finding, which was published in the Journal of Physiology (postdoc Rahul Agrawal was first author)

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.

When the X-rated sex comedy " The Telephone Book" was released in 1971, it was called pornographic and obscene. But now, 38 years later, it's considered a neglected masterpiece. You can decide for yourself tonight as the American Cinematheque's Egyptian Theatre screens the risque farce about a woman (Sarah Kennedy) who falls in love with the world's greatest obscene telephone caller. It's the first time the film has played in L.A. since its engagement in 1971 at the old Vogue Theatre.

By offering a device that would identify a caller, we are taking one more step toward the day when our lives are monitored totally by Big Brother. This plan would almost negate the benefits afforded by having an unlisted telephone number and possibly subject telephone users to a rash of unwanted solicitations. I feel that there should be public hearings conducted by the Public Utilities Commission, so that everyone may have the opportunity of airing their opinions and that we are able to carefully weigh all the aspects of such a program.

Saudi Arabia has restricted dialing to more than 50 phone-sex services and is using a new technology to identify and disconnect such calls, an official told the Al Eqtisadiah Arabic-language daily. Saudi Minister of Posts Ali bin Talal Jihani said that tracing the numbers of phone-sex services was a complicated task but that it was worth it to protect Saudi youth.

Chinese authorities Sunday blanketed volatile towns in Inner Mongolia with armed police, blocked Internet and telephone connections, and confined students to their campuses and activists to their homes in an effort to forestall protests scheduled Monday over the death of a Mongolian herder during a confrontation over land use. The killing of the herder, allegedly run over May 10 by truck drivers who were transporting coal across pastoral lands,...

Here is a roundup of alleged cons, frauds and schemes to watch out for. ? Restaurants targeted ?- A man posing as a health inspector has been trying to get credit card information from Los Angeles County restaurant owners, county Supervisor Don Knabe said in a news release. The man has directed restaurant owners to call a telephone number, which has a recording that asks them to input banking information, Knabe said. Los Angeles County health inspectors always present a county-issued photo identification card upon request and will never accept payment for an inspection or charge a fee for a county letter grade, Knabe said.

For tourist information about foreign destinations, contact the government offices below. Several no longer list phone numbers, so information is through their website only. For information about a country not listed, call the United Nations at (212) 963-1234, dial 0 and ask for the number of the country's U.N. mission or delegation. A helpful website is the Tourism Offices Worldwide Directory, http://www.towd.com . Anguilla: Anguilla Tourist Board, (877) 426-4845, http://www.

President Obama prodded besieged Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to "take concrete steps and actions that deliver" on reforms that Mubarak promised in a speech early Saturday to Egyptians, suggesting that continued American support for his regime will depend on immediate action. Obama, describing a candid 30-minute telephone conversation he had with the Egyptian leader shortly after Mubarak's televised address, said protesters' "grievances have built up over time" because Mubarak has failed to address Egyptians' desire for more open government and improved economic opportunities.

Both diabetes and obesity have increased across Los Angeles County in recent years, according to a report released Thursday by the county's Department of Public Health and the American Diabetes Assn. of Los Angeles. The age-adjusted adult diabetes rate increased from 6.6% to 9.1% between 1997 and 2007, according to the new report, "Trends in Diabetes: A Reversible Public Health Crisis. " Of the 650,000 people with diabetes in 2007, the most recent year available, about 90% of those with diabetes in 2007 had Type 2, primarily caused by obesity, according to the report.

John "Jack" Goeken, a prolific entrepreneur who founded telecommunications giant MCI and pioneered in-flight telephone service, has died after a long battle with cancer. He was 80. Goeken died Thursday at a hospital in his hometown of Joliet, Ill., according to Pat Schneider, a close friend and executive vice president of the Goeken Group Corp., a company Goeken founded in Chicago's suburbs after leaving MCI. Goeken is widely viewed as the father of air-to-ground telephone communication.

Small-business owners across America are being courted by big and small telephone service and equipment companies hungry for business in these highly competitive times. It seems that every week business owners are offered new, discounted long-distance calling plans or astonishingly low prices for cellular and other types of telephone equipment. With the price wars raging, now is a great time to re-evaluate your telephone needs to see if there is money to be saved.

A 'Scoop' for today's legislators Re "Patt Morrison Asks / Zev Yaroslavsky: The orchestrator," Column, Sept. 4 I was impressed with Patt Morrison's interview with Zev Yaroslavsky, especially his response to a question about his political hero, Henry "Scoop" Jackson. He praised Jackson's launching of an amendment to encourage Soviet freedom of immigration, saying, "He [Jackson] did it because he thought it was right. " Wouldn't it be great if California legislators followed that path out of the morass the budget is in so frequently?

This summer, we swapped houses for seven weeks with people in France. It was a glorious holiday. Until we bumped into some old friends. Traveling in 2010, they complained, was nothing like the good old days. They were in Paris in the '70s and Prague in the '80s. Those days were the golden era for travelers. Back then, Europe wasn't overrun with Americans in khaki shorts and Crocs, and French radio stations weren't playing the same Lady Gaga song they'd left home to escape. "It was more fun then," one friend said.