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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.

Mitt Romney said it himself:  He needs to boost his support among Latinos, or cede the White House to Barack Obama for another four years. Speaking last month at a fundraiser in Palm Beach, Fla., (just within earshot of eavesdropping reporters) the former Massachusetts governor acknowledged the resistance he faces among Latino voters after moving far right during the Republican primaries on immigration and other issues. “If it's not turned around,” said the GOP nominee-to-be, “it spells doom for us.” Romney clearly has some work to do. A new national poll,  conducted for NBC News, the Wall Street Journal and Telemundo, showed him trailing the president 61% to 27% among Latinos.

Two 17-year-old girls have been sentenced for torturing and butchering an elderly woman, less than three weeks after a pair of 10-year-olds were charged with murdering a toddler. Again, a troubled nation is asking, how could this happen? Edna Phillips, 70, was throttled with her dog's leash and stabbed or slashed 86 times. The mental images of the crime have shocked the nation just as the video pictures of little James Bulger being led to his death did last month.

The San Antonio Spurs swept the Clippers in the Western Conference semifinals, but there was no love lost between Tim Duncan and Chris Paul. After the Spurs closed the series, Duncan walked down the hall to say hello to Paul and his 2-year-old son, Chris. Paul prompts little Chris to tell Duncan where he wants to go to college. "To my birthday," little Chris said.  Paul then helps his son out. "Wake Forest," he said.  After little Chris repeated his father's words, Duncan, a Wake Forest alumni, flashed a huge smile.

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.

Los Angeles police will not pursue through the courts scores of motorists with unpaid tickets from the city's defunct red-light camera program. The city Police Commission voted this week to end its contract with the company that operated L.A.'s cameras until they were shut off last summer. And authorities are now planning to reassign a small group of officers who regularly appeared in court to testify in contested photo enforcement cases. With the cancellation of the contract, officers will no longer have easy access to the photo and video evidence that courts require.

Want to fool merchants with a fake ID? Hack someone's text messages? Or how about tracking where your co-workers are, without their knowing it? There's an app for that. The explosion in smartphone and tablet applications that enable people to check the weather, follow their stocks and play Words With Friends has a dark side: apps that facilitate questionable if not outright illegal behavior. Apple's App Store, for example, offers Drivers License software that promises "unlimited access to realistic-looking licenses" for all 50 states.

Staples Center is home to four professional sports franchises, the Lakers, Clippers, Kings and Sparks. Each team has a different set-up on the arena floor. It is up to the crew overseen by the Staples Center operations department to reconfigure the floor for each game. Several times a year they must make the changeover twice or more over one weekend in between games. Last Saturday afternoon, while fans were still heading for the exits after the Clippers' 103-100 loss to the San Antonio Spurs, 65 workers began transforming the arena for the Kings' game against the Calgary Flames that night.

Vertigo. For most people, the word summons images of Jimmy Stewart dangling from high places in Alfred Hitchcock's classic thriller by the same name. It means something else, however, to hundreds of thousands of people who experience the strange, dizzying affliction. The most common cause of vertigo, known as benign paroxysmal positional vertigo, usually can be treated with one visit to the doctor.

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie continued to say he's not sure he's the type to be a vice presidential nominee, but he'd listen if Mitt Romney wanted to talk about it.  Christie, speaking to students at West Windsor-Plainsboro High School North in Plainsboro, N.J., said, “I really have no interest in being vice president,” but his stance appeared to bend the longer he spoke. “But if Gov. Romney called and asked me to sit down and talk to him about it, I'd listen, because I think you owe the nominee of your party that level of respect and who knows what he's going to say?

It's called the fiscal cliff, and Americans are going to drive off it early next year, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office has warned. Since it's never too early to worry about the economy plunging back into recession, let's turn away momentarily from Facebook's IPO and other such matters of import to appreciate the complete lack of responsible leadership coming from our elected representatives in Washington.

Dexter Pittman provided perhaps the ugliest moment in what had already been a pretty testy playoff series between the Miami Heat and Indiana Pacers on Tuesday night. With just 19.4 seconds remaining in the Heat's blowout win, the Miami reserve center went across the lane and delivered a forearm blow to the chin area of Indiana's Lance Stephenson.

Ever want to video chat with a few of your closest friends? How about 11 of them at the same time? That's what video chat service ooVoo offers free through Facebook and a new iPad app. The company, whose name represents two sets of eyes looking at each other, lets users access video chat rooms from the iPhone and Android phone over Wi-Fi, 3G and 4G LTE as well as via Web and desktop apps. The desktop apps allow up to 12-way chat, screen sharing and sharing of files up to 25 megabytes.

Amid all the ballyhoo over what a bold visionary Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is, let's pause for a moment to appreciate the work of Eugene Polley, inventor of the TV remote control, who has died at age 96. Think about it. Before Polley's brainstorm, people actually had to get up out of their seats and cross the room to change TV channels. Simply put, there would be no couch potatoes without this man. I don't mean to be snarky.

Video-on-demand services usually come into play toward the end of a film's life span — either to follow a theatrical run or to take a movie straight to video. For the website Prescreen, however, VOD is the launching pad. Prescreen, which debuted in September, offers users a curated selection of independent films, most available for 60 days and many exclusive to the site. A single film is spotlighted in a daily email, and most rentals cost $2 to $8 for a 48-hour viewing window.

The Clippers were eliminated from the playoffs Sunday evening following a 102-99 loss to the San Antonio Spurs in Game 4 of their Western Conference semifinal series. Even though they were swept out of the postseason, many consider the team's season a success, regularly selling out Staples Center , reenergizing their fanbase and making the playoffs for the first time since 2006. Here's a glimpse of what Coach Vinny Del Negro and the players had to say in their post-game interviews.

Annie Leonard used to spout jargon. She reveled in the sort of geek-speak that glazes your eyeballs. Externalized costs , paradigm shifts , the precautionary principle , extended producer responsibility. That was before she discovered cartoons. Today the 45-year-old Berkeley activist is America's pitchperson for a new style of environmental message. Out with boring PowerPoints and turgid reports; in with witty videos that explain complex issues in digestible terms.

"Caine's Arcade" -- a short film about a 9-year-old boy who built an elaborate cardboard arcade in his dad's used auto parts store in East L.A. -- is one of the sweetest videos we've seen all year. And now it's going viral: The 11-minute video has picked up 1 million views on Vimeo in just two days, and another 438,000 views on YouTube. "Caine is a killer," filmmaker Nirvan Mullick, who directed the video, wrote in a recent tweet. "He has been making thousands of grown men weep at work.

Good form makes for a better workout, and that's one of the keys to ballet-inspired barre workouts. These exercises also increase flexibility and tone the muscles without adding bulk. Pasadena-based fitness expert, video host and teacher Tracey Mallett (www.traceymallett.com) is the founder of Booty Barre, a technique that combines elements of dance, yoga and Pilates to strengthen and stretch the body. No prior experience in any of those disciplines is necessary. Make sure the spine, neck and head are aligned and the movements are slow and deliberate.

Vice President Joe Biden said he and President Obama are "in the same place" on same-sex marriage, just more than a week after his comments on the issue forced the president to hasten his public declaration of support. In an interview with CBS affiliate WTRF during a stop in southeast Ohio on Thursday, Biden reiterated Obama's position that it would be up to each state to "determine for themselves how they're going to treat the issue of marriage. " At the same time, he said everyone is "entitled to the same exact rights.