MTV

Mario Lopez, right, is a longtime friend of Manny's.

Update, 8:30 p.m.: Pacquiao is "not welcome at The Grove and will not be interviewed here now or in the future." Full statement on Page 2.

Update, 6:50 p.m.: "We're canceling the event," says Grove spokesman Bill Reich. "Manny Pacquiao is not coming to the Grove." And thus the backlash begins.

See also: "Ten Gays Who Could Beat the Crap Out of Manny Pacquiao."

Professional boxer Manny Pacquiao and "Extra" host Mario Lopez were blowing up Twitter today about their 3/3:30 p.m. interview at the Grove on Wednesday.

But mall executives tell LA Weekly that the event may be called off.

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Google Maps

Make way for geeks.

Updated at the bottom: Google may work out some sort of sublet deal with Gold's, allowing it to stay in its historic location. And the jocks beat the nerds again!

Originally posted May 14 at 5:30 p.m.

Last week, the former owner of Gold's Gym in Venice leaked to Muscle Week that Google would be taking over the iconic old bodybuilder haven -- just one step in turning that whole area into a Mountain View-style Google compound.

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Kevin Scanlon

Update: Manny Pacquiao Barred From 'Extra' Interview at the Grove After Bashing Gay Marriage

Updated with comments from the founder of the Courage Campaign. First posted at 12:51 p.m.

See also: Manny Pacquiao: The Fight of His Life.

Manny Pacquiao, who lives and trains in Los Angeles, is probably in deep shit in this liberal city of brotherly love.

That's because the boxing champion said that gay men "must be put to death."

Really. In a recent interview with the National Conservative Examiner the fighter quoted the Bible in relaying his feelings about President Obama's support for same-sex marriage:

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Updated at the bottom: Maybe it was all just a bad dream. The first guy has withdrawn his suit. First posted at 1:54 p.m. Monday, May 7.

When a Los Angeles man wrote a book that claimed John Travolta was a well-known cruiser of gay massage spas in town, we were a bit doubtful.

First, why didn't others come forward with similar accusations that the actor was doing this pretty much out in the open? Second, one of the main spas mentioned was not known as a gay spot at all.

Well, maybe we were wrong (warning -- explicit language):

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Tags:

gay, Hollywood, John Travolta, lawsuit, Los Angeles, massage, masseuse

ABC7

Katrina Frausto's husband was gunned down on Mother's Day.

The timing of 41-year-old Damian Frausto's cold-blooded murder on Mother's Day could not have been more tragic.

He was reportedly parking his car at his home around 7:25 p.m., his wife Katrina in the passenger's seat and his 5-year-old daughter in the back, when an unknown suspect walked up to his window and shot Frausto twice in the chest.

LAPD detectives think it might have been a case of extreme road rage:

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The fuming neighbors along Grand View Drive should really give the rest of L.A.'s neighborhood activists a lesson in how to sway the city to your cause.

They just put together this super-impressive YouTube saga, titled "We're Mad As Hell," to demonstrate what they consider to be an egregious lack of oversight by Department of Building and Safety on a series of nearby construction projects.

"I was subjected to four years of misery..."

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So cops can now fly unmanned aircraft known as drones, which could be used to peek into your backyard and maybe even into your window at night.

So will the LAPD, a pioneer in the use of helicopters for law enforcement, soon be buzzing drones over your house as you smoke your favorite herb and become paranoid with fear?

Not likely, cops tell us:

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LAPD

'Opportunistic Bandit.'

Usually carjackers commit crimes of the moment by grabbing a car to get away from a just-committed felony or using a vehicle for a one-night joyride.

But cops today announced they're looking for perhaps L.A.'s first serial carjacker, a man they're calling the "opportunistic bandit." And he's violent.

The LAPD says the bandit has hit areas from the Westside to the Valley this spring, including:

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Rhee, ballsy reformer, cracks down on California.

Update: Rhee herself and Parent Revolution didn't file the lawsuit -- they're just on the plaintiff's advisory board. Clarifications throughout.

California's teachers have long been protected by a series of state laws -- lobbied into existence by powerful teachers unions -- that make the ineffective ones almost impossible to fire.

Now, in the largest state lawsuit of kind, a new organization called Students Matter, advised by the key players behind the controversial "Parent Trigger" law, alleges in L.A. Superior Court that strict tenure and seniority rules are ruining the K-12 system:

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Borell's alleged Twitter avatar.

Some young hacktivist in Ohio apparently gives a damn about police accountability in far-off Los Angeles County.

According to the Los Angeles Times, the FBI suspects 21-year-old Ohio resident John Anthony Borell III -- who's already facing 10 years in prison and a quarter-million-dollar fine for allegedly hacking into two police websites in Utah, of all places -- of posting emails, personal details and nude pics belonging to over 100 law-enforcement officers in the L.A. area.

The late-February breach was an embarrassing one:

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Lina Lecaro

Gov. Jerry Brown says there are $8 billion worth of cuts coming to state programs this summer, and that's not even enough to fill the $16 billion sinkhole California faces July 1.

One enterprising legislator has a wild idea, though: Tax strip club patrons $10 each time they enter an exotic dancing establishment. Damn. Talk about your cover charge.

Assemblyman Das Williams of Oxnard plans to tax you like a gangster taxes drug dealers:

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JosephAdams

Is it the bad kids who turn to drugs, or is it the drugs that turn teens bad?

A recent study suggests that the high schoolers who do drugs are more susceptible to them.

The research, billed as the largest brain imaging study ever, was published recently in the journal Nature Neuroscience.

Basically, it says that some teens are bad to the bone, or rather ...

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Carmen Trutanich: Can you believe this guy?

D.A. candidate Carmen Trutanich was caught last week in a fib about being shot at by gang members when he was a young prosecutor in 1985. The L.A. Times' Jack Leonard discovered that in fact, there were no gang members, and no gun.

OK, everybody tells a fish story once in a while. But instead of shrugging it off, Trutanich lashed out. In a letter to the attorney general (posted after the jump), Trutanich accused the D.A.'s office of "suspicious political activity" and called for a state investigation into whether his opponents stole his personnel file in order to conceal evidence of his heroics.

That's where it gets really troubling. Trutanich was accusing the office he wants to lead of political corruption. The allegation was false. He knew it was false. And we can prove he knew it.
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'After Porn Ends'

Porn gets glamorized, sensationalized and sanitized by the mainstream, but its sometimes dark reality is hard even for some of its own insiders to admit.

A new documentary seeks to shed light on what happens After Porn Ends.

The documentary, to be released May 21, seeks to unearth the ordinary family lives of adult video's biggest stars, including those who have left the industry behind:

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Officer-involved shooting, 2.0.

Confronting the cops via rocket launcher isn't just for gamers anymore. At the annual LAPD Gun Buyback over the weekend, someone actually turned in a military "anti-tank" rocket launcher, reports City News Service.

The buyback allows civilians to turn in their firearms -- no questions asked -- in exchange for Ralphs or VISA gift cards ranging from $100 to $200, depending on the weapon.

But because this launcher was only a "training-type weapon"...

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@Saber via Twitter

She was a beauty.

Updated at the bottom: Sons of Anarchy producer Kurt Sutter says his show had nothing to do with the take-down. Our headline has been revised to reflect this claim.

Someone just painted over a mural that went up at Willow and Santa Fe in downtown Los Angeles only one-and-a-half months ago.

It was painted by street artists Zes, Push and UGLAR on the side of a building adjacent to the graffiti-themed LALA Gallery, apparently in celebration of the gallery's opening.

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zerega

For those who oppose building a stadium downtown because, they argue, we just can't handle the traffic, this weekend could be the ultimate test:

It's being called the perfect storm of sports events: The Lakers, Clippers and Kings are all playing in playoffs at Staples Center this weekend. And a bike race, with road closures, is coming through Sunday morning. Staples officials will release parking-lot maps for weekend visitors tomorrow, they tell us.

Staples spokesman Michael Roth tells the Weekly it's all good:

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Also, weed and cash.

Yesterday afternoon, West Hollywood Sheriff's deputies responded to a routine call from a lady who had noticed a German Pointer locked in a car parked along her street. The windows were all rolled up, and she was concerned that the dog might be in danger.

But when deputies arrived to the 1200 block of Ogden Drive to let the dog out, they found a red Nissan Pathfinder full of bigger problems:

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The parking nazis have come to Santa Monica: No free minutes for you!

New sensors that begin working today will cut meters' paid time down to zero once a space is empty, even if the woman who parked in a spot before you paid for way more time than she used.

Yep. According to a city of Santa Monica statement:

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Jerry Brown / YouTube

Updated at the bottom with Brown's slash-and-burn budget. First posted at 6:06 a.m.

Gray Davis? Arnold Schwarzenegger? Jerry Brown II? It's deja vu all over again.

Brown took to YouTube over the weekend to deliver the bad news that the state deficit has hit $16 billion, far greater than the $9 or so billion he predicted at the beginning of the year.

Despite the alleged economic recovery, it looks like extra revenues haven't been flowing to Sacramento at the rate the governor expected:

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