Featured Articles From the Los Angeles Times

Fall's hottest hairstyles include perfect and polished 1950s ponytails and pixie cuts inspired by Mia Farrow's late-1960s crop. The trendiest styles from fashion runways and the red carpet are pulled up, swept to the side or simply chopped off. Top knot This style seems to rule with leading ladies, as well as with tweens and twentysomethings who love Audrey Hepburn's hair in "Breakfast at Tiffany's. " Salma Hayek and Molly Sims have been spotted recently with their hair piled up on the tops of their heads and coiled around like a dollop of whipped cream.

J. Paul Getty III, a scion of the Getty oil dynasty whose tragedies ? mutilation by kidnappers in the early 1970s and an incapacitating, drug-induced stroke in the 1980s ? brought into high relief the dysfunctional relations that beset his famously wealthy family, has died in Buckinghamshire, England. He was 54. Getty, who had homes in the Los Angeles area for some years after his ordeals, died Saturday after a long illness, according to a statement from his actor-son, Balthazar.

When San Pedro held its annual holiday parade a few weeks ago, the message to the Navy was unmistakable. One of the grand marshals ? although it couldn't be there in person ? was the Iowa, the storied battleship that, with the Navy's blessing, could be permanently berthed on San Pedro's waterfront. A cheering crowd gave the thumbs up to a float with a 40-foot-long billboard showing "the Big Stick," the vessel that carried President Franklin D. Roosevelt to crucial meetings during World War II. Veterans marched alongside, and a 93-year-old who was among the Iowa's first sailors waved, with other aging warriors, from atop a truck loaded with hay bales.

Anderson Silva did not do much of anything in the first three minutes of his Ultimate Fighting Championship title defense Saturday night against Vitor Belfort. Then came the kick. Unleashing a wicked left kick that moved Belfort's jaw toward his nose, Silva knocked down the former UFC champion, hesitated briefly to ensure there were signs of alertness, then moved in for a right punch and a left that led referee Mario Yamasaki to stop the fight at the 3-minute 25-second mark.

The billionaire brothers David and Charles Koch no longer sit outside Washington's political establishment, isolated by their uncompromising conservatism. Instead, they are now at the center of Republican power, a change most evident in the new makeup of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Wichita-based Koch Industries and its employees formed the largest single oil and gas donor to members of the panel, ahead of giants like Exxon Mobil, contributing $279,500 to 22 of the committee's 31 Republicans, and $32,000 to five Democrats.

For more than half a century, biographers have treated Franklin Delano Roosevelt with Rushmore-like reverence, celebrating the nation's 32nd president as a colossus who eased the agony of the Great Depression and saved democracy from Nazi Germany. Which never sat right with historian Burton Folsom Jr. Growing up in Nebraska, Folsom remembers, his dad, a savings and loan executive, griped about high taxes and Roosevelt's voracious ambition. FDR was dead, but his legacy ? deficit spending, an activist federal government, an expansive social safety net ?

WASHINGTON -- Steaming toward a White House bid, Mitt Romney addressed CPAC on its second day Friday, charging that Barack Obama has failed to lead on national security and the economy, calling him a "weak president. " Romney was introduced by his wife, Ann, who in essence made his long-expected entry in the 2012 presidential field official by saying she hoped to see him elected. The former Massachusetts governor told a packed hotel ballroom at the Conservative Political Action Conference that "an uncertain world has been made more dangerous by the lack of clear direction.

In the nation's collective memory, the assassination of John F. Kennedy is a clash of images and mysteries that may never be sorted out to the satisfaction of everyone. But if there is a lasting emblem that sums up Nov. 22, 1963, the day America tumbled from youthful idealism to hollow despair, it is Jacqueline Kennedy's rose-pink suit and pillbox hat. An expanded collection of Kennedy treasures and trivia was unveiled this month on exhibit and online to coincide with the 50th anniversary of JFK's inauguration; it includes the fabric of his top hat (beaver fur)

The Southern Poverty Law Center is an organization with deep roots in the civil rights movement. Its ingenious lawsuits helped break the back of the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacist factions, and in recent years, it has joined the Anti-Defamation League as a reliable monitor of hate groups. The Family Research Council is an influential Washington-based advocacy group with deep roots in the religious right. Its annual political forum, the Values Voter Summit, has become a nearly obligatory stop for ambitious Republican office-seekers hoping to win the support of so-called values voters.

Face it -- celebrities take a lot of heat, particularly when it comes to their faces. And now it appears to be Suzanne Somers' turn. It started with a sensational "plastic surgery run amok" story in the National Enquirer. That led to this column by Toronto Sun writer Mike Strobel who declares "my only scare during Snowmageddon/Snowbigdeal was in the supermarket checkout line" when he saw the "Three's Company" star's face on the cover of the tabloid. The Enquirer story alleges that Somers, 64, might have had a stem cell face-lift.

While merchants in Texas count their profits from Super Bowl XLV, downtown Los Angeles business owners are hoping for a big score from their own high-profile sporting event next weekend. Downtown businesses expect to reap hefty profits when the NBA All-Star weekend rolls into Staples Center, drawing thousands of big-spending celebrities, professional athletes and die-hard hoops fans for four days of basketball, dinners and parties. Although Los Angeles hosted the annual basketball celebration seven years ago, economists predict this year's event will generate even more profits.

Thousands of immigrants from India have crossed into the United States illegally at the southern tip of Texas in the last year, part of a mysterious and rapidly growing human-smuggling pipeline that is backing up court dockets, filling detention centers and triggering investigations. The immigrants, mostly young men from poor villages, say they are fleeing religious and political persecution. More than 1,600 Indians have been caught since the influx began here early last year, while an undetermined number, perhaps thousands, are believed to have sneaked through undetected, according to U.S. border authorities.

The ear-piercing machine-gun-like blasts of an air hammer are a welcome sound to workers on the Northrop Grumman Corp. assembly line in El Segundo. It means they're busy churning out fuselage sections for the supersonic F/A-18 fighter jet, a fixture on U.S. Navy aircraft carriers since 1983 and still in demand worldwide. Once slated for replacement, the jet now is in high demand from the Pentagon and foreign governments looking to upgrade their arsenals. The Northrop plant has a backlog that will take at least until 2014 to finish.