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UFC Heavyweight Title: Junior Dos Santos vs. Cain Velasquez Dos Santos, the UFC champion, is undefeated at 9-0 in the UFC and finished 7 of those 9 opponents. He relies on his excellent boxing and a ground game refined with his legendary mentor Antonio Rodrigo "Minotauro" Nogueira. He also has a reputation as one of the nicest people in the sport, a beloved figure in his native country of Brazil. Velasquez's only MMA loss came to Dos Santos and he has been pegged as a future champion from his start in the sport.

MALEH, West Bank - In remote Palestinian villages of the northern Jordan Valley, children read by gas lamp, and water must be purchased from miles away, even when electricity lines and water pipes to Israeli settlements run directly past their homes. Near Nablus, a Palestinian farmer whose home is nearly surrounded by Jewish communities says settlers frequently harass him, digging up crops, and once poisoning his cow. And in Khader, south of Jerusalem, a carjacker once escaped Palestinian police by simply crossing the street into a part of town under Israeli jurisdiction.

Tom Schaar landed a 1080. That's all that needs to be said -- and pretty much all the 12-year-old from Malibu could say immediately after becoming the first skateboarder ever to complete three full rotations in the air and land with his board still underneath him. "I did a 1080!" an out-of-breath and excited Schaar exclaimed into the camera that captured him completing the stunt on only his fifth attempt. Schaar recently became one of only a handful of skaters to land a 900. He set out to nail the 1080 on the MegaRamp at Woodward West in Tehachapi, which was customized by Schaar's sponsor, Red Bull, to feature a 70-foot roll-in ramp that leads to a 50-gap and then a quarterpipe ramp with a 27-foot wall.

In a historic feat for the U.S. Navy, a stealthy bat-winged drone was catapulted off an aircraft carrier's flight deck before it soared above the Atlantic and into the blue sky. On Tuesday morning, the X-47B experimental drone was launched from the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier George H.W. Bush as it floated off the Virginia coast. The test flight was seen as a milestone in drone technology and the program, which has been eight years in the making. "Today we saw a small but significant pixel in the future picture of our Navy as we begin integration of unmanned systems into arguably the most complex war-fighting environment that exists today: the flight deck of a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier," Vice Adm. David Buss, commander of naval air forces and known as the Navy's "air boss," said in a statement.

Authorities are investigating how a car landed on the roof of a home in Glendale on Saturday night. According to KTLA News, the driver of a Cadillac lost control of his vehicle and landed on the roof of a home. The Glendale Fire Department had to call in a crane to remove the vehicle. No one was hurt. The driver told authorities that the brakes on the car failed, according to KTLA News.  

The driver of a Cadillac apparently lost his brakes after he left his steep driveway, flying down a hill and landing on the roof of a home, Glendale police said. The car crossed a yard and went airborne, coming to rest in the 400 block of Audraine Drive in the Glendale hills on Saturday evening. The Glendale Fire Department had to call in a crane to remove the vehicle from the home, but no one was seriously hurt. An 80-year old man was in his bedroom below. Authorities said he was startled, but otherwise fine.

Sony Pictures has hired Academy Award-winning screenwriter Aaron Sorkin for its upcoming biopic on Steve Jobs. Sorkin's task will be to adapt last year's biography of Jobs by Walter Isaacson, and his hiring has been well received, likely due to his recent work adapting other books for the big screen. Last year, Sorkin was nominated for an Academy Award for his work on "Moneyball," and in 2010, he won an  Oscar for his adaptation for "The Social Network. "  Before that, Sorkin was also highly successful with the TV show "The West Wing," winning a couple of Emmy awards.

Phil Mickelson probably felt a little gutted Sunday afternoon after losing to Bill Haas in a three-man playoff during the final round of the Northern Trust Open, but at least he got a laugh from pulling off a rare pant-leg shot. Mickelson didn't have much to smile about Saturday as he watched his shot from the 15th tee at Riviera Country Club land among the gallery, but he couldn't help but laugh when he saw that the ball somehow made its way into the shorts of a fan. The fan was also having a good time -- he even stretched out on the ground to help Mickelson in his attempt to play the ball where it lay. In the end, the only one who really benefited from the errant shot was the fan, who received an autographed glove from the 40-time PGA Tour winner.

An American Airlines flight from Hawaii landed safely with one working engine at LAX early Monday, after the other engine went out about an hour before the plane's arrival time. The  jetliner landed at 5:19 a.m. from Kona on time and without incident, and passengers got off at the terminal gate. The 147 people on board, including the seven crew, were not injured. The Associated Press reported that spokesman Matt Miller in Dallas says instruments on Flight 246 showed trouble with the left engine.

Talk about karma. After lobbying ferociously to prevent Elizabeth Warren from running the new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the banking industry now must contend with her sitting on the Senate Banking Committee. Rumors have circulated for weeks the Massachusetts senator-elect would be tapped for the gig overseeing the industry she so completely cheesed off with accusations of fraud and unfair play. Now it's official . You can almost hear the muttering among bankers about the tough-love they're going to face.

President Obama recently groused that no U.S. airport ranked among the world's top 25 airports. If you're a regular traveler to Los Angeles, you may be even more disappointed to learn that Los Angeles International Airport didn't even make the top 100. Obama was referring to a ranking released in April - the Skytrax World Airport Awards - that is based on a survey of 12.1 million travelers around the world. Out of 395 airports worldwide, LAX ranked 109th overall and 24th among 50 airports in North America.

Construction is set to begin on the first phase of a massive housing development that is part of the city of Irvine's long-awaited Great Park project. A total of 726 single-family homes and detached condominium units are planned for Pavilion Park, which will be the first part of the Great Park Neighborhoods development. This week, eight major home builders bought land in this first offering from master developer FivePoint Communities Inc. Construction of the new homes, priced from the high $600,000 range to $1.2 million, is expected to begin this month.

One pilot died after two small planes collided Monday afternoon over Ventura County, sending one plummeting into a mountainside and forcing the other to land on a golf course. Both planes were Cessna single-engine aircraft. At least one had departed from Santa Monica Airport before crashing about 2 p.m. in the Santa Monica Mountains, according to preliminary information from the Federal Aviation Administration. The other, which had three people on board, belly landed at the Westlake Golf Course.

COLSTRIP, Mont. - Out in these windy stretches of cottonwood and prairie grass, not far from where Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer ran into problems at Little Bighorn, a new battle is unfolding over what future energy development in the West will look like. Here, rancher Wallace McRae and his son, Clint, run cattle on 31,000 acres along Rosebud Creek, land their family has patrolled with horses and tamed with fences for 125 years. They could probably go on undisturbed for 100 years more if the earth under the pastures weren't laced with coal.

KABUL, Afghanistan--Eleven people, including eight Turkish nationals, were captured after their helicopter was forced to make an emergency landing in eastern Afghanistan in an area largely controlled by the Taliban, local authorities said Monday. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the abductions and said the passengers on the flight were actually NATO soldiers posing as civilians. Local officials and a NATO spokesman denied the passengers were soldiers. The private helicopter was carrying mechanical supplies and technical staff from a project in eastern Khowst province to Kabul on Sunday evening when it made a hard landing in the Azra district of eastern Logar province because of bad weather, said Din Mohammad Darwish, a spokesman for the governor of Logar.

SAN FRANCISCO -- In the run-up to what would be the biggest initial public stock offering for a consumer Internet company since Facebook, Twitter has nailed its biggest advertising deal yet. The San Francisco-based social media company has reached a deal with Publicis' Starcom MediaVest Group worth hundreds of millions of dollars over multiple years, the Financial Times reported . The agreement is the first of its kind: a partnership between...

Kate Upton looks [blank] on the cover of the 2013 Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. While many adjectives might spring to mind, Upton filled in the blank herself Friday after the image used on the front of the annual issue was released to the public. "I look...Cold lol," Upton tweeted. No doubt that's how the model was feeling at the time of the photo shoot, which took place in Antarctica. "Took us 2 months to thaw out," she said in another tweet.  Upton and nine other SI swimsuit models will appear on "Late Night with David Letterman" on Monday night.

Re "Amid Drought, a Range War Erupts in Utah Over Grazing Restrictions," Dec. 26: Livestock grazing on federal lands, particularly arid lands, has always been and always will be a lose-lose situation for the wildlife resources of this country and for the government, which subsidizes this absurd practice. Back when the West was young, many users and managers of the land were ignorant about grazing on lands that could not support this type of abuse. The majority of the well-informed in this country, backed by sound economic sense and hard science, now realize that these degraded, arid lands are more valuable to the American people if they can be given the chance to recover their historic biodiversity and water-storage capacity.

BALTIMORE - Matt Kemp was smiling and recounting the details of the Dodgers' sweep-preventing 7-4 victory over the Baltimore Orioles when he was asked about Chad Billingsley. "What happened?" Kemp asked. He didn't know that Billingsley had been scratched from his scheduled start Sunday because of pain in his throwing elbow. The third starting pitcher to land on the disabled list in the last nine days, Billingsley didn't rule out the possibility of reconstructive surgery. He is expected to be examined Tuesday in Los Angeles by team physician Neal ElAttrache.

Marc Maron slips into a chair and plunks a tattered, spiral-bound notebook onto the table. The cover, folded back, reveals dense, tight scribbling on ruled paper. Pen in hand, Maron hunches over the notes, looks up for a second to lock eyes by way of greeting, then drops his head back down. "This bit," he says, "I'm struggling with the ending. " He runs a finger over a line from his latest stand-up routine, then pops a guacamole-tipped chip in his mouth. "Anyway, hi," he says at last.