Palm Beach

When a Venezuelan oil tanker crashed through a retaining wall and landed in Palm Beach socialite Mollie Wilmot's Olympic-sized swimming pool, Wilmot did the proper thing: She invited the crew in for Beluga caviar and Brie. They stayed for a month. Now, about a year later, Hollywood may make Wilmot a household name. After lengthy negotiations with super agent Swifty Lazar and New York lawyer Roy Cohn, producer David Permut bought the rights and will produce the story for Disney Productions.

If you're headed to West Palm Beach , United is offering a round-trip fare from LAX that can get you to that southeastern Florida city for $245, including all taxes and fees. The fare is subject to availability. There is no minimum stay. Travel can be Mondays-Saturdays through May 15; tickets must be bought 10 days in advance. Info: United, (800) 864-8331 Source: Airfarewatchdog Follow us on Twitter @latimestravel , like us on Facebook @Los Angeles Times Travel.

The Kennedy family is selling the Palm Beach estate that once served as the winter White House but more recently was the backdrop for a rape case. Bryan Dunn, spokesman for the New York-based Joseph P. Kennedy Enterprises Inc., said Friday that Sotheby's International Realty had been given an exclusive listing to market the terra-cotta-roofed oceanside property that has been in the family for six decades. The asking price: $7 million.

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. - Thousands of South Florida homeowners have struck out - again - in their fight to collect more than $27 million in compensation for the destruction of their fruit trees in the state's fight against citrus canker. The 4th District Court of Appeal ruled last week that the plaintiffs have to ask the state Legislature to appropriate the money to pay them, despite their victories in class-action lawsuits against the Florida Department of Agriculture in Broward and Palm Beach counties.

This 1942 romantic comedy is Preston Sturges at his most giddy and irresistible. Claudette Colbert (pictured, with Joel McCrea), Rudy Vallee and Mary Astor make up a set of intersecting triangles that have more points than a porcupine. The settings are New York, Palm Beach and points between--mostly on a train that's been taken over by the rowdies of the immortal Ale and Quail Club. (AMC Monday at 7:15 p.m. and 11:15 p.m.; Tuesday at 8:30 a.m.

The courts in Florida should quickly order a new election in Palm Beach County. If the voting machines in Florida were miscalibrated and counted Gore votes as Buchanan votes, no one would question the need for a court order to correct the malfunction. The confusing Palm Beach ballots had exactly this effect; even Pat Buchanan has admitted that the surprisingly large number of votes for him were a result of a misleading ballot.

Snippets from the Palm Beach notebooks: "Smashing," said Prince Charles. He was referring to the dazzling emerald-and-diamond necklace Helen Boehm, his dancing partner, wore to the United World College International Gala at the Breakers. Mrs. Boehm's rings, an emerald and a diamond one, also caught the princely eye. Princess Diana's three strand choker of smallish pearls was more in keeping with British understatement. The princess' dancing pumps were mid-heel and silver.

Canyon High softball player Crystl Bustos, the 1994 Times Valley Player of the Year, will sign a letter of intent today to play for Palm Beach Community College in Lake Worth, Fla. Bustos batted .573 with 10 home runs, 27 runs batted in and 31 stolen bases last season. After missing most of this season because she was academically ineligible, Bustos has picked up where she left off, batting .625 (15 for 24).

A conservative law firm that has invoked Florida's broad open-government laws to request access to all ballots cast in the presidential election began inspecting disputed votes Tuesday in Palm Beach County. A similar inspection was to begin Thursday in Miami-Dade County. The move incensed Democrats, who say the ballots are potential evidence in legal skirmishing underway in Tallahassee.

After another dizzying day of shifting fortunes, Al Gore is back in a familiar position this morning--needing to squeeze more votes out of Palm Beach County if he is to have any realistic hope of overcoming George W. Bush's narrow lead in Florida. Gore suffered a major disappointment Thursday that was almost immediately salved by encouraging news on another front.

The thieves struck early on a Sunday morning, when it's quiet in the agricultural areas— no joggers from nearby upscale developments; no feed trucks rumbling down the dusty roads. The modern-day rustlers were after Brangus cows, some of them moms with their calves, and adult and young bulls. The cattle were docile, often hand-fed. "They're like my kids. They will come right up to you," said owner Patrick Wilson, a big, weathered man with an easy smile. He started raising cattle a decade ago as a hobby, and "it got way out of hand," he said.

It's 3 feet long, weighs 8 pounds and looks a bit like a plastic airplane model. But by next year it will be flying into the eye of a hurricane, bucking incredibly violent winds and maneuvering within 100 feet of the ocean's surface. Its primary mission: to help the National Hurricane Center improve intensity predictions, an area where forecasters have lagged for decades. It also will help improve the accuracy of real-time storm predictions. Called GALE, the unmanned aircraft will be launched from the belly of a hurricane hunter turboprop, initially shot out of a tube as a cylinder.

Nationwide demand for high-potency marijuana has turned Florida into a top producer of hydroponic weed, and hundreds of people are turning their homes into lucrative grow houses, local law enforcement said. The illegal drug nurseries are hidden everywhere from million-dollar homes to run-down apartments, putting unsuspecting neighbors in serious danger, police said. Some grow houses are discovered only after explosions or fires. Last year, more grow houses were seized in Florida than in any other state, despite a drop in overall numbers, the federal Drug Enforcement Administration said.

Riding the wind and ocean currents, hordes of blue, alien-like creatures have descended upon South Florida's shoreline, entangling beachgoers in poisonous tentacles and delivering painful stings by the hundreds. Each invader, in fact, isn't an "it" but a "they" ? a colony of organisms that combine to create a single entity, the Portuguese man-of-war. The seafaring wanderer with the neon-blue gas bag and tentacles as long as 30 feet seems more suited to a sci-fi horror flick than a sunny tourist beach.

Lake Okeechobee's declining water level once again threatens to generate water-supply ripple effects throughout south Florida, leaving less water for thirsty crops and lawns as well as an ecosystem trying to rebound from years of abuse. The big lake is south Florida's backup water supply, relied on to replenish drinking water for some communities and tapped for irrigation by sugar cane growers and other farmers. During droughts, the lake also is a barometer for water conditions across the region.

William Koch didn't mean to turn the wine world upside down. The Palm Beach billionaire developed a taste for wine as a young man and, as he accumulated wealth, built an extensive wine collection. Among that collection: a 1787 Lafite Bordeaux with Thomas Jefferson's initials etched into the bottle. Except, he says, it's a fake. "I thought that I had a piece of history, a piece of America's most important history," Koch said, holding up the bottle in his wine cellar, which contains about 40,000 bottles.

THE news on Nathan C. Baird-Hu's Internet blog swung both high and low. He'd been happy about the prospects of a new job in the Los Angeles Unified School District, but his good mood ebbed when his mother's chronic aches and fatigue were diagnosed as post-polio syndrome. "I know she'll press on, faithful that God is God even in the midst of life's mysteries."