Anchors

Your choices in San Francisco hotels are overwhelming. The prices can be too. So during our staff visit to the City by the Bay, we looked for reasonably priced hotels that had charm, location or both. We came back with 14 ideas on places to bed down. It's not a complete list, but it is eclectic, like the city itself. Mystic Hotel. This property, which opened in April, stands on a tunnel-adjacent block of Stockton Street that you'll never see on a picture postcard, yet it has style, as do the Burritt Tavern bar and restaurant downstairs.

Jeanne Cooper Emmy winner starred in 'The Young and the Restless' Jeanne Cooper, 84, the enduring soap opera star who played grande dame Katherine Chancellor for nearly four decades on CBS' "The Young and the Restless," died Wednesday in her sleep, according to the network. Cooper's son, actor Corbin Bernsen, said last month in Twitter messages that she had been suffering from an undisclosed illness. A Los Angeles resident, Cooper joined the daytime serial six months after its March 1973 debut, staking claim to the title of longest-tenured cast member.

Veteran KNBC-TV Channel 4 newscaster Paul Moyer, one of the last of a breed of well-paid and highly promoted local news anchors, confirmed his retirement Wednesday from the station at which he's worked for nearly a quarter-century. "It's been a hell of a run," Moyer said in a brief phone interview. "I'm going to miss it, I'm going to miss it a lot. Any success I may have achieved I owe to the people of Southern California. I thank them for every one of those 37 years [in the L.A. market].

Memphis Grizzlies center Marc Gasol won his first NBA defensive player of the year award after anchoring the league's stingiest defense. Gasol received 212 points and 30 first-place votes to beat the Miami Heat's LeBron James, who had 149 points and 18 first-place votes, the NBA announced Wednesday. The 7-foot-1 Spaniard averaged 1.7 blocks and 1.0 steals for a Memphis defense that gave up a league-best 88.7 points per game. The five-year veteran ranked 12th in the league in blocks.

The TV newsmagazine "The Insider" was created nearly a decade ago on the premise that viewers couldn't get enough behind-the-scenes looks at television and film stars. That's still true, but these days, celebrity watchers don't need to turn on the TV to get their fix. Fans are awash in Hollywood gossip thanks to social media and the Internet. And in a connected world where reality star Kim Kardashian turned to her own blog to share news of her pregnancy, pop culture no longer waits for an evening TV time slot.

CNN shuffles anchors Seeking to bolster its daytime lineup, CNN is making another anchor switch for the new year. The network is giving chief business correspondent Ali Velshi his own daily show from 10 a.m. to noon, a time slot currently anchored by Kyra Phillips, who will take over the 6 to 8 a.m. slot. Heidi Collins, who had been anchoring "CNN Newsroom" during that time, is leaving the network after nearly eight years. Velshi, a veteran financial reporter, already hosts "Your $$$$$," a weekend business round-table shown on the network, as well as "The Ali Velshi Show" on CNN Radio.

Capra states that the station has an "embarrassment of riches" in regards to their anchors. In truth what it has is Marlow and an embarrassment of pretty faces. I question the journalistic skills and the knowledge of Los Angeles possessed by any of those pretty faces. JANE WELLS Los Angeles

Anchors back from Haiti All three network news anchors returned from Haiti over the weekend and anchored their evening newscasts from New York on Monday evening, a sign that the intense coverage of the earthquake's wreckage is abating. But even though NBC's Brian Williams, ABC's Diane Sawyer and CBS' Katie Couric have left Port-au-Prince, the broadcast and cable news networks still have large contingents in Haiti reporting on the aftermath. ABC, CBS, Fox News and NBC each have half a dozen correspondents and dozens of other producers in the field, a sizable commitment.

CAIRO - Adorned with delicate makeup, an anchorwoman wearing a head scarf appeared Sunday on Egypt's state television for the first time in its five-decade history. Wearing a cream-colored scarf, Fatma Nabil appeared poised as she read the latest updates on the drafting of Egypt's post-revolution Constitution on the noon news program, followed by a male anchor. Salah Abdel Maksoud, the country's new information minister and a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, announced Saturday that a largely unspoken ban on female news presenters wearing traditional Islamic head scarves was being lifted and that more covered female anchors would follow Nabil on state-owned networks.

The Greek tanker Ethnic, which hit a mine in the Persian Gulf on Tuesday, has anchored off Dubai where divers are inspecting a hole in its starboard tanks, shipping sources said Saturday. They said the 274,629-ton tanker, carrying about 210,000 tons of Kuwaiti crude oil, arrived in Dubai on Saturday after anchoring off Ras Tanurah, Saudi Arabia, on Thursday. Divers will check the extent of damage and whether the ship must offload its cargo before sailing for Taiwan, the sources said.

Construction is underway on the long-awaited city center for Playa Vista that will include its first grocery store -- a Whole Foods Market. About the size of four city blocks, the $260-million shopping and apartment project called Runway is intended to be the commercial and social heart of the planned community that has been under construction for more than a decade on land south of Marina del Rey once controlled by aviation mogul Howard Hughes....

Veteran "KTLA 5 Morning News" anchor Michaela Pereira will be leaving the station at the end of May to join CNN's new morning show in New York. Pereira will be the news anchor for the show, which will be hosted by Chris Cuomo and Kate Bolduan. The announcement was made jointly by KTLA and President of CNN Worldwide Jeff Zucker, who is aggressively shaking up the struggling network's lineup and personalities. "I've been looking forward to this announcement since I first joined CNN," Zucker said in a statement.

Tim Tebow is not playing in the Super Bowl. But that didn't stop ESPN anchors Mark Schlereth and Hannah Storm from discussing the New York Jets backup quarterback Tuesday during the network's live coverage. What's that you say? People talk about Tebow all the time? True. But did we mention that Schlereth and Storm did not realize they were on the air at the time? Ah, suddenly things got a lot more interesting as viewers got to hear the two analysts express how they really feel about Tebow's future in the NFL. The not-so-private conversation picked up after Schlereth apparently told Storm that the former Denver Broncos quarterback might want to consider switching to tight end. "But I'm going to tell you, I talked to a bunch of Broncos coaches who said, 'I just don't know if he's a fluid enough athlete to go over and play tight end,' " said Schlerth, emphasizing his doubt about such a move by squinting his eyes and showing his teeth.

Plans are in the works at the 1940s-era Anchor Trailer Port in Costa Mesa to convert the residential park to condominiums. But as decisions and approvals make their way through administrative channels, some residents say they feel confused, cheated and adrift. Others know the change was inevitable but just want their fair share of moving costs and per diems. The tentative move-out date is Aug. 24. The developers say they hear residents' concerns and are being generous. City staff has chipped in more than 100 hours toward the task of helping them move.

The TV newsmagazine "The Insider" was created nearly a decade ago on the premise that viewers couldn't get enough behind-the-scenes looks at television and film stars. That's still true, but these days, celebrity watchers don't need to turn on the TV to get their fix. Fans are awash in Hollywood gossip thanks to social media and the Internet. And in a connected world where reality star Kim Kardashian turned to her own blog to share news of her pregnancy, pop culture no longer waits for an evening TV time slot.

Steven Spielberg's “Lincoln,” which collected a leading seven Golden Globe nominations Thursday morning, will anchor the race for best drama in the 70th annual awards show. In addition to singling out the story of the 16th president of the United States, the voters in the Hollywood Foreign Press Assn. selected Ben Affleck's “Argo,” Quentin Tarantino's “Django Unchained,” Ang Lee's “Life of Pi” and Kathryn Bigelow's “Zero Dark Thirty” as the year's top dramas. The most glaring omission among the best picture selections was “Beasts of the Southern Wild,” widely seen as a top contender for Academy Award attention.

USC's Antonio Manning won the 100 meters and anchored two Trojan relay teams to victory Saturday in the USC Collegiate Relays at Cromwell Field. Teams from USC, Washington State, Arizona, Iowa and Drake competed. In a dual meet held concurrently with the relays, Long Beach City College defeated Pasadena City College, 98-41. Manning won the 100 in 10.41 seconds after anchoring wins in the 400-meter relay and 800-meter relay. The times were 40.20 and 1:23.7.

MOSCOW - A journalist with Russian state television was killed and a government official was injured in separate attacks in the country's violence-ridden North Caucasus region, authorities said Thursday. Kazbek Gekkiyev, a 28-year-old anchor for the Russia-1 state television channel, was gunned down late Wednesday in downtown Nalchik, capital of the Kabardino-Balkarian republic, officials said. The journalist was allegedly approached by two men who asked whether he was Gekkiyev. When he confirmed his identity, the assailants reportedly shot him several times and fled.