Fars

Parents aren't supposed to pick favorites, but it's clear Hyundai has a soft spot for its Santa Fe. To hear the Korean automaker tell it, the crossover played a key role in Hyundai's transformation from maker of meek little econoboxes with shoddy reliability to a brand that rivals the best from Honda and Toyota. The third generation of the Santa Fe, rolling into dealerships now, demonstrates how far the company has come. This handsomely redesigned crossover is packed with utility and comes in two sizes: a five-passenger version and a seven-passenger model.

The two hikers missing for days in Orange County's Trabuco Canyon were eventually found not far from each other, each about a half mile from where they had parked their car, authorities said. "From the map's perspective, it appears they were pretty close," Orange County sheriff's Lt. John Park told reporters Thursday afternoon. Nicolas Cendoya, 19, was found the night before off a gravel road that had been traversed by rescue crews and volunteers who had come to join in the search, about 200 yards up a ridge.

With the first quarter of 2013 in the books, crime in Los Angeles is continuing its decade-long decline, according to statistics released Friday. Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and Police Chief Charlie Beck announced the notable gains at a press conference that served as a swan song for the mayor, who will leave office this summer after being termed out. More than anything else, the continued drop in crime has been a reliable, powerful success for the mayor to trumpet throughout his time in office.

President Obama's brain-mapping initiative, for which he has proposed $110 million in federal funding for 2014, will focus how on how the brain is affected by conditions such as Parkinson's disease, schizophrenia and autism; how it produces memories and programs human behavior; and what treatments could lead to cures for post-traumatic stress disorder, Alzheimer's disease and other neuropsychiatric afflictions. The Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies Initiative is modeled after the Human Genome Project of the 1990s and early 2000s.

BEIRUT  - March was the bloodiest month of the Syrian uprising, with more than 6,000 documented deaths, a pro-opposition human rights group reported Monday. More than one-third of those killed were civilians, including nearly 300 children, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a London-based organization with monitors in Syria. For months the Syrian conflict has seen daily death tolls topping 150 as government shelling and aerial bombardments have increased amid ongoing clashes between loyalist forces and rebel fighters.

It is shameful that veterans of the United States military have to wait months, and sometimes more than a year, to begin receiving the benefits they are owed after their years of service. Yet that is the case. Almost 900,000 veterans across the country currently have claims pending for disability, pension or education benefits; nearly 600,000 of those claims are considered backlogged by the Department of Veterans Affairs - meaning they have already taken more than 125 days to process.

HOUSTON - The Clippers finished their four-game trip with a whimper, showing such a lack of resolve that Coach Vinny Del Negro lit into his team in the locker room after the game. They may have been playing their fourth game in five nights, but it was a feeble attempt at playing with inspiration against a Houston Rockets team missing its best player. The Clippers return home having suffered a 98-81 beat-down by the Rockers on Saturday night at the Toyota Center. "We were terrible," Del Negro said.

The world of cinema mourned when Jean Renoir died in Beverly Hills in 1979 at the age of 84. One of the most influential directors of the 20th century, noted for such masterpieces as 1937's "Grand Illusion," 1939's "Rules of the Game" and 1945's "The Southerner," the French filmmaker was widely embraced by the young Turks of France's New Wave, including Francois Truffaut and Jean-Luc Godard. But there was little notice seven months later when Renoir's first wife, Andree Heuschling, who acted in his silent films as Catherine Hessling, died in France at the age of 79. After their divorce in 1930, she soon retired from acting and drifted into obscurity.

For $400 million, you could produce two Hollywood blockbusters. The Dodgers and Angels are betting they have. Los Angeles' two Major League Baseball teams have been on a buying spree, signing some of the game's most talented players. The Dodgers gave Zack Greinke a six-year contract for $147 million, a record for a right-handed pitcher. The Angels lured outfield Josh Hamilton from the Texas Rangers in a five-year, $125-million deal - a year after spending $240 million to secure slugger Albert Pujols' services for 10 years.

Glad to see that the self-imposed purda of retired Gen. David Petraeus is coming to an end.  I am not one who thinks an extramarital affair merits the equivalent of a professional death penalty, but Petraeus' transgressions with his much younger biographer were so over the top that he really did need to excuse himself from the public sphere for awhile. And though he has apologized, I don't think his apology went far enough. PHOTOS: Political sex scandals You probably remember the general outlines of the sex scandal that brought him down: Paula Broadwell, 40, an extraordinarily accomplished academic, writer and Army intelligence officer, co-authored “All In: The Education of General David Petraeus.” Petraeus, 60, was a rich subject for any biographer -- a four-star general who oversaw coalition forces in Afghanistan and Iraq before becoming CIA director in 2011.