Hunter

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.

ARDMORE, Pa. -- The 17th green at Merion Golf Club sits in a quiet corner of the course, where the driving range and commuter trains normally provide the only background noise. Onto this spot, the U.S. Golf Assn. built two grandstands, one towering three stories over the green, to accommodate more than 5,000 spectators. Knowing that, Sean Palmer, Merion's first assistant golf pro, said before the U.S. Open that this would be the loudest place on the course. And still, the piercing roar that followed Phil Mickelson's birdie putt at the par-three hole was overwhelming.

London is swinging again thanks to bride and princess-to-be Kate Middleton. Millions are hanging on her every move — where she shops, where she primps, what she eats and drinks. Although the couple live (part of the time) in a rented farmhouse in North Wales, Middleton and Prince William will likely move to London's Kensington Palace at some point in the future. And Middleton certainly spends a lot of time in London — especially now that the wedding is a month away — mostly in the swish neighborhoods of South Kensington, Chelsea, Knightsbridge and Mayfair, all of which are in close proximity to Hyde Park and the Buckingham and Kensington palaces.

Environmental groups are taking the Justice Department to court over a policy that prohibits prosecuting individuals who kill endangered wildlife unless it can be proved that they knew they were targeting a protected animal. Critics charge that the 15-year-old McKittrick policy provides a loophole that has prevented criminal prosecution of dozens of individuals who killed grizzly bears, highly endangered California condors and whooping cranes as well as 48 federally protected Mexican wolves.

Many days, the sheer weight of Iszurette Hunter's clinical depression becomes more than she can lift. She clings to her bed in her South Los Angeles home. Important obligations slide away, including keeping appointments with doctors who are trying to control her asthma and high blood pressure. "I don't have no desire," she explains. As the nation seeks to extend healthcare coverage to millions of new and in many cases chronically ill patients, one of the great parallel challenges to controlling costs and improving delivery of care will be managing the mental health problems of people like Hunter.

As the pastor of the oldest black church in Los Angeles, the Rev. John J. Hunter earned a generous salary, lived in a $2-million home and drove a Mercedes-Benz paid for by the church. His wife earned $147,000 a year running nonprofit organizations connected to the 19,000-member congregation. But over the last few years, the hilltop church in the West Adams district has fallen into debt. The First African Methodist Episcopal Church owes nearly $500,000 to creditors. Some vendors say they have not been paid in more than a year.

'The Bounty Hunter' MPAA rating: PG-13 for sexual content, including suggestive comments, language and some violence Running time: 1 hour, 51 minutes Playing: In general release

The first thing anybody is going to tell you about the Hart & the Hunter, the restaurant in the new Fairfax District Palihotel, is that you should get the biscuits, which come four to an order and are served on a board. And you should get the biscuits, which are really pretty extraordinary, as light and delicate as the angel biscuits you sometimes find in the best Southern households, but also flaky at the extremities, and layered - they naturally separate into two or three finger-burning strata, which you are going to need if you want to butter them properly.

The best thing in your newspaper that day was Roger Simon's column "The Hunter Seeks His Prey: It Is Himself." He said it all and said it well. In my opinion, it takes the same mentality to be a hunter as to be a murderer. The only difference is the hunter is more cowardly--and more protected by our legal system with its sometimes strange set of priorities and value judgments. So bravo, Roger Simon. Keep telling it as it is. LOUISE LILLARD Los Angeles

The Times' article "Police Seek Man Who Killed Doe With a Crossbow" refers to the sick individual who committed this horrendous crime as a "hunter." This man does not fit the definition of a hunter, a man or woman who enjoys nature and all that it has to offer. Ninety-nine percent of hunters respect and abide by the rules and regulations that govern the sport. The Times is helping feed the anti-hunting fire, ensuring that the decent men and women who enjoy this noble sport are stripped of their privilege to do so. AL SANCHEZ Palmdale

Though NASA's Kepler spacecraft isn't dead yet, a serious malfunction aboard the space telescope may mean its days of planet hunting have come to an untimely end. "I wouldn't call Kepler down and out just yet," John Grunsfeld, the head of NASA's science missions, said at a news conference Wednesday. PHOTOS: Kepler's discoveries Even with faint hopes still alive -- and with plenty of unanalyzed data in the can that will keep scientsits busy for years -- astronomers and planetary scientists expressed their dismay through social media.

On Monday night a documentary called "The Fruit Hunters" premiered at the Laemmle Monica 4. The fascinating (and taste-tempting) film was directed by Yung Chang and features actor Bill Pullman, who has been cultivating a vertical orchard at his home in the Hollywood Hills for nearly 20 years. Also featured is a colorful cast of fruit lovers from around the world, including picturesque places like Italy, Borneo and Hawaii. The protagonists are growers, horticulturists and enthusiasts and they are beyond obsessed with every single aspect of rare fruit.

"There are things you can get away with in this world, and things you can't. " The voice is Matthew McConaughey's, and days after seeing him in "Mud," I can close my eyes and hear him still - a simple line echoing with the mysteries of a man caught in the emotional muck and Mississippi mud of Jeff Nichols' fine new drama. McConaughey's voice is like that, so specifically seasoned by Texas you know it sight unseen. That's the power of a drawl, the way it can wrap entire stories and an ocean of feelings in honeyed tones; the way it can fit a person, a character, like broken-in jeans.

Making fun of others is often amusing. But being able to laugh at yourself is even better. You don't have to worry about other people's feelings because yours are sufficiently multilayered: an ambivalent mixture of first impressions, second thoughts and emotional turbulence - spiked by the ability not to take yourself too seriously. At Perry Rubenstein Gallery, Georg Herold's new works embody the characteristics of selves who are comfortable in their own skins. In making fun of themselves, his sculptures and paintings leave us free to think for ourselves, playfully and provocatively.

The star of this reality show is a Mexican immigrant who carries pink handcuffs. The bounty hunter show "Fugitivos de la Ley: Los Angeles" boasts a cast that includes two real-life federal agents and a fireplug of a man, a former U.S. Marine from Riverside. There's also a 29-year-old firefighter who grew up in Pacoima and is nicknamed "Bombero" - Spanish for fireman - and a German shepherd named Cooper. "Fugitivos" is an attempt by the small bilingual cable channel Mun2 to boost its profile by tapping into the richness of L.A.'s Latino population to find compelling characters and stories.

The Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach was a tough day at the office for several of IndyCar's leading drivers. Two-time champion Scott Dixon , reigning champion Ryan Hunter-Reay and Helio Castroneves were involved in minor accidents Sunday. Castroneves and Dixon, however, battled back after their cars were repaired to finish ninth and 10th, respectively, which earned them valuable points. Castroneves kept the lead in the Izod IndyCar Series championship standings by eight points over race winner Takuma Sato and by 11 points over the third-place Dixon.

A review of the NBA's players' association found that Executive Director Billy Hunter did nothing illegal with union funds but did enough wrong that players should consider whether he should remain in his position. The report said Hunter's current contract was never properly approved and he failed to disclose that information to the NBPA's executive committee or player representatives. The eight-month review by the firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP was released Thursday.

The National Basketball Players Assn. put chief Billy Hunter on an indefinite leave Friday, two weeks after a report the union commissioned questioned Hunter's leadership and criticized him for bad decisions and questionable business practices. The union is forming an interim executive committee and an advisory committee, the group's president, Derek Fisher , said in a statement released Friday. An outside attorney is also being hired as players begin moving forward, likely without the man who has guided them since 1996.

Ryan Hunter-Reay, Mike Conway and Will Power -- winners of the last three Toyota Grand Prix of Long Beach races -- topped the speed charts in Friday afternoon's practice for the 39th annual running of the street race Sunday. Hunter-Reay, the reigning Izod IndyCar Series champion who won the race in 2010, turned the fastest lap at 102.054 mph around the 11-turn, 1.97-mile course. Conway, the 2011 winner, was second at 101.998 mph, while Power, an Australian driver for Team Penske who is the defending race winner, was third at 101.915 mph. Conway left the IndyCar series after last season because he no longer wanted to drive on the high-speed oval tracks that are part of IndyCar's schedule.

Ryan Hunter-Reay was born in Texas and now lives in Florida, but the reigning IndyCar champion traces many key moments of his life - the highs and the lows - to Southern California. Hunter-Reay lived in Dana Point when his IndyCar career was teetering in the mid- to late-2000s. Then a comeback win in Long Beach in 2010 finally secured him a ride with a top team. That led to his capturing his first IndyCar title at a dramatic season finale in Fontana last September, making Hunter-Reay the series' first American champion in six years.