Hunting

SAN DIEGO - In the ocean off Coronado, a Navy team has discovered a relic worthy of display in a military museum: a torpedo of the kind deployed in the late 19th century, considered a technological marvel in its day. But don't look for the primary discoverers to get a promotion or an invitation to meet the admirals at the Pentagon - although they might get an extra fish for dinner or maybe a pat on the snout. The so-called Howell torpedo was discovered by bottlenose dolphins being trained by the Navy to find undersea objects, including mines, that not even billion-dollar technology can detect.

Planet-hunting scientists were dealt a major blow Wednesday when NASA officials announced that a crucial wheel on the Kepler space telescope had ceased to function and that the craft had been placed in safe mode. Even as NASA officials raised the possibility that they could get the telescope back up and running, scientists began mourning the potential loss of a spacecraft that they said had fundamentally altered our understanding of alien planets in the Milky Way - and Earth's place in an increasingly crowded galaxy.

Not in 18 years has a sport hunter legally shot and killed a California mountain lion--a secretive, nocturnal predator that inhabits terrain as disparate as the eastern desert, the Sierra Nevada's snowy slopes and the coastal oak woodlands of Los Angeles and Orange counties. In 1987, the state Department of Fish and Game tried to reintroduce limited hunting of the animals, whose population statewide was estimated to have grown to about 5,100.

Reddit is apologizing for its role in fueling the social media witch hunts for the Boston bombings suspects. The social news website became one of the must-reads last week for the latest news and thoughts on the Boston Marathon bombings. But it also became a place for amateur sleuths to gather and share their conspiracy theories and other ideas on who may have committed the crimes. The online witch hunts ended up dragging in several innocent people, including Sunil Tripathi, a 22-year-old Brown University student who went missing last month.

Until such time that deer, bears, ducks and geese are issued rifles so that they can fire back, let's call hunting for sport what it really is--murder of defenseless creatures. MURRAY LAMISHAW Laguna Hills

Re "Patients save by paying cash," May 27 Let me see if I have this right: People in California pay hundreds of dollars a month in health insurance premiums for the "privilege" of paying up to 10 times the cash cost of a medical procedure or test? With such obviously brilliant talent available, I think I will ask a health insurance company negotiator to come along with me when I buy my next car. David Bowles Rancho Santa Fe ALSO: Letters: Buying a town with a barbecue Letters: Wind farms and birds don't mix Letters: Where deportees can go for help

A proposed California Senate bill to outlaw the use of dogs to hunt bears and bobcats in the state gets a hearing Tuesday before the Natural Resources and Water Committee and the dozens of supporters and opponents expected to show. The hunting of bears and bobcats (not mountain lions) is legal but highly regulated in California. There are quotas, seasons and various limitations, such as a ban on killing cubs or mother bears with cubs in tow. The state does allow hunters to deploy dogs, often outfitted with radio telemetry devices on their collars, to track bears or bobcats.

Prayerful angels carved from oak, grinning terra-cotta cherubs and gold pocket watches with time on their hands. All are stacked on the cobblestones of Arezzo's Piazza Grande. Through the shutters of my hotel window, I watch vendors unload a treasure trove of antiques: gleaming wood dining tables, paintings, pottery, jewelry, copper pots and Murano glass. As dusk throws shadows across the square, I go out to reconnoiter, excited by the thrill of the hunt. Tomorrow, when the fair opens, I will buy a memento of my Tuscan travels — something artful, affordable, Italian.

The scimitar-horned oryx was listed as endangered seven years ago, but a special exemption from the federal Endangered Species Act allowed breeders of the rare African antelope to nonetheless sell and hunt the animals -- at $5,500 a head. As a result, herds grew exponentially on exotic hunting ranches nationwide, especially in Texas. That exemption for the oryx and two other African antelopes popular with Texas hunters, the addax and the dama gazelle, could disappear Wednesday unless a federal judge approves a last-minute appeal by ranchers for an injunction.

I just read Mark Vanhoenacker's article “A Rest for Restless Spirits” [Jan. 8] about the Mojave National Preserve and must object to the characterization that allowing hunting is “inferior.” Hunting is not at all an inferior use of public land and has a long tradition in the U.S. and California. Long before MNP came into existence, hunters were, and still are, one of the larger user groups of the MNP. The L.A. Times has a long antihunting bias, somewhat surprising considering the history of its publishers.

Anyone who's ever laid eyes on Beth Chapman, the costar of former hit reality show "Dog the Bounty Hunter," might think she's one of a kind, with her lacquered nails, stiletto heels and pink handcuffs. It turns out she has imitators, and she's none too pleased with her flashy doppelgangers. She and her husband, Duane "Dog" Chapman, found several impractically outfitted bounty hunters while playing mentor to mom-and-pop bail bond agencies across the country for an upcoming series on CMT. “I asked them to change their clothes and put on sensible shoes,” Beth Chapman said recently by phone during a break in filming in Oklahoma City.

The social networking site Reddit found itself in the middle of a terrible situation this week after it fingered a missing Brown student as one of the Boston Marathon bombers. Reddit, for those unfamiliar, is a popular site that consists entirely of user-generated content. “Redditors,” or users, can either vote a post up or down. The site's “front page” consists of its most popular posts. Reddit's thousands of threads on every sort of topic, called “subreddits,” are moderated by volunteers.

ATHENS - Police scoured much of Greece's rural south Thursday searching for three strawberry plantation foremen suspected in the shootings of 29 foreign workers in a pay dispute that has fanned fear of rising racism. None of the workers, mainly from Bangladesh, suffered life-threatening injuries. But many sustained multiple gunshot wounds when at least one of the foremen at a plantation in the Peloponnese, about 160 miles southwest of Athens, went on a rampage late Wednesday, opening fire on about 200 workers demanding back pay, workers told authorities.

The newly formed group of Sierra Nevada bighorn sheep barreled up rugged Olancha Peak last month, the 10 females and four males becoming the first new herd of the endangered animals reintroduced in California in 25 years. Once abundant throughout the region's alpine areas, the state's population of Sierra Nevada bighorn had dwindled to two herds by the 1970s. Their numbers have been devastated by disease spread by contact with domestic sheep and goats and unregulated commercial hunting.

REVERE, Mass. -- A student from Saudi Arabia who was wounded in the explosions at the Boston Marathon finish line on Monday was caught up in the manhunt for the source of the two bombs. On Monday night, federal agents questioned his roommates and searched his apartment, carrying out bags of evidence. FULL COVERAGE: Boston Marathon attack The man was considered a “person of interest,” but is no longer under suspicion, said a federal law enforcement official who requested anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation.

Serial tech investor Ashton Kutcher is backing the Hunt, a fashion start-up that makes social media photos on sites such as Pinterest and Instagram "shoppable. " The San Francisco company was created to help consumers find clothing, jewelry and other items seen in images shared on blogs, photo apps and social media platforms. It calls itself a community-driven online shopping experience. The Hunt , founded by Tim Weingarten and Simon Peck, launched in January; since then, it has grown to 1 million monthly unique visitors.

Here it is, late spring in Orange County. Most wild animals, what are left of them, are raising newborn young. What does The Times commit in its Orange County Digest? An article with photo of our own urban mountain man with bow and bearskin. Though he professes to teach "respect for nature," he promotes in the same breath hunting with bow and arrow. Provides more of a challenge, he feels. Orange County's wildlife has been trampled by development, run over by traffic, shot year-round by poachers, young and old, and sometimes even legislated against.

As outdoor activities in California go, bear hunting is not particularly popular. Officials estimate that, at most, 1% of the state's population hunts black bears. Many of the other 99% are appalled that anyone does. "I think most people think of it as an anachronism," said state Fish and Game Commissioner Michael Sutton, who speculates that the state's voters may soon ban the practice. Bear hunting has come a long way since the 1920s, when ranchers and farmers wiped out the grizzly, leaving its sole California presence on the state flag.

With no obvious inside candidate to be the next president of the University of California system, experts predict a wide search that will concentrate on similar university systems elsewhere but could also stretch beyond academia. Whoever replaces Mark Yudof will take a job that comes with intense political and financial pressures. UC has an annual budget of $24 billion, 230,000 students, 191,000 faculty and staff members, 10 campuses, five medical centers and three national laboratories.

— During his adventure on the first three holes Thursday, Tiger Woods clanged a hair-raising screamer off the gallery and landed a tee shot on a spectator's beer cup, turning his chase for a green-jacket refitting into a scramble at the start. By the end, there were rueful laughs and accidental on-air expletives and a mid-round surge, as well as Lindsey Vonn and her floppy hat bouncing expectantly at the fringe of the 18th green as Woods' birdie putt veered just right. The world's No. 1 player wasn't No. 1 on the leaderboard as the first round of the Masters closed at Augusta National.