Resort Town

Hundreds of people cowered for about two hours inside a shopping mall in this resort town Saturday while security forces traded sporadic gunfire with armed men in the parking lot and then searched stores for suspects. No one was injured in the gunbattle, but some cars and entrance doors to the shopping center were damaged, authorities said. Police said they arrested two men who were also suspected of being involved in an overnight attack near the mall that killed a Mexican marine.

SAN SEBASTIAN, Spain - Juan Mari Arzak peered out from behind his red-framed glasses as if trying to solve a puzzle. "Food has always been very important here," said the chef, "and nobody knows why. " His own culinary genius, of course, is part of the reason. Restaurante Arzak, where he now shares the kitchen with his daughter Elena, is one of three Michelin three-star restaurants in town and one of only five in Spain, as of 2012. Juan Mari pioneered the contemporary Basque cooking that put this Belle Epoque resort town - indeed all of Spain - on the international culinary map in the 1970s.

A trip to this fishing village turned art colony turned gay-friendly resort town brings you to the tip of Cape Cod, the land narrowing so much as you approach on Route 6 that you can see water on both sides, Atlantic Ocean and Cape Cod Bay. Provincetown is the clenched fist at the end of the slender wrist that is Truro, with the forearm of the Outer Cape towns of Wellfleet and Eastham leading down to the flexed elbow, made up mostly of Orleans and...

Police say a retired U.S. Marine living near the Philippine capital was bludgeoned to death by robbers who broke into home and stole his valuables on Christmas Eve. Police said Monday that robbers used a metal pipe to kill 61-year-old James Thomas Kakara, who was alone in his house in the resort town of Tagaytay. His Filipino wife and her daughter had left to spend Christmas Eve with her family nearby. They found his body the following morning. Police spokesman Agrimerf Cruz said the robbers took about $6,000, a cellphone and a laptop from the house.

ANKARA, Turkey -- A bomb tore apart a minibus in a popular Aegean beach resort town yesterday, killing at least five people, including two foreigners, the second explosion in a week aimed at Turkey's vital tourism industry. The blast in the coastal city of Kusadasi, a favorite destination for British, Irish, and German tourists, reduced the bus to a scorched, twisted heap of metal. A man's charred body was shown in news photos draped over the remains of a seat and an injured woman lay on the road, just a few yards from the beach.

SAN SEBASTIAN, Spain - Juan Mari Arzak peered out from behind his red-framed glasses as if trying to solve a puzzle. "Food has always been very important here," said the chef, "and nobody knows why. " His own culinary genius, of course, is part of the reason. Restaurante Arzak, where he now shares the kitchen with his daughter Elena, is one of three Michelin three-star restaurants in town and one of only five in Spain, as of 2012. Juan Mari pioneered the contemporary Basque cooking that put this Belle Epoque resort town - indeed all of Spain - on the international culinary...

You could spend much of your life in greater Boston and never venture into this small town dangling off Eastie into the harbor. Just over 1.6 square miles, it has no glitzy shopping complex, nor the orderly quaintness of Newburyport or even downtown Salem. Unless you live there, it’s out of the way, which is precisely its charm. Getting here is a deliberate act. With just two roads leading in and out (one from East Boston, the other from Revere), chances are you won’t arrive by accident.

Jackson Hole, Wyo., is reportedly in the running to be the setting for the premiere of “Modern Family.’’ The Jackson Hole News & Guide reports Wednesday that producers of ABC’s “mockumentary’’ sitcom named the resort town as their top pick but that network approval is still pending. The proposal would have the show’s characters on a family vacation at the Lost Creek Ranch, a lodge and spa. ABC officials declined to comment. The newspaper reports that Jackson emerged at the front-runner after the Snow King Resort offered to...

Police say a retired U.S. Marine living near the Philippine capital was bludgeoned to death by robbers who broke into home and stole his valuables on Christmas Eve. Police said Monday that robbers used a metal pipe to kill 61-year-old James Thomas Kakara, who was alone in his house in the resort town of Tagaytay. His Filipino wife and her daughter had left to spend Christmas Eve with her family nearby. They found his body the following morning. Police spokesman Agrimerf Cruz said the robbers took about $6,000, a cellphone and a laptop from the house.

SPRINGERVILLE, Ariz. — Stiff winds whipped up a gigantic blaze in the mountains of eastern Arizona yesterday, forcing the evacuation of a third resort town and casting a smoky haze over states as far away as Iowa. Winds of about 30 miles per hour, with gusts above 60, blew heavy smoke from the fire into Greer, a picturesque town where most of the 200 full-time residents had already fled. Everyone still there and in the nearby area known as Sunrise were ordered to leave yesterday afternoon.

Hundreds of people cowered for about two hours inside a shopping mall in this resort town Saturday while security forces traded sporadic gunfire with armed men in the parking lot and then searched stores for suspects. No one was injured in the gunbattle, but some cars and entrance doors to the shopping center were damaged, authorities said. Police said they arrested two men who were also suspected of being involved in an overnight attack near the mall that killed a Mexican marine.

It’s not as if there hadn’t been a no-brainer choice before. Salt Lake City was the obvious pick for the 1998 Winter Games that went instead to Nagano. Vancouver was odds-on for 2010 and nearly lost to Pyeongchang on the first ballot. And Pyeongchang was the decided favorite for the 2014 edition that went to Sochi, a Black Sea resort better known as Joe Stalin’s summer getaway. So until International Olympic Committee president Jacques Rogge opened the oversized envelope yesterday and pronounced Pyeongchang as the site for 2018, the South Koreans crossed their fingers and held their breath,...

Jackson Hole, Wyo., is reportedly in the running to be the setting for the premiere of “Modern Family.’’ The Jackson Hole News & Guide reports Wednesday that producers of ABC’s “mockumentary’’ sitcom named the resort town as their top pick but that network approval is still pending. The proposal would have the show’s characters on a family vacation at the Lost Creek Ranch, a lodge and spa. ABC officials declined to comment. The newspaper reports that Jackson emerged at the front-runner after the Snow King Resort offered to set...

HAMBURG, Iowa — The rising Missouri River ruptured two levees in northwest Missouri yesterday, sending torrents of flood waters over rural farmland toward a small town in Iowa and a resort community in Missouri. Water rushing from a 300-foot-wide hole in a levee near Hamburg, in far southwest Iowa, is continuing to widen the breach, placing more people in jeopardy. Flood waters are expected to reach a secondary levee protecting the partly evacuated town of about 1,100 people by today.

SPRINGERVILLE, Ariz. — Stiff winds whipped up a gigantic blaze in the mountains of eastern Arizona yesterday, forcing the evacuation of a third resort town and casting a smoky haze over states as far away as Iowa. Winds of about 30 miles per hour, with gusts above 60, blew heavy smoke from the fire into Greer, a picturesque town where most of the 200 full-time residents had already fled. Everyone still there and in the nearby area known as Sunrise were ordered to leave yesterday afternoon.

LUDLOW, Vt. - New England skiers know Ludlow as the home to Okemo Mountain Resort, the family-friendly ski area with impeccably groomed runs. Even when Mother Nature fails to deliver the fluffy white stuff, Okemo is busy making snow all night, so much in fact that it often feels like the upper ridges of this 3,344-foot peak are a wonderland of snowed-over pines and ridge walls covered with ice. The energetic owners of the resort, Diane and Tim Mueller,...

RANCHO MIRAGE, Calif. -- President Bush paid a visit yesterday to the ailing former president, Gerald R. Ford, at his home in this resort town, where Bush was spending the weekend. Ford and his wife, Betty, were waiting outside their stucco home, which overlooks a golf course, as Bush's limousine pulled into the circular driveway. Bush gave Betty Ford a kiss on the cheek and shook the hand of the Republican former president. Ford then linked his arm into Bush's and led him inside the home in the gated community near Palm Springs in the California desert.

"It's almost a laughable thing. Everybody knows Romania because of Dracula. Even Bulgarians themselves refer to their country as the forgotten corner of Europe. " FUN AND FACT -FINDING: Kennedy, no stranger to travel, teaches English as a second language at Suffolk University and helps manage programs part time at Vantage Deluxe World Travel.

LUDINGTON, Mich. — A search was underway yesterday for four passengers reported missing after a medical transport plane headed to the Mayo Clinic crashed into Lake Michigan, officials said. One of the five people on board was rescued by a boater, officials said. Meanwhile, federal officials yesterday began to investigate a medical helicopter crash in central Oklahoma that killed the pilot and a nurse and left a paramedic seriously injured, an official said. In Michigan, Coast Guard Petty Officer Nathaniel Parks said the plane went down shortly after 10 a.m. a few miles off the shore of...

You could spend much of your life in greater Boston and never venture into this small town dangling off Eastie into the harbor. Just over 1.6 square miles, it has no glitzy shopping complex, nor the orderly quaintness of Newburyport or even downtown Salem. Unless you live there, it’s out of the way, which is precisely its charm. Getting here is a deliberate act. With just two roads leading in and out (one from East Boston, the other from Revere), chances are you won’t arrive by accident.