Gifts

Last week, the Senate voted on a proposal by New Jersey Sen. Robert Menendez to end some of the billions of dollars in handouts enjoyed by the fossil-fuel industry. The Repeal Big Oil Tax Subsidies Act was a curiously skimpy bill that targeted only oil companies, and just the five richest of them at that. Left out were coal and natural gas. Even so, the proposal didn't pass. But that hasn't stopped President Obama from calling for an end to oil subsidies at every stop on his early presidential-campaign-plus-fundraising blitz.

Nearly a decade ago, an improbable dream came true for Deaf West Theatre and its founder, Ed Waterstreet. The small, L.A.-based company went to Broadway with its signed and spoken version of the musical "Big River: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. " Even as he savored their success, Waterstreet had another dream - creating an original musical inspired by Edmond Rostand's "Cyrano de Bergerac. " What better tale for his theater to tell than one that explores the universal desire to express oneself?

It's NOT a boy. Nor is it a girl. Not yet anyway. That's a ways down the road. But seeing as baby showers are the "it" event right now, I feel like I should plan ahead. So who wants to host this sucker? FYI: Online site Baby-shower.com suggests you create a 10-week timeline. Hmm. Let's make it 12 weeks. After all, you'll need three months to come up with a hip theme, hire a live band and concoct a signature drink -- the "infantini" or a "gin 'n' colic," perhaps?

The California Science Center has received what officials describe as an "extraordinary" financial contribution to the new Air and Space Center that will house the space shuttle Endeavour. The gift, to be announced at a news conference Thursday, comes from a foundation chaired by Lynda Oschin, wife of the late Los Angeles businessman and philanthropist Samuel Oschin, whose name already graces the Griffith Observatory planetarium and the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center cancer institute stemming from charitable contributions there.

A former Cruttenden & Co. stockbroker pleaded guilty Wednesday to receiving gifts, including a $50,000 Jaguar luxury car, from Spectrum Information Technologies in return for helping the wireless data company manipulate its stock price. Federal prosecutors said Reagan Richmond, 34, of Tustin, conspired to manipulate Spectrum stock between 1992 and 1994 while working as a broker at Irvine-based Cruttenden, now known as Cruttenden Roth, and at Regency Capital Group Inc. in Glendale.

An abandoned cat or dog can make the perfect holiday gift. But all too often, Christmas cats and Hanukkah hounds return to animal shelters because they are chosen in haste. At a North Hollywood animal shelter Thursday, Gary Olsen, general manager of the city Department of Animal Regulation, paired up with City Councilman Joel Wachs to promote pet gift certificates to ensure that holiday pets don't return to shelters by summer.

It was meant to be a joke. But the recession got the last laugh when more than 500 callers responded to an ad for a new bridal registry service offered by the 99 Cents Only Stores. Brides and their gift-hunting pals were invited to inquire about the registry's debut with a quick call to (213) LUCKY-99.

George Bao felt like a rich man the first time he flew back to China from America. He had so many gifts for his family and friends, he was lugging eight cardboard boxes in addition to his suitcase. That was in the 1980s, when flights weren't crowded. The airline didn't even charge him for the extra luggage. As for what the gifts were, the memory makes him laugh. He had brought secondhand clothes scavenged from yard sales. "My father was so happy," said Bao, who watched the elderly farmer put on his first Western suit, beaming even though it didn't fit well.

Are you buying a gift for a traveler who has everything or wants nothing? Step away from the neck pillow and look for something fun, unusual and/or handcrafted at UncommonGoods.com. What's hot: Once someone is labeled a traveler, that person inevitably gets gifts that are never used. Spare your traveling friends (or yourself) and head to UncommonGoods.com's Travel section for gifts that are both humorous and handy. I found pop-up towelettes ($12), a solar-powered backpack ($230)

Is it wrong to ask friends to spend when you know they're scrimping? And what do you do with an influx of cash -- if you're still getting unemployment checks? :: Dear Alana: My husband and I are about to have a baby. We are both employed as lawyers in Chicago and have -- for the time being -- steady jobs. I am from Flint, Mich., and my mother is planning on throwing me a baby shower there.

Adali Gutierrez rarely mentioned his scarred and disfigured chin. He kept quiet about the mangled lower lip that twisted when he talked. A 21-year-old raising four orphaned siblings had bigger worries. Today, however, he speaks without hesitation. A plastic surgeon has fashioned him a new lip and smoothed over the divots in his skin. Faded are the lesions that reminded him constantly of the night his parents were gunned down in Mexico. It was January 2010. Maria and Guillermo Sr. had arrived at a police station to bail out Adali, who had been stopped for drunk driving.

GREENSBORO, N.C. - After weeks of riveting and often salacious testimony about an extramarital affair and the elaborate lies that once kept it hidden, testimony in the John Edwards trial turned Monday to a more prosaic topic: campaign finance law. As Edwards' legal team opened his defense, the finance director for his failed 2008 presidential run testified that more than $900,000 from two wealthy benefactors was not reported as campaign contributions...

UC Santa Barbara, according to old stereotypes, may still conjure up the image of a lush campus by the beach, where students can squeeze in a few hours of surfing after class and live in a nearby neighborhood that is one of the nation's best-known party zones. But in reality, UC Santa Barbara over the last three decades increasingly has become a center of scientific research, and its move in that direction was strengthened Saturday with the announcement of a $50-million private donation to energy efficiency research and engineering programs.

Solar choices Re "Standing their sacred ground," April 24 The choice is not between disturbing Native American grave sites or building clean-energy projects; it's between continuing these huge, inefficient, enormously expensive and environmentally destructive boondoggles in the desert or using solar the way it should be used: with panels on every rooftop supplying that building's energy needs. The attempt to fit solar into the portfolio of big energy companies is a doomed strategy that may be good for Southern California Edison's bottom line but is bad for the desert environment and the species that live there.

Occasionally The Times publishes a story that leaves little room for debate, where the reader letters come down so uniformly on one side of the issue that putting a positive spin on the article would seem impossible. Monday's front-page article, " AT&T wields enormous power in Sacramento ," was one such story. None of the roughly two-dozen reader submissions sent to letters@latimes.com (two of which were published on Monday's page ) even attempted to note a remotely apologetic aspect of AT&T's grip on California lawmakers.

In this age of Kindle and iPad and e-books, I write by hand, on little notepads, in my car. I have written in my car since I was 22 and working on my first novel. Then, the car was a broken-down pale green Fiat. I sat in the driver's seat while my then-husband worked on it in our gravel driveway, yelling at me to pump the brakes or start the engine. Now I write in my 2009 Honda CRV while waiting in the high school parking lot for my youngest, or even at the curb in front of my house - the way Raymond Carver used to - before I go inside.

The holiday season is upon us. Time for eggnog, caroling -- and worries about what to buy the boss. Today Alana answers your questions about gift giving and receiving. Dear Alana: I have been working in an office for a little more than a year now. Last year I did not exchange any gifts with co-workers because I was new. However, now that I have been here over a year, who am I supposed to give a card or gift to? What is appropriate? Oscar in El Monte Dear Oscar: It's a tough question.

Purim is a holiday of sweetness and joy, a time when Jews reflect on the power of an individual and the victory of the Jewish nation in the face of destruction. One of the exciting elements of Purim is the obligatory giving of gifts of food to friends and family. Jews are commanded to give at least two foods to at least one person, and they must be ready-to-eat food items. Mordecai, one of the Purim heroes, instituted the practice of mishloach manot. TIPS FOR MISHLOACH MANOT Collect any plastic berry or wood produce baskets, boxes, decorative bottles, ribbons and bows you have around the house.

The mountain lion hunt that put California Fish and Game Commission President Daniel W. Richards in the center of a political firestorm has him in trouble again. The enforcement chief for the state's Fair Political Practices Commission informed Richards on Thursday that he had violated the gift limits of the Political Reform Act when he went on the Idaho hunt but failed to pay the fee that the Flying B Ranch usually imposes. Richards eventually reimbursed the ranch $6,800 on March 5, but he did it after the expiration of the 30-day time period that state officials are given to pay back the value of an illegal gift, and after a complaint had already been filed with the FPPC.

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art finally has fulfilled the vision it had for its biggest foray into Islamic art - a goal thwarted until now by the government of the Russian Federation. The only problem is that Angelenos would have to travel more than 8,000 miles to see it. In "Gifts of the Sultan: the Arts of Giving at the Islamic Courts," now on view in Doha, the capital of Qatar, art that Islamic rulers had sent long ago to the czarist courts are finally on display - courtesy of the State Hermitage Museum and National Library of Russia inSt.