Opportunities

Hospice in the Home, a program of the Verdugo Hills Visiting Nurses Assn., needs volunteers to help with terminally ill patients and their families as part of a team effort. Volunteers run errands, give rides to doctors' offices and fill in for primary caregivers when they need a break. Training begins July 22. Information: (818) 956-1860.

Unable to send Clayton Kershaw to the mound for a second consecutive night, the Dodgers went back to being the Dodgers on Tuesday. With Zack Greinke giving up five runs in four-plus innings, the Dodgers had no chance against the Milwaukee Brewers, as their inept offense converted 10 hits and five walks into only two runs. The 5-2 defeat at Miller Park felt like many of the last-place Dodgers' 25 previous defeats, as they were three for 14 with runners in scoring position. They had men on first and second with none out in the second inning and didn't score.

"The Arab World Unbound: Tapping Into the Power of 350 Million Consumers" opens in a Hezbollah-controlled grocery shop in south Beirut, where people are drinking Red Bull. From there on, it just gets better and better. Most of us know the Middle East and North Africa only from what we see on our television screens and read in the newspapers. The daily tale of riots and protests, bombs and bullets can leave us feeling profoundly depressed about the entire region and its prospects.

WASHINGTON - Disclosure of a highly classified intelligence operation in Yemen last year compromised an exceedingly rare and valuable espionage achievement: an informant who had earned the trust of hardened terrorists, according to U.S. officials. The operation received new scrutiny this week after the Justice Department disclosed it had obtained telephone records for calls to and from more than 20 lines belonging to the Associated Press news service and its journalists in April and May 2012 in a high-level investigation of the alleged leak of classified information.

When Andrew Conru founded a dating website called FriendFinder, he soon became frustrated by users uploading explicit videos. Conru spent many hours deleting clips of home pornography before realizing he had stumbled by chance on a profitable niche. He renamed the site Adult FriendFinder and later sold it for a reported $500 million. The role of simple luck in success is a fashionable topic. Daniel Kahneman, the Nobel Prize-winning economist, concluded recently that there was little to learn from profiles of companies and chief executives, because their triumphs were more a case of serendipity than good judgment.

In basketball, free throws can make the difference in a game. In hockey, the power play provides the perfect chance for a team to attack an opponent's goal. Similarly, the water polo teams that take advantage of their six-on-five opportunities tend to enjoy the most success. Consider Chino Hills Ayala, which recently beat La Canada, 11-1, in a girls' playoff game. The Bulldogs scored six times in eight man-advantage chances and limited their opponent to one goal in 13 similar situations.

One is the reigning Major League Soccer most valuable player and the other should have won the award a year earlier. One leads the league in scoring over the last three seasons while the other leads the league in assists. But accolades and gaudy numbers aren't the only things Chris Wondolowski and Brad Davis share. Because despite their offensive prowess, neither has gotten much of a look from a U.S. national team that has often had trouble scoring. Wondolowski, 30, invited to his second consecutive winter training camp this year, played only sparingly in three friendlies for the U.S. in 2012.

WASHINGTON - Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski was expected to announce his resignation Friday after nearly four years on the job, and one public-interest group isn't sad to see him go. Public Knowledge, which has pushed for more protections for consumers against large telecommunications companies, said Genachowski's tenure "can best be described as one of missed opportunities. " "The chairman had the opportunity, but declined, to take several important steps that would have promoted more robust competition in the wireline and wireless broadband markets," the group said.

Tom Bernard of Beverly Hills had been recently laid off from his engineering job when he received an e-mail in 2009 offering seminars to help him start a Web-based business. He had some misgivings, but the need to find a new job trumped them, and Bernard signed up. Several weeks later, the business was not turning a profit, but his credit card had sprouted a $12,000 charge from Ivy Capital Inc., which offered the seminars. On Wednesday, the Federal Trade Commission said it had filed suit against Ivy Capital in Las Vegas, National Sales Group in Santa Barbara, Business Recovery Services in Mesa, Ariz.

Larry Smith is a nice man, but I wish he wouldn't give his coaching friends any more of these opportunities at my expense. JOE REGAN Los Angeles

There was a good deal of playoff chatter around the Kings training facility Sunday morning. After an abbreviated skate, with the team still waiting to hear about its second-round matchup, players imagined the excitement of a freeway series against the Ducks. They talked about facing a familiar - and tough - opponent in the San Jose Sharks. Dwight King had no preference either way. He was just hoping for a happy ending. "In the playoffs, you have more eyes on you," he said.

Marine biologist Dan Madigan stood on a dock in San Diego and considered some freshly caught Pacific bluefin tuna. The fish had managed to swim 5,000 miles from their spawning grounds near Japan to California's shores, only to end up the catch of local fishermen. It was August 2011, five months since a magnitude 9 earthquake and tsunami had struck in Japan, crippling the Fukushima Daiichi power plant. Madigan couldn't stop thinking about pictures he'd seen on TV of Japanese emergency crews dumping radioactive water from the failing reactors into the Pacific Ocean.

Throughout 2001, President George W. Bush and I spent time negotiating an important bilateral agreement on immigration policies and programs. We optimistically pieced together an innovative framework, and were close to reaching our goals, when the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11 derailed our plans. Now, in 2013, and in remarkably similar circumstances, President Obama and a bipartisan group of congressional leaders are again working courageously on immigration issues. I join the millions of voices echoing around the world in expressing my outrage and sorrow about the events in Boston this month.

NEW YORK - Matt Barkley marveled, often helplessly, as Oregon's offense went up and down the field against USC and most other opponents the last four seasons. The Ducks seemed to score at will, coach Chip Kelly's fast and relentless spread scheme making stars of every quarterback manning the controls. Now Barkley will try to find his own place in that kind of offense. On Saturday, the Philadelphia Eagles traded up and chose Barkley with the first pick in the fourth round of the NFL draft.

They were damaged goods a year ago, with a new coaching staff coming in. Defensive backs Anthony Jefferson and Brandon Sermons had little opportunity to make an initial impression. Jefferson was still recovering from a back surgery that forced him to sit out the 2011 season. Sermons had seen limited duty after suffering a broken leg that wiped his 2010 season. Both are making an impression this spring. "They are putting themselves in position to show who they were coming out of high school," said secondary coach Demetrice Martin . "Both of them were pretty highly recruited guys.

SACRAMENTO - For just the second time during his 11-year career, Caron Butler has played in as many as 78 regular-season games. And for Butler, being injury-free for the playoffs, which start Saturday for the Clippers, is key. When the Clippers met the Memphis Grizzlies in the first round of the Western Conference playoffs in 2012, Butler suffered a broken left hand in Game 1. He missed Game 2 but played in the rest of the Clippers'...

About this series One in a series of occasional reports on China's fast-growing film industry and the opportunities — and challenges — it presents for Hollywood.

Heilbrun emerges as a fine role model for women over 50. She is courageous and knows that the later years offer exciting opportunities for those brave enough to take advantage of them. DIANE KOVACS Los Angeles

With Kobe Bryant sidelined with an Achilles tendon tear, the Lakers (44-37) will need to ride on the back of Dwight Howard to get past the Houston Rockets (45-36) on Wednesday and into the playoffs. Center -- Probable Starters: Dwight Howard vs. Omer Asik Howard's opportunity to lead the Lakers hits center stage against the Rockets. Houston has one of the better defensive centers in the league in Omer Asik. Asik, at 7 feet, 255 pounds, is taller than Howard. The third-year center has averaged 10.2 points and 11.7 rebounds a game for the Rockets.

WASHINGTON - Secretary of State John F. Kerry told Congress on Wednesday that any chance of resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict by creating a separate Palestinian state may be lost in two years. The unusually specific prediction was intended to highlight Kerry's urgency in trying to encourage peace negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians. "The window for the two-state solution is shutting," he said. "I think we have some period of time, a year and a half or two years, or it's over.