Pictures

FRANCE, ITALY AND SWITZERLAND Presentation Tricia Holbrook will look at hut-to-hut trekking through France, Italy and Switzerland on the Tour du Mont Blanc, and from Mont Blanc to the Matterhorn along Switzerland's Haute Route. When, where: 7:30 p.m. Monday at Distant Lands, 20 S. Raymond Ave., Pasadena. Admission, info : Free. RSVP to (626) 449-3220. CAMBODIA Presentation Travel photographer and tour guide Ralph Velasco will present a virtual circumnavigation of Tonle Sap Lake in Cambodia and offer photo tips about these images.

Poor job growth and a large exodus of unemployed workers last month stifled weeks of upbeat economic data and marked a sobering reality check, signaling that hiring was likely to remain weak in the coming months. Employers added a paltry 88,000 net new jobs in March, the smallest number since June and just one-third of the gain in February. Retailers, manufacturers and finance companies shed jobs over the month, an indication that consumer spending may be softening as workers grapple with higher payroll taxes and sluggish wage growth.

Since the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts & Sciences sent out a "Save the Date" notice last week inviting its entire 6,000-person membership to an unprecedented general meeting, Hollywood has been buzzing about just what would be on the agenda. Now, academy President Hawk Koch is unveiling his motives for calling the confab.  “It's about time the academy is finally doing this,” said Koch, a longtime Board of Governors member whose term as president will end in August after one year, due to academy term limit rules.

Demi Lovato tweeted a photo of herself without makeup on Wednesday, urging her almost 13 million followers to do the same. "Ladies, be brave today.. take off your make-up and stop using those filters!! WE are beautiful!!!," she wrote as a caption to the photo (a cropped version of which is shown above).  Her followers responded by sending along pics of themselves in a similar state, with a handful of them earning attention from the "Heart Attack" singer, who offered props for beautiful smiles, skin and more.

Like the sluggish box office, the jobs picture in Hollywood isn't looking pretty so far this year. Employment in the motion picture, television and sound recording category fell 7.3% to 114,700 jobs in January, compared with the same period a year ago, according to the latest figures from the state's Employment Development Department. In fact, the employment level in January was the lowest of any month since January 2001, when employment also stood at 106,300 jobs, according to the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corp.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences will celebrate breakthroughs in visual effects with a slate of programs in April, beginning Tuesday with an advance screening of "Jurassic Park 3D" at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills. Steven Spielberg's 1993 dinosaur blockbuster based on Michael Crichton's bestseller is the latest vintage film to get a makeover in 3-D. The new version opens April 5 in theaters and IMAX. Following the screening will be a discussion with several members of the crew, including Rick Carter (art direction)

Fay Kanin, an Oscar-nominated screenwriter for the 1958 Clark Gable-Doris Day comedy "Teacher's Pet" and former president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, died Wednesday. She was 95. In a writing career that spanned more than four decades, Kanin penned screenplays for movies such as the 1954 Elizabeth Taylor romantic drama "Rhapsody" and television specials such as "Tell Me Where It Hurts," for which she won two Emmy Awards in 1974. She won another Emmy in 1979 for producing "Friendly Fire," a critically acclaimed Carol Burnett TV movie based on the true story of an American soldier killed in the Vietnam War. Kanin served as president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences from 1979 to 1983, and was its second female president after actress Bette Davis.

This golfer looks like he's enjoying himself at this all-natural "driving range. " The photographer, Robert Larson , tells us "I took the picture on Ilford HP5 pushed to 800 with a Pentax K1000. This is in Joshua Tree. My friends and I try to get out there a few times a year for a weekend or so. We rent a different house each trip and try to forget about the 'real world' for a while. We're like a bunch of kids in a giant sandbox. It's wonderful. " Each week, we're featuring photos of Southern California submitted by readers.

While other social networks seem to be ignoring the resurgence of the popular GIF animated image format, Google+ seems to be embracing it wholeheartedly. On Monday, Google's social network gave users the ability to use GIFs as their profile picture. So if users add a GIF profile picture, their default image will be a looping animation. "Like newspapers in Harry Potter :)" said Google's Matt Steiner, who announced the new feature in a post Monday on Google+. QUIZ: How much do you know about Google?