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Adoption agencies should be free from blame

The story of the Russian adoptee sent back to Russia by his adoptive family certainly caught my eye and heart [“Russia furious: Adopted boy sent back alone from U.S.,” News, April 10].

Having been a social worker for a program that promoted the adoption of special needs or “waiting” children, I cannot help but feel that there is more to this story; I do not think it should reflect negatively on the agency involved unless an investigation shows it is more culpable than I suspect.

Adoption of older children presents known risks that vary by the child’s history and where he or she is originally from.

An adoption agency provides prospective parents the most accurate info it could get from adoption authorities. The agency relies on a social worker’s home-study across the country, who attests a family understands these risks and has the emotional, psychological and financial resources to make a lifelong commitment to the welfare of a child.

When an adoptive family experiences challenges with a child, family members are expected to respond as if the child were born into their family. My understanding is that this adoptive family did not seek services for the child. If it is eventually determined that an adoption cannot be salvaged, the agency should match the child with another adoptive family.

It is possible that the child is reacting to that particular family and might adjust much better in a different home. I have seen that happen. Again, that means working with the adoption agency to assure the child’s welfare.

I am confident the adoption agency did not suggest or support this parent’s actions. While the adoptive parent had laudable motivation in her desire to adopt a waiting child, there was clearly an abandonment of her responsibilities as an adoptive parent.

— Tim Meagher, Fircrest

Abandonment in international adoptions rare

There are many faces to international adoption and so many happy endings. [“Grandmother: Boy terrified adoptive kin,” News, April 11.]

A story like this recent one of abandonment is rare, but is frightening enough that it gives the countries involved in international adoption pause in order to review policy. Sadly, this places so many stable, loving families waiting to adopt a child on hold.

We adopted our daughter two years ago from China. She is a daily joy and we could not possibly imagine our lives without her. We waited three years for our daughter and were guided skillfully and patiently by our agency, World Association for Children and Parents (WACAP).

There were countless, unexpected delays as we waited for our daughter as country policies changed and paperwork increased. Throughout the adoption process, WACAP rigorously educated our family, prepared us for the transition with our daughter and was available for support. Upon our daughter’s arrival, post-placement visits and transitional support were woven into our homecoming. WACAP is an agency of integrity that is highly regarded in the adoption community, and we are so grateful for their work on behalf of children in the United States and worldwide.

We believe in adoption. Every child deserves a loving, forever family to call their own. We hope that these recent events will not deter countries from entrusting children in need to families abroad, nor deter families from adopting children in need.

— Annie & David Drummond, Shoreline

Comparado con el fin de semana anterior, en el que tuvimos GP de Malasia y Rally de Jordania, este ha sido un fin de semana tranquilo donde la competición del motor estuvo en las motos mientras que en las cuatro ruedas esperamos al GP de China de Fórmula 1 y el Rally de Turquia. A pesar de ello, han habido algunas noticias.

En el gran circo, Peter Sauber ha salido a la palestra para comentar que el proceso de adaptación de Kamui Kobayashi y Pedro Martínez De la Rosa no está siendo tan rápido como se esperaba. Hace días incluso se habló de una posible sustitución de De la Rosa pero Pastor Maldonado, posible sustituto, desmintió esa posibilidad al menos por su parte.

Esperemos que Sauber pueda mejorar los problemas de fiabilidad de sus monoplazas ya que en dos de las tres carreras ninguno de los dos monoplazas ha sido capaz de acabar. La mejora en la fiabilidad contribuirá a acelarar el proceso de adaptación y esperemos que así desaparezcan cualquier fantasma de sustitución de De la Rosa.

También de pilotos se habló estos días en Hispania Racing. La escudería española de momento está contenta con Senna y Chandhok pero busca un piloto experimentado que les ayude a desarrollar el monoplaza. Los nombres de Cristian Klien y Giancarlo Fisichella son los que han sonado con más fuerza para esta posibilidad.

En cuanto a tecnología, continúa hablándose de neumáticos, tema que promete rellenar muchas páginas en el futuro. Por el momento, Michelin sigue poniendo condiciones y ya ha dicho que no volvería si continua la política de proveedores en exclusiva que implantó la FIA desde 2007, dando todo el protagonismo a una Bridgestone que ahora le abandona.

Otro problema que tiene Ecclestone sobre la mesa es el del GP de Corea, cuyas obras parece que van con mucho retraso, hecho que ya ha llevado a pensar en una posible suspensión de esta prueba, prevista para finales de Octubre.

También en estos días conocimos que la FIA fija la sanción para Briatore y Symonds hasta finales de 2012, lo que significa que ambos podrían volver a la F1 si lo desean a partir del año 2013.

En cuanto al WRC, el equipo Citroën confirmó que Sebastien Ogier estará en el Rally de Nueva Zelanda mientras que Kimi Raikkonen lo tiene bastante complicado para acudir. Además, se dieron detalles del Porto Roadshow, espectáculo que servirá de previo al Rally de Portugal y que servirá para acercar el WRC a los aficionados portugues.

De todo lo que vaya ocurriendo en el mundo de la competición os seguiremos informando a través de Recta de Meta.

Vía | Recta de Meta

NextGen Solar has announced that it has raised half of the $1 million it needs to bring its “solar paint” to customers.  The company claims its paint-on solar cells can hit 40 percent efficiency and will cost only a third of traditional solar PV panels.

The NextGen solar paint is a liquid material that forms webs of nanoscale solar cells when it dries and it can be painted onto practically any surface.  Developed by the Argonne National Laboratory, the solar paint beats out thin-film PV cells in efficiency because it captures more wavelengths of light.

The company is working with ambitious clean tech investors, hoping to get the prototype out of the lab and onto roofs, windows and walls soon.  A commercial breakthrough of this type of clean energy technology – one that is cheap and efficient enough to go up against coal – could make a big impact.

via Cleantechnica

The Jaguar XJ is ready to go on sale next month in the United States, U.K., China and Germany – the first time ever the brand has launched a vehicle simultaneously in four major markets, said Mike O’Driscoll, managing director of Jaguar Cars Ltd.

Click here to get prices on the 2010 Jaguar XJ.

The company is counting on the XJ sedan to boost sales by as much as 50 percent in 2010. It hopes that the XJ will increase sales to 75,000 units this year. Jaguar sales fell 21 percent last year to 51,855 worldwide. U.S. sales were down 19 percent to 11,955 units.

Before the XJ, Jaguar dealers were relying primarily on the XF sedan, which went on sale in 2008. Prices for the base 2010 Jaguar XJ will start at $71,650.

Click here for more news on the Jaguar XJ.

2010 Jaguar XJ:

– By: Stephen Calogera

Source: Automotive News (Subscription Required)

After months of relying on campaign surrogates to slam chief rival Linda McMahon, Republican U.S. Senate candidate Rob Simmons went on the offensive Monday, publicly questioning the character of the former World Wrestling Entertainment CEO who is also seeking the GOP nomination.
 
Simmons stood on the north steps of the state Capitol before a half-dozen reporters and catalogued what he called McMahon’s lack of credibility and disrespect for the law. He blasted her for painting herself as a political outsider when her company has spent $1 million on Washington lobbyists. He said her misleading answers to a questionnaire in connection with her appointment to the state Board of Education constitute lies.
 
And most significantly, Simmons cited McMahon’s role in a federal investigation into steroid use by professional wrestlers. According to a 1989 memo obtained by both The Day of New London and POLITICO, McMahon tipped off a Pennsylvania doctor about the impending investigation.
 
“This is the stuff of a mystery novel and a Hollywood thriller,” Simmons said. “It does not add credibility to a U.S. Senate campaign. These are the actions of someone who does not respect the law and it leaves one to ask the question: how can you write the laws if you don’t feel bound by them?”
 
McMahon was never charged with any crime in connection with the incident, but Simmons said he believes she ought to offer the voters of Connecticut a full accounting of her actions. “Mrs. McMahon is building her Senate candidacy entirely on her business experience at the WWE,” he said. “She needs to be held accountable for that very troubling record.”
 
Two members of McMahon’s campaign staff stood nearby and when Simmons’ was finished speaking, one of them responded to his critique. Spokesman Ed Patru borrowed a favorite phrase of the Clintons, saying Simmons’ attack smacked of “the politics of personal destruction.” He also said it represented a desperate move by a candidate whose public approval numbers had fallen sharply in the most recent Quinnipiac University poll.
 
“What you saw here today is the playbook of a tired and desperate politician who has no forward vision, no ideas of how to put people back to work,” Patru said. “Linda McMahon believes that what voters are entitled to and what they deserve is a substantive debate on the issues that impact them every day, not a 17-year-old court case, not 21-year-old memos but how do we best put people back to work (in this) economy.”
 

McMahon has said she will spend up to $50 million to win the race. She has already launched a television advertising blitz, a strategy that appears to be paying dividends: She emerged as the GOP frontrunner in the latest Q poll, though a Rasmussen poll released today found that Simmons would be the strongest Republican against Democratic frontrunner Richard Blumenthal. Simmons has yet to air a single TV commercial. 
 
Simmons took pains to contrast his record as a former Congressman who served in the U.S. Army for 37 years and taught at Yale and UConn with McMahon’s experience at the WWE.

“My public service career is an open book,” he said. “I’ve disclosed personal finances, cast thousands of public votes…people may not agree with every vote I’ve cast but I’ve never done anything to dishonor them and the offices I have held.”
 
 
 
 
 
 

The Senate this evening took a step toward extending the filing deadline for unemployment benefits, hopping a procedural hurdle that sets the stage for final passage of the bill later this week.

The count was 60 to 34 to sidestep a filibuster by Republicans — notably Sen. Tom Coburn (Okla.) — who were urging the Democrats to offset the $9.2 billion cost with unspent funds from last year’s economic stimulus bill.

The legislation — which the House had passed unanimously last month — extends COBRA benefits and the filing deadline for unemployment benefits through May 5. Those benefits had expired April 5, leaving hundreds of thousands of unemployed workers without an income.

If you’ve been feeling more shaking this year, it’s not your imagination.
The number of quakes greater than magnitude 4.0 in Southern California and Baja California has increased significantly in 2010. There have been 70 such quakes so far this year, the most of any year in the last decade. And it’s only April.

There were 30 in 2009 and 29 in 2008.
Seismologists said they are studying the uptick but cannot fully explain it.

Major earthquakes tend to occur in cycles, and experts have said the region in recent years has been in a quiet cycle when it comes to sizable temblors.
The string of quakes this year raises the possibility that Southern California might once again be entering a more active seismic period.

Scientists said the uptick does not mean that the Big One is any more imminent, but it could mean that more significant quakes are on the way.

Egill Hauksson, a geophysicist at Caltech, said the rate of quakes in the region is “probably … picking up again” after a relative lull that lasted more than a decade.

“What it means is that we are going to have more earthquakes than in the average year,” said Hauksson. “With more earthquakes, we’re bound to have more bigger ones. But there are always fewer of those than the smaller ones.”

Scientists, however, have not been able to fully explain the increase.
“We would like to be able to explain it,” said Kate Hutton, a seismologist at Caltech. “But there’s no real correlation with any cause.”

Many of the quakes this year have been aftershocks to the magnitude 7.2 temblor that rattled the Mexicali area earlier this month. The border area had experienced a swarm of smaller quakes before that one.

And there have been more than 1,000 aftershocks, including more than a dozen that registered more than magnitude 5.0.
The Mexicali quake was the region’s largest in nearly two decades — since the 7.3 Landers quake in the Mojave Desert in 1992.

Despite their size, neither quake did catastrophic damage because they occurred in relatively remote areas far from major population centers.

The Landers quake occurred during a particularly active seismic period in the L.A. area. Between 1987 and 1994, the region experienced five major quakes. In addition to Landers, there were the Whittier Narrows quake, which killed eight people, quakes in Big Bear and Joshua Tree, and the Northridge quake, which killed 57 people, injured 4,500 and caused about $40 billion in damage.

Beginning in the late 1990s, however, the number of these big, memorable quakes subsided. Experts are not sure of the reason for the cycles.

Experts said one possibility is that the ups and downs are random. Another possibility is a “cascade effect” in which a quake on one fault changes the stresses on another.
“If that fault is ready to produce an earthquake anyway, it might do something. But it would have to be pretty close” for that to happen, Hutton said.

Earthquakes have been in the forefront of public consciousness this year after January’s devastating temblor in Haiti, which killed tens of thousands. It was followed weeks later by a destructive temblor in Chile.

And then came the Mexicali quake, which was stronger than Haiti’s although much less destructive.

Hauksson said it’s easy to read too much into this year’s quake uptick.

Although it comes after several relatively quiet years, he noted that it’s not uncommon for one large quake to produce months if not years of increased seismic activity. So in that sense, the quake pattern this year is fairly typical.

— Cara Mia DiMassa

Map: Intensity shaking map for Mexicali quake. USGS

Google’s core philosophy about opening up access to the world’s information is the reason behind the company’s pro-net neutrality stand, the building of its own fiber network and its search for protocols for moving information between cloud providers. Google discussed its information liberation efforts at the search giant’s Atmosphere event held today as part of Google’s efforts to push enterprise adoption of cloud computing.

One of the biggest issues holding back cloud computing is the lack of protocols and a standard vocabulary around moving data from one cloud to another, said Vint Cerf, Google’s chief Internet evangelist. “Inter-cloud interaction is still in the formative stage,” he said. Cerf spoke on a panel at the all-day event held at Google’s headquarters with some 400 attendees representing corporate America. I’m watching via webcast, and my colleague Liz is contributing notes and photos from the event in person.

Cerf likened the cloud today to corporate networks back in the pre-Internet days, explaining that the Internet emerged as the way to bring disparate networks together and to enable folks to move data from one network to another. That’s an especially interesting comparison given that both IBM and HP have said they view the cloud as open in so much as there are already existing protocols such as TCP/IP and Http to move data between different clouds.

Cerf didn’t sound satisfied by this, and I don’t imagine he should be given some of the security needs of data moving between clouds and the amount of bandwidth such information can require. Surely for sharing such large amounts of sensitive data, different protocols that are open and standardized might make sense.  Look at companies like Aspera, which is offering a proprietary protocol to shift huge volumes of information between data centers.

Plus Cerf called for ways to move information between clouds in ways that preserves the metadata that makes the data itself useful.  If you think of the data as a piece of meat, say salami, the metadata is the additional ingredients and bread that determine if the salami ends up as a mufaletta instead of a Italian sub when traversing from one cloud to another.

In addition to protocols for moving information between clouds, Cerf said the industry needs to keep paying attention to IPv6 as the number of devices connected to the web increase, and it also needs to develop protocols to send information via broadcast, rather than sending everything via a one-to-one unicast connection. Other protocols or standards should focus on authentication and knowing who a person is on the web. Interestingly, none of the Googlers mentioned protocols for protecting data privacy or anonymity.

The panel also touched on non-cloud issues such as the importance of net neutrality, with Cerf reiterating that Google isn’t calling for every packet to be treated the same, but rather making sure the owners of the pipe don’t behave anticompetitively toward content flowing over their pipes. Prioritizing the flow of information for legitimate network management means is fine, but blocking them to stifle competition isn’t.

It wasn’t just Cerf speaking. Alan Eustace, SVP of engineering & research, and Jeff Huber, SVP of engineering, also shed light on Google’s plans. When asked about native or platform-specific apps versus the browser, Huber said, “The app model doesn’t scale well across different devices, and that’s why the browser and HTML 5 is important.”

He also discussed a new native client that Google is developing that allows web apps to run at native speeds while keeping those apps partitioned off from all of the resources of the hardware, saying it will “raise the bar on what a web app will do.”

Finally Cerf and Huber explained why Google is building out its experimental fiber network to bring 1-gigabit-per-second speeds to 50,000 to 500,000 Americans. Simply put, Google needs data. ” What does [a fiber network buildout] take technologically, and what does it cost not only to deliver it but to maintain it,” Cerf said. “Our business model isn’t to replicate that all over the world, but to understand it.” Later he added that Google might be able to bring new knowledge to the table, something that could help drive innovation in broadband (GigaOM Pro sub req’d).

Google’s search for data and the trek to catalog information can obviously disrupt entire industries, but it’s clear that the company is stepping up to take a greater role when it comes to cloud computing and hosted applications. We’ve seen its effort to get enterprise customers on board and it sounds like we’re going to see it attempt to drive standards as well. As it does so, Huber offered a reminder to those in the Atmosphere audience, “The more fundamental or structural thing is our commitment to openness…it’s your data, not something we’re trying to capture and keep.”

I’m not sure that’s a message that’s getting through to some people so far, especially given Google’s reliance on proprietary code for its Google Apps platform to enable programs to scale across its infrastructure. But perhaps for enterprise customers, Google is saying enough of the right things to drive interest and eventual adoption. We’ll have to see.

“Custom bulletproof limousine for $2,500? How can I go wrong?”

From: You Drive What?

Imagine, if you will, being sucked into a parallel universe in which the original Nintendo Entertainment System was exactly the same, but games like The Legend of Zelda were rendered in 3D. Don’t know what I mean? Watch this clip. More »

The National Football League has joined forces with Verizon Wireless to provide the deepest NFL experience on a mobile phone. Sprint previously held the NFL contract, but Verizon managed to sign a new four-year agreement with NFL Mobile.

Starting today, any Verizon customer with an Android phone can download NFL Mobile from the Android Market. The application will allow fans to watch live games from NBC’s Sunday Night Football and NFL Network’s Thursday Night Football, watch NFL Network channel 24/7, and gain access to NFL RedZone (live look-ins of every key play and touchdown).

In addition to live games, fans will also be able to access:

• Video: Game highlights and an extensive collection of on-demand video featuring analysis and inside access from NFL Network and NFL Films.
• Audio: Live radio broadcasts of every regular season and playoff game from both home and away teams.
• Fantasy: Access to fantasy information, news, and player and team statistics.
• Customizable NFL alerts, ringtones and graphics.

The first event to covered by the NFL Mobile app will be the 2010 NFL Draft which takes place April 22-24. Fans will be able to follow every single draft pick with a real time tracker and have access to in-depth profiles for all the prospects.

• Live 24/7 stream of NFL Network’s coverage of the Draft from Radio City Music Hall.
• Extensive collection of on-demand video of NFL Network analysis.
• Pick-by-pick Draft tracker updated in real time.
• In-depth prospect profiles, blogs, news and more.

I’m a huge fan of the NFL, but I am currently not with Verizon. I’d pay good money for this app, but it looks like Verizon will have the exclusive deal for awhile (just like Skype). If you are a Verizon customer, check out the app and let us know what you think.

From Android Market: Exclusive coverage of the 75th NFL Draft including prospect profiles, mock draft and analysis. Get news, headlines and updates as well as NFL Network programming – Path To The Draft, our daily inside access news show NFL Total Access and Live NFL Network coverage that will air for the first time in prime time in April.

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I’m interested in your thoughts on how much greenwashing this is on a scale of 1 to 10.

I watch pretty much every major golf tournament.  And that means that I saw some great golf played this weekend at the Masters in Augusta, Georgia, especially by the winner, Phil Mickelson.

It also means I saw some heart-warming/green-washing commercials pitching the Mickelson ExxonMobil Teachers Academy, which is “designed to provide third- through fifth-grade teachers with the knowledge and skills necessary to motivate students to pursue careers in science and math.”  ExxonMobil explains the rationale:

Today, in fields like medicine, computing and energy, the U.S. needs more brilliant young minds than ever before. Yet, as the need for brainpower grows, the number of our nation’s young people pursuing careers in these areas is decreasing.  Fortunately, we believe this trend can be reversed, which is why we partnered with professional golfer Phil Mickelson and his wife Amy….

Yes, the second-biggest fossil-fuel funder of anti-science disinformation, ExxonMobil, whose goal is to convince the public that scientists and the scientific method cannot be trusted, is worried that young people don’t want to pursue science as a career.

Now, Mickelson is, by appearances and almost all press accounts, a very decent guy (although hagiography is rampant in every sport, including, as we now know, golf).  I suspect he has no clue what ExxonMobil has been doing to help create a hostile climate for science and scientists.

So, Phil, in the exceedingly unlikely event you read this, it would appear your Academy is designed in part to help us forget that country’s biggest oil company has funneled millions of dollars to fund the disinformation campaigns of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the American Enterprise Institute, and the Heritage Foundation, all of which continue to advance anti-scientific attacks as I have detailed recently (see posts on Heritage and CEI and AEI).

Chris Mooney wrote an excellent piece on ExxonMobil’s two-decade anti-scientific campaign a few years ago.  Mooney notes that one anti-science disinformer, Paul Driessen, a senior fellow with the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow ($252,000 from ExxonMobil) and the Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise ($40,000 in 2003), said in 2005 that he’s “heartened that ExxonMobil and a couple of other groups have stood up and said, ‘this is not science.’ ”  That’s the kind of science education ExxonMobil has been funding for a decade.

A 2007 Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) report looked at ExxonMobil’s tobacco industry-like tactics in pushing anti-scientific global warming disinformation (see “Today We Have a Planet That’s Smoking!”).  Like the tobacco industry, ExxonMobil’s goal is to undercut real science and replace it with their phony science.

The oil giant said it would stop, but that was just another lie (see “Another ExxonMobil deceit: They are still funding climate science deniers despite public pledge“).  Mickelson should read this excellent commentary by award-winning journalist, Eric Pooley, “Exxon Works Up New Recipe for Frying the Planet.“

ExxonMobil’s funding of virulently anti-science fanatics, carried to its ‘logical’ extreme by the extremists who the disinformation campaign is aimed at, leads to McCarthyism or worse:

• Sen. Inhofe inquisition seeking ways to criminalize and prosecute 17 leading climate scientists
• The rise of anti-science cyber bullying; Morano says climate scientists “deserve to be publicly flogged.”
• Glenn Beck:  “There aren’t enough knives” for ‘dishonored’ climate scientists to kill themselves

So now ExxonMobil is shocked, shocked, that the number of our nation’s young people pursuing careers in science is decreasing.  That reminds me of Leo Rosten’s famous definition of chutzpah:  “that quality enshrined in a man who, having killed his mother and father, throws himself on the mercy of the court because he is an orphan.”

Note to ExxonMobil:  You should change your trademarked tagline from “taking on the world’s toughest energy challenges” to “creating the world’s toughest energy challenges.”

Mickelson, the “good guy” golfer who used to be wild, but now has his act together [unlike that other golfer in the news these days] has no doubt pursued this for the noblest of motives, and the Academy is no doubt providing valuable skills to teachers.  But I don’t think that gives it a free pass from being greenwashing for ExxonMobil.

What do you think? How much greenwashing is this is on a scale of 1 to 10, with 9 being, say, calling gasoline from the tar sands with a little corn ethanol thrown in “Mother Nature’s Fuel” and 10 being pretty much anything that comes out of the mouth of Massey CEO Don Blankenship.

h/t to Brad Johnson for the video.

Related Posts:

• NYT suckered by ExxonMobil in puff piece titled “Green is for Sissies”

(Remember this one?)

Join the conversation about this story »

CENOURA – Fornece caroteno (provitamina A), agente antioxidante que previne o desenvolvimento do câncer. Use sua raiz crua, cozida ou o suco
ALHO – Previne os tumores malignos, especialmente os do aparelho digestivo. É usado cru, extrato, e a decocção das folhas secas
CEBOLA – Previne o câncer intestinal, regula a flora do intestino e detém os processos de putrefação; Usa-se c rua, em suco fresco, cozida ou assada.
COUVE – Previne o câncer possivelmente pelo seu conteúdo em caroteno. Usa-se o suco da planta fresca.
VISCO – Destrói as células tumorais, estimulando a imunidade celular. Usa-se a Infusão ou maceração das folhas secas.
EQUINÁCEA – Previne tumores malignos, aumenta os leucócitos. É útil na radioterapia e quimioterapia. Usa-se o decocção da raiz, ou em preparados farmacêuticos.

Fonte – www.cantoverde.org

Drama has unfolded lately between Los Angeles City Councilman Paul Koretz and food trucks. Now, someone has created @NotPaulKoretz, a fake Twitter account for the councilman, and has begun tweeting about the mobile food vendors.

The account is still new, with 38 followers, but it has already been mentioned on LAist:

A new and humorous Twitter account appeared this week mocking a city council member for his apparent lack of consistency and conviction in the way he does business. Based on last week’s drama, @NotPaulKoretz was probably created by a food truck vendor, or at least a die-hard advocate.

How to kill a bear?
The Pasadena Star News is reporting on the difficulty foothill cities face when they want to kill a dangerous bear:

Turns out, a lot of red tape is involved in putting down a bear that has become an imminent threat to residents’ safety. Before a dangerous bear can be killed, residents must take out a depredation permit from the state Department of Fish and Game.

L.A. River exhibition:
Good Magazine reports on an exhibition on the L.A. River at the Pasadena Museum of California Art:

The current exhibition at the PMCA, "The Ulysses Guide to the Los Angeles River," explores the river’s continual evolution as a suffering ecosystem and as a canvas for artists. We highly recommend that you pay a visit.

Where to get 24-hour coffee:
LAist reports on the surprising lack of late-night coffeehouses in the city:

After some *ahem* extensive research, only the L.A. Cafe downtown and Crave Cafe in Sherman Oaks popped up as scrumptious 24-hour suitors for our common late night more-than-just-caffeine fix. A small but hearty group chooses to stay open until 2 a.m. (including Franklin Village’s Bourgeois Pig and the Starbucks at L.A. Live), but shouldn’t there be more?

— Anthony Pesce

Have some news for Linking L.A.? Contact Times reporter Anthony Pesce.

Daimler AG terminated its contract with nearly 350 Dodge dealers last year to sell the Sprinter van, which has been sold by selected Freightliner dealers since 2001. Daimler Vans USA is now expanding the Sprinter model with the addition of a passenger van that seats up to 16 individuals, hoping to target hotel shuttle service, paratransit and other applications (a very big road-trip for your friends and family).

The vehicle will go on sale later this summer and can be ordered from Mercedes-Benz or Freightliner. Mercedes-Benz spokesman Dan Barile says that the company will offer four different interior configurations including a model with a wheelchair lift.

Power for the van will come from a 188-hp 3.0L turbocharged diesel V6.

Pricing will be announced closer to launch date.

– By: Kap Shah

Source: Automotive News (Subscription Required)