Aani Nagaiah

By Aani Nagaiah Craig Gima left his phone in a taxi in Ayutthaya, the ancient capital north of Bangkok. The driver did not speak English, but a woman who Gima met by chance offered to help. She contacted the driver for Gima and spoke to the driver in Thai to arrange for the phone pick up. She is the woman Gima would go on to marry. That was 2019. Then the pandemic closed borders, but they still kept talking. He started flying to Thailand twice a year from his home in Hawaii.

Get a parking ticket in Hancock Park and it will run you, on average, $197. In Sherman Oaks the average drops to $63.94. Leave your car in a disabled space without a valid placard and the fine is $1,100, no matter which neighborhood you are in. It’s no secret that the cost of living in Los Angeles can swing wildly, from tony Brentwood to gritty San Pedro. But it also determines the average cost of your parking ticket.

By Aani Nagaiah Consumer Reports tested 52 rice products sold in American grocery stores, with every one of them containing arsenic. The watchdog group tested white, brown, basmati, jasmine, sushi and arborio rice along with precooked and seasoned products, running lab tests on 142 individual samples. All of them contained inorganic arsenic, the more harmful form of the heavy metal, along with traces of cadmium and mercury. Nearly half the samples also contained lead.