LOS ANGELES — Chien Le first met the Venerable Bhikkhu Pannakara in 2005, a few years before Pannakara became a novice monk at the Texas Buddhist temple where he is now the deputy abbot. What struck Le then, and amazes him still, is Pannakara’s iron-clad determination. “When he ...
Dear Annie: My mom and I have always been close. I’m 35 now, but we talk almost every day, even though she’s in Virginia, where I grew up, and I moved to Washington state after college. We make an effort to see each other as much as possible, but of course, it’s never enough. Recently, a work trip brought her to San Francisco, but I didn’t find out until she was already boarding the plane. San Francisco is a lot closer to me than Virginia is. I couldn’t help but think that if the situation were reversed, I would have found a way to tack on a few days and see her. She ...
Dear Dr. Roach: I’m a 57-year-old man, and I’ve had Crohn’s disease since I was a child. For the past 18 years, I’ve managed it quite successfully with 6-MP, budesonide and Xifaxan. For the past five years in particular, I’ve been in perfect health. My C-reactive protein (CRP) test was under 5 mg/dL, and my colonoscopy from about four years ago was pristine. Just recently, I had a colonoscopy that showed significant inflammation, and my blood work is showing it, too, with a CRP of 19.5 mg/dL. My doctor recommends an aggressive treatment with Skyrizi. I don’t want to take ...
You are comforted, nourished and fortified by your favorite “ingredients,” including funny friends, affection and adventure. Aries (March 21-April 19) You gathered information. You explored possibilities. You changed your mind three times. Now it’s time to pick. You’ll gain more useful information from action than from another week of deliberation. Taurus (April 20-May 20) What starts as a curiosity or possible source of entertainment will escalate and transform into something much more substantial and emotional. It could even change you. So be careful what you dabble in now. ...
A poet, a nurse, a construction worker, and a food delivery driver. The four people killed in 2026 by federal immigration agents were regular folks trying to live their lives in peace before they were crushed by the unchecked power of President Donald Trump’s mass deportation campaign. The brief respite between the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in January and the deaths of Lorenzo Salgado Araujo and Johan Sebastian Duran Guerrero over the last two weeks shows the government learned nothing from what happened in Minneapolis earlier this year. There, U.S. Immigration and ...
Many of today’s consumer loans are legal but abusive. Payday lenders and used car sellers often steer customers into costly contracts they barely understand. Low-income borrowers with jobs, and therefore, dependable cash flow to siphon off, are favored targets. Sure, there’s a sucker born every minute, as P.T. Barnum allegedly said. But now we have a federal government that’s gone backward in providing protection from predators just as they adopt sophisticated technology to ply their craft. Criminals now use AI to generate fake images and scrub their pitches of misspellings ...
