Containers

  Join us for our Google+ Hangout today at 11:30 a.m., when Lakers writer Mike Bresnahan and Clippers writer Brad Turner discuss the two teams. Sure to be a hot topic is Lakers Coach Mike Brown saying he wants to limit Kobe Bryant's playing time. As Bresnahan wrote earlier this week, "Almost every Lakers coach has said it since 1996, with the exception of Del Harris . He was lucky enough to get a young, vibrant Kobe Bryant . "Phil Jackson , in his second tour with the Lakers, wanted to limit Bryant's playing time.

The video is grainy, black and white and of poor quality. But it is the key evidence in a perjury and conspiracy trial of three current and former Los Angeles police officers accused of lying under oath four years ago about a drug arrest. Jurors in a downtown courtroom Friday watched the security camera recording, which prosecutors said contradicts police testimony about how long it took the officers to find a small box containing cocaine. It also captured what prosecutors contend was a revealing conversation among officers after the discovery.

"The First Time" tells the story of Aubrey (Britt Robertson) and Dave (Dylan O'Brien), high school students falling in love. Although it feels very much like a first film, it's actually the second directorial effort from writer-director Jonathan Kasdan, son of Lawrence, whose 2007 debut was the overdone but underwhelming "In the Land of Women. " That film, with a cast including Meg Ryan, Adam Brody and Kristen Stewart, was perhaps too ambitious, possibly a sign that the filmmaker's Hollywood lineage had allowed him access to too much too soon.

A Seattle attorney on Monday released the names of nearly 1,900 men who were expelled from the Boy Scouts of America for alleged sexual abuse between 1970 and 1991. The spreadsheets compiled and released by Timothy Kosnoff, a plaintiff's attorney who has sued the Boy Scouts on behalf of more than 100 alleged victims, identifies many men who have never been reported to police or faced criminal charges. In addition, Kosnoff released brief summaries of 3,200 other cases of suspected sexual abuse dating to 1948, without naming the alleged perpetrators.

PARIS - To mixed reaction, France's Socialist government unveiled a get-tough budget Friday that contains $25.8 billion in tax increases and a "supertax" rate of 75% on those earning more than $1.29 million a year. Critics said it would make France unattractive to "top talent" entrepreneurs and business leaders; supporters described it as fair and constructive. The hardest hit will be major businesses and the rich, as President Francois Hollande stuck to his May election pledge to introduce the new "supertax" rate on the nation's wealthiest citizens, applying to about 2,000 to 3,000 people.

In a little more than 48 hours, we'll have a pretty clear indication of whether Ang Lee's CGI-kissed, 3-D adaptation of "Life of Pi" casts a spell of magic or nausea. Given Lee's resume and undeniable talent, we'll err toward the former, but the international trailer below, released Wednesday in advance of the movie's Friday evening premiere at the New York Film Festival, doesn't exactly soft-sell its charms. Coldplay and Sigur Ros? Computer-generated armies of meerkats and dolphins?

In response to a recent investigation that found "substantial" levels of arsenic in rice and many rice-based products, a group of Democrats proposed legislation that would impose federal limits on the dangerous element. Reps. Rosa De Lauro of Connecticut, Frank Pallone of New Jersey and Nita Lowey of New York said in a joint statement that their bill would require the Food and Drug Administration to set a maximum amount of arsenic permissible in foods containing rice. The move Friday is based on a Consumer Reports finding this week urging consumers to cut back on rice ingestion after researchers said they discovered "worrisome" traces of inorganic arsenic in products including brown and white rice and rice-based infant cereals, pastas, drinks and crackers.

All along the rice shelf at the grocery store, where brown and white rice sit alongside rice-based breakfast cereals, rice pastas, rice drinks and rice crackers, there's arsenic, and often at troubling levels. The new findings from a Consumer Reports investigation show “significant” and “worrisome” amounts of inorganic arsenic in nearly every rice product tested. The watchdog group urged consumers to scale back ingestion of rice products and asked the Food and Drug Administration to set limits.

WOODLAND, Calif. - The worst U.S. drought in half a century is withering the nation's corn crop, but it's a fertile opportunity for makers of genetically modified crops. Agricultural biotechnology companies have been pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into developing plants that can withstand the effects of a prolonged dry spell. Monsanto Co., based in St. Louis, has received regulatory approval for DroughtGard, a corn variety that contains the first genetically modified trait for drought resistance.

An elephant weevil, a tiny insect that attacks wine crops and fruit trees, was intercepted last month at the Los Angeles-Long Beach port complex in a container of oranges from Australia, officials said. It was the first time the pest had been found in the United States. It attacks roots, stems and fruits of cultivated vines, and also feeds on citrus, blueberry bushes and fruit trees. "Had this pest gone undetected, it could have had a serious impact on the California wine industry," Todd C. Owen, Customs and Border Protection director of Los Angeles field operations, said in a statement last week.