Account information for this Lucianne member

The current state of the United States Congress is nowhere near what the Founding Fathers had in mind. [snip] The newspaper discovered that Rep. Granger was now the resident of a local memory care and assisted living home and had been for some time after she was found confused and wandering around her neighborhood. Assistant Executive Director for the memory care/assisted living home, Taylor Manzeil, confirmed that Granger was a resident, saying, "This is her home."

After a decade of fighting the most powerful man in daytime television, Holly Hallstrom had come to the end of her road. Cresting a hilltop deep in California's wine country, Hallstrom clutched the wheel of her beat-up white Honda as it puttered to a stop. She wasn't just out of gas. She was out of money, down to her last 48 cents. She'd sold all her belongings to wage what everyone told her was a battle she was certain to lose: taking on Bob Barker, her former boss at "The Price Is Right."

The wife of a Marine has been crowned the first-ever transgender Miss Maryland USA — and said she was inspired by the “sisterhood” of other competitors she saw on the pageant circuit. Bailey Anne Kennedy, 31, won the coveted title on Saturday, according to the official Miss Maryland USA Instagram account. She is now prepared to compete at Miss USA, which will be held in Los Angeles on Aug. 4.

California's $20-an-hour fast food minimum wage has its first casualty. Mexican chain Rubio's Coastal Grill is shuttering 48 restaurants in the state - because of the 'rising cost of doing business in California'. [snip] This week's 48 closures are just over a third of the 134 that remained across California, Nevada and Arizona.

Reigning Miss USA Noelia Voight and Miss Teen USA UmaSofia Srivastava both abdicated their posts this week, citing mental health concerns and a conflict of values with the parent organization. In explaining her decision on Monday, Voigt, who won the Miss USA title in September 2023 and who had planned to participate in the Miss Universe pageant later this year, said in an Instagram post that she “values the importance of making decisions that feel best for you and your mental health.” Then on Wednesday, Srivastava wrote in her own, similarly styled Instagram post that she was prematurely stepping away from her 2023 Miss Teen USA title...

The mother of a German woman, who was paraded half-naked in the back of a terrorist pickup truck after being captured from the scene of a Hamas massacre at a music festival in Southern Israel, has claimed to have reason to believe that her daughter is still alive in Gaza. [snip] Despite initial rumours from pro-Palestinian sources claiming that Shani was an Israeli soldier, her aunt said that Shani was, in fact, a peace campaigner and a conscientious objector. Shani, her aunt told Der Spiegel, refused to enter into the mandatory military service in Israel because of her belief in pacifism...

Lego has abandoned plans to make its famous bricks from recycled plastic bottles, saying that the manufacturing process would be more polluting than the current production of oil-based bricks. [snip] The toymaker has pledged to use only sustainable materials in its products by 2032 and, two years ago, unveiled a prototype brick made from recycled PET. The plastic was sourced from bottles that are typically used for water or soda. Since then, however, Lego has found that making bricks from the recycled material would require investing in new equipment and involve more steps, which would ultimately lead to more planet-heating pollution than the status quo...

David McCallum has died. The actor, best known for his role as Ducky on NCIS, died on Monday of natural causes while surrounded by family at New York Presbyterian Hospital. [snip] "After returning from the hospital to their apartment, I asked my mother if she was OK before she went to sleep. Her answer was simply, 'Yes. But I do wish we had had a chance to grow old together.' She is 79, and dad just turned 90."

New reports shed light on nearly $1 billion in land purchases by a mysterious company near a California Air Force base that raised national security concerns. Since 2018, a group called “Flannery Associates” invested more than $800 million on almost 54,000 acres of agriculture-zoned land surrounding the Travis Air Force base in Solano County, California, public records show. [snip] Now, reports from The New York Times and San Francisco Chronicle reveal Flannery is comprised of a group of ultra-wealthy Silicon Valley investors acquiring vast parcels of land northeast of San Francisco with the mission to build a new California city “from scratch.”

U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s ongoing medical struggles have raised a sensitive political question with no easy answer: Who would California Gov. Gavin Newsom pick to replace her if the seat becomes vacant? [snip] “Newsom must honor his promise to appoint a Black woman” if Feinstein resigns, said Democratic Assemblymember Lori Wilson, who heads the Legislative Black Caucus in Sacramento. “I trust him at his word. We currently have zero Black women in the Senate, so if the opportunity becomes available the governor must act to help remedy this lack of representation.”

Rear Admiral Yvette Davids has been nominated to become the first female superintendent of the U.S. Naval Academy. [snip] She is the first Hispanic woman to command a Navy warship, the frigate USS Curts. She later commanded the USS Bunker Hill, a guided missile cruiser, and Carrier Strike Group 11. But her promotion and appointment likely will be added to the list of more than 100 vacant Pentagon positions that are on hold. Sen. Tommy Tuberville, Alabama Republican, has blocked the nominations to protest new, more expansive accommodations for service members seeking abortions set by the Pentagon last summer.

A San Francisco district supervisor is calling for more policing in the crime-ridden city – despite advocating to defund the police in 2020. Hillary Ronen, Democrat, represents District 9 on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. [snip] "I want to make it clear that I believe strongly in defunding the police and reducing the number of officers on our force," Ronen wrote. "For decades we’ve had an imbalance in our city’s budget, with hundreds of millions of dollars going to SFPD to have them do work they are not qualified to do."