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California politicians have been blind to the fact that the state’s High Speed Rail project is an utter failure. However, the creation of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) by the Trump administration might finally force HSR advocates to open their eyes to the reality that the project will never be completed as promised 26 years ago.Throughout the early 2000’s a High Speed Rail project from San Francisco to Los Angles was the dream of rail advocates and politicians who were too disengaged from reality to consider whether the project even made sense. Once the California Legislature approved placing a…

David J. Neal | (TNS) Miami HeraldStanley — whose cups have become almost as popular as the National Hockey League’s Stanley Cup — recalled 2.6 million travel mugs because their burn count got too high.As explained in the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission recall notice, “These mugs’ lid threads can shrink when exposed to heat and torque, causing the lid to detach during use, posing a burn hazard.”According to what Stanley told the CPSC, the lids on recalled travel mugs have detached 16 times in the United States and 91 times worldwide, causing two burn injuries in the United States…

Glenn Litton, the suspected shooter, had a long criminal history, according to authorities.Police said he used a ghost gun but did not reveal how a convicted felon obtained the gun.Authorities revealed that Litton allegedly committed multiple crimes before he carried out the shooting and was in jail weeks prior. Three weeks before Glenn Litton shot and wounded two kindergarten students at a Christian elementary school in Northern California, he appeared in a criminal courtroom in San Bernardino County via a video stream.The 56-year-old was arrested on a felony warrant stemming from a 2020 second-degree burglary charge out of Redlands.Litton pleaded…

By STEPHEN GROVESWASHINGTON (AP) — The Senate is pushing toward a vote on legislation that would provide full Social Security benefits to millions of people, setting up potential passage in the final days of the lame-duck Congress.Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said Thursday he would begin the process for a final vote on the bill, known as the Social Security Fairness Act, which would eliminate policies that currently limit Social Security payouts for roughly 2.8 million people.Schumer said the bill would “ensure Americans are not erroneously denied their well-earned Social Security benefits simply because they chose at some point to work in…

President-elect Donald Trump will have a busy Day One given the many policies he has promised to implement immediately, but there is a possible day-one policy that has gotten more than usual attention. Trump has toyed with the idea of using an executive order to end birthright citizenship.That’s the policy that grants citizenship to anyone born on American soil, including the children of people here visiting or illegally. Typically, conservatives decry the misuse of executive orders and claim to be devoted adherents to the words of the U.S. Constitution, but apparently their principles are malleable when it comes to immigration.In…

By BARBARA ORTUTAY, AP Technology WriterNearly half of American teenagers say they are online “constantly” despite concerns about the effects of social media and smartphones on their mental health, according to a new report published Thursday by the Pew Research Center.As in past years, YouTube was the single most popular platform teenagers used — 90% said they watched videos on the site, down slightly from 95% in 2022. Nearly three-quarters said they visit YouTube every day.There was a slight downward trend in several popular apps teens used. For instance, 63% of teens said they used TikTok, down from 67% and Snapchat…

A divorce battle that spanned 15 years between a Woodland Hills doctor and his ex-wife included financial and custody disputes as well as a series of restraining orders with claims of threats of violence, according to some of the court records reviewed by the Southern California News Group.Dr. Hamid Mirshojae was shot and killed on Aug. 23 while walking to his SUV from his Woodland Hills-based medical clinic. On Thursday, his ex-wife, 53-year-old Ahang Mirshojae, was among five people arrested on suspicion of conspiring to commit his murder. She was being held without bail, police said.On Friday, the Los Angeles…

By DARLENE SUPERVILLEWASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden said Wednesday that he is “so proud” that a women’s health research initiative he launched last year at his wife’s urging has already invested nearly $1 billion because a healthy female population improves U.S. prosperity.“That’s a fact,” he said in closing remarks at the first White House Conference on Women’s Health Research. “We haven’t gotten that through to the other team yet,” Biden said, referencing President-elect Donald Trump and his incoming administration.Trump’s three conservative nominees to the Supreme Court from his first term as president voted to overturn a woman’s constitutional right…

LAGUNA NIGUEL, Calif. (AP) — Freddie Freeman’s historic walk-off grand slam ball from Game 1 of the World Series has sold for $1.56 million at auction.The bidding at SCP Auctions went into the late hours of Saturday night, according to a statement from the auction house on Sunday. It didn’t say who bought the ball.Freeman, the Dodgers first baseman, came to the plate on a sprained right ankle with the bases loaded and two outs in the bottom of the 10th inning against the New York Yankees. He hit the first pitch from Nestor Cortes 413 feet for the first…

SACRAMENTO – The most telling sentence in a lengthy Wall Street Journal article about Luigi Mangione, the Ivy League educated scion of a prominent Maryland family who is suspected of shooting UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, is surprisingly banal: “It wasn’t clear what dealings he had with health-insurance companies.”As Business Insider reported, Mangione complained about terrible back pain in social-media posts “and what he felt to be the healthcare system’s inadequate response.” None of those posts “blame UnitedHealthcare – or Thompson – for his health issues.” So we don’t know about his personal healthcare experiences, but it is clear from the handwritten…