Living on $600 a month? Seniors over income limit can struggle to afford Medi-Cal

In a major bump for Abbott's border security measures, the barriers were removed after being in place for less than a week.

The passenger told Newsweek "I didn't see a single person looking out their window" to catch the rare viewing of the incredible phenomenon.

Newsweek has rounded up some of the stand-out reviews for Taylor Sheridan's new show from critics and social media users.

The rocker agreed to pay nearly $327,000 in attorney fees for his ex-fiancée, who accused him of sexually and physically abusing her during their relationship.

No one knows how to get these searches right, but Woody Johnson’s strategy to find a new coach and GM makes sense.

The Japanese author’s popularity rests on a blend of mystery and accessibility. His latest novel fails to achieve that balance.

A runoff election in the state Supreme Court in Mississippi race is too close to call, with State Sen. Jenifer Branning and Justice Jim Kitchens neck and neck as of Wednesday morning.

People are beginning to return to their homes in southern Lebanon after the ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah took effect and appeared to hold in its initial hours. CBS News contributor Andrew Boyd has more on the stop in fighting.

Donald Trump's inauguration this January will signal a tectonic shift in American foreign policy unmatched by any since Ronald Reagan's swearing in 43 years before.

Ariana Madix, Lala Kent and their co-stars are being replaced with a "new group of close-knit SUR-vers" for Season 12 of the Bravo reality show.

As Donald Trump readies an aggressive tariff policy, Newsweek has created a map showing the U.S.'s biggest trading partners.

A turkey arrives at the 2024 White House turkey pardon, a strange annual “song and dance of celebrating turkeys while we torture them,” as Vox’s Kenny Torrella put it last year. | Susan Walsh/Associated Press On Thursday, tens of millions of Americans will partake in a national ritual many of us say we don’t especially enjoy or find meaning in. We will collectively eat more than 40 million turkeys — factory farmed and heavily engineered animals that bear scant resemblance to the wild birds that have been apocryphally written into the Thanksgiving story. (The first Thanksgiving probably didn’t have turkey.) And we will do it all even though turkey meat is widely considered flavorless and unpalatable.  “It is, almost without fail, a dried-out, depressing hunk of sun-baked papier-mâché — a jaw-tiringly chewy, unsatisfying, and depressingly bland workout,” journalist Brian McManus wrote for Vice. “Deep down, we know this, but bury it beneath happy memories of Thanksgivings past.”  So what is essentially the national holiday of meat-eating revolves around an animal dish that no one really likes. That fact clashes with the widely accepted answer to the central question of why it’s so hard to convince everyone to ditch meat, or even to eat less of it: the taste, stupid.   Undoubtedly, that has something to do with it. But I think the real answer is a lot more complicated, and the tasteless Thanksgiving turkey explains why.  Get Vox’s Processing Meat newsletter Sign up here for Future Perfect’s biweekly newsletter from Marina Bolotnikova and Kenny Torrella, exploring how the meat and dairy industries shape our health, politics, culture, environment, and more. Have questions or comments on this piece? Email me at marina@vox.com! Humans crave ritual, belonging, and a sense of being part of a larger story — aspirations that reach their apotheosis at the Thanksgiving table. We don’t want to be social deviants who boycott the central symbol of one of our most cherished national holidays, reminding everyone of the animal torture and environmental degradation that went into making it. What could be more human than to go along with it, dry meat and all?  Our instincts for conformity seem particularly strong around food, a social glue that binds us to one another and to our shared past. And although many of us today recognize there’s something very wrong with how our meat is produced, Thanksgiving of all occasions might seem like an ideal time to forget that for a day.  In my experience, plenty of people who are trying to cut back on meat say they eat vegetarian or vegan when cooking for themselves — but when they are guests at other people’s homes or celebrating a special occasion, they’ll eat whatever, to avoid offending their hosts or provoking awkward conversations about factory farming.  But this Thanksgiving, I want to invite you, reader, to flip this logic. If the social and cultural context of food shapes our tastes, even more than taste itself, then it is in precisely these settings that we should focus efforts to change American food customs for the better.  “It’s eating with others where we actually have an opportunity to influence broader change, to share plant-based recipes, spark discussion, and revamp traditions to make them more sustainable and compassionate,” Natalie Levin, a board member at PEAK Animal Sanctuary in Indiana and an acquaintance of mine from vegan Twitter, told me. Hundreds of years ago, a turkey on Thanksgiving might have represented abundance and good tidings — a too-rare thing in those days, and therefore something to be grateful for. Today, it’s hard to see it as anything but a symbol of our profligacy and unrestrained cruelty against nonhuman animals. On a day meant to embody the best of humanity, and a vision for a more perfect world, surely we can come up with better symbols.  Besides, we don’t even like turkey. We should skip it this year.  The misery of the Thanksgiving turkey  In 2023, my colleague Kenny Torrella published a wrenching investigation into conditions in the US turkey industry. He wrote:  The Broad Breasted White turkey, which accounts for 99 out of every 100 grocery store turkeys, has been bred to emphasize — you guessed it — the breast, one of the more valuable parts of the bird. These birds grow twice as fast and become nearly twice as big as they did in the 1960s. Being so top-heavy, combined with other health issues caused by rapid growth and the unsanitary factory farming environment, can make it difficult for them to walk. Another problem arises from their giant breasts: The males get so big that they can’t mount the hens, so they must be bred artificially. Author Jim Mason detailed this practice in his book The Ethics of What We Eat, co-authored with philosopher Peter Singer. Mason took a job with the turkey giant Butterball to research the book, where, he wrote, he had to hold male turkeys while another worker stimulated them to extract their semen into a syringe using a vacuum pump. Once the syringe was full, it was taken to the henhouse, where Mason would pin hens chest-down while another worker inserted the contents of the syringe into the hen using an air compressor. Workers at the farm had to do this to one hen every 12 seconds for 10 hours a day. It was “the hardest, fastest, dirtiest, most disgusting, worst-paid work” he had ever done, Mason wrote. In the wild, turkeys live in “smallish groups of a dozen or so, and they know each other, they relate to each other as individuals,” Singer, author of the new book Consider the Turkey, said on a recent episode of the Simple Heart podcast. “The turkeys sold on Thanksgiving never see their mothers, they never go and forage for food… They’re pretty traumatized, I’d say, by having thousands of strange birds around who they can’t get to know as individuals,” packed together in crowded sheds.  From birth to death, the life of a factory-farmed turkey is one punctuated by rote violence, including mutilations to their beaks, their toes, and snoods, a grueling trip to the slaughterhouse, and a killing process where they’re roughly grabbed and prodded, shackled upside down, and sent down a fast-moving conveyor belt of killing. “If they’re lucky, they get stunned and then the knife cuts their throat,” Singer said. “If they’re not so lucky, they miss the stunner and the knife cuts their throat while they’re fully conscious.”  On Thanksgiving, Americans throw the equivalent of about 8 million of these turkeys in the trash, according to an estimate by ReFED, a nonprofit that works to reduce food waste. And this year will be the third Thanksgiving in a row celebrated amid an out-of-control bird flu outbreak, in which tens of millions of chickens and turkeys on infected farms have been culled using stomach-churning extermination methods.  Reclaiming Thanksgiving When I search for the language for this grim state of affairs, I can only describe it in religious terms, as a kind of desecration — of our planet’s abundance, of our humanity, of life itself. On every other day of the year, it’s obscene enough. On a holiday that’s supposed to represent our gratitude for the Earth’s blessings, you can understand why Thanksgiving, for many vegetarians or vegans, is often described as the most alienating day of the year.  I count myself among that group, although I don’t dread Thanksgiving. I’ve come to love it as a holiday ripe for creative reinvention. I usually spend it making a feast of plant-based dishes (known by most people as “sides,” though there’s no reason they can’t be the main event).  To name a few: a creamy lentil-stuffed squash, cashew lentil bake, a bright autumnal brussels sprout salad, roasted red cabbage with walnuts and feta (sub with dairy-free cheese), mushroom clam-less chowder (I add lots of white beans), challah for bread rolls, a pumpkin miso tart more complex and interesting than any Thanksgiving pie you’ve had, and rasmalai, a Bengali dessert whose flavors align beautifully with the holidays.  Vegan turkey roasts are totally optional, though many of them have gotten very good in recent years — I love the Gardein breaded roast and Field Roast hazelnut and cranberry. You can also make your own.    The hardest part of going meatless is not about the food (if it were, it might not be so hard to convince Americans to abandon parched roast turkey). “It’s about unpleasant truths and ethical disagreements being brought out into the open,” Levin said, about confronting the bizarre dissonance in celebrations of joy and giving carved from mass-produced violence.  These conversations are not easy, but they are worth having. And we don’t have to fear losing the rituals that define us as Americans. To the contrary, culture is a continuous conversation we have with each other about our shared values — and any culture that’s not changing is dead. There’s far more meaning to be had, I’ve found, in adapting traditions that are no longer authentic to our ethics and violate our integrity. We can start on Thanksgiving.

This holiday shopping season is poised to break spending records. A new survey finds people plan to spend $771 on average.

The Russian currency has hit a two-year low against the U.S. dollar, reaching 107 on Tuesday, as sanctions continue to hit the country's economy.

Millions of people are at risk after downloading dangerous applications onto their smartphones.

JS "Kaga" bears the same name as an aircraft carrier that took part in Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor during World War II.

In the here and now, the Giants are losing pretty much every week and Malik Nabers is growing increasingly frustrated.

Ukraine's former Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba has criticized the podcast host for his comments about the war started by Russia.

Unidentified drones have been spotted over U.S. bases in the United Kingdom used by American forces for a week, Fox News has confirmed.

The course will examine "fatness as an area of human difference subject to privilege and discrimination."

If confirmed, those who worked with Bondi expect her to use her role as attorney general to crack down on drugs and trafficking—a playbook first espoused as Florida's top prosecutor.

Kysre Gondrezick had two careers to fall back on after being waived by the Chicago Sky in June.

The ex-teacher allegedly told the teens he was a “naughty teacher who fantasizes about his students all the time."

In response to reports of State Department counseling sessions, Russia has urged the U.S. to focus its outrage on foreign conflicts.

Tren de Aragua, a transnational criminal organization formed in a Venezuelan prison, is gaining traction within the criminal underworld.

“My family is something I’d fight to the death for,” said Brad Ewell, a Texas police sergeant. “Family is also something that has pierced my heart.”

New York Jets quarterback Aaron Rodgers was back talking about vaccines on "The Pat McAfee Show," saying people should "look out" with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. joining President-elect Donald Trump's Cabinet.

Dangerous conditions are expected Wednesday and Thursday as millions travel for the holidays under winter storm warnings.

Buying New | The Oak will have 126 units and four floor plans

Plastic pollutes oceans, food, your body. Yet nations are divided over a global treaty. Why all eyes are on talks for a U.N.-led accord to cut plastic waste.

A sudden loss has given the Colts something else to play for in this year’s DCIAA Stars division championship.

Freedom of the press and access to reliable information are pillars of democracy—freedoms which aspiring despots can manipulate to manufacture convenient new narratives, and rise to power.

The National Portrait Gallery’s “Felix Gonzalez-Torres: Always to Return” expands what a portrait can be: Strings of lights, piles of candy or collections of words.

The third film in Pablo Larraín’s trilogy centers on the turbulent final weeks of Maria Callas’s life.

Airplanes can be some of the noisiest and most uncomfortable places to try and catch some sleep, but there’s a game-changing trick that could have you flying off to dreamland in no time — even from 30,000 feet.  Dubbed the “alpha bridge method,” the technique is thought to have been originally developed by the US...

A Vox reader asks: What is humility? How can I become more aware of being humble, and why is pride always prevalent in us humans over humility? The concept of humility can be elusive in a culture that places a premium on (and even requires) constant self-aggrandizement. One who is truly humble might possess a graciousness despite their accomplishments, an openness to other ways of being and thinking. Encountering a humble person feels rare these days.  Political figures are rewarded for their hardheadedness and self-righteousness. In the workplace, those who tout their achievements are more likely to be considered for promotions. Arguments erupt — and drag on for days — on social media when people dig in their heels and fail to acknowledge others’ experiences. When admitting fault can feel so threatening to one’s sense of self, some people have a hard time seeing themselves as fallible at all. Lately, it appears as if the person who screams the loudest and holds true to their convictions at all costs ultimately wins. Humility is still worth striving for, says Daryl Van Tongeren, a professor of psychology at Hope College and author of Humble: Free Yourself from the Traps of a Narcissistic World, but in the right amount. Too little humility and you become arrogant and unwilling to conceive of other points of view. Too much humility and you relinquish your power, status, and worth. The tricky part is finding the middle ground. What is humility in the first place? Van Tongeren defines humility as the “ability to know ourselves, check ourselves, and go beyond ourselves.” Humility requires self-awareness about your strengths and weaknesses and the power to reel in selfish impulses and the desire to be right. A humble person can identify when they’re wrong and accept blame without getting too defensive. They can also recognize others’ needs beyond their own.  Pride isn’t necessarily the inverse of humility. If you view pride as being vain or conceited, then yes, a person with those qualities likely lacks humility. But to be proud of your accomplishments and know your self-worth is more in line with humility than conceit. “Extremely humble people already know that they’re worthwhile,” Van Tongeren says. “They’re valued, they’re loved, they’re enough.”  Those who are secure in their self-worth often don’t seek the approval of others and may not be as defensive when given negative feedback. That comes across in nearly all aspects of their lives. “When we engage the world like that, our relationships get much better, our partners are much more likely to forgive us, they’re more committed to us,” Van Tongeren says. “We’re better citizens. We’re less likely to get defensive or aggressive when we interact with people who don’t share our ideological viewpoints, and we’re much more tolerant to people who don’t share our particular perspective on something.” Are you a humble person? It’s fairly difficult to gauge your own humility because people tend to think they’re more skilled, attractive, funny, and, yes, humble than the average person. The desire to see yourself in a positive light overwhelms any objectivity you might have into your own humility, Van Tongeren says: “This overly glowing representation of myself makes pride a natural default.” To get around these biases, Van Tongeren suggests getting a trusted person’s opinion — “On a scale of one to 10, how humble am I?” — and to try not to get defensive if you get an answer you don’t like.  Van Tongeren posed this same question to his wife after he spent a morning on his own pursuits, delaying their departure to the beach by over an hour. She gave him a four on the humility scale. “I’ve been researching this for a decade. I think about humility all the time,” he says, “and it’s still really hard for me. I still find myself falling into traps in which my selfishness takes over.” How can I work on being a little more humble?  Once you have a somewhat objective starting point, one way to work on humility is to cultivate empathy, Van Tongeren says. That is, to sympathize with the feelings of another, even when you disagree with them, and to put yourself in their shoes to consider their perspective. Van Tongeren acknowledges this can be especially difficult in today’s social, cultural, and political climate when people tend to have ideologically rigid points of view. Still, try to give others the benefit of the doubt and try to acknowledge that they might be trying to be a good person, too.  A few ways to foster empathy and humility include diversifying your news sources and actively seeking out perspectives that differ from your own. Make an effort to interact with more people who hold these alternative views and attempt to understand their motivations or why they would hold these beliefs. “Try to understand,” Van Tongeren says, “what is it like to be them?” To maximize humility within your relationships, Van Tongeren suggests pausing and thinking about what would be best for the other person. Take time to truly listen to a friend or colleague, as listening increases humility. “It helps you realize that it’s not all about you,” he says. You might also consider a time when you weren’t humble — like Van Tongeren’s thwarted beach plans — and how the situation went awry. Now you know what to avoid in similar scenarios.  Alternatively, if you’re in a relationship with an arrogant, self-centered person, humility might not be the virtue you need, Van Tongeren says. “They might take advantage of the fact that you’re regularly humble and [are] treating you poorly,” he says. “In some situations, maybe courage is a better virtue, or justice might be the virtue that needs to be prioritized” to either stand up to the person or walk away. Cultivating humility is an internal process, not one you can wish onto another person. So often, people who have historically been marginalized have been told to stay humble when they speak out against wrongdoing or seek a seat at the table. Women in particular are expected to be humble, and are considered arrogant when they share their accomplishments. In that way, humility becomes a weapon. It’s not up to you to decide who most needs to be humbled, but instead to act with humility and hope others follow in kind.

LIV Golf star Bryson DeChambeau expressed interest in going to space while he was at a SpaceX rocket launch in Texas. He appeared in Kai Trump's vlog.

Seán Ono Lennon said on X that podcaster Joe Rogan was neither from the left nor the right politically, despite claims to the contrary.

People were seen firing guns in celebration in Beirut on Wednesday, as a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah appeared to be holding.

The Chinese-flagged Yi Peng 3 should "move towards Swedish waters," Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said on Tuesday.

The Mexican president wrote to President-elect urging him to open conversation between the U.S. and Mexico about the imposition of new tariffs.

If management doesn’t take action — i.e. trades — the Nets could keep climbing in the standings.

Traveling to 36 countries and 5 oceans, George Steinmetz (and his drones) take us on a food tour in his new book Feed the Planet:  A Photographic Journey to the World's Food.

Kylie announced on Friday that she and Jason, who wed in 2018, are expecting their fourth daughter after welcoming Wyatt, Elliotte and Bennett.

Torrential rain unleashed flooding and landslides on Indonesia's Sumatra island, killing 20 people and leaving at least two others missing.

Sony has revealed updated sales figures for its PlayStation consoles.

Hacienda Heights has been without landline phone service for six months due to copper wire thefts. Some schools' power lines also have been cut.

Rachel reckons she knows exactly who her dog Kyle is imitating when he's denied a taste of something.