Kay Granger of Texas found to be living at facility, a fact she did not disclose to the public, according to Dallas media

A Republican congresswoman from Texas has not cast a vote in the US House since July while she has been living at a memory care facility – something she did not disclose to the public, according to a Dallas media outlet that figured out the reason for her prolonged absence.

Kay Granger, 81, has represented Texas’s 12th congressional district, which includes part of the Dallas-Fort Worth area, since 1997. And beginning in January 2023 she spent more than a year as the chairperson of the powerful House appropriations committee.

The Associated Press contributed reporting

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Abortion debt is swelling. Providers and groups trying to fill the void created by bans are buckling under the weight

Early this fall, a woman desperate for an abortion messaged the Wild West Access Fund, an abortion fund in Nevada, asking for support. She guessed she was nearly 20 weeks pregnant and didn’t have even a few hundred dollars to spend on the procedure. She wanted to prove she was doing everything she could to raise the money, and said she was trying to pawn her vehicle.

Over the next few weeks she bounced from clinic to clinic, trying to put the money together as the price of the abortion she sought continued to increase. The cost of a first trimester abortion is about $500, around $2,000 in the second, and a third trimester abortion can range from a few thousand dollars to around $25,000. Since the US supreme court eliminated federal protections for abortion, more than a dozen states banned the procedure completely, while others set gestational limits, increasing travel costs for pregnant people in those states.

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After the fall of the Assad regime, the country now faces challenges from Turkey, Israel and the enmity of the west

Robin Yassin-Kassab is co-author of Burning Country: Syrians in Revolution and War and English editor of the Isis Prisons Museum

The liberation of Syria was long hoped for, but unexpected. Over the past weeks, Syrians have experienced the full range of human emotions, with the exception of boredom. On the first two Assad-free Fridays, millions of celebrants swelled the streets to chant and sing and speak formerly forbidden truths. There was a huge presence of women, who had been less visible during the years of war. Relatives are meeting again and assuaging their pain as hundreds of thousands return from the camps of exile.

At the same time, millions are having to accept at last that their loved ones have been tortured to death. It now appears that most of the 130,000 lost in Bashar al-Assad’s prisons (a bare minimum figure) are dead. Dozens of mass graves have already been discovered.

Robin Yassin-Kassab is the co-author of Burning Country: Syrians in Revolution and War and the English editor of the Isis Prisons Museum

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Olympia Auset started SÜPRMARKT to provide her community easy access to food and healthy produce

The plate is her canvas.

Imani Cohen never wants her dish to look too brown nor too starchy. She gravitates toward foods bright with luminous colors such as greens, purples and orange, during her weekly Saturday visits to the farmer’s market – a ritual she’s kept for herself and family as a way to be intentional in the foods she purchases for quality health and manifesting energy.

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