CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
September 14, 2010 | By Valerie J. Nelson, Los Angeles Times
Billie Mae Richards, a Canadian actress best known for voicing Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer in the enduring animated 1964 television special, has died. She was 88. Richards, who had suffered strokes, died Friday at her home in Burlington, Canada, west of Toronto, said Rick Goldschmidt, who documented the history of "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer" and its producers. Like most of the cast, Richards was a veteran of Canadian radio when the producers traveled north to assemble the voices for the program based on the 1949 song "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.
ENTERTAINMENT
September 6, 2010 | By Eric Pape, Special to the Los Angeles Times
Reporting from Paris — As Brigitte Bardot approaches her 76th birthday, her starlet aura has been enjoying a broad resurgence — and the woman herself, plenty of attention. In the year since her widely commemorated 75th birthday, a fashion elite — Dior, Lagerfeld and Gaultier — have offered their catwalk homages to France's famous "sex bomb. " The actress' tantalizingly retro 1960s-era face looks out over shoppers from the posh Lancel store on the Champs-Élysées (where they sell the recently launched eco-chic Brigitte Bardot Bag)
HEALTH
July 26, 2010 | By Jeannine Stein, Los Angeles Times
Every so often, we take a candid look at the private dietary lives of people whose food choices need a makeover. Up this week: the kitchen and dining habits of 22-year-old Jessica Watson and her boyfriend, 31-year-old Todd Preboski. She's a vegan; he eats fish but no other animal-based foods. Such diets may conjure up images of fresh vegetables and fruits, nuts, tofu and whole grains. But a lack of time and planning have cornered the couple into relying too often on Taco Bell burritos, protein bars and potato chips.
OPINION
May 23, 2006 | J.D. Smith, J.D. SMITH'S second collection of poetry is "Settling for Beauty."
FOR YEARS NOW, preservationists have been pleading and preaching in a failed attempt to get humans to stop slaughtering exotic and increasingly rare animals whose organs are believed to increase sexual potency. But it hasn't worked. Poachers risk bullets, handcuffs and steep fines for the profits from rhinoceros horns, tiger penises or the eggs of endangered sea turtles, all wrongly believed to enhance male sexual performance or desire. It's time for a new approach.
FOOD
May 17, 2006
I would like to comment on the article on the Chicago foie gras ban and the response of one reader. Each time I read of another ban, I ask myself the same question: "Why is foie gras being championed by the general population as the food product they are trying to ban?" The main issue seems to be that people find the process amounts to "animal cruelty." Yet it would seem that if people universally cared about animal cruelty, they wouldn't eat any animal products. Do people not know about the processing of mass-produced poultry (and accompanying waste)
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
August 23, 2004 | Sharon Bernstein, Times Staff Writer
Is your car vegan? Actor Michael Bell's is. The 66-year-old Encino resident doesn't eat or wear animal products, and his hybrid car doesn't have a stitch of leather in it. If it had, Bell said, he wouldn't have bought the car, a 2001 Toyota Prius, despite its impeccable green credentials. In raw numbers, vegans such as Bell are so few that they barely register on surveys of consumer habits.