Bee State News

On summer evenings in the Capay Valley, the sound of West African drumming and chanting rolls across the fields and orchards, as children dance beneath a towering oak.

MERCED – The total cost for May's commencement ceremony at UC Merced – with a keynote address by first lady Michelle Obama – has finally been tallied: $1,047,338.82.

San Francisco is ordering residents and businesses to compost food scraps and biodegradables, or risk fines for not properly sorting their garbage.

SMUD is pulling out of a plan to join other municipal power providers in building a $1.5 billion high-voltage power line, putting the project in question.

A California Court of Appeal handed down a ruling Wednesday in favor of a Butte County man ordered to destroy several marijuana plants he grew on his property as part of a medical marijuana collective to which he belonged.

MARKLEEVILLE – There are some flat stretches of land in Alpine County, but they aren't easy to find. Most of the county's 700 square miles are severely tilted. The streams and rivers run like they're scared of something.

An alcohol ban instituted last Fourth of July weekend on a popular rafting section of the Truckee River will be in effect again July 3-5.

The Jackson Rancheria Band of Miwok Indians announced Thursday it has closed 50 of the 83 rooms at its hotel and will cancel all concerts after Robin Trower performs July 9.

An autopsy performed Tuesday determined that a man whose body appeared to have been in the water several days when it was discovered last week floating in the Klamath River near Happy Camp had drowned.

SUSANVILLE – Six men, all arrested in a marijuana farm raid resulting in a gunbattle that left a seventh suspect dead, are scheduled to appear in Lassen Superior Court today on multiple felony charges.

TRUCKEE – Development of this city's historic, long-vacant railyard has received a giant boost with the Town Council's recent approval of a master plan and environmental impact report.

With peak fire season approaching, state officials have announced the suspension of door-yard burning permits at midnight Tuesday.

Sean Powers is regaling a group of children and their parents with a fractured fairy tale.

Bay Area Catholic Charities has agreed to pay $30,000 to a 71-year-old man who claimed the organization fired him from a job helping seniors because he was too old.

STOCKTON – The case of four people accused of ritualistically torturing a teenage boy took a new turn Thursday as a judge announced that the defense plans to file a motion challenging a grand jury's indictments.

A report evaluating the economic performance of the nation's 100 largest metropolitan markets paints a broad-brush profile of fiscal stagnation in Sacramento, the Central Valley and the state as a whole.

WASHINGTON – A prominent California nonprofit agency that has worked closely with Central Valley farmworkers has lost a costly breach-of-contract fight with the federal government.

El Capitan, on the north side of Yosemite Valley, is a 3,593-foot wall of granite, challenging for even the world's best able- bodied climbers.

U.S. Forest Service officials have reopened a section of the Pacific Crest Trail near Belden in time for summer hikers.

California's ports are getting quieter and the state's huge export slump is getting worse.

The Moonlight fire, which burned 65,000 acres on the northernmost slopes of the Sierra Nevada in 2007, will be the the focus of a daylong guided tour June 20 sponsored by Sierra Institute's Center of Forestry.

One eaglet is gone, a second one is just about to fly from the nest and the youngest is flapping its wings vigorously, preparing to take that liberating first flight in a day or two.

It's 8:15 a.m. at the St. Vincent de Paul dining facility on a gritty, pothole-laced Third Street in Eureka.

Plans for Los Angeles-based clothing retailer Forever 21 to take over the Gottschalks store at Country Club Plaza have run into a potential snag.

TOLLHOUSE – There are enduring symbols of the Old West.