Our Region

SUSANVILLE – An octogenarian water tunnel that has not deliberately carried water for 74 years is facing federal scrutiny to determine how – and whether – it should operate in the future.

From his cell at Mule Creek State Prison, disgraced businessman and once-prominent insider Roberto P. Vellanoweth has reached back into Sacramento to stir outrage once more in the drunken driving manslaughter case in which he killed four people.

It took some 32,000 glasses of wine and three days of judging before top honors were announced Thursday for the California State Fair Commercial Wine Competition.

At last, the up side of the worst unemployment to batter the country since the early 1980s: Americans are rediscovering volunteer work.

For the first time since the taxpayers' revolt of the 1970s, the total assessed value of properties is dropping in Sacramento and across California.

The Wilton Miwok Rancheria, fresh from winning federal tribal recognition, has tripped alarms among Sacramento County and Elk Grove officials about effects on local communities if the tribe eventually opens a casino.

A witness in the murder trial of the man convicted of shooting and killing a UC Berkeley scholarship student pleaded no contest Wednesday to perjury charges.

Excited laughter and frenetic play among more than 200 children in Rancho Cordova's White Rock Park paused just long enough for the children to form a crooked, single-file line.

Sacramento County's Oak Park clinic quietly reopened this month as part of an expanding group of community health centers striving to care for the region's poor and medically underserved.

A class on daily life in Japan has become a lesson in life under quarantine for 20 students from UC Davis and other California colleges who are confined to a Japanese dorm because of swine flu.

A 56-year-old Yreka man drowned Tuesday after falling from the Klamathon Bridge and into the Klamath River near Hornbrook, a Siskiyou County Sheriff's Department spokeswoman said.

Authors, artists and a local winery will join forces to raise funds Sunday for the El Dorado County-based American Mustang Foundation.

A new tent city populated by about 100 homeless people along a Sacramento street has prompted a charity agency to propose that the city allow it to lease land to establish a legal place for those people and others to stay.

Aficionados say the burger sold at the Squeeze Inn is perfection, the consummate marriage of bun, ground meat and melted cheddar cheese.

In need of help: Teach Peace Foundation, a nonprofit group in Davis that seeks to educate children and adults about peaceful solutions to problems and issues around the world.

The Sacramento City Unified School District has offered its superintendent job to a North Carolina school district administrator who ran a multimillion- dollar nonprofit in Boston before going into public education.

Opponents of a planned $1.5 billion, 600-mile electrical transmission line across Northern California vowed Wednesday to keep fighting – even after the plan suffered possibly a fatal blow last week when its largest partner pulled its support.

Planners consider reopening mall to cars to reverse a "concept that did not work well."

In another time or another place, "Big Mike" Winnett's relatives said he would have embraced William Roger Lyons, put his arms around the struggling addict and welcomed him into his world of sobriety.

An education summit, a proposed external audit of city finances and a sister-city relationship with Tel Aviv were on tap Tuesday in Sacramento Mayor Kevin Johnson's weekly news meeting.

Two Folsom police officers who shot and killed a 23-year-old man in his family's home Easter Sunday did so lawfully and will not be prosecuted, the Sacramento County District Attorney's Office said Tuesday.

A federal appellate court on Tuesday gave new life to the lawsuit of a former UC Davis football player who sustained severe eye injury from a projectile fired by university police.

The ever-contentious issue of development in El Dorado County has sparked an a effort to recall veteran county Supervisor Jack Sweeney.

New video red-light cameras will have put new eyes on errant drivers this morning at three major intersections in Sacramento County.

The Auburn Police Officers' Association, the city of Auburn and Auburn Police Department officials have reached an agreement allowing union members to return to a shift schedule based on members' seniority and bidding preferences, according to a statement from the union's lawyer.

Park rangers are hosting a Volunteer Trail Day Friday to help construct a portion of the new Shasta Trinity Trail within Whiskeytown National Recreation Area.

Want to honor a fellow citizen and provide a good thrill at the same time?

Nevada County has its first case of swine flu, and the patient is quickly recovering.

Cancer patients unable to afford the latest, and perhaps more effective, forms of oral chemotherapy might have to wait only a few more months for relief.

Lisa Ling's younger sister Laura has been imprisoned by North Korea since March 17. "It's devastating," she said in her first interview with local media. "With each passing day, it becomes harder and harder."