Merced Sun-Star

WASHINGTON -- The Agriculture Department is paying landowners to conserve wetlands but failing to monitor the results, investigators warn in a new report. One consequence arose in the Sacramento Valley, where investigators uncovered trash piled up on property for which the Agriculture Department had purchased a conservation easement.

Hillary Rodham Clinton trounced Barack Obama in Stanislaus County's February presidential primary. John McCain wooed just over a third of county voters, with former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney running close behind.

Developers are scrambling to find lenders, car loans are harder to get, home equity lines are being frozen and cash for small-business loans is drying up. And Friday's news that the Bush administration has a plan to suck bad debt out of the loan industry isn't likely to radically change the Valley's lending landscape.

Down again, darn it. Median home sales prices plunged further during August in Merced, Stanislaus and San Joaquin counties and throughout most of California.

WASHINGTON -- The California red-legged frog regained political territory Tuesday as the Fish and Wildlife Service proposed designating 1.8 million acres in California as critical habitat for the threatened species.

Foster Farms Dairy, one of the largest processors in the northern San Joaquin Valley, is ending contracts with some of the 30-plus farmers who supply it with milk.

WASHINGTON -- Valley residents will now shape the future of federal wildlife refuges that protect some of California's largest remaining freshwater wetlands.

SACRAMENTO -- California farmers can grow more food more profitably if they switch to water-saving crops and change their irrigation practices in response to the state's drought, according to a study released today.

SANGER — A burglar who broke into a home just east of Fresno rubbed spices over the body of one man and then used an 8-inch sausage to whack the other man on the face and head as the two slept in their rooms, Fresno County sheriff's deputies said Saturday. The burglar then ran out of the house.

SACRAMENTO — With the state mired in a drought, state water officials today said they would restart a water transfer program not used since the early 1990s.

The federal Environmental Protection Agency has agreed to settle a lawsuit about ozone standards in the San Joaquin Valley and Los Angeles air basins.

Whether they want to vote for America's next president – or are eager to feel generally more enfranchised – immigrants in California's Central Valley became U.S. citizens at an explosive rate in 2007, according to an analysis of new naturalization statistics.

Drought and economic desperation are driving farmworkers in small towns across the Valley to pull up decades-old roots and look for work elsewhere.

SACRAMENTO -- Ending two years of debate, the Legislature on Thursday gave final approval to a bill aimed at stopping metal theft, a growing problem in the Valley and elsewhere.

WASHINGTON -- Grape lovers could have an easier time finding Chilean bunches untouched by the potent chemical methyl bromide, under new rules proposed Wednesday by the Agriculture Department.