Junior Villarreal, once an earnest high school freshman with a passion for history and baseball, missed hundreds of classes at two Fresno campuses. Last March, he was fatally stabbed a few blocks from Sunnyside High.

TOOLEVILLE -- From her living room window, Valeriana Alvarado can see the Friant-Kern Canal, where pristine snowmelt flows to farm fields. She wouldn't mind getting some of that sparkling irrigation water at the drafty two-room trailer where she lives with eight family members.
Read more

Sicilian immigrant Baldassare Forestiere carved himself an underground home out of the hardpan north of Fresno. Now, some of Forestiere's descendants fear that California's proposed high-speed train project could threaten his creation. Mainly, though, they're confused by the lack of information about how the project would affect them.

The contradictions are everywhere: Americans want illegal immigration to stop, but they enjoy its benefits of cheap goods and services. Lawmakers won't force businesses to verify their workers' legal status. And the government provides free services to illegal immigrants, whose taxes do not cover those services.

A new federal analysis reveals $70 million has been invested in the San Joaquin River restoration since 2007, but no major projects have been completed. And as a Dec. 31 deadline nears to restart salmon runs, riverside farmers say it's time to talk about a delay.

Rent-to-own stores offer a powerful temptation for people who want new furniture or the latest TV but can't afford them.

For one of Fresno's visionaries, opportunity knocked during a chance encounter in a barbershop in 1904.

Lawmakers have quietly begun efforts to work out a California water bill that can survive the Senate and become law. In recent days, Republican Rep. Jeff Denham met with Sen. Dianne Feinstein to set the stage, and soon he will join San Joaquin Valley Democrats Jim Costa and Dennis Cardoza in in a private meeting with the key senator.

Eager homebuyers once had to get on a waiting list for a chance at a house in Fresno's Vineyards neighborhood west of Highway 99. That was in 2006. In the five years since then, residents have seen what an imploding real estate market can do.

A 1974 memo from Dow Chemical describes several chemicals in a widely used farm fumigant as "garbage." Today, one of those useless chemicals threatens drinking water for more than 1 million people across the San Joaquin Valley.

The Crime Map charts the time and location of reported felonies in the city of Fresno. You also can search a neighborhood for crime reports, and track the frequency of crime types over a chosen period of time.

The Data Center makes available to the public many of the links and databases – including some developed by The Bee – that reporters and editors use for research. You can search records ranging from property assessments to public employee salaries.