City Manager Andy Souza and the Fresno City Council are supposed to meet with a Grizzlies owner behind closed doors Thursday to hash out another rent break for the financially ailing baseball club.

Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door. Or so Ralph Waldo Emerson said in the 19th century about the power of innovation.

Bill Dietzel has kept the regimen of a military man and, at 75, has the flat belly and straight posture to prove it. Mornings start with push-ups, sit-ups and a mile run -- the family dog, a Queensland heeler, tagging along.

This beauty contest is going to make more noise than a Q & A with Carrie Prejean.

Mendota High was piling up touchdowns in Avenal on Friday night when the first text messages arrived. A 4-year-old was missing back home.

Jon Morse's passion for children, education and community led him to the charter-school movement. He has needed every bit of that passion during the four years that it took to get approval for a Big Picture school.

City leaders have been trying to figure out what to do with "Sin City" since the 1980s, when paint started peeling on its ticky-tacky apartments and Fresno State students fled to better digs.

Fresno can't hire an independent police auditor fast enough.

I was among those checking out the mural in the Tower District on Monday afternoon. Some of us stopped and viewed at a distance from the sidewalk on the east side of Wilson Avenue. Others did a slow crawl in their vehicles and sped off.

Movie director Ken Burns and PBS teamed up recently to peddle the six-episode idea that America's national parks belong to all of us.

The day after a judge said that alleged child molester Harry Baker must appear in court next time for his twice-delayed arraignment, lawyer Richard Berman provided an update on the health of his wealthy client.

White Gold looks like a reject from a Whitesnake tribute band. He's a collage of bleached-white hair, Spandex and admire-yourself-in-the-mirror attitude.

Even though the Central Valley Tea Party Web site says "the so-called media" have shirked their watchdog responsibility and become "lapdogs of the left," I like the group's firebrand activism.

Here's a warning for 21 million Dittoheads: You don't want Rush Limbaugh getting a piece of the St. Louis Rams.