The Fresno Bee

FRESNO, Calif. -- A Fresno mother accused of encouraging her 12-year-old daughter to fight another girl -- a 35-second battle posted on YouTube -- said Monday that school officials ignored her complaints about her daughter being bullied.

In her first interview since her arrest in September, Carla Jimenez, 43, admitted that she made a poor decision when she told her daughter to defend herself against the other girl instead of breaking up the fight.

FRESNO, Calif. -- Reviving chinook salmon on the San Joaquin River will cost more than $20 million -- which may sound like a lot of money for 40,000 fish. But this rare project will take years of work, scientists say.

Three-quarters of those fish will be spring-run salmon, a threatened species already in danger of extinction in California. In the San Joaquin, the fish will have to survive in the southernmost salmon fishery on the continent -- where the water sometime gets a little too warm for them.

Scientists say they haven't found similar reintroductions of the threatened spring-run salmon in a river like the San Joaquin, which had been dry in places for more than a half century. Federal officials need to breed a resilient fish for this river.

In February, federal officials began revealing details of the project that will include a $14.5 million hatchery near Friant Dam and more than $7 million to operate it for a decade.

FRESNO, Calif. -- A company once owned by pharmaceutical giant Merck & Co. exposed residents near its now-shuttered Merced plant to cancer-causing chemicals, then covered up the contamination for years and downplayed its severity, a lawyer said Thursday.

Fresno attorney Mick Marderosian made the allegations in opening statements in U.S. District Court in Fresno.

Marderosian is part of a legal team representing more than 2,000 residents of Merced's Beachwood subdivision, who claim the air they breathed and the water they drank were contaminated by the cancer-causing chemical hexavalent chromium -- which gained attention after the movie "Erin Brockovich."

FRESNO, Calif. -- Ending a high-profile case that spurred community debate over whether a high school wrestling move could be a sex crime, a judge on Thursday agreed to dismiss a sexual battery charge against a former Buchanan High senior.

FRESNO, Calif. -- The murder of a California kindergartner Tuesday stunned residents still heartbroken by the carbon-monoxide poisoning deaths of two of her Oakhurst Elementary schoolmates last week.

The Madera County Sheriff's Office said the body of Marijane Lyn Lewis, 5, was discovered about 4:30 a.m. PST Tuesday by her grandfather in the Nipinnawasee home near Ahwahnee, Calif., that he and his wife shared with the girl and her mother, Crystal Lynn Lewis.

FRESNO, Calif. -- California's ambitious plan for high-speed trains is drawing sharp criticism from San Joaquin Valley farmers who fear the project would carve their property into useless pieces, disrupt their work and drive down land values.

Others accuse the California High-Speed Rail Authority -- the agency tasked with building the 800-mile system over the next decade -- of ignoring their concerns and steering the proposed rail line into the countryside as the path of least resistance.

FRESNO, Calif. -- A woman who hosted formal tea parties for the women of Visalia First Assembly of God church was arrested Thursday on suspicion of embezzling more than $2 million from the church, where she worked as the accounting manager for 13 years.

Sandra Arreola, 51, who moved to Palm Desert, Calif., last year, turned herself in Thursday morning to police in Visalia, Calif. She was charged with embezzlement, money-laundering and a white-collar crime enhancement. Her arrest came after an 18-month investigation.

Arreola is being held on $1 million bail. Her arraignment is scheduled for Friday afternoon.