Forget the diet: Girl Scout cookies are back in the Valley. The Girl Scouts of Central California South kicked off the three-week cookie selling season on Sunday with its cookie mega-drop. Six freight trucks in Fresno and others in Visalia and Bakersfield dropped off 18,000 cases of cookies to fill pre-sale orders and tables for [...]

Hello Kitty jewelry, Star Wars collectibles and baby pacifiers with mustaches on them are for sale at a new downtown gift shop, The Kern Street Gift Shoppe. It opened this month at 2131 Kern St. in the Hotel Virginia building. Downtown isn’t exactly known for gift shops. In fact, the best-known shop, Twee boutique, will [...]

An indoor gun range in Clovis is the center of a fight over property rights that has city officials searching for a fair solution. Homeowners say daily gunfire from The Firing Line has shattered the peace in their neighborhood near Shields and Clovis avenues. The constant sound of “pop, pop, pop” has devalued homes, caused [...]

Dorothy Cruz, credited as the glue that held the family company Mi Rancho Tortillas of Clovis together, died earlier this month. She was 76. Her memorial is scheduled for 10 a.m. Friday at Our Lady of Mt. Carmel Catholic Church at 816 Pottle Ave. in Fresno. Cruz and her husband, Gilbert, who died in 2003, [...]

Pinnacles National Monument became Pinnacles National Park on Monday as hundreds gathered in San Benito County for the dedication of America’s 59th national park — and first on the Central Coast. “Today, Pinnacles is no longer a monument, it is a national park,” U.S. Interior Secretary Ken Salazar said during the ceremony. “It is iconic [...]

Longtime KFTV (Channel 21.1) reporter Reina Cardenas recently moved into the anchor chair for the local Spanish-language television station’s 6 and 11 p.m. news. She says she thinks about her father, Agustin, whenever she does a news story. “I remember when I was a kid, he always wanted to watch the news and we wanted [...]