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You would think that this would get a bit more attention than it has. It certainly piqued my interest when I saw it.A China-linked company ran a grossly unsafe bio lab filled with deadly pathogens in a supposedly empty warehouse in Fresno, California. A company without much of a backstory, addresses that don’t exist, and a president who can only be reached by email.China-linked Bio Lab in Fresno Co, California Had Over 900 Mice “Genetically Engineered to Catch and Carry the Covid-19 Virus” https://t.co/SAvzAx53gU— The Gateway Pundit (@gatewaypundit) July 29, 2023No, this is not the plot of a bad movie....

Why would a COVID lab run by a shady Chinese company be operating in Reedly, CA in the central San Joaquin Valley? The lab, which was supposed to be an empty building, was discovered by Reedly city code enforcement officers when they saw a garden hose attached to the building and investigated.

long-lost lake in California may reappear after heavy rains in the state. Tulare Lake, a freshwater dry lake in the southern San Joaquin Valley, dried up about 80 years ago. It shrank when the land was developed for agriculture and rivers were diverted elsewhere. It became farmland in the middle of the 20th century. It has flooded occasionally since then, but this year is looking to be the wettest yet. California has been hit by severe storms in recent days, as well as throughout much of winter. Forecasters have estimated there will be 4 inches of rain and 4 feet...

The Fresno Nightcrawler — often described as walking, ghostly pants — is known far beyond California's central San Joaquin Valley. It's become a darling of the cryptids — creatures typically described as mythological in nature, whose existence are widely considered unproven. "It's up there with Chupacabra, the Mothman and Bigfoot," said Michael Banti, founder of Weird Fresno, about the Fresno Nightcrawler's popularity. "It's very niche. It seems to be bigger outside of Fresno than inside."

MODESTO - Originating in a glacier at the eastern edge of Yosemite, the Tuolumne River runs into a man-made roadblock in the towering granite cliffs of the Hetch Hetchy Valley. A massive concrete dam captures its icy water and ships much of it through pipes and tunnels to the residents of San Francisco. Further downstream, the Tuolumne is halted again, this time by a dam in the oak-covered Sierra foothills. From there, a network of canals spreads the Tuolumne’s waters over mile after mile of rich San Joaquin Valley vineyards, orchards and dairy farms. The meager amounts left in the...

If the states are supposed to be laboratories for democracy, where new ideas that reflect regional attitudes can flourish, then cities are like micro-laboratories. Local governments can try out ideas that would never get statewide traction. Unfortunately, some California cities are more like laboratories run by Dr. Frankenstein, where frightening concepts are given life — and local residents have few other choices than to flee to other places. Most conservatives are familiar with the goings-on in San Francisco, where stringent rent-control laws have — I know you’re surprised by this — led to the least affordable rents and most unaffordable...

LOS BANOS - The helicopter landed in the western hills above the San Joaquin Valley and out of the dust walked President John F. Kennedy. It was Aug. 18, 1962, and the sun would not let go. In the hollow of the mountain, where California was about to build its newest reservoir, the air felt like a blast furnace. Summer had baked the earth to a tan and shrunken form. The hills turned to hide. Though not a drop of rain had fallen from the sky since spring, no one in the assembled crowd, certainly not the cotton kings, thought...

Presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump told California voters Friday that he can solve their water crisis, declaring, "There is no drought." Speaking at a rally in Fresno, Calif., Trump accused state officials of denying water to Central Valley farmers so they can send it out to sea "to protect a certain kind of three-inch fish

In December 2008, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service issued what is known as a “biological opinion” imposing water reductions on the San Joaquin Valley and environs to safeguard the federally protected hypomesus transpacificus, a.k.a., the delta smelt. As a result, tens of billions of gallons of water from mountains east and north of Sacramento was channelled away from farmers and into the ocean, leaving hundreds of thousands of acres of arable land fallow or scorched.

Federal officials Tuesday will begin releasing a disputed allotment of San Joaquin River water from Millerton Lake to a group of west San Joaquin Valley growers with water rights dating back to the 1870s. East-Valley growers last week had argued the unexpected allotment belonged to them, citing an agreement this year with the west-side growers over water in Millerton. But the west-siders, who belong to the San Joaquin River Exchange Contractor Authority, said they have honored the earlier deal, and this water has nothing to do with that agreement. The additional water from spring storms should be distributed through the...

In the summer of 2002, shortly before I was elected to Congress, I sat through an eye-opening meeting with representatives from the Natural Resources Defense Council and several local environmental activist groups. Hoping to convince me to support various water restrictions, they argued that San Joaquin Valley farmers should stop growing alfalfa and cotton in order to save water — though they allowed that the planting of high-value crops such as almonds could continue. Then, as our discussion turned to the groups' overall vision for the San Joaquin Valley, they told me something astonishing:

Farmers again will get no federal river water for more than 2 million acres of cropland in the San Joaquin Valley, the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation announced Friday. Though the announcement was no surprise, it sent ripples of anxiety through the farming industry on both the east and west sides of the Valley, which rely on water from the federal Central Valley Project. Don Peracchi, board president of the Westlands Water District’s board, mostly in west Fresno County, said: “The federal government’s Central Valley Project is broken. Some of the most vital elements of the state’s economy are being allowed...

San Joaquin Valley growers Wednesday filed an appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court, hoping to reverse an appellate court’s rejection of their claim that flawed science was used to cut back water pumping in Northern California. The case already has been through U.S. District Court in Fresno, which sided with growers in a decision that would have forced federal leaders to rewrite 2008 protections for the threatened delta smelt. The dwindling fish population lives in the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta where pumps divert water for Valley farms and Southern California cities. Federal wildlife agencies say water pumping is harming the...

SHAFTER, Calif. — A bustling city is sprouting on five acres here, carved out of a vast almond grove. Tanker trucks and heavy equipment come and go, a row of office trailers runs the length of the site and an imposing 150-foot drilling rig illuminated by football-field-like lights rises over the trees. It's all been hustled into service to solve a tantalizing riddle: how to tap into the largest oil shale reservoir in the United States. Across the southern San Joaquin Valley, oil exploration sites have popped up in agricultural fields and on government land, driven by the hope that...

Flows of money towards climate adaptation projects are becoming increasingly unpredictable, making it difficult for vulnerable countries to prepare for the hardships caused by global warming. Future fundraising tactics would have to be “extremely aggressive” in order to raise enough money to continue their work, according to board members of the UN-run Adaptation Fund, the primary finance provider for adaptation projects around the world. “We are essentially going with our hands out to everyone,” Philip Weech, the board member from the Bahamas representing the Latin American and Caribbean regions, told RTCC. “We take funds from anyone, any inch, but the...

Reporting from Taft, Calif.— Anywhere else, linking an aromatic cup of coffee and a gooey glob of oil would quickly kill a restaurant. Not so in Taft, Calif., the Taft Crude Coffee House is a popular stop for hot coffee or iced mocha. And in an era when oil spills tend to be environmental disasters, people here are happy to provide directions to the Lakeview Gusher, even though it spewed more than 9 million barrels of oil, nearly twice the amount spilled in 2010 from the Deepwater Horizon, the ill-fated British Petroleum rig in the Gulf of Mexico. Over 18...

$12 Pollution Assessment To Be Added To Car Registration FeesEvery person who owns a non-commercial vehicle in the San Joaquin Valley will begin paying a fine for violating federal air quality standards starting in October, said the San Joaquin Valley Pollution Control District. The fine will show up as a $12 pollution assessment on a resident's annual car registration bill. "We will pay this fine every year until we go three straight years without violating tougher federal air quality standards," said Anthony Presto, a spokesman for the pollution control district. The reason for the fine is that the San Joaquin...

Officials who have tried and failed to clean the air in California’s smog-filled San Joaquin Valley have seized on a new strategy: getting millions of drivers to shoulder more of the cost. Faced with a fine of at least $29 million for exceeding federal ozone limits, the San Joaquin Valley’s air quality regulators are proposing an annual surcharge of $10 to $24 on registration fees for the region’s 2.7 million cars and trucks beginning next year. A decision is expected when the governing board meets on Thursday. Although the surcharge is not expected to change how much people drive or...

Law: A federal judge has struck a blow for California's water-deprived Central Valley, ruling that draconian federal water cutbacks violate human rights because — surprise! — people also belong in the ecosystem. Next time a concept like, say "death panels" from the federal government seems far-fetched, consider the ordeal California's Central Valley has endured for the past two years. Based on a judicial ruling, some of the most prized and productive agricultural land in the country was turned into a wasteland after its water was shut off. The ruling was derived from an 800-page "biological opinion" put out by regulators...

A federal judge ruled Tuesday in favor of Central Valley farmers and urban water agencies seeking to loosen restrictions on pumping from the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta, a major source of irrigation and drinking water for much of California. U.S. District Judge Oliver Wanger in Fresno said the federal government did not properly develop a management plan that restricted water exports to protect endangered salmon, steelhead and other fish. The judge scheduled a hearing Wednesday to determine how much water can be exported without harming threatened fish that migrate through the delta to the Pacific Ocean. Groups representing San Joaquin Valley...