Valley News

Early Thursday morning, gymnast Sunisa Lee became the first Hmong American to win a gold medal for team USA. And just as her hometown community in Minnesota cheered her on, the San Joaquin Valley’s Hmong community was watching as well. Geri Yang-Johnson of Fresno has never met Sunisa Lee, but …

Last week, a federal judge in Texas ruled that the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, is unconstitutional. For now that means new DACA applications will not be approved, but DACA renewals will still be processed. It was the latest blow to the program, which allows more than …

Now that most pandemic restrictions on houses of worship have been lifted, the Sikh Institute of Fresno looks much like it did pre-COVID. On a recent Sunday at this 3-story, salmon-colored temple known as a gurdwara, people stream in and out of the main worship hall, some wearing traditional saris …

As the Delta variant has made its way to the most prevalent COVID-19 variant in the state, other indicators of the pandemic have been rising as well. Statewide, case rates and positivity rates are four to five times higher than they were a month ago, and hospitals are slowly seeing …

Mohamed Ahmed has worked behind the register of the Food King in Fresno’s Tower District for more than a decade. He’s the owner, and he says many of his customers are regulars coming in every week for basic staples or beer. He expects to see them, but the pandemic changed …

Vaccine rollout is proving far more challenging in rural communities, creating what are called vaccine deserts. And according to the Documenting COVID-19 project, a national effort to make pandemic related data more transparent, vaccine deserts are springing up across the San Joaquin Valley, causing concern among public health professionals. Valley …

California’s 2020 wildfire season was indisputably historic: Fires burned a record-high 4.3 million acres in the state, and five of the blazes went down among the 10 largest in our recorded history. Many were touched off by widespread lightning sieges, which hadn’t occurred at such a high rate since 2008. …

Since 1938, employers in California have been able to apply for a certificate that allows them to pay employees with disabilities less than minimum wage – in some cases as little as $ 2 an hour. Some say the program, called 14(c), creates opportunities for people who otherwise could not …

A new book from journalist and author Amy Wu explores how a growing number of women are blending agriculture with technology to find new solutions to feed the world. Valley Edition host Kathleen Schock spoke to Wu about her book, “From Farms to Incubators: Women Innovators Revolutionizing How Our Food …

A project is underway throughout July to remember when the now dry Kern River flowed through the city of Bakersfield. The organization Bring Back the Kern is collecting photos, videos and stories of the once moving river for an upcoming exhibit. Valley Edition host Kathleen Schock spoke with the project’s …

Pete Oliver likes to say that his small green Army jeep is older than he is, and he’s 76. But it still runs well after a few starts, and he uses it to drive around his small farm west of downtown Fresno. On this day, he takes the jeep out …

When the one working well serving the unincorporated community of Teviston in Tulare County stopped working last month, the roughly 1,000 people who live there were left without running water in the middle of a drought. As the community waits for bureaucracy to clear the way for the well to …

In 2020, the Creek Fire and other blazes throughout California billowed so much smoke into the San Joaquin Valley that, at times, the sky turned brown and ashes accumulated on cars and sidewalks like snowflakes. We know long-term air pollution is bad for our health, but what can we expect …