Coachella Valley

MUSIC It's Coachella season and all of your friends are packing up their liquor cabinets and finest beach towels to head for Indio where the country's premiere rock music festival is taking place for not one, but two full weekends. Headliners include Radiohead, the Black Keys, and Snoop Dogg and Dr. Dre. Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, Empire Polo Club, 81-800 Ave. 51, Indio, CA. Fri.-Sun. (323) 930-5700; http://www.coachella.com.

Environmental regulators will be allowed to enforce air quality laws on the Cabazon Band of Mission Indians reservation in the Coachella Valley, an agreement reached seven months after noxious odors from a recycling facility sickened nearby schoolchildren. Under the agreement announced Wednesday, inspectors from the South Coast Air Quality Management District will have the authority to enter sovereign tribal land to monitor environmental laws on a reservation industrial park and issue violations.

Unbeaten Coachella Valley boxer Timothy Bradley signed a new promotional contract Thursday and was assigned a prominent semi-main event fight, probably against former champion Joel Casamayor , under the Nov. 12 Manny Pacquiao - Juan Manuel Marquez pay-per-view bout at MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas. Bradley (27-0, 11 knockouts) hasn't fought since January while splitting with former promoters Gary Shaw and Ken Thompson , who have sued the fighter. Bradley hasn't settled with Shaw and Thompson, the boxer's manager, Cameron Dunkin , said, but he has been advised he can sign with veteran fight promoter Bob Arum's Top Rank company.

Reporting from Indio -- Nearly every winter sunrise for decades, hot air balloons floated above the Coachella Valley. People on the ground would wave and admire the chromatic airships, while the passengers would gaze down at the date palm groves, the sere desert floor, the plum shadows on the San Jacintos. Then the Marrellis came to town. They bought an 80-acre parcel in 1999, double-fenced it and planted it with thousands of olive trees. When the trees were grown and provided a screen, they started building a compound in the style of a "Moorish fortress castle": two sprawling buildings and a bell tower, surrounded by 24-foot-high walls — four feet thick — with turrets on each corner and a deep moat at the entrance.

The burning stench first enveloped Saul Martinez Elementary School in December, sending two teachers to the hospital and forcing a classroom lockdown as firefighters searched the grounds for the source of the noxious odor. Liria Vargas was in tears, unable to get to her 8-year-old daughter — and herself nauseated from what she thought was an invisible cloud of poisonous gas. The mysterious odor came and went for months and, every time, her four young children complained of piercing headaches, upset stomachs and raw throats.

Farmers markets that close seasonally typically do so in the winter, when fresh produce is least abundant in most of California, but the Palm Springs farmers market shuts down from June to September, in deference to the brutal desert summers, when temperatures can easily surpass 120 degrees. In winter and early spring, by contrast, the generally balmy weather attracts a profusion of tourists and snowbirds, and the desert (mostly the less developed areas of the southern Coachella Valley and Imperial County)

For years, Donna Lozano badgered the Desert Hot Springs Police, public officials and anyone else who would listen, trying to get information about her son's killer. Henry Lozano, a popular 20-year-old ex-Marine, had been shot dead by a suspected gang member in December 2001 while driving near his home. He was dating the man's former girlfriend and had received threats to stay away. "I wanted answers. The police never called. The officer in charge of the case had never done a murder investigation," said Lozano, 65. "I said my son is dead, and I have no information."

An hour before dawn in the camp of last resort. Dozens of men and a few women are asleep in the beds of pickup trucks, in the back seats of cars or on flattened cardboard boxes in the dirt behind the Toro Loco market. The air is cool, but the terrible sun is close at hand. Martin Zavala is wrapped in a blanket, his head resting on a Scooby-Doo pillow, a pack of Marlboros under his neck. Thieves prowl at night and will snatch what is not secured.

Authorities say a San Diego County woman died in the desert after wandering away from her car when it got stuck in the sand. Riverside County sheriff's officials said Monday that the body of Genevieve Miller MacMahon, 85, was found over the weekend in the desert near Thousand Palms. MacMahon, of Escondido, had been visiting relatives in the Coachella Valley and apparently got stuck on her way home. Authorities say she called a friend Saturday night and left a message that she was lost.