Sacramento Ca

Organizers of the annual Rainbow Festival were prepared for trouble. The Q Crew, a local "queer/straight alliance," distributed cards telling people what to do if approached by hostile demonstrators. Sympathetic local church groups formed a protective buffer along the festival ground's cyclone fence. Mounted police were on patrol. Jerry Sloan manned a table for Stand Up for Sacramento, a recently formed gay self-defense organization. "So far, so good," he said. "No Russians."

U.S. Rep. Laura Richardson's rundown Sacramento house, which became the scourge of the neighborhood and a sore point with an investor who thought he had bought it out of foreclosure, has drawn the interest of a House ethics panel. The Office of Congressional Ethics contacted real estate investor James York, who bought Richardson's house at a foreclosure auction last year, only to have Washington Mutual take it back after he had recorded the deed and return the house to the congresswoman.

A 28-year-old woman found dead hours after taking part in a radio station's water-drinking contest died of water intoxication, the coroner's office said Saturday. Assistant Sacramento County Coroner Ed Smith said a preliminary investigation found evidence "consistent with a water intoxication death." Also known as hyponatremia, water intoxication occurs when the body's sodium level falls below normal.

The capital's tent city sprawls messily on a grassed-over landfill beneath power lines, home to some 200 men and women with nowhere else to go. It has been here for more than a year, but in the last three weeks it has transformed into a vivid symbol of a financial crisis otherwise invisible to most Americans. The Depression had Hoovervilles. The energy crisis had snaking gas lines. The state's droughts have empty reservoirs and brown lawns.

To their parents and their priest, the three brothers were obedient boys. Every Sunday, Loi, Pham and Long Nguyen went to the Vietnamese Catholic Martyr Church. Often, they helped out at the church's special events. They liked to fish in the Sacramento River, and on Thursday, they asked their parents for permission to go fishing.

Police arrested two members of an organization called Breasts Not Bombs after they removed their tops during a protest on the steps of the state Capitol on Monday afternoon. The women, who were protesting Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger's ballot measures for today's special election, took off their shirts despite warnings from the California Highway Patrol last week that doing so would lead to their arrests -- and possibly their inclusion on the state's list of sex offenders.

One punch was all it took. One punch to forever divide. One punch to kill a young man. On a hot summer afternoon along a placid lakefront in the Sacramento suburbs, Satender Singh had come with a group of fellow Fijians to celebrate his promotion at an AT&T call center. Three married couples and Singh, a lighthearted 26-year-old, drank and hooted and danced a crazy conga line to East Indian music. An innocent outing? Not in the eyes of the Russian family a few picnic tables away.

The capital's tent city sprawls messily on a grassed-over landfill beneath power lines, home to some 200 men and women with nowhere else to go. It has been here for more than a year, but in the last three weeks it has transformed into a vivid symbol of a financial crisis otherwise invisible to most Americans. The Depression had Hoovervilles. The energy crisis had snaking gas lines. The state's droughts have empty reservoirs and brown lawns.

Authorities believe a "thrill killer" is behind two shootings within a week that have left six people dead. Sheriff's officials advised late-night stores and restaurants in northeastern Sacramento suburbs to take extra security precautions Wednesday, a day after three employees of a pizza parlor were fatally wounded in the head. Investigators said the victims were killed with the same handgun used to murder two employees and a customer a week earlier at a convenience store a mile away.

A friend loaned me Stephen E. Ambrose's new book about the building of the first transcontinental railroad, "Nothing Like It in the World," and suggested that my wife and I do what he had done: Take Amtrak from Sacramento to Reno, the most romantic leg of the railroad and, for those who built it in the 1860s, the most daring. Docents from the California State Railroad Museum in Sacramento make the trip once a day, chronicling the route's history along the way.

Here's Sacramento's problem: It desperately needs more tax money to provide the services the public wants. But the public doesn't trust Sacramento to spend any new money wisely. Polling shows that Californians are concerned about possible program cuts -- not only in public schools, but in health and welfare services. The same polls also show that people don't want to pay higher taxes -- from their own pockets anyway -- largely because they don't trust politicians with the money.

Wind-blown fires have destroyed more than 50 homes, burned thousands of acres and on Wednesday overran three firefighters who suffered burns. A grass fire near Lincoln, about 30 miles northeast of the state capital, consumed 65 acres of brush, but reversed direction amid the shifting winds and blazed toward a fire crew working the edges.

In the NBA and in life, Kevin Johnson always seemed the guy who would do the right thing. This was the kid who survived Sacramento's toughest neighborhood to study hard and set scoring records, graduating to matchups with Magic Johnson and Michael Jordan. This was the man who returned to his old Oak Park neighborhood to work at restoring a place pockmarked by poverty.

California's capital city may be best known for politics, but it has another claim to fame: It's America's most flood-threatened city not named New Orleans. A recent state report predicts that the right combination of unlucky weather conditions could put some parts of the city under more than 20 feet of water, causing a $25-billion disaster that would cripple state government and ripple through the California economy.

One punch was all it took. One punch to forever divide. One punch to kill a young man. On a hot summer afternoon along a placid lakefront in the Sacramento suburbs, Satender Singh had come with a group of fellow Fijians to celebrate his promotion at an AT&T call center. Three married couples and Singh, a lighthearted 26-year-old, drank and hooted and danced a crazy conga line to East Indian music. An innocent outing? Not in the eyes of the Russian family a few picnic tables away.

Former National Basketball Assn. star Kevin Johnson jumped into the Sacramento mayor's race Wednesday, announcing he would challenge incumbent Heather Fargo, who is a seeking third term, in the June 3 municipal election. Johnson, 42, made the announcement at a news conference at the Guild Theater in Oak Park, the low-income Sacramento neighborhood where he grew up and where he has devoted himself to urban renewal projects after retiring from professional basketball.

"Look!" Josh exclaimed. "Look over there!" My 6-year-old nephew's delight stemmed from riding, of all things, the parking lot shuttle to the Ontario International Airport terminal. The object of his glee was something I'll bet escapes the average passenger: the maze of railroad tracks surrounding the airport and the freight trains continually rolling on them.

One hundred forty years after businessmen drove the first spike of the Transcontinental Railroad here and marked a famous chapter in America's push to expand, California developers plan to build at the same site one of the nation's biggest and most innovative downtown projects.

He seems more fable than flesh and blood, a general who marched with serendipity at his side. Wartime comrades say he walked away from downed aircraft, defied bullets and dodged artillery shells. Once, the story goes, a barrage of bombs landed around him and not one exploded. Even in defeat, Gen. Vang Pao of the Royal Lao Army consistently beat the odds. After the communists conquered his homeland in 1975, he fled with six wives and more than 20 children to the U.S.

Sacramento police announced Thursday that they had searched the home of basketball player Justin Williams, but would not say why the warrant was served. Sgt. Matt Young said that Williams, a 23-year-old forward for the Sacramento Kings, was involved in an ongoing investigation, but that no one had been detained or arrested. Young said the investigation began Oct. 12. Williams' home was searched about 6 p.m. Wednesday.