Visalia Ca

They came to City Hall wearing stern expressions and lapel ribbons. Their faces were masks of grief and anger. The white ribbons were meant to represent peace. They quickly filled the 75 seats in the circular council chambers. Then an equal number squeezed together, shoulder to shoulder, in the foyer, resigned to listening through a doorway. The last to arrive could only stand outside in the cold or go home. They stood. Something had happened.

Hospital officials are warning residents to be on the lookout for a woman trying to peddle fake flu shots. The unidentified woman reportedly has been approaching local businesses, saying she's from Kaweah Delta Hospital and offering to give flu shots at a rate of $20 per person. Officials, who were notified of the scam by a skeptical business owner, say the woman is not a hospital employee.

A convicted bank robber who held hostages 10-plus hours in a botched Exeter heist has been sentenced to 50 years in prison. Jess Martinez, 47, was convicted last month of 13 felony counts stemming from the Jan. 25 standoff at Bank of America.

Giant retailer Wal-Mart has pulled plans to build a Supercenter in southwest Visalia, but still has its sights set on the town. The Supercenter, which would have included a grocery section, was opposed by a group of neighbors last fall. The plan was still in its initial stages. Wal-Mart had applied for a site plan review, but had not yet submitted a formal application to the city, officials said.

Investigators were trying to determine who left an unmarked envelope containing a letter and white powder on a school campus, police said, adding that tests had determined that the substance was not anthrax. Green Acres Middle School was closed Tuesday and 915 students were sent home as firefighters in biohazard suits started cleaning up the powder that had spilled from the envelope. A teacher had discovered the envelope outside the school office about 8:15 a.m. and opened it.

No place in California, save for the borderlands of Imperial, is poorer than this place. Like the fields, despair runs clear to the horizon. So it comes as no surprise that residents approach the cluster of buildings on the north side of Visalia -- a refuge known as the Good News Center -- as if it were hallowed ground. For years, a small relentless nun with the unusual name of Sister Kenneth Quinn has performed what the down-and-out here consider miracles.

A former printing business employee shot a worker to death Tuesday, then set fire to rolls of paper and an office at the Visalia plant before fatally shooting himself, authorities said. Police equipped with oxygen tanks entered the smoke-filled PrintXCel plant minutes after the 7:44 a.m. emergency call, and found the two men dead, Visalia Police Sgt. Michelle Figueroa said.

A former Tulare County sheriff's deputy was accused of rigging a camera to film people in a courthouse bathroom. Manuel Mendez, who worked as a bailiff at the county courthouse, faces up to a year in jail if convicted on two counts of invasion of privacy. Mendez denied hiding the camera in a locker and aiming it at a toilet in an employees' bathroom for men and women. A woman using the toilet discovered the camera last month.

A Superior Court judge is suing to close the Tulare County Courthouse in Visalia unless officials rid the structure of mold and fungi, which she says made her sick. Judge Elisabeth Krant alleged that a black, slimy mold contaminated the ceiling tiles in her chambers. The mold allegedly led to the judge's hair loss, dizziness, bouts of vertigo, abdominal pain, respiratory problems, ringing in her ears, facial swelling and severe rashes.

In the coffee bars and restaurants in this small central San Joaquin Valley town, people are talking about The Mold That Ate The Courthouse. But for the people who work in the three-story building downtown, the discovery of toxic mold above a judge's chambers is no laughing matter. More than 150 courthouse workers, among them three judges, have filed claims against Tulare County, claiming injuries caused by hazardous working conditions. More than a third of the court staff is out sick.