Fresno Man Arrested on Suspicion of Beating Wife Because She Posted Selfie on Instagram

Wouldn't want others to share his wife's beauty, or something.

At the Los Angeles Times, "Police: Fresno man attacks wife over Instagram selfies."

The wife desperately tried to delete the selfies but it was too late. The man "lunged at her, choked her and threatened to kill her," pretty much what leftists do when you expose their hatred.

Fresno Man Killed Within Hours of Being Mistakenly Freed from Incarceration

I read about the man's release last night, and now here's this. Pretty freakin' bizarre.

At the Fresno Bee, "Fresno felon slain minutes after jail release on jury's mistake; suspect arrested."

Fresno is No. 1 on California's Toxic Hit List

I've blogged Fresno's pollution before, "Menacing Air Quality in California's Central Valley."

But there's a new state pollution study out ranking Fresno as ground zero for environmental danger in the state, and I don't doubt it.

At the Los Angeles Times, "Fresno ranks No. 1 on California pollution list":

FRESNO — The state's new effort to map the areas most at risk from pollution features hot spots up and down California.

But nowhere are there more of the worst-afflicted areas than in Fresno — in particular a 3,000-person tract of the city's west side where diesel exhaust, tainted water, pesticides and poverty conspire to make it No. 1 on California's toxic hit list.

"I'm looking at this map, and all I see is red. We're right here," Daisy Perez, a social worker at the Cecil C. Hinton Community Center, said as she located the center of the red areas that represented the top 10% most-polluted census tracts in California. "It's so sad. Good people live here."

Pollution has long plagued the Central Valley, where agriculture, topography and poverty have thwarted efforts to clean the air and water. The maps released this week by the California Environmental Protection Agency show that eight of the state's 10 census tracts most heavily burdened by pollution are in Fresno.

For residents of the state's worst-scoring area, statistics tell only part of the story of what it is like to live there.

It's a place where agriculture meets industry, crisscrossed by freeways. The city placed its dumps and meat-rendering plants there decades ago.

Historically, it was the heart of the city's African American community. The Central Valley's civil rights movement was centered in its churches. People referred to it as West Fresno, which meant a culture as well as a place.

These days, young community workers call it by its ZIP Code — the "93706 Zone."

It's home to a Latino community — the children and grandchildren of migrant workers; to Hmong and Cambodian farmers; and to a minority African American community that includes those desperate to leave, and an old guard of those who say they will never abandon home.

"The voice of the community is still black. Because we're the ones who now have the wherewithal and time to speak," said Jim Aldredge, who took over running the community center when the city cut its budget. "Look, when you're just trying to survive, you don't have time to go before City Council and all that. Pollution data is the farthest thing from your mind when you're looking for your next meal."

More.

Menacing Air Quality in California's Central Valley

Most of the left's environmental memes are baloney, but I lived in Fresno for years, and the air quality is often terrible.

So I don't doubt this piece at all, at LAT, "A menacing air in the Central Valley":

FRESNO — On bad-air days here in the Central Valley, school officials hoist red flags to warn parents and pupils that being outside is officially deemed “unhealthful for all groups.”

This winter, though, the most polluted on record, schools have not only raised red flags. On several days, they have had to send out notices saying the red flags should really be purple—indicating “very unhealthful” air — if only they had them. But such warnings have been be so rare that schools don't even have the flags designating the most extreme conditions.

Of course, parents could just look at the sky itself.

From Stockton to Bakersfield, a haze of chemical-laced particles has tinted the air a rusty gray all winter. In the evenings there's a charcoal stripe across the horizon. The Sierra Nevada hasn't been visible for more than a month.

A high-pressure ridge, four miles high, sits off the West Coast, blocking Pacific storms from cleaning the air in the Central Valley. Pollution levels have spiked across California, but nowhere is it as bad as in this agricultural region.

With no rain since Dec. 7, fine particles that can embed in lungs and enter the bloodstream build up in an ever-darkening sky. Meteorologists don't expect the weather to shift until at least the end of the month.

When Kellie Townsend returned from her Christmas vacation at the coast, she knew right away something was wrong.
"As soon as I drove into the valley, I could feel a burning in my throat," she said.

Townsend, who works in the Earth and Environmental Sciences program at Fresno State, heeded air board warnings to stay inside. Her neighbors seemed to do the same. The only people she saw out were gardeners with leaf-blowers. For exercise there was her Lindy Hop dance class. One weekend she went to the mountains for a dose of fresh air.

But after three weeks, on a recent balmy day, the 42-year-old returned to running up and down hills near a walking trail. She purposely didn't check the air rating — which was a red alert with about three times the amount of fine particles found in air considered healthful.

"I'm scared. I can feel that something isn't right. I can feel the tightness in my chest," she said. "But I get tense when I'm inside too long. I told my husband, 'My head feels chaotic inside.' I know what will happen — I will be coughing tonight. Maybe the damage is long term. But what do I do?"

People who live in the Central Valley are used to bad air. Surrounded by mountains on three sides, home to industrial agriculture and oil fields, and with most of the state's long-distance big-rig traffic driving through on Interstate 5 and state Highway 99, the region historically has had some of the worst pollution in the nation.

Warnings about spikes usually go out in the summer and are directed at sensitive groups: children, older people and those with respiratory problems in a region where the asthma rate is three times higher than the national average.

Now the amount of fine particles — known as PM-2.5 — in the air is so high that a new group is affected: outdoorsy adults with no health problems. On many days, the air district, tracking hourly readings, sends out an alert: "Real Time Activity Risk Warning."
As the weeks stretch on, people are ignoring the warnings.

Keep reading.

One of the things that always tripped me out about Fresno was all the agricultural burning. Drive around the Valley and you see agricultural fires all the time. Sometimes you just breathe the smoke. So, yeah, air quality up there is definitely an issue.