News

Death Cap, or amanita phalloides, mushrooms are part of a large display of mushrooms at the Santa Cruz Fungus Fair Friday. The Fungus Federation of Santa Cruz and the Santa Cruz Museum of Natural History teamed up to present the 50th anniversary event which...

CENTRAL COAST—The Clinica de Salud del Valle de Salinas (CSVS) is now hosting a pop-up Covid-19 testing site every Saturday at Las Lomas Market, bringing a much-needed resource to the small rural community in the northern reaches of Monterey County. The pop-up site is one...

When local conservation pioneer and philanthropist Diane Porter Cooley died last March, members of Pajaro Valley Arts (PVA) knew they wanted to pay tribute to her in some way. Cooley was a founding board member of PVA and instrumental in its success over the years....

The Department of Pesticide Regulation’s (DPR) held a public hearing Jan. 16 at the National Steinbeck Center in Salinas to address a new draft regulation for Telone, a pesticide also known by the chemical name 1,3-dichloropropene. Protesters say the regulations proposed by the DPR allow...

New Leaf Energy, the company proposing a battery energy storage system (BESS) facility for Minto Road in Watsonville, has submitted a pre-application to the California Energy Commission seeking approval for the project. The move was a possibility county officials have long feared since the project...

Santa Cruz County Superior Court Judge Heather D. Morse announced her retirement from the bench effective Nov. 2.

CALIFORNIA—Nineteen people were shot and killed in three separate mass shootings in California in three days. On Monday around 2:20pm four people were killed at the Mountain Mushroom Co. on Highway 92 in the surf-side city of Half Moon Bay. A short while later the...

WATSONVILLE—In a surprise end-of-meeting redux, the Watsonville City Council approved a moratorium on Covid-19 related evictions, reversing a decision it made just hours prior during Tuesday night’s meeting. The council was preparing to wrap up the virtual session when Councilman Aurelio Gonzalez made a motion...

SANTA CRUZ—The former neurosurgeon accused of molesting multiple children committed suicide by slicing into his femoral artery on his left groin, Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s spokeswoman Ashley Keehn announced Wednesday. James Kohut, 59, was found dead in his cell early in the morning on Oct....

WATSONVILLE—Juan Carlos Pozo Block has spent the past two decades teaching in Watsonville, working with students from various backgrounds and levels of education. This year, that experience culminated in a new book in which the author, who goes by the pen name JC Pozo, shares...