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Local News

• Giant Pumpkins, racing gourds featured at festival

If you?re looking for gigantic pumpkins, adventurous pumpkin-boat paddlers, and more scarecrows than most people have ever seen, there?s only one place for you this weekend.
• Gov. signs restaurant law in Elk Grove

All chain restaurants in California will be required to list how many calories are in each dish on their menus by the year 2011.
• Maestas shares foreclosure experience, desire to help

Among the many fallen dominos of foreclosed homes that reverberated particularly hard on the local economy was Elk Grove City Council candidate Katherine Maestas.
• Council candidates speak at Oct. 9 election forum

Candidates running for the Elk Grove City Council and the Elk Grove Unified School District will speak to the public at an Oct. 9 election forum.
• Majority of local sophomores pass exit exam

The state released data last month that found that most sophomores within the Elk Grove Unified School District passed the high school exit exam during the past school year.
• Official reports Stockmans Bank on solid ground

Officials of Stockmans Bank report they are not fazed by the current financial meltdown that has affected some prominent national financial institutions. Stockmans in Elk Grove is part of the PremierWest Bank, headquartered in Medford, Oregon.

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Regional News

• Mental Health Court makes strides, but funds drying up

Every week, Superior Court Judge Jaime Román finds a reason among a pile of stuffed manila folders to lead applause in his courtroom.


Terrell Baker loads a bed and other items Friday being supplied by his employer, Turning Point Community Programs, to a needy client. The Army veteran, 44, has struggled with being schizophrenic and bipolar but now is a graduate of Mental Health Court.


Mental Health Court client Virgil Rheinbolt, 63, of Fair Oaks and his wife, Ruth, listen to Jim Hughes in the courtroom last week. Hughes, a county probation officer, says of the program: "I'm a believer."


Sienna Riffa, left, an assistant public defender for Sacramento County, reviews case records last week with Mental Health Court client William Scott Linton, 39. His mother, Evelynn Carr, looks on.

• Grand jury warns CPS to cooperate in probe

Complaining that its investigation of Child Protective Services is being stonewalled, the Sacramento County grand jury has warned all CPS employees and its leaders that they must cooperate with the panel's probe.
Complete coverege of CPS issues


Child Protective Services Director Laura Coulthard, speaking to members of the CPS Citizens Academy in April, told The Bee on Friday that the agency has cooperated with a Sacramento County grand jury's investigation. The grand jury claims CPS has resisted the panel's probe.

• What's unsaid also is revealing to officers

Sometimes a lot is revealed to law enforcement officers by what isn't directly said. Take these two incidents from Thursday's sweep by Sacramento County probation officers, backed by several law enforcement agencies, looking for the "most problematic" probationers previously convicted of domestic violence crimes.
• Man arrested in fatal south Sacramento County shooting

Sacramento County Sheriff's deputies have arrested a suspect in the shooting death of a 27-year-old woman, whose body was found inside a vehicle in the parking lot of a southside apartment complex, a sheriff's spokesman said Friday.
• Deputy tries to help kid with improbable dream

This 9-year old boy dreams of playing pro football someday. That's what he told Sacramento County Sheriff's Deputy Jeff Massagli as he stood watch over him and his family while other officers tore apart his South Sacramento home late last month looking for drugs.
• Detectives go fishing; Sheriff McGinness not happy

It probably seemed like a good idea at the time. Nearly all of the Sacramento County Sheriff's Department homicide squad decided to celebrate a colleague's retirement on a recent weekday with a Bay Area fishing trip, arranging with Sacramento police to cover any homicides in the county. But later that day, a man was killed in a homeless encampment in the south county. Within 13 hours, another was killed in the same area.

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National News

• 1 in 4 mammals at risk of extinction

Read full story for latest details.





• Knievel FBI file details probes of '70s assaults

Read full story for latest details.





• 32 salmonella illnesses reported in 12 states

Read full story for latest details.





• Election may decide future of high court

Republican Sen. John McCain likes fellow conservative justices John Roberts and Samuel Alito. Democratic Sen. Barack Obama does not think much of Clarence Thomas.





• High court to hear cigarette advertising case

Read full story for latest details.





• Money worries create surge in homeless

Read full story for latest details.

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