By DENNY WALSH, Sacramento Bee

In what is being called the most costly single disaster in the history of the American wine industry, Mark C. Anderson admitted he burned up hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of fine wine.

Sitting across the table from Adorian Deck, it is difficult to imagine him as a groundbreaking legal warrior.

Cherub is more like it. He chooses his words carefully, speaks quietly and has an unassuming manner punctuated with a slight, almost-shy smile.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - California Corrections Secretary Matthew Cate announced this week that the state has a plan to reduce the prison population that will satisfy a judicial panel of judges.

A former senior executive of a major California food company was charged this week in federal court with conspiring to provide consumers with mislabeled, inferior tomato products at inflated prices.

Jeffrey Sherman Beasley, who was a vice president of SK Foods LP, is the highest-ranking insider to be charged in the expanding tale of corruption in California's tomato industry.

A guilty plea in Sacramento federal court by a former employee of one of the nation's largest growers and processors of tomato products has pushed a nationwide investigation beyond bribery and price-fixing into the realm of consumer confidence in food labeling.

Thousands of California residents can sue AOL in their home state for invasion of privacy despite agreements they signed requiring all legal disputes to go before "courts of Virginia" and be guided by Virginia law.
A federal appellate court on Friday cleared a path for a class-action lawsuit to proceed against AOL.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. -- An atheist sued top California corrections officials Monday, claiming that his constitutional rights were violated when he was returned to prison after objecting to participation in a program with religious overtones as a condition of parole.

Things were really humming near Sacramento, Calif., when a big rig bound for Yakima, Wash., overturned on Highway 99, and set 8 million bees free.The truck, loaded with 440 colonies -- or hives - flipped over onto its side Sunday on an onramp, scattering the valuable insects.