News Pix: Drought Update, Oakland Skaters Go Rogue and Victims' Rights Week

Bill Niman is fighting to save his company, BN Ranch, which stands to lose nearly $400,000 from a massive beef recall at a Petaluma slaughterhouse. Niman and others have said his meat is safe. The troubled slaughterhouse began operations this week under the aegis of Marin Sun Farms, a San Francisco-based boutique meat producer. (Mina Kim/KQED)

Lake Oroville is the main reservoir for the State Water Project and the second-largest California reservoir after Lake Shasta. Watch how the water levels rose and fell over the last year to get a sense of California's drought over time. (Dan Brekke/KQED)

If you bike around Alamo Square, stroll through Chinatown, hit tennis balls in Hayes Valley or enjoy a car-less commute, you already know what a new report by Smart Growth America confirms: The Bay Area’s density correlates with better health indicators, more economic mobility and fewer transportation costs. (Jeremy Raff/KQED)

A group of skaters built a skate park where Ninth Street dead-ends into the I-880 freeway in West Oakland. The area used to be blighted by trash dumping and other dangerous activity. The skaters built the park without the permission of the city and without documentation, such as a formal lease or insurance. Now Oakland says skateboarders must stop using the skate park immediately if the park is to have any chance of gaining legal status in the future. (Andrew Stelzer/KQED)

Victims and families from across the state celebrated National Crime Victims' Rights Week with a march in Sacramento on Tuesday, April 8. Gov. Jerry Brown also attended the event, giving a speech in which he avoided "tough on crime" rhetoric. New research out of UC Berkeley's Warren Institute suggests that current public safety policy is failing to help California's most frequent crime victims - low-income African-American and Latino youths. Many victims in those demographic groups are repeatedly targeted, but do not access recovery services. (Kathryn Hunts/KQED)