A key question hovering over the Convention Center expansion is what role climate change will play.

A little bitty beetle is making a meal of San Diego's oak trees -- and could kill them all. The race for City Council District 4 is wide open. Immigration reform may really be coming. And a proposed development is stirring up Carmel Valley folks.

The ACLU says the number of students not receiving English language instruction in California schools is unacceptable.

Both the Democratic and Republican parties in San Diego have new blood in the ranks of leadership.

Sara Kruzan, who was sentenced to life in prison without parole for killing her pimp when she was 16, now has a shot at freedom.

Southern California Edison wants most of its testimony kept secret in a state investigation into what went wrong with the San Onofre nuclear plant.

A Riverside County judge met behind closed doors with prosecutors and Sara Kruzan’s attorneys over a tentative settlement.

On Tuesday night, Mayor Bob Filner promised to direct the city attorney to stop using "zoning stuff" to persecute medical marijuana collectives and to get the U.S. Attorney to "back off."

Riding a wave of new tax revenue, California's spending plan for the coming fiscal year will rise by 7 percent, a powerful indication that the state that came to symbolize fiscal mismanagement during the heart of the recession is emerging into brighter days.

The hearing is part of an inquiry by the California Public Utilities Commission.

Prosecutors and defense lawyers are scheduled to meet with a judge later this week.

KPBS takes a look at the top investigative stories of 2012 with KPBS reporters Joanne Faryon and Amita Sharma.

The city of San Diego has been conspicuously absent in the debate about the future of the troubled San Onofre nuclear plant.

There will be a new voice at the public commission that regulates power companies including San Diego Gas & Electric.

State regulators left the door open for the utility to try yet again to recoup those expenses from ratepayers.

In an about-face, a state regulator recommended late yesterday that customers pick up the tab for San Diego Gas & Electric's uninsured costs for the 2007 wildfires.

Ratepayer advocates claim San Diego Gas & Electric may be playing a numbers game as it attempts to gain regulatory approval to bill customers for uninsured costs from the 2007 wildfires, which state investigators say the company's lines started.

Consumer advocates are worried that California regulators may be quietly finding a way to allow San Diego Gas & Electric to recoup its uninsured 2007 wildfire costs from customers.

The expected vote by the five-member California Public Utilities Commission comes one month after an administrative law rejected reimbursement for the utility.

A San Diego landmark slated for a $500 million expansion may be partially underwater by 2050.

Iraq War veteran Paul Chappell lectures at USD on "Why Peace is Possible."

U-T San Diego has fallen out of the top 25 national daily newspapers, according to new numbers released by the Audit Bureau of Circulations.

Customers are hoping regulators will not require them to continue to pay for the annual $1 billion cost of running the troubled San Onofre nuclear plant.

Advocates say ratepayers shouldn't have to pay the $54 million a month it costs to keep San Onofre running. Plant owner Southern California Edison says it's looking at other sources to cover the expenses.

U-T San Diego reporters and former staffers complain that Doug Manchester's boosterism and strident editorials are dimming the paper's heft.

Hotelier and U-T San Diego owner Doug Manchester wants to buy the Tribune Company, which owns the Los Angeles Times.

The CEO of U-T San Diego Thursday denied sending a threatening email to a port commissioner running for Congress, suggesting the email had been doctored and “somebody could go to jail” for sending it.

Federal regulators say more local power generation could have prevented last September's blackout.

The Mayor's race is getting as hot as the weather. The Port of San Diego gets a long-term delivery of fresh fruit. And the City of Escondido is wrestling with a voting-rights lawsuit.

San Diego is known for great weather, beautiful beaches and its laid-back lifestyle. Two women are working to make San Diego also known for its year-round public market.

Starting today, young undocumented immigrants in San Diego County are eligible for legal status under a new federal program that allows immigrants who arrived in the United States as children to stay in the country legally for two years. We hear from a local student who is applying and an immigration attorney.

The San Diego summer suddenly got a lot hotter, but nowhere near as steamy as it is in the middle of the country. We look at what's up with the weather (the temperature), what's going on with the climate (change), and whether they are related (maybe).

An advocacy group is calling for a reduction in what San Diego Gas & Electric and Southern California Edison customers are being charged because they have continued to pay to support the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station even though it has been shuttered since January.

Fresh fruit from South America will continue to flow through San Diego's port if a new lease deal is approved on Tuesday. We'll look at the deal and what it means to San Diego.

Federal regulators warned Southern California Edison about fire safety lapses at San Onofre two years ago. Now KPBS has learned of continued employee complaints of fire risks at the nuclear plant. Edison wants to reopen San Onofre by the end of the year. If that happens, some insiders worry the violations – left unchecked –could injure workers and jeopardize safe operation of the plant.

Actor Robert Redford has teamed up with his son Jamie to film a new documentary, “Watershed,” about issues facing the Colorado River system. He talks to KPBS about the dangers he said the river faces.

While the 19th annual International AIDS Conference is underway in Washington D.C. this week, local researchers are making progress in their HIV research as well.

Environmentalists say the NRC's report is not an exoneration of Edison or regulators. Also, NRC inspectors again blamed flawed computer modeling and manufacturing issues for the generators’ problems.

Southern California Edison today released data on its newly installed steam generator tubes. It showed most of the tubes that were repaired were below the wall-thinning limit.

San Onofre has repaired four times as many tubes as the combined total of repaired tubes at all other U.S. nuclear power plants.

If regulators agree with SDG&E, customers would pick up the tab for $235 million in pipeline upgrades.

The Riverside Court has refused a new trial for Kruzan once before.

California whistle-blower protections don't apply to San Onofre employees because the plant sits on federal property.

City could lose tens of millions of dollars in state funding if project-labor agreements are banned, analysis shows.

San Diegans await a decision by state regulators on whether power customers, instead of SDG&E shareholders, will have to pay for wildfires costs.

The consumer advocacy group UCAN announced this week it will have a new executive director: Kim Malcolm, a former chief of staff and administrative law judge at the California Public Utilities Commission.

One in five teachers likely to be laid off by San Diego Unified unless concessions -- or a miracle -- happen. The Citizens Review Board of Police Practices charged with questionable practices of its own. Michael Crowe found "factually innocent"of murder -- and he's not alone.

The four candidates for San Diego City Council District 1 are making that election one of the most competitive this year.

The race for the San Diego City Council District 7 seat will put a brand new face on the council. We'll meet some of the candidates.

Denise Ducheny wants to represent the 51st District, southern San Diego County and all of Imperial County, in Congress. Her priorities include border wait times, immigration reform and veterans' issues and getting her opponent, State Senator Juan Vargas, to debate her.