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Crisp and clear weekend, but stormy Monday looms in the forecast

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 11:00:00 GMT

ST. LOUIS -- A quiet weekend has begun. Cold mornings and cool afternoons both Saturday and Sunday. Highs in the 50s both days. Sunshine Saturday, but increasing clouds Sunday.  Our next storm system arrives late Sunday into Monday. Scattered light rain showers will build in overnight and continue through Monday. Highs are only in the low 50s. Waves of showers continue Monday night and Tuesday. Gusty winds Tuesday will usher in even cooler temps for the middle of the week.  Wednesday and Thanksgiving Thursday look sunny and quiet, but colder. Highs are only in the low 40s.  

Colorado’s labor market softened in October, but don’t be scared

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 11:00:00 GMT

Colorado’s unemployment rate continued to tick up, and private-sector hiring turned negative again last month, according to an update from the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment on Friday.Employers in the state added 1,500 net new jobs last month, but governments did the heavy lifting, adding 1,700 jobs. One of the biggest surprises in the report came in downward revisions to September job counts, which turned an initial gain of 1,500 jobs into a decline of 100.“The weak data for October was not a surprise; however, it was disturbing that the September data, originally up 1,500 workers, was revised downward by 1,600,” said Broomfield economist Gary Horvath in an email.Private-sector employers shed a net 200 jobs last month, with the biggest losses coming in construction, down 1,400 jobs, and trade, transportation and utilities, down 900 jobs. Private sector gains were strongest in leisure and hospitality, where employment rose by 1,500 jobs.For the past ye...

Grading The Week: Welcome to Denver, Cal Quantrill! You’ll love life with the Rockies. Except for the pitching parts

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 11:00:00 GMT

What the chucklenuts up in the Grading The Week office love about Bill Schmidt’s Rockies moves is the club’s ability — or is it the hope? — to see the good in anything. Take Cal Quantrill, who must’ve seriously ticked off somebody in the Cleveland front office to wind up getting shipped to Colorado on Friday for an A-ball catcher.As a lottery ticket, was it worth a flyer for the pitching-starved Purple? Sure. Schmidt and the Rockies can sell this as giving up almost nada for a smart (ex-Stanford), courteous (he’s Canadian) veteran (he’ll be 29 next February) starter to fill out a rotation that got completely nuked by injuries last summer.“Quan” went 23-8 and averaged 168 innings for the Guardians in ’21 and ’22 before hitting the skids (4-7, 5.24 ERA) this past season. On a macro level, it fits.Rox brain trust see a crafty righty who’ll take the ball every five days and allow the dudes in the bullpen to play Immaculate Grid...

Should Nuggets’ Michael Malone shorten bench, approach must-win in-season tournament games like playoffs?

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 11:00:00 GMT

NEW ORLEANS — One of the Nuggets’ coaches brought a hypothetical question of strategy to Michael Malone on Friday, before Denver’s third group stage game of the NBA in-season tournament.If the Nuggets make it to the eight-team knockout stage, when every game is an elimination game, should they shorten their bench and treat it like an actual playoff game?Will other teams treat it that way? Or will those games be coached as normally as possible for an early December matchup?“I’m worried about today. When we get to Vegas, I’ll worry about that then,” Malone said a few hours later when presented with the same question during his pregame news conference in New Orleans.“But I had not given that much thought. Obviously if we’re one of those (semifinal) teams that gets to Las Vegas, you can start thinking about, one: What’s at stake? From prize money for the players and how impactful that can be for some of these guys and their liv...

Broncos sense Sean Payton Way is starting to take hold. “You’re like, Holy (crap), it’s working”

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 11:00:00 GMT

Adam Trautman has seen this movie before.The Broncos tight end started his career in New Orleans playing for Sean Payton. His rookie year in 2020, they went 12-4 and secured the NFC’s No. 2 seed.Payton is an intense coach by nature. Start winning, his reputation goes, and there’s no sense of a lighten up. He only gets more demanding. Like several of his core coaching principles, this one comes from the years he spent with Bill Parcells.“The hardest time working with Bill was when you were three or four wins in a row,” Payton said earlier this season. “I mean, you couldn’t wait for the game. You’d have a couple tough losses, and then he’d be a little bit more pick-me-up.”Payton’s wired himself in a similar way. He’s pulled big stunts in the past, “creating a crisis,” as he calls it, or putting mousetraps in the Saints’ locker room to implore his team not to “eat the cheese.”The methods can be slightly more subtle, too.“It’s little things like, ‘Hey, I don’t care that we’re winn...

Keeler: Deion Sanders, CU Buffs, please shut QB Shedeur Sanders down. Before Utah Utes finish what Wazzu started.

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 11:00:00 GMT

Utah is CU’s bowl game now. And there’s no reason for Shedeur Sanders to play in it.Hold on. Hold on. We don’t quit.There’s a time and a place for macho, Coach Prime.And Salt Lake City next Saturday ain’t it.We’ve seen enough.More than enough. Washington State came into Punishment On The Palouse with the Pac-12’s third-worst pass rush. The Cougars had racked up just 17 sacks over their previous 10 games.They’d piled up four in the game’s first 12 minutes, setting the tone for a 56-14 blowout with an iron fist. They’d knocked out the younger Sanders, CU’s QB1, five minutes into the second quarter.Wazzu’s defensive line? Nice bunch.The Utes’ defensive front? Straight nasty.Utah heads into the weekend averaging almost twice as many sacks per game (three) as the Cougs did before they ran over, around, and through the CU pocket in a 56-14 beatdown. Utes defensive end Jonah Elliss, son of former NFL great Luther...

Opinion: Reclaim our children’s birthright — skiing at Colorado’s mountain resorts

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 11:00:00 GMT

Over the entirety of my career as a teacher, primarily in Colorado, the most fun I had by far was teaching kids how to ski. Whether the youngster was a temporary resident of a homeless shelter, a recent immigrant from tropical Honduras, or a special education student whose classroom learning curve was jagged, the response was nearly universally positive and, critically, the timeline for success was usually immediate.My vehicle to do this was a small youth-oriented program of the Sierra Club called Inner City Outings (ICO), which assumed the lion’s share of the liability risk and helped shoulder the costs of transportation.The lure of the mountains was so strong that even kids who, for whatever reason, had no interest in learning to ski would ask to participate in the experience anyway, to hang out and imbibe the atmosphere. Necessarily, we cut expenses by providing instruction ourselves and never turned down the services of the occasional youngster who had skied before and was...

Mathews: How Schwarzenegger recall victory 20 years ago affects today

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 11:00:00 GMT

Friday marked the 20th anniversary of Arnold Schwarzenegger becoming governor of California, after the recall of former Gov. Gray Davis.For much of the last two decades, the recall has been remembered mostly as a bizarre media circus, with 135 candidates, a hurried 60-day campaign, and a debate featuring Schwarzenegger and Arianna Huffington trading insults.This is a shame, because that strange, cataclysmic event shifted California’s political priorities and offers important lessons that might provide some much-needed hope about our power to change the future.In retrospect, the Davis recall looks like the first of three election earthquakes in the 21st century that shook up American politics. The other two are the elections of Barack Obama in 2008 and Donald Trump in 2016.For Americans, the recall election, with all its bombast, would preview how politics would grow louder, more populist, more direct. And for Californians, the recall was something more: the beginning of a new era in...

Bernstein: The Biden campaign should pivot to marijuana legalization

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 11:00:00 GMT

As President Joe Biden looks to boost his reelection campaign and lousy poll numbers, there’s one policy position that is popular with voters, could help unite Democrats and would leave Republicans scrambling to respond. It’s time he comes out in support of legalizing recreational use of marijuana.There’s even a ready-made playbook for rolling out the new position. In 2012, then-Vice President Biden provided the initial public push that helped President Barack Obama off the fence on the issue of marriage equality — whose views changed and evolved over two decades, like much of America.Now, it’s Biden stuck straddling the middle when his party and public opinion have already decided the issue. According to the latest Gallup poll earlier this month 70% of Americans think the use of marijuana should be legal. At the same time, 24 states have moved forward on their own and legalized recreational use, the latest being Ohio, where voters approved a ballot measure last week. Accordin...

First planeload of wounded Palestinian children from Israel-Hamas arrives in United Arab Emirates

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 11:00:00 GMT

ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — The first planeload of Palestinian children wounded in the Israel-Hamas war raging in the Gaza Strip reached the United Arab Emirates on Saturday, part of a pledged relief effort by the country to aid 1,000 children. The group of 15 people, including children and their family members, made it across the Gaza Strip’s Rafah border crossing with Egypt on Friday. They then took a flight to Abu Dhabi, the capital of the Emirates.Young children lay asleep on their moms’ laps as the plane finally landed at Abu Dhabi International Airport. Some of the seats of the plane were removed to make room for the most critically wounded children, who needed to lie on stretchers. Some of the young had bandaged arms and legs. Others sat quietly next to their parents or relatives. Some traveled alone. The mood was somber and quiet inside the plane. Many of the mothers said they were exhausted.Twelve-year-old Amr Jandieh, his eyes welling up with tears, ...