Comment on Arctic snowy owls soar south in rare mass move

The National Hurricane Center is tracking three developing systems with growing chances to form into the season’s next tropical depression or storm while also following Hurricane Isaac and Tropical Storm Joyce in the Atlantic. The most likely to threaten the U. S. is a system the NHC expects to form in the Caribbean that could head into the Gulf of Mexico. As of the NHC’s 8 a.m.

The November election is approaching quickly — so quickly that Colorado’s ballots will begin arriving in mailboxes just two weeks from now. The Denver Post’ staff is now at work on our fall election coverage. Our aim, as always, is to inform readers about the candidates, the ballot measures they’ll decide and the major issues that are playing into races. But to focus our coverage this year, we’ve relied on your input more than ever. The Denver Post is among dozens of newsrooms statewide that joined together in the spring to launch the Voter Voices project through the Colorado News Collaborative.

Westminster is making it clear the city doesn’t want to increase access to hikers and cyclists visiting the Rocky Flats National Wildlife Refuge — the one-time site of a Cold War nuclear weapons plant that continues to spark health worries 30 years after it closed. The city last week became the second community surrounding the 6,200-acre federal property to withdraw from an intergovernmental agreement supporting construction of a tunnel and bridge into the refuge, home to more than 200 wildlife species, including prairie falcons, deer, elk, coyotes and songbirds. Broomfield exited the $4.7 million Federal Lands Access Program agreement four years ago, and both cities point to potential threats to public health from residual contamination at the site — most notably the plutonium that was used in nuclear warhead production over four decades — for their withdrawal. “I think we have a moral obligation to get out of this,” Westminster Councilman Obi Ezeadi said during a meeting Monday night. Westminster’s withdrawal comes less than a month after a federal judge denied several environmental organizations a preliminary injunction that would have stopped the project cold.

The nomination process for The Denver Post’s Top Workplaces program has begun. It’s the 14th year The Post is honoring the workplaces with the top cultures in the state. Any organization with 50 or more employees in the state is eligible to earn Top Workplaces recognition. The nomination deadline is Nov. 1. Anyone can nominate any organization, whether it is public, private, non-profit, a school, or even a government agency. Companies will be honored in spring 2025.

Denver Health spent much of the last year laying the groundwork for a proposed sales tax increase that its leaders see as crucial for shoring up the system’s long-strained budget. But just as the Denver City Council was considering sending that tax to the ballot in June, news emerged that Mayor Mike Johnston was teeing up an even bigger ask for voters: a new dedicated sales tax — the largest in city history — to pay for his affordable housing initiatives. Now both are on Denver’s November ballot, and if both pass they would add a combined 0.84 percentage points to the city’s effective 8.81% sales tax rate — pushing it to 9.65%, among the higher rates in the state.

Armed with a roll of stickers and GoPro cameras, Mark Thompson and his crew patrolled the Sports Castle Lofts construction site at Broadway and 10th Street near downtown Denver. The team calls itself the “Payroll Fraud Task Force,” aimed at rooting out wage theft and employee misclassification at job sites across Colorado. On a recent September morning, the team talked up workers on their lunch break, asking if they’re being paid correctly and on time.