Comment on Web gets April Fools' makeover of goofy hoaxes

The day before Thanksgiving, Michael Diaz-Rivera was delivering goods to customers in the snow and cold, more focused on “Green Wednesday” than Black Friday. Diaz-Rivera, who contracts with Denver cannabis stores, figured he and his drivers could end up making about 25 deliveries if people chose to stay inside for the day.

UTE MOUNTAIN UTE RESERVATION, Colorado — The wind whipped dust around Latoya Laner’s face, her hand-beaded earrings swaying as she greeted a semi-truck driver on a sunny autumn afternoon. Late November meant harvest season on the reservation, and the driver offloaded yellow corn kernels, gathered from the nearby fields, into the grain silos before pulling his big rig away. “That is ours,” said Laner, a Ute Mountain Ute tribal descendant whose father is a member of the tribe.

New rules on real estate commissions, including limiting the disclosure of how much sellers were willing to pay buyer agents, were expected to send shockwaves throughout the homebuying process when they rolled out on Aug. 17. Although some national surveys show residential real estate commissions may be dropping, agents in metro Denver describe few changes, with sellers still covering the full tab for the other side most of the time. “It feels like business as usual.

For Damon Carson, the inspiration to start his six industrial thrift stores came from a conversation in 2010. An airbrush artist suggested that old vinyl from billboard advertising “like you see on the sides of the interstates, Budweiser, Chevrolet, Coca-Cola,” would make good drop cloths for painting “in a second life.” “And it was that phrase, that comment, that launched the company,” Carson said. The next day, he made a few phone calls to outdoor advertising companies in Denver until he found someone who sold 20 retired billboard vinyls to him. “I threw them up on Craigslist, and they started to sell.

German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said ships are damaging undersea cables in the Baltic Sea nearly every month. Florian Gaertner/Photothek/Getty ImagesGermany's foreign minister urged new European Union sanctions on Russia's dark fleet. As part of a probe into a cut cable, Finland said last week it detained a ship that may be from the dark fleet.