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How did Broncos take on $100 million in Empower Field work over a single offseason? “It’s been quite a heavy lift”

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 12:00:08 GMT

You’d typically think the busiest time of year at a football stadium is football season.Not so for Empower Field at Mile High over the past several months.For all the commotion between a Nathaniel Hackett-led September win against Houston and a Jerry Rosburg-led early January win against the Los Angeles Chargers, that was all just a warmup for the frenetic offseason.When the Walton-Penner Family Ownership Group took over the franchise in August, one of the primary questions surrounding its purchase was the future of Empower Field.The owners are still determining whether they want to build a new stadium to serve as the franchise’s home, one thing they knew for certain was that they wanted to update the current one. In late 2022, the club decided on $100-plus million in upgrades to serve as Empower Field’s second act after a 22-year opening run.The challenge: Get it done in eight months.“My challenge to them was that we haven’t touched the stadium in any meaningful way sin...

Moscow’s deportation of 20,000 Ukrainian children to Russia, Less than 400 have found a way back home

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 12:00:08 GMT

On the eve of the 54th Session of the UN Human Rights Council, the Brussels-based NGO Human Rights Without Frontiers filed a report taking stock of the deportation of Ukrainian children by Russia from the territories occupied since the beginning of the war.According to the Adviser-Commissioner of the President of Ukraine for Children’s Rights and Children’s Rehabilitation Daria Gerasymchuk, the Ukrainian authorities have collected personal data of about 20,000 cases although there might be ten times more according to incontrollable figures circulating both in Russia and in Ukraine.The report “Ukrainian Children in Search of a Way Home from Russia” reveals that only 386 children have found a way back home. They could not be returned through negotiations with the Russian side but every time it could only be achieved through a specific rescue operation.On 17 March 2023, the Pre-Trial Chamber of the International Criminal Court in The Hague issued arrest warrants for Russian President V...

High school football: AJ Cenizal runs wild for Mitty in win over Aptos

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 12:00:08 GMT

LOS ALTOS HILLS — The Archbishop Mitty offensive line split the Aptos defense Friday night just enough to give running back AJ Cenizal room to squeeze through. Cenizal shook off a tackle or two before seeing only grass separating him from the end zone. That’s when he turned on the jets.“I felt like I’m flying,” Cenizal recalled of his 83-yard rushing touchdown. “I look back and [an Aptos player was] closing in. It felt a little like a horror movie.”But in this film, Cenizal almost always found a way to escape and break through tackles for double-digit gains in Mitty’s 41-28 win against a tough Aptos squad to improve to 2-0 on the season.Cenizal might be only 5-foot-7 and weigh 185 pounds, but the senior running back plowed through the Mariners time and time again Friday at Foothill College, Mitty’s usual home site. During the Monarchs’ second scoring drive, Cenizal recorded back-to-back 19-yard gains. It took four Aptos pla...

Opinion: Sites Reservoir is not the water solution California needs

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 12:00:08 GMT

California is at yet another critical point in its struggle toward a sustainable water future, and yet we’re still talking about the wrong solutions.Sites Reservoir is the latest in a long line of proposed dams promising to end our cycle of water insecurity. However, Sites won’t add much to California’s water portfolio, and its harm to the Sacramento River, Delta ecosystem and communities that rely on them could be irreversible and ongoing.Many lamented during this unusually wet year that water was “wasted to sea,” and that more dams could have captured enough water to solve California’s ongoing water uncertainty. But water that flows to sea is essential for many uses, including salinity control for farming, wastewater treatment and aiding endangered species.If the Delta ceased to deposit water into the San Francisco Bay, ocean water would further flow into the Delta, making the Delta’s water unusable for farming and toxic for the wildlife that depends upon it.If constructed, Sites ...

POINT: Don’t let politicians take credit for economic recovery

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 12:00:08 GMT

Workers have much to celebrate this Labor Day. Unemployment is near its lowest level since the 1960s, and real wages are growing again. Post-pandemic inflation is finally under control, even if it’s not yet all the way back to normal.Barring another crisis, there will be a soft landing from the pandemic downturn.This is fantastic news, and President Joe Biden has quickly taken credit for it under his Bidenomics umbrella. He, along with Republicans, deserves more blame than credit, however. Neither Biden nor Congress have much control over inflation, and their massive bipartisan spending binge is doing more harm than good for working families.It helps to think of today’s primarily healthy economy as the third act of a three-act story. In the opening act, a mostly healthy economy was humming along, much like it is now.In the second act, the pandemic shut everything down.We are now in the third act, when things are getting back to normal.The economy is mostly healthy now because the pr...

COUNTERPOINT: Labor faces a partisan divide on most important issues

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 12:00:08 GMT

“In the wealthiest country in the history of the world, tens of millions struggle to put food on the table, find affordable housing, affordable health care, affordable prescription drugs, affordable child care and affordable educational opportunities.”That was Bernie Sanders, in New Hampshire last week, summing up some of the injustices at the source of many Americans’ discontent.It’s Labor Day 2023. The election cycle will be moving into high gear, and 2024 could determine how much we can fix these problems or whether we move backward toward increasing inequality of income, wealth and access to education.Let’s start with some good news: Over the past year, inflation has fallen from 9.1% to just 3.2%. Many economists, including Nobel Prize winners and others prominent in the profession, would say that the job is about done. The Fed’s goal is still 2% and will likely get there. But it doesn’t really have an argument that 3% is a problem.In any case, the economists and others who said...

El director de ‘Friends’ cuenta que casi cambian a un personaje clave

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 12:00:08 GMT

(CNN) — El director de “Friends”, James Burrows, escribe en sus nuevas memorias que los productores casi reformulan a Emily, la esposa de Ross, interpretada por Helen Baxendale.En sus nuevas memorias, “Dirigidas por James Burrows”, escribe que la química de Baxendale con Schwimmer no siempre generó grandes risas.“Schwimmer no tenía a nadie con quien defenderse”, escribió. “Era como aplaudir con una mano”.Continuó: “En las comedias de situación y cualquier tipo de comedia romántica, lo divertido es tan importante como la química. Descubrimos que cualquier nueva novia de Ross tenía que ser tan divertida como Rachel”.Matthew Perry como Chandler Bing, Jennifer Aniston como Rachel Green, David Schwimmer como Ross Geller, Helen Baxendale como Emily Waltham, Courteney Cox como Monica Geller, Matt LeBlanc como Joey Tribbiani. (Oliver Upton/NBCU Photo Bank/Getty Images)Rachel fue interpretada por Jennifer Aniston.Reestructurar a Emily se volvió difícil debido a ...

Spalletti carries ‘giant’ Italian flag his mom made for him to national team job

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 12:00:08 GMT

ROME (AP) — When Luciano Spalletti was 11, he asked his mom to sew a “giant” Italian flag together to celebrate the Azzurri’s 4-3 win over West Germany in the 1970 World Cup semifinals — a match that has since been labeled the “Game of the Century.”“Now I’m going to carry that flag with me onto the the national team’s bench,” Spalletti said Saturday at his presentation as the new Azzurri coach. “I want to create that dream for thousands of kids.“It’s really an indescribable emotion,” Spalletti added.The 64-year-old Spalletti, who led Napoli to the Serie A title last season, was hired when Roberto Mancini unexpectedly resigned last month. Mancini then took over Saudi Arabia’s national team.Spalletti, whose attacking tactics at Napoli garnered plaudits from all over Europe, left the southern club after the title and said he wanted to take a year-long sabbatical. But when the Italian soccer federation called to offer him the national team job, he didn’t hesitate.It’s a good fit f...

Howard Co. public schools superintendent announces mobile app as bus routes remain suspended

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 12:00:08 GMT

The superintendent of Howard County Public Schools in Maryland announced Friday that while suspended bus routes have yet to be reinstated in what he recently called a “transportation crisis,” an upcoming mobile app will help keep families informed about bus statuses in the future.Superintendent Michael Martirano said in a Friday email to students and their families that the county is going through “final testing and quality control assurances” for a mobile application from Zum Transportation, one of its independent contractors that said it did not have the drivers needed to service 20 routes on the first day of classes.The app will “allow families who ride Zum buses to track their child’s bus in real-time,” Martirano wrote in the email.“This will provide much-needed information for parents and families at your fingertips so you can plan accordingly,” the email said. “We expect to launch the application mid-week next week. Until t...

2 dead, 3 injured in multivehicle Hagerstown crash involving 4 tractor-trailers

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 12:00:08 GMT

Two people are dead and three others injured after a Friday morning crash on southbound Interstate 81 in Washington County, Maryland, involving four tractor-trailers and two passenger vehicles, Maryland State Police said.A preliminary investigation revealed that a Chevrolet Tahoe struck the back of a tractor-trailer that had started to brake due to traffic, causing a chain-reaction crash between three more tractor-trailers and a pickup truck just before 9:40 a.m.Wesley Merrick, 55, and Alicia Eve Cornell, 46, both of Wellsville, New York, driver and passenger of the Chevrolet Tahoe involved in the crash, were pronounced dead on the scene.Two additional passengers in the Tahoe, Wesley’s wife Carrie Merrick, 49, and Kevin Dye, 59, were injured in the crash and transported to separate medical facilities.A third person and driver of one of the tractor-trailers involved in the crash, Darrin Wayne Shank, Jr., 55, of Williamsport, Maryland, was hospitalized with injuries.Southbound I...