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Was Casa Bonita’s food really that bad? Not according to these locals.

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:17:24 GMT

This story is one in a series featuring trips down memory lane with longtime Casa Bonita fans and former employees who shared their fondest tales with The Denver Post. The restaurant and entertainment venue in Lakewood is expected to reopen in May.The inescapable narrative about Casa Bonita is that the food was terrible. Well, every menu item except for its famous sopapillas, which appeared tableside warm and drizzled in honey whenever a customer would raise the little red table flag.This bit of local folklore has been repeated so much over the last 49 years since Casa Bonita opened that it’s practically a statutory truth. That’s why many longtime patrons were excited when the beloved eatertainment venue’s new owners, “South Park” creators Matt Stone and Trey Parker, hired James Beard-nominated chef Dana “Loca” Rodriguez to helm the kitchen.As the days tick down to the restaurant’s highly anticipated reopening in May, however, several people are blowing the whistle...

Misery loves company at Denver’s Rule Gallery

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:17:24 GMT

It is fashionable these days to put your pain on the table and dish it out to others in heaping helpings. “Soft Mirror” and “Rupture,” two exhibitions currently at Rule Gallery, serve up a feast.The shows indulge in victimhood, no matter how you come to suffer it. One artist explores what happened years ago when he was bullied in school. Another rehashes the inter-generational trauma that resulted when his grandfather survived the nuclear bombing at Hiroshima.  Another delves into the psychological damage that results from viewing too much violence in the media.It’s a lot, as they say.There’s a part of me that wants to respond coldly to the excess, partly because the notion that we are all damaged goods is delivered so casually. If everybody hurts in their own way, and at the same volume, do we really need to share? Maybe self-care is something you should do on your own. If television violence disturbs you, for example, just turn off the TV.But curator Britland Tracy gives us some c...

Inside Denver’s 5280 High, one of the country’s few recovery high schools

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:17:24 GMT

By Stephanie Daniel, KUNC via Kaiser Health NewsEvery weekday at 5280 High School in Denver starts the same way.Students in recovery from drug and alcohol addiction gather on the steps of the school’s indoor auditorium to discuss a topic chosen by staff members. One recent morning, they talked about mental health and sobriety. A teenage boy dressed in tan corduroys, a black hoodie, and sneakers went first.“I didn’t want to have, like, any emotion,” he said. “So I thought, like, the best way to, like, put it down would be to do more and more and more drugs.”A classmate said she started doing drugs for fun and then got hooked. Another student said his addiction negatively impacts his mental health. A third announced an upcoming milestone.“In, like, two days, I’ll be six months sober,” she said, as her classmates cheered.The students attend Colorado’s only recovery high school — one of 43 nationwide. These secondary schools are designed for students who are recovering from substa...

Audit criticizes CDOT’s handling of contracts that abandon low-bid approach for some major projects

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:17:24 GMT

The Colorado Department of Transportation’s increasing use of untraditional contracting approaches for large highway projects has been hampered by problems with how the deals are awarded, negotiated and managed, state auditors found in a recent report.Awarding construction work to the lowest bidder for a set design is no longer the rule of thumb for large or complex projects designated for so-called “alternative delivery” contract methods. Instead, CDOT and transportation officials in several other states have opted for setups in which construction companies bid before the full design is complete and, once selected, work with CDOT or engineering contractors to finish it.Critics contend these newer forms of contracting — used for work including the $1.3 billion Central 70 project in Denver and major widening projects on Interstate 25 south and north of metro Denver — favor larger companies, often from out of state, and risk costing taxpayers more.But CDO...

A Russian trace is likely to undermine the head of the Ukrainian Central Bank Andriy Pyshnyy's future

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:17:24 GMT

EU Reporter already published an investigation about the new head of the Ukrainian National Bank, where we quoted famous Ukrainian journalist Serhyi Lyamets. After the publication, S.Lyamets submitted to us his separate article - published below - about suspicions of some banking malpractices, which are important as we talk about the head of the central bank and the family of Ukrainian businessmen strongly associated with former Russian president Medvedev.A Russian trace is likely to undermine the head of the Ukrainian Central Bank Andriy Pyshnyy's future, writes Serhyi Lyamets."In times of Russian invasion and European sanctions, these moments hardly can be left unnoticed. There was an episode in the activities of the current head of the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU), which was once widely reported by the Ukrainian mass media. In 2020, while Andriy Pishny headed the state-owned Oschadbank, he carried out a rather suspicious financial transaction. Several years have passed, and th...

2 people critically injured in Highland fire

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:17:24 GMT

Two people were critically injured in a house fire in Highland early Monday, officials said.The incident was first reported as being medical-related around 12:45 a.m., but when San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department deputies arrived they saw smoke coming from a home in the 7700 block of Chanticleer Road.Neighbors told responding deputies that there might be people trapped inside and they were able to pull one victim out of the burning house.Firefighters from Cal Fire San Bernardino then rescued a second victim, Chief Grant Malinowski told KTLA.Both victims were taken to a hospital in critical condition. Their ages and genders have not been released.Firefighters were battling heavy smoke and fire conditions, and even though the blaze was knocked down, they remained on scene for several hours to make sure the rest of the house was cleared.The cause of the blaze is under investigation.

Iress is in Heaven with the Cocteau Twins

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:17:24 GMT

Cocteau TwinsHeaven or Las Vegas (4AD)Iress is in Heaven with the Cocteau Twins: Michelle Malley of L.A, dreamy doom-rockers Iress told us about her love for a Cocteau Twins gem.(4AD)Michelle Malley: There are so many influential albums that have been monumental in my life. My music taste definitely is diverse but ultimately, I am drawn to music that moves me, that makes me feel something. Heart-wrenching, dreamy, heavy and dark. Instead of choosing my favorite album of all time, which feels impossible, I decided to choose an album that has been extra special to me over this past year.Heaven or Las Vegas by Cocteau Twins. I have been listening to it on repeat all of 2022 and then some. It’s just so good from beginning to end. I feel like you can listen to this album alone and in your feels when it’s raining outside,  and when you’re driving to the beach with friends loving life—it just always feels right. It’s inspiring and beautiful. If you haven’t heard it yet, I encourage you to ...

Laying the foundation of UAE’s first Technical Support Company to Secure Websites & Electronic Accounts

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:17:24 GMT

Internet is part of our daily lives; it not just plays an integral role; it has completely dominated our lives. With time, the dependence on the digital space is rapidly growing and has reached an extent where we prefer paying bills, shopping, and transferring money online. It is convenient, and there is no doubt about it, but with convenience comes risks attached to it as well. The threat in the guise of cyberattacks is real. It is time that companies and organizations start prioritizing cyber safety and security more than anything else.This is where Saud Ahmed Ibrahim Ahmed Alhammadi, more professionally known as Saud Bin Ahmed, is helping companies operate without any concerns about cyber threats. Saud Ahmed Ibrahim Ahmed Alhammadi is an Emirati entrepreneur and Founder of Technical Support Company to Secure Websites and Electronic Accounts. Born in 1985, he is a public figure, digital creator, awareness film director, and animation creator and has also been an Unlimited Technolo...

The Bay Area’s economy of mud: Dredging concerns threaten jobs, $100 billion in assets

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:17:24 GMT

At the Port of Oakland on a recent weekday, trucks, cranes and container-laden ships moved goods across the sprawling 1,300-acre complex with the precarious precision of a Rube Goldberg machine.Mere blocks from downtown Oakland, the port operates essentially as a city within a city. It’s the ninth biggest port in the country and the first stop for 99% percent of containerized goods moving through Northern California.A large container ship is docked at the Port of Oakland in Oakland, Calif., on April 4, 2023. (Dai Sugano/Bay Area News Group) In the whir of logistics and machinery, it’s easy to forget that everything happening here is made possible by one unsung, unglamorous and Sisyphean task: hauling mud from San Francisco Bay.That dredging process has enormous implications for the future of shipping and transportation in the Bay Area, and may hold the key to protecting local shorelines.“The bottom line is that if we don’t dredge, none of this happens,” said port spokespe...

Two dads, one baby? Gene technique works in mice

Published Sun, 16 Feb 2025 16:17:24 GMT

For the first time in history, scientists have created mice with two dads, foretelling a day when same-sex couples may be able to have biological children of their own.The success, announced by Japanese researchers last month, has not yet been tried on people.But scientists at two Bay Area startups, as well as a company in New York City and another in Japan, are striving to move the mouse research into humans, and rewrite the rules of reproduction by making sex cells in a lab. If successful in people, the technique would allow the creation of an egg cell from blood or a tiny sliver of a man or woman’s skin.So far, the research has focused on making egg cells, which would enable male-male reproduction. Creating sperm for female-female reproduction is a tougher scientific challenge.“Even the remote possibility of same-sex couples creating a baby without a donor is extraordinary and exciting,” said Drew Lloyd, board president of the Bay Area Municipal Elections Commit...