News

Colorado Mountain College joined 165 other colleges and universities across the country in signing a letter of support for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. 

DACA applies to people who were brought in to the United States as children or babies when their parents entered illegally. The program gives them protection from deportation and the ability to work and study in the U.S. legally.

The Bureau of Land Management’s acting director says past comments he’s made doubting the existence of climate change are irrelevant. 

Reporters grilled William Perry Pendley at the annual Society of Environmental Journalists conference in Fort Collins. When asked about comments he’s made calling human-caused climate change fictional, Pendley refused to elaborate on how he formed those opinions. He instead cited a directive from his boss, Interior Secretary David Bernhardt, to look at climate impacts.

Coloradans who purchase their health insurance on the individual marketplace can expect to save even more money next year than lawmakers originally thought.

Governor Jared Polis says premiums on the marketplace will go down by an average of twenty point two percent next year thanks to a new reinsurance program. The savings will be two percent higher than what the state projected in July.

Welcome to another week in the Roaring Fork Valley! This is Week in the Arts, a curated list of upcoming exhibitions and events.

Morning Newscast: Friday, October 11, 2019

Thursday’s snowfall brought a welcome pause to two fires burning in the area. After a long stretch of dry, windy conditions, officials say the snow and low temperatures helped to slow the Middle Mamm and Granite Lake Fires.

The Shining Mountains Film Festival comes to Aspen this weekend, bringing stories from, and about, Native Americans.

The festival is put on by the Wheeler Opera House, Aspen Film and the Aspen Ute Foundation.  Deanne Vitrac-Kessler, the executive director of the Aspen Ute Foundation, says the mission is to give a voice to indigenous filmmakers and performers. 

For the 22nd year in a row, the John Denver Celebration is getting underway. Fans from all around the world converge on Aspen for a week of music, remembrance and friendship.

Five days of concerts and events kicked off with a meet and greet in the John Denver Sanctuary on Wednesday morning. A group of six women at the meet and greet have attended every annual celebration, and have found fellowship over the past two decades.

Morning Newscast: Thursday, October 10, 2019

On Tuesday, Aspen city council approved a contract with Axon Enterprises to outfit every Aspen police officer with a body camera for the next five years.  It’s the result of a push for more transparency from within the department itself.

Morning Newscast: Wednesday, October 9, 2019

Murals are perhaps the most public of public art, available to anyone who happens to be walking by.  Creating murals is pretty public, too.  L.A. artist Bunnie Reiss was in Carbondale last week to paint a forty-five-foot-tall wall on the side of Batch above the Third Street Plaza.

Since Reiss’ canvas is a towering wall, her studio is a hydraulic lift. It shuttles her up and down and side to side as she paints a forty-foot-tall deer, surrounded by purple columbines and other native Colorado flowers.   

Wednesday, Dr. Edith Eva Eger speaks at Colorado Mountain College about healing from trauma.

Dr. Eger is a survivor of the Auschwitz concentration camp and is one of a dwindling number of Holocaust survivors alive today. 

 She was a teenager in Hungary in 1944 when Nazi soldiers broke into the home she shared with her sister Magda and their parents and took them to Auschwitz in Poland.  

Her book “The Choice: Embrace the Possible,” tells her story of recovery and forgiveness.

Pitkin County 911 dispatchers will be among the few in the country, and the first in Colorado, to now be recognized as first responders. 

All Pitkin County emergency dispatchers are trained to give potentially lifesaving instructions over the phone, like CPR, childbirth and bleeding control. In the first six months of 2019, emergency dispatchers in the county have provided medical guidance to over 200 callers. 

Morning Newscast: Tuesday, October 8, 2019