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Texas ranks among states most impacted by natural disasters, study says

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 18:11:54 GMT

AUSTIN (KXAN) — Texas continues to rank among the states most impacted by natural disasters, a new study showed.The state ranks third most-impacted by natural disasters over the past four decades, according to the study by WalletHub. Only Mississippi and Louisiana rank higher, while Florida and Iowa round out the top five.The website ranked all 50 states by looking at the number of natural disasters since 1980 that have caused at least $1 billion in damages, as well as the damage cost per capita.Texas received a score of 87.88 out of 100, up almost four points from last year's study. No other state saw a higher number of billion-dollar disasters. Meanwhile, Texas ranked ninth for per capita damage cost.Maine again ranked as the state least impacted by natural disasters, with a score of 11.85 out of 100. Alaska, New Hampshire, Utah and Nevada all received scores of less than 15.Since 1980, the National Centers for Environmental Information have reported 380 natural disasters that cau...

Asteroid passing Earth: Why NASA's OSIRIS-REx is now heading towards a once dangerous space rock

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 18:11:54 GMT

AUSTIN (KXAN) - NASA brought rock samples back from space for the first time since the Apollo Mission over the weekend. The OSIRIS-REx mission launched in 2016 towards Bennu, a more than four billion year old asteroid orbiting our sun."It took us about two years to actually catch up to it in the right place and be able to get into orbit," said NASA Senior Scientist Amy Simon.Once in orbit, OSIRIS-REx scanned the surface of the asteroid before eventually touching down and collecting a sample in 2020. It then spent three years bringing the sample back to Earth."Now that the sample has come back, the spacecraft is still healthy, it will actually be diverting on to a new mission, it will be going to near Earth asteroid Apophis."Apophis was once considered a risk to Earth. Discovered in 2004, scientists believed it would hit the Earth in 2029.Will an asteroid hit Earth in 2029?Luckily, a decade later with more precise measurements, Scientists were able to determine it wouldn't hit Earth,...

Retired Saratoga County Sheriff's Office K9 dies

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 18:11:54 GMT

SARATOGA COUNTY, N.Y. (NEWS10) -- According to the Saratoga County Sheriff's Office, Brodie, a retired K9 with the office, died Friday evening. Brodie was 12 years old. Get the latest news, weather, sports and entertainment delivered right to your inbox! Deputies say Brodie started his career 10 years ago in 2013 after being selected for the Sheriff's K9 school and was trained for patrol and narcotics detection. Brodie retired in 2017 due to medical reasons.His handlers were Sergeant Joe Shields and Deputy Dave Zecca. Brodie lived with Zecca and his family after retirement.

Hit-and-run kills Littleton pedestrian, police search for SUV driver

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 18:11:54 GMT

Officers are searching for a white Jeep Grand Cherokee that allegedly hit and killed a Littleton pedestrian Sunday, and the Colorado Bureau of Investigation is asking for the public’s help in finding it.Littleton officers responded to the pedestrian-motorist crash just after 3:20 a.m. Sunday on Bowles Avenue, near the intersection of Santa Fe Drive.The driver of a white SUV was traveling eastbound on Bowles Avenue when they hit a Hispanic man in his 40s or 50s, according to a Sunday news release from the Littleton Police Department. The unidentified man died from his injuries.The Jeep left the scene westbound, the news release stated.Littleton police and the Colorado Bureau of Investigation believe the white SUV is a Jeep Grand Cherokee model from between 2016 and 2021, according to a CBI medina alert.There is damage to the front of the vehicle on the driver’s side, the alert stated.UPDATED MEDINA ALERT: On 9/24/23 at about 3:38 AM, a 2016 to white 2021 Jeep Grand Cherok...

Aurora’s Mango House is a food hall delight | Opinion

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 18:11:54 GMT

Editor’s note: This is part of The Know’s series, Staff Favorites. Each week, we offer our opinions on the best that Colorado has to offer for dining, shopping, entertainment, outdoor activities and more. (We’ll also let you in on some hidden gems).Denver’s food scene has endured extreme highs and lows in recent weeks, from bittersweet closures to the state’s first Michelin-starred eateries.But in Aurora, eating out is often more about the affordable, modest comforts of home than impressing out-of-state judges or holding down high-profile real estate in hip neighborhoods.A sterling example — and one that blows away most food halls for diversity and authenticity (yes, I know the latter can be a problematic term) — is the nonprofit Mango House. Founded 12 years ago by Dr. P.J. Parmar, the hulking pair of buildings at 10180 E. Colfax Ave. hold refugee-focused healthcare, shops, religious and social services, and events.Related ArticlesRestaurants, Food and...

Small talk gives way to horror in “The Minutes” at Curious Theatre

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 18:11:54 GMT

On the civic-minded set of “The Minutes,” things get very strange, even funny, before going downright dark. Tracy Letts’s Pulitzer Prize-nominated drama about a city council meeting gone awry launches the new season at the Curious Theatre Company with artistic aplomb and to roiling effect.Letts, the author of the family meltdown drama “August: Osage County,” brings his knack for the implosive to what should be a routine Big Cherry city council meeting — if only Mr. Peel (played with hapless decency by Josh Robinson) would stop asking about the absence of Mr. Carp (Erik Sandvold).New to the council, Peel has just returned from burying his mother. It’s only natural for him to wonder, what did I miss? When he last saw Carp, the latter was talking about a cache of stolen bicycles that the brother of another council member had come into lucrative possession of.Carp’s chair and nameplate sit at the end of a long table, but he’s nowhere in sight. Why? Might a reading of the min...

Losing eyesight sharpens vision for artist Chloé Duplessis

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 18:11:54 GMT

Editor’s note: An untold number of unheralded artists live in Colorado, those creators who can’t (or don’t want to) get into galleries and rely on word of mouth, luck or social media to make a living. You’ve likely seen them on Instagram, at festivals or at small-town art fairs. This monthly series, Through the Lens, will introduce you to some of these artists.In 2018, a Stargardt disease diagnosis for the Louisiana-born, Denver-based artist Chloé Duplessis was a wake-up call. At 39 the digital artist, muralist, photographer and oral historian was faced with losing her sight.“As an artist, I thought, how can I go on when the very thing I do is visual?”Stargardt Disease is a rare form of inherited macular degeneration that causes retinal degeneration, central vision loss and most often ends with almost complete blindness.Now 44, she has lost 40% of her vision and is legally blind. “I am actively losing my vision in real time,” she explains. Duplessis doesn’t know when she is going to...

DPS board president calls out members’ “exorbitant” travel expenses amid uncertainty about spending limits

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 18:11:54 GMT

Members of Denver’s school board spent more than $40,000 traveling to conferences this past year, more than double the amount spent in other metro districts — and a figure that has spurred directors to call for changes in how the board handles expenses as the district faces financial constraints brought on by declining enrollment.Denver Public Schools board members, including President Xóchitl “Sochi” Gaytán, said the elected body needs to create a new policy governing directors’ expenses, including potentially setting a per-person cap to curb overspending.“I’m absolutely concerned about this level of spending,” Gaytán said of how much some board members have spent on travel. “I believe it’s an exorbitant amount.”Previous DPS boards operated with a $5,000 limit on expenses per person, but that cap wasn’t in writing. In interviews with The Denver Post, directors said the district lacks a clear policy on personal spending by its elected leaders — and they even disagreed on...

10,000 Coloradans mistakenly lost their Medicaid health coverage in 2023

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 18:11:54 GMT

More than 10,000 Colorado residents were mistakenly cut off from Medicaid after the state marked them as ineligible.This spring, states started going through their Medicaid rolls to determine who was no longer eligible for the first time in about three years. During the emergency phase of the pandemic, states that kept everyone covered received additional federal money. There was an exception for people who left the state or died.Colorado, like most states, has a program to automatically reenroll households if other data sources, such as applications for food assistance, show their incomes are low enough to qualify for Medicaid. In August, however, the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services asked states to determine if eligible people were falling through the cracks.Children and pregnant women can qualify at a higher income than non-pregnant adults. What that means is that even if a household as a whole made too much to qualify for Medicaid, certain members could still b...

What’s the purpose? Slow art can be taxing in a fast-paced world.

Published Sat, 22 Feb 2025 18:11:54 GMT

It might be funny to call Trey Duvall’s new art installation at Rule Gallery “exciting.” After all, the piece is a bit tedious to watch.Here is the visual: a broom sweeps across a mound of sand.That’s it. The broom, ordinary and plastic, moves back and forth very slowly. It pushes the sand this way, just a little, and then that way, just the same.Trey Duvall’s pile of sand at the beginning of the show on Aug 18. (Provided by Rule Gallery)Perhaps this review should end right here because there is not much more to say about the visuality of this particular piece of visual art. I could go on, as I sometimes do, over-describing the scene, talking about how the sand is the color of brown sugar, or how the broom is a pure white with honey-shaded bristles.Or I could get into the mechanics, which, like most of Duvall’s pieces, are decidedly low-tech. The broom handle is attached to a string, which is connected to a pulley on the ceiling, which is operated by a motor, which drags the broom t...