• A Harvard scholar who wrote seminal academic studies on honesty has been accused of fabricating his findings.
• A janitor destroyed 25 years worth of scientific research when he turned off a super-cold freezer that held cell cultures and other samples. He said the freezer’s constant beeping annoyed him.
• A ground worker at San Antonio International Airport died after he was “ingested” into a Delta plane’s engine.
• Casa Bonita has enjoyed nothing but positive media coverage since the South Park team bought it, but an abrupt shift to raise employee salaries while eliminating tips has some servers unhappy.
• Edelman PR laid off 240 people – 4% of its staff – due to “macroeconomic conditions.”
• A study found that nearly 30% of women who played in qualifying games for this summer’s Women’s World Cup or at the 2022 European Championship were not paid for their participation, a sign of how neglectful FIFA is about women’s soccer.
• Independent liquor stores in Colorado have seen sales drop as much as 60% since voters passed a law last November allowing wine sales at grocery stores. Said one small store owner: “We’re screwed.”
• Renters frustrated about high rents crashed an Apartment Association of Metro Denver awards ceremony to hand out their own awards – the “Slummies.”
• Aspartame, the artificial sweetener found in Diet Coke, Extra chewing gum and some Snapple drinks, is expected to be named a carcinogen by the the World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer.
• The Denver Public Library is exploring a new name for its Ross-Barnum branch after research has shown that circus pioneer P.T. Barnum, its namesake, knowingly exploited Black people and people with disabilities. Some free advice to every governmental entity in Colorado: stop naming things after people.
• National Geographic, which has covered science and the natural world for 135 years, laid off all of its last remaining staff writers. Editors will work exclusively with freelancers now.
• Madonna’s upcoming show in Denver was cancelled after the singer was hospitalized due to a “serious bacterial infection.” Her manager said a full recovery is expected.
• Weather delays have disrupted the entire airline industry this week, but United Airlines has suffered far more than any other carrier.

So, who won the week?

• SE2’s Bazi Kanani has been named to the Children’s Affairs transition committee for Mayor-Elect Mike Johnston.
• Boulder-based Comprise won two Web Excellence Awards for its print and website design work.
• GBSM is hiring an associate.
• CBS4 reporter Conor McCue is headed to Nashville. Denver … Nashville. If he can relocate to Austin at some point, he’ll have hit the hipster trifecta.
• The Denver Business Journal has named Cassidy Ritter as its new technology reporter.
• Ryan Seacrest has been named the next host of “Wheel of Fortune,” replacing the retiring Pat Sajak.
• Belgium shot put and hammer throw champion Jolien Boumkwo kept her team from being disqualified from the European Championships when she agreed up to run the 100-meter hurdles after two of her teammates withdrew due to injuries.
• Everyone in South Korea just got a year younger.

Legendary Denver advertising executive Tom Hagan passed away at the age of 92. Hagan, along with business partner Phil Karsh, founded Karsh Hagan in 1977, and it quickly grew to be one of the most recognizable agencies in the region. Its clients included Aspen Snowmass, Denver International Airport, Steamboat, Bank of Colorado, McDonald’s, Telluride and VISIT DENVER.

• A migration of millions of crickets in Nevada is so bad that crews are literally plowing them off the roads. Miller moths don’t seem so bad now, do they?
• Former Denver Broncos linebacker Bill Romanowski was never one to play strictly according to the rules, so I guess it is no surprise that he allegedly owes the IRS more than $15 million in back taxes and penalties.
• The owners of a Northern California taqueria have been ordered to pay $140,000 in back wages and damages after they hired a man to pose as a priest to elicit “confessions” of wrongdoing from employees. “The priest mostly had work-related questions, which I thought was strange,” one employee told investigators.
• A preschool in Taiwan has cracked the code on settling down rambunctious kids: sedatives.
• The Paris 2024 Olympics may be 13 months away, but it is never too early to kick off the scandals. French authorities raided the headquarters of the organizing committee as part of a probe into suspected embezzlement.
• A contestant on “The Price is Right” dislocated his shoulder on-camera when he celebrated too exuberantly.
• 3M has agreed to pay $12.5 billion to settle hundreds of lawsuits brought by cities whose drinking water was contaminated with PFAS “forever chemicals” the company made for decades.
• A new, high-end W Hotel in Scotland is making headlines for its design that is remarkably similar to the poop emoji.
• The FTC has accused Amazon of enrolling consumers into its Prime program without their consent and making it difficult to cancel those subscriptions. And proving that it’s not just the marketing people at Amazon who are clever, the internal code name for the scheme to make it difficult to cancel was “The Illiad.“
• Former talk-show host Maury Povich has launched a line of at-home paternity tests.
• Colorado’s public pension system PERA announced it had a –13.4% rate of return in 2022. If you are a public employee, you might want to plan to continue working.
• Dozens of people were injured and seven went to the hospital after hail hit the Louis Tomlinson concert at Red Rocks. Meanwhile, 9News’ Kyle Clark was not impressed with the facility’s response on social media.
• The Atlanta Braves sent infielder Charlie Culbertson down to the minors the day before his father was scheduled to throw the ceremonial first pitch.
• More than 30 Colorado congregations announced they are leaving the United Methodist Church in a dispute over gay marriage.
• None of the world’s Top 10 Most Livable Cities were located in the United States. Canada had three.
• Will Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk pummel each other in a cage fight? We can only hope.
• Longtime Colorado Rockies TV announcer George Frazier passed away. He was 68.
• It appears that as the world closely watched the search for the lost submersible that was touring the wreck of the Titanic, the five passengers were already dead. Meanwhile, humanity did what humanity does, and the dark jokes and memes about “Schrödinger’s Sub” were, in some cases, vicious.

So, who won the week?

• Colorado native Wyndham Clark won the 2023 U.S Open golf tournament. Clark graduated from Valor Christian High School.
• The Denver Post reporter Conrad Swanson has taken a position with the Seattle Times.
• Meteorologist Jessica Lebel announced she is leaving Fox31 and the news business entirely.
• Former Denver7 investigative reporter and Colorado native Jennifer Kovaleski joined the ABC affiliate in Phoenix.
• Denver Water has tapped Alan Salazar as its new CEO. Salazar currently is chief of staff for Denver Mayor Michael Hancock.
• The Denver Post has wisely abandoned its comments section.

• The Denver Nuggets won their first NBA championship earlier this week, but the euphoria of the celebration went downhill pretty fast:
  • On the night the Nuggets won, many of the national headlines were about the 10 people who were injured in a mass shooting that took place amid the championship celebration as the they were winding down.
  • During the championship parade several days later, a Denver police officer was somehow run over by a slow-moving fire truck that was carrying star players Nikola Jokić and Jamal Murray. The officer will survive, but it is not clear whether he will lose a leg.
  • A presumably drunk fan threw a beer can at Jokić while he was riding on the fire truck. The beer missed Jokić but deflected and hit his wife in the face.
  • At the conclusion of the parade, two more people were shot just blocks away from Civic Center Park.
• With the Nuggets season over, it is a good time to remind you that your Colorado Rockies remain in last place in the N.L. West.
• Heavy rains and hail have put a damper on the annual City Park Jazz series. Some concerts have been canceled, and others that usually attract thousands have seen only hundreds. Now, organizers fear the financial losses may be devastating.
• Lower-than-expected use of C-470’s toll lanes has required CDOT to loan its tolling oversight arm $4 million to cover revenue shortfalls. None of the other toll roads in Denver has required a similar bailout.
• Actor Marlon Wayans was cited for disturbing the peace when he got into a dispute with a United Airlines employee at DIA over carry-on luggage.
• Gannett announced that 51 members of the Pueblo Chieftain’s print production team will lose their jobs when it transitions the printing of the paper to The Denver Post.
• The East Moon Asian Bistro in Westminster has been ordered to pay nearly $250,000 in back wages after federal officials said the restaurant failed to pay overtime to employees and illegally kept their tips.
• Twitter has been evicted from its Boulder office after it just stopped paying rent.
• Transgender activist Rose Montoya has been banned from the White House after she shared photos of her topless on the South Lawn during an LGBTQ Pride Month celebration.
• Circle K fired a 75-year-old woman in Westminster for gently pushing a robber away when he went behind her counter to steal cigarettes. She had worked at the store for 18 years.
• The Concacaf Nations League semifinal soccer game between the U.S. and Mexico lived up to its tradition of ugliness. There were multiple melees, four red cards and a U.S. player had half of his jersey ripped off. Meanwhile, the ref ended the game 5 minutes early because of repeated homophobic chants from Mexico fans. The U.S. won the game 3-0 and will now face Canada in the final on Sunday.

So, who won the week?

• As I mentioned earlier, the Denver Nuggets won their first NBA championship.
• Just in time for the re-opening of Casa Bonita, the prestigious Michelin Guide has added Colorado as the sixth U.S. region whose restaurants it will award its coveted stars. The other regions are New York, Washington D.C., Chicago, California, and Miami/Orlando/Tampa. In reality, I’m guessing that most, if not all, of the star-rated restaurants in our state will be in Aspen, Vail and/or Telluride.
• UPS drivers are celebrating after the shipping company agreed for the first time to add air conditioning to its iconic big brown delivery trucks. Temperatures can exceed 120 degrees in the trucks’ cargo areas.

• New Casa Bonita owners Trey Parker and Matt Stone reportedly spent $40 million renovating the iconic restaurant. If Casa Bonita maintains standard restaurant profit margins, Parker and Stone only need to generate somewhere between $400 million and $650 million in revenue to make back their investment.
• Boulder County investigators determined that the billion-dollar Marshall Fire likely had two ignition sources: an Xcel power line and embers from a trash fire on property owned by the religious cult-like organization Twelve Tribes. I’m guessing most of the lawsuits are filed against Xcel.
• PR agencies nationally are seeing a sharp rise in bad debt from clients who are walking away from their bills.
• The PGA Tour. Where to begin? Convincing golfers such as Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy to reject literally hundreds of millions of dollars from Saudi-funded LIV Golf, only to then turn around and merge with the rival league? Spending two years making moral arguments (9/11, Jamal Khashoggi, women’s rights, etc.) against the Saudi league, only to, again, turn around and merge with it? Blindsiding its own golfers and having them learn about the merger on social media? It goes on and on. PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan has to be a dead man walking, although at least not in the Khashoggi way.
• CNN fired CEO Chris Licht after a string of bad decisions. He had only been CEO for 13 months. Also gone: the communications team that was behind the brutal Atlantic article that sealed Licht’s fate.
• The Los Angeles Times is cutting 10% of its newsroom staff. Meanwhile, hundreds of Gannett journalists walked off the job to protest the company’s continued job cuts.
• Scripps, the parent company of Denver7, announced that companywide layoffs are coming and that newsrooms will also be affected.
• You know how national media don’t really pay attention to winter storms until they reach Illinois and Ohio? The same thing is happening with smoke from forest fires. More than 75 million people in the Northeast, Midwest and mid-Atlantic are under air quality alerts due to smoke from forest fires in Canada, and national media is all over it.
• Denver’s last drive-in movie theater is closing.
• Actress/talk show host Drew Barrymore has gone to war with tabloids that reported that she wished her mother was dead.
• “90210” actress Shannen Doherty shared that her breast cancer has spread to her brain.
• Twitter ad sales dropped 59% as advertisers continue to flee the social media platform.
• A Denver woman went on a crusade demanding that her rusted-out RTD bus-stop shelter and overflowing trash can be maintained better. She got results. The shelter and trash can have been removed entirely.

So, who won the week?

• MLS may be an also-ran soccer league globally, but the league’s Inter Miami franchise just signed the biggest soccer star in the world – Lionel Messi.
• Modelo Especial has supplanted Bud Light as the nation’s top-selling beer, amid Bud Light’s transgender marketing woes.
• Do energy drinks and ribeye steaks make you live longer? Probably not due to heart attacks. But scientists think an amino acid contained in both of those may offer insight into how to slow the aging process.
• Colorado ski resorts saw a record-breaking 2022-2023 ski season.
• Cameron Schaefer, the CEO of Denver’s Vinyl Me, Please record club, was named to Billboard’s 40 Under 40 List.

• Maryland failed to renew a web domain featured on one of its commemorative license plates, and now 800,000 cars in the state are advertising for an online casino in the Philippines.
• An AI-enabled drone “killed” its human operator in an Air Force simulation when the operator tried to prevent the drone from completing its mission. This is how the world ends, by the way.
• Twitter is now valued at about one-third of the $44 billion that Elon Musk paid for it last fall, according to the investment firm Fidelity.
• Hard Rock Cafes were the hottest restaurant chain going in the 1980s, which naturally meant Denver got one in 1998. Now, 25 years later, Denver’s Hard Rock Cafe is closing. The pandemic and construction on the 16th Street Mall were too much.
• Chick-fil-A is no stranger to the culture wars, but this time it’s different. Conservative activists are accusing the chain of “going woke” because it adopted a diversity, equity and inclusion policy and hired an executive to be in charge of DEI efforts.
• Amazon has agreed to pay a $30 million fine for violating the privacy of Ring and Alexa customers.
• In May, Denver saw the highest number of eviction filings in more than five years.
• A man attempting to cross the Atlantic Ocean in a three-foot sailboat had his 1,900-mile voyage dashed after about a mile when it began taking on water.
• A woman wanted by police poisoned a lookalike with a piece of cheesecake in order to steal her identity.

So, who won the week?

• The Denver Nuggets‘ sweep of the L.A. Lakers meant they had nine days off before starting the NBA Finals against the Miami Heat. Fortunately for Denver, the Nuggets showed no rust and now lead the series 1-0.
• Celebrities, they’re just like us! Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez bought a $61 million L.A. mansion that has 12 bedrooms, 24 bathrooms and a 12-car garage. Not to be outdone, Beyoncé and Jay-Z dropped $200 million on a 30,000-square-foot home in Malibu. They paid cash.
• “Sex and the City” fans are abuzz about reports that Kim Cattrall will reprise her role as Samantha in a spin-off.