Who Had the Worst Week?

• Former Denver Public Schools board member Auon’tai Anderson has been ordered to pay $61,000 in legal fees to Black Lives Matter 5280 and its board member Amy Brown related to his unsuccessful defamation suit.
• The layoffs in the journalism industry continue and are hitting close to home. Colorado Public Radio has cut 15 employees in its audio and podcast production departments, although the station’s newsroom was spared.
• The Denver Broncos announced they will cut QB Russell Wilson, a move that will count $85 million against the salary cap for a player no longer with the team. In his two years with the Broncos, Wilson earned $124 million in salary and bonuses. The Broncos also cut fan favorite safety Justin Simmons.
• Comedian Nick Swardson had a melt-down on-stage in Beaver Creek that forced organizers to yank him from the stage. He blamed the effects of alcohol and cannabis edibles for his bizarre behavior.
• European Union regulators fined Apple the equivalent of $1.95 billion for allegedly “thwarting competition among music streaming rivals.”
• Three passengers who were aboard the Alaska Airlines flight whose door plug blew out mid-flight are suing Boeing and the airline for $1 billion.
• And Boeing just can’t catch a break. This week, a tire fell off of a United Airlines Boeing plane shortly after take-off as it was en route from San Francisco to Osaka, Japan.
• A jury has ordered the Denver Police Department – i.e., Denver taxpayers – to pay a 78-year-old Montbello woman $3.76 million for conducting a SWAT-style raid on her house that found nothing. The jury determined that police did not have reasonable cause to search her house.
• New York Times crossword puzzle editor and NPR “puzzle master” Will Shortz is recovering from a stroke he suffered last month.
• Meta (Facebook and Instagram) and LinkedIn both suffered unusual outages this week.
• Scammers cost Coloradans about $164 million in fraud in 2023, up 17% from 2022 and nearly double the amount Coloradans lost to fraud in 2021.
• Liberty University has been fined a record $14 million by the Department of Education for violations of federal law that included failing to issue timely warnings about criminal activity, failing to notify the campus about emergencies and dangerous situations, and not maintaining an accurate and complete crime log.
• A U.S. House committee unanimously supported a bill to force TikTok’s Chinese parent company to divest its ownership or face an app store ban in the U.S. 
• Ikon season passes for Alterra resorts will cost $1,249 (up 7.7%), and Vail Resorts‘ Epic passes will set you back $982 (up 8%).
• About a dozen fans who attended the bitterly cold January playoff game between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Miami Dolphins suffered such severe frostbite that amputations were required. Unfortunately for Broncos fans, Patrick Mahomes was not one of them.

So, who won the week?

• Westword promoted Thomas Mitchell from cannabis editor to news editor.
• Former 9News meteorologist Danielle Grant has resurfaced at Denver7.
• The U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team will play a friendly against South Korea in June at Dick’s Sporting Goods Park.