• The electronic payment processor Stripe terminated 300 people, or about 3.5% of its global workforce, and many of them received the news via an email that inadvertently included an image of a yellow cartoon duck. The head of HR followed up with another email that said in part, “I apologize for the error and any confusion it caused,” but left unsaid “but you are still fired.”
• CNN is laying off about 200 employees as part of shift to from a cable-first to a digital-first model. That transition is driven in part by historically low television ratings. Sadly, there is no indication that those who were fired received an email with an emotional support cartoon duck.
• A former CBI DNA scientist who worked on thousands of cases, has been charged with 102 felonies alleging that she manipulated evidence. Prosecutors worry that more than 1,000 convictions could have relied on her evidence, and an unknown number of cases may not have been prosecuted due to her faulty findings.
• The Salt Lake City-based NHL hockey team – temporarily named Utah Hockey Club while it tries to finalize its permanent name – had its first choice, the Utah Yetis, rejected by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. It is not distinctive enough.
• Everyone always says they want to be in The Wall Street Journal. Unfortunately for one local company, its moment came with the headline, “Vail Resorts Has an Epic Problem.”
• The NFL forced the New England Patriots to remove its Bluesky social media account because the league has not “approved” the Twitter/X competitor.
• Jewelry designer Lynn Ban, who starred in the Netflix reality series “Bling Empire: New York,” died following emergency brain surgery due to a skiing accident in Aspen.
• The head of Panama’s football federation was suspended after he called one of the country’s star players “fat” and “out of shape” after she complained about the lack of investment in the sport.
• Allen Media Group television stations were forced to back away from a plan to fire local meteorologists and replace them with a Weather Channel feed after a backlash from viewers.
• One of the bigger stories coming out of the Australian Open tennis tournament this year has been the media. One of the biggest sports anchors in the country was forced to apologize after he insulted Novak Djokovic and his Serbian fans on air, and U.S. player Ben Shelton criticized the post-match, on-court interviews as being “embarrassing and disrespectful.“

Who won the week?

• The City of Lone Tree‘s Melissa Gallegos has been elected to the board of the Emergency Services Public Information Officers of Colorado (ESPIOC).
• Former 9News anchor Christine Noel has accepted an anchor position at Fox31 following a short stint at a station in Houston.
• In the fourth quarter of 2024, rent prices in Denver dropped by an average of nearly $70 from the previous quarter. It is the biggest decline since records started being kept 44 years ago.
• DIA set a passenger traffic record in 2024 with more than 82 million passengers traveling via the airport.
• Denver had 65 “murder incidents” in 2024, which is an 11% drop from 2023 and a nearly 30% decline from 2021’s peak of 92, per an Axios Denver analysis of police data. Sixty-five still seems like a lot, but I guess we’ll take our wins where we can.
• The movie “Moana 2” surpassed $1 billion in ticket sales, a feat that has become rarer in the post-pandemic movie environment.
• What’s the going rate for tipping a pizza delivery guy who trudges on foot through half a mile of snow-covered, closed streets? Apparently $2. But a police officer who witnessed it helped spur a GoFundMe campaign that has raised $30,000.