- Paraguayan tennis player Adolfo Daniel Vallejo has pinpointed the reason he lost to France‘s Moise Kouame at the French Open this week – the match was umpired by a woman. “This sort of match needs to be umpired by a man,” Vallejo said of the raucous, pro-France crowd. “It has to be refereed by a man, because it’s a very demanding crowd and you need a lot of strength to go against the crowd.”
- Paul Petyo, one of the 173 State of Colorado IT workers who were laid off this week, spoke to Marshall Zelinger at 9News about how he received an email invite to a mass layoff meeting three minutes before it started. The state says that media interview was a violation of its workplace policies (he was required to get departmental approval to speak to media), so the state, which again has already terminated him, then placed Petyo on administrative leave.
- For a little over 30 years, the Achilles heel at DIA is that you must ride a train to access the B and C concourses. That has been a huge issue that has prevented passengers from moving back and forth between the terminal and the concourses when power outages or other technical issues occur. It was such a problem that in 2021 the airport asked the public to provide suggestions for alternatives. Well, it took five years, but DIA just announced a solution: use existing underground tunnels to create walkways to the concourses. I’m no airport designer, but I’m not sure why it took five years to identify that one.
- Japan is giving us a look into what happens when a xenophobic, insular country drastically limits immigration in an era of declining birth rates: an “accelerating demographic crisis.” The country’s population has declined by 3.1 million people in the last five years alone, and that number pales in comparison to what is coming – a projected population decline from 123 million people in 2025 to just 87 million in 2070. Experts note that the current decline in population is already constraining Japan’s economy and putting pressure on the country’s health care system and causing labor shortages.
- The new fully electric Ferrari Luce will cost you at minimum $640,000, but that is a bargain compared to what it has cost Ferrari. The vehicle’s toy-like design sparked a flood of social media memes mocking it, which caused the carmaker’s market cap to fall 8%, or about $5 billion. Ferrari’s former president and chairman Luca di Montezemolo struggled to find something positive about the design, and could only come up with, “This is surely a car that at least the Chinese won’t copy.”
- Hours after being announced as performers at a concert on the National Mall to celebrate America‘s 250th anniversary, Morris Day and the Time, Young MC, Martina McBride, Poison’s Bret Michaels and The Commodores announced they would not be performing at what they were concerned was becoming a partisan event. The show will go on, though, with Vanilla Ice, Flo Rida and C+C Music Factory.
- Oklahoma City Thunder star Shai Gilgeous-Alexander is an NBA MVP, but he has also earned a reputation for flopping and trying to draw cheap fouls. Fans have even held up trophies shaped like an Oscar to mock his “acting” skills on the court. Now, Gilgeous-Alexander’s lawyers have sent a cease and desist letter to the makers of “Unethical Hoops,” a board game similar to classic kids game “Operation” in which a buzzer goes off anytime he is touched.
- The good news for 90s rapper Fat Joe is that he is finally getting some media attention again. The bad news is that it is because the Cleveland Cavaliers, tired of insufferable New York Knicks fans buying up courtside seats in the Cavs’ arena, revoked his tickets. Fat Joe was among at least 10 fans who were notified that they had purchased courtside tickets that were not eligible to be resold. Alas, it did not help. The Knicks swept the Cavaliers.
- We are in year four of a struggling real estate market, and many real-estate professionals are finally reaching their breaking points. The number of registered brokers is down more than 12%, while mortgage-industry employment has declined almost 40% from its peak in 2021.
- Blue Origin, the space exploration company that Amazon founder Jeff Bezos created to compete with Elon Musk‘s SpaceX, gave residents of Cape Canaveral, Fla., a beautiful fireworks show this week. Unfortunately, the eruption of orange, yellow and crimson colors in the night sky was actually the company’s new Glenn rocket exploding on the launch pad during testing.
- Controversial former Colorado Avalanche star and four-time Stanley Cup winner Claude Lemieux passed away. He was 60.
- A highly touted Los Angeles Dodgers prospect playing for the team’s Double-A affiliate in Tulsa was injured when he tripped over the team’s “bat dog” – a dog trained to retrieve bats from players who dropped them on the way to first base. The team announced they were “suspending the program,” which is a shame because “pawsing the program” was sitting right there.
Who won the week?
- Sidecar PR founder and CEO Sarah Cullen has been named a 2026 Denver Business Journal “Outstanding Woman in Business“.
- Karsh Hagan | Madden promoted Melissa Pert to Senior Vice President of Integrated Media.
- Lumen Technologies promoted Jessica Taylor to Senior Vice President and Chief Communications Officer.
- Tina Peters is scheduled to be released from prison on Monday.
