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Zoey Ripple (the drunk home invader) Timothy Justice and Doreen Orion (the owners of the home) The Boulder County District Attorney's Office announced Friday it will file felony trespassing charges against the 21-year-old University of Colorado graduate who was shot after police say she drunkenly wandered into a couple's Boulder home early Wednesday.Yet defense attorney Colette Cribari said the incident was "out of character" for Ripple, who graduated from CU two weeks ago. "She didn't enter the house with any intent of committing a crime or harming anyone," Cribari said Friday. "We're thankful she was not killed or more...

Ludovic Masciave, 36, was driving his car through the Arly Gorge in the French Alps when a 20 ton boulder crashed onto the roof of his vehicle. Amazingly, Masciave survived the crash and is recovering in a local hospital, according to Landov...

BOULDER -- In the first police action related to the Occupy Boulder movement, officers early Monday morning ticketed 11 people in a makeshift camp outside the Boulder County courthouse along the Pearl Street Mall. ... According to police records, officers issued a total of 10 tickets on charges of illegal camping or public urination. Additionally, police ticketed P.J. Jentsch for having a dog on the mall. His 3-year-old border collie mix, Shelby, garnered national media attention after being elected leader of the Occupy Denver movement in early November following a request from Denver Mayor Michael Hancock that protesters designate a...

Inside the worship room, carpeting bought off Craigslist covers the floor. Near the front door, simple wire shelving holds dozens of pairs of shoes. Out on the street, dank pieces of paper hung inside a sign box announce a mosque at the corner. Saied Mabrouk admits it's a modest space with few flourishes and an obviously dated look. "This is a 40-year-old building; it has a lot of maintenance and repairs for us to do," Mabrouk said before Friday prayers began at the Islamic Center of Boulder. But he said the center's new location, at 5495 Baseline Road, is a...

BOULDER, Colo. (CBS4) – A 21-year-old woman in Boulder has been arrested after allegedly blowing heroin smoke in the face of a cat, killing the animal.

Boulder police are looking for a man who hid in the tank of a portable toilet at a yoga festival before running off. A woman at the Hanuman Festival went into the portable toilet Friday and noticed something moving in the tank when she lifted the lid, according to police spokeswoman Kim Kobel. The woman exited and asked a man nearby to look inside the tank. The man told police he saw something moving under a tarp, and when he left the toilet he heard it lock from the inside. A security supervisor then waited outside for the person to...

BOULDER, Colo. -- Boulder Police are looking for a man who was seen hiding inside a portable toilet during last Friday’s Hanuman Yoga Festival at Boulder High School. “A female patron of the festival walked into a portable toilet and told police she noticed that something was moving inside the tank when she lifted the lid,” said police spokeswoman Kim Kobel. Believing there was a person inside, the female left the portable toilet and asked a man who was standing nearby to go in and check. “The man told police that when he entered the toilet, he did see someone...

BOULDER -- A driver who was stopped for speeding and proceeded to swear and call the sheriff's deputy names just got paid $20,000. Boulder County made the payment to settle Bob McIntosh's civil rights violation lawsuit. His attorney, David Lane, says his client was arrested without probable cause in violation of the First Amendment. On October 1, 2010, McIntosh was stopped for speeding by Deputy Timothy Lynch in Superior. McIntosh ended up going to jail that afternoon for swearing at the sheriff's deputy. The deputy's report shows Lynch used radar to catch McIntosh going 41 mph in a 20 mph...

Xiuhtezcatl Roske-Martinez, 11, of Boulder, is a leader of the Colorado-based Earth Guardian group and one of the plaintiffs named in the suit against the state of Colorado, Gov. John Hickenlooper, the Colorado Department of Health and Environment, the Colorado Air Quality Control Commission and the Colorado Department of Natural Resources. The goal is to "force action on climate change" in all 50 states, translating to a reduction in carbon dioxide emissions and implementation of reforestation programs, according to the lawsuit. A gathering of thousands of young people is planned in Denver on Saturday, one of dozens of marches around...

Rep. Jared Polis (D-Colorado) says the DREAM Act "means everything to hundreds of thousands of de-facto Americans. To them and all of us it is supremely important and supremely urgent.

A Longmont man accused of shooting at and attempting to kill a Longmont Police Officer in May appeared in Boulder District Court on Friday and pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. Brandon Duke, 22, is charged with first-degree attempted murder, first degree assault, felony menacing, possession of a weapon by a previous offender, all felonies, and misdemeanor carrying a concealed weapon, resisting arrest, obstructing a police officer, and reckless endangerment. He told investigators after he was arrested that he believed Longmont Officer David Blake was a zombie and that his actions were caused by mental illness. Duke shot at...

Sixty-three structures have been confirmed lost in the Fourmile Fire, and firefighters have only surveyed half of the burn area, Don Whittemore, assistant chief of the Rocky Mountain Fire Protection District, said at a 4 p.m. news conference. The blaze, which is raging unabated, has burned 7,120 acres in the Boulder County foothills, officials said, but details about specific losses have not been made public.

A wildfire erupted this morning in Fourmile Canyon northwest of Boulder, destroying multiple homes and leading to widespread evacuation in the foothills — and igniting fears the blaze is headed toward the area burned by the Olde Stage Fire in January 2009.

The days of scraping by with D's in high school classes may be waning. Three Boulder Valley high schools -- don't give D grades to students. The reasoning is that a D wouldn't be good enough in the working world -- who wants a doctor or a mechanic performing D-level work -- so it's not good enough for high school students, either. "D's seem to be really sending a mixed message -- well, you've performed below average, you haven't really met the standard, but you're passing," New Vista Principal Kirk Quitter said. More high schools nationwide are considering whether a...

Boy Scouts shouldn't be able to meet in Boulder's public schools because they openly discriminate against gays, according to the local chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. Johanna Blumenthal, with the Boulder County ACLU, sent a letter today to officials with the Boulder Valley School District arguing that the Boy Scouts are a discriminatory group because they have openly defended the right to exclude homosexuals from membership. The ACLU raised the same concern in 2001, but is now buffering its argument with a recent Supreme Court ruling. The ACLU is asking the district to change its policies so that...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9lnVSu3aCU

Boulder's deputy mayor wrote in an e-mail to a Louisville woman Thursday that he is "sometimes ashamed to live in Boulder" and said later that the city has a "selfish and arrogant streak." Ken Wilson, who has served on the City Council since 2007, engaged in an e-mail exchange Thursday morning with a Louisville woman who is friends with Boulder resident Seth Brigham -- who was arrested Tuesday night during a council meeting for refusing to leave the speaking area. Katie Wells wrote Wilson to complain about how the city had Brigham removed from the room after city officials said...

BOULDER, Colo.—This spring, city contractors will fan out across this well-to-do college town to unscrew light bulbs in thousands of homes and replace them with more energy-efficient models, at taxpayer expense. City officials never dreamed they'd have to play nanny when they set out in 2006 to make Boulder a role model in the fight against global warming. The cause seemed like a natural fit in a place where residents tend to be politically liberal and passionate about the great outdoors. Instead, as Congress considers how to encourage Americans to conserve more energy, Boulder stands as a cautionary tale about...

Restaurant joins handful of local eateries to recently shutter. Dolan's Restaurant in central Boulder was seized this week by state agents for unpaid taxes, and a handwritten sign on the door indicates the eatery has closed for good. Dolan's closure comes amid a spate of Boulder restaurants and cafes that recently have gone out of business. Within the past two weeks, Bimbamboo, Burnt Toast, Sidney's Coffee, Coffee Sanctuary and the b.side Lounge all shuttered. They join others such as Sunflower, the Scotch Corner Pub and Seven Eurobar, which also closed in late 2009. Starting a restaurant in a weak economy...

The Colorado Division of Wildlife sedated and removed a juvenile mountain lion from Boulder's University Hill neighborhood on Wednesday morning. DOW spokeswoman Jennifer Churchill said the ... juvenile male had been chased into a tree ...by a pair of dogs. "He didn't do anything wrong," Churchill said of the lion...

Electric carmaker plans to keep gallery in Boulder. Nate Hukill was not in the market for a new car -- he said Tuesday he's not even really a "car person." But on his way back from lunch ... Now Hukill's owned his high-performance, all-electric, thunder-gray Tesla Roadster for three weeks. ... which has a $100,000 price tag. But it was the $42,000 tax credit offered by the state of Colorado that really sealed the deal. Embarrassingly, the tax incentive was so shocking... Within 30 seconds, he was hooked. The incredibly liberal tax incentive...

The University of Colorado's version of the national campus craze, Humans vs. Zombies, is happening in full force, but without a main prop of the game — Nerf guns. “The use of simulated weapons on campus violates regent policy,” said Molly Bosley, a spokeswoman for the CU Police Department. “Given the climate of what has happened in this country lately, we are taking precautions by banning the use of these simulated weapons on campus.”

Some Boulder library employees and supporters are up in arms this week about plans to shut down all four branches on Friday for a mandatory, all-staff training session that includes yoga lessons, a catered lunch and extra paid hours for some workers. But Library Director Tony Tallent defended the get-together, saying it’s a chance for the library system’s 80 employees to bond, relax and learn.

How are forest-thinning projects on Boulder County open space land affecting the tassel-eared Abert's squirrel? Which shorebirds and waterfowl are nesting at county ponds? How well have county wetland restoration projects really worked? These are the kinds of questions the Parks and Open Space Department hopes a new corps of volunteers will help answer when the county's new Natural Resource Monitor program begins next year. "We have a lot of acreage, and we have really diverse natural resources on our open space," said Michael Bauer, education and outreach specialist for the county's open space department... As the county designed the...

Police in Boulder, Colorado, were reportedly successful last night in stopping yet another annual "nude pumpkin run" -- in which men and woman run down a pedestrian mall naked with carved out pumpkins over their heads. The local American Civil Liberties Union is outraged over what he claims is the denial of a constitutional right. Liberal Boulder residents and public officials in the ultraliberal city also are upset, according to a Wall Street Journal article on police efforts to stop the informal annual rite that the local police chief say has gotten totally out of hand. Last year, the event...

DENVER (AP) -- Police on a cold case hunt have finally identified a woman whose nude and battered body was found along a Boulder creek 55 years ago. But it's not over - they want to name the killer. She was buried under a headstone that read "Jane Doe" and remained anonymous until a DNA test revealed that she was Dorothy Gay Howard of Phoenix, officials announced Wednesday. Howard had been reported missing in March 1954 when she was 18. The ID was resolved by the Boulder County Sheriff's Department, Internet research and the persistence of local historian Silvia Pettem....

August 19, 2009, 4:00 a.m. When Boulder Starts Rolling AwayObamacare's in trouble in an Obama town. By Mark Hemingway Boulder, Colo., is known as one of the most politically liberal communities in America. And yet here’s a man named Steve standing in the parking lot of a strip mall, holding up a bright-orange sign that reads, “I’ll keep my freedom, you keep the change.� In 45 minutes, U.S. Rep. Jared Polis is scheduled to arrive at a restaurant nearby for a “Congress on Your Corner� event. Already a hundred or so people are waiting to make their voices heard....

Yikes. Shortly after 4 p.m., smack in the middle of Queen's "Bicycle Race," the voice of Erich "Mancow" Muller, host of The Mancow Show, a nationally syndicated repository of far-right loonbaggery, popped up on 101.5 FM, which has been known as The Pole, aka "Stripper Radio," since dumping the acclaimed Indie 101.5 format last week. (This blog from earlier today should get you up to speed.) Mancow's question: "Did you really think we were serious?" Errrr, no -- but Max Media, the owner of 101.5, is actually serious about FM-talk radio. Hence, the transition from The Pole to The Truth,...

Police Charge Campers With Trespassing, Illegal Camping. Seven people have been arrested after they were found sleeping on the roof of the Boulder Public Library. The Rainbow Family is also known as the Rainbow Family of Living Light...

Wildlife officials respond to several confrontations Tuesday night. Authorities responded to several reports of bears in homes or yards west of Boulder on Tuesday night, including one in which a bear walked into a house in Sunshine Canyon. Rice said it was the second time in recent weeks that a bear was in his house. He said in the previous break-in, the bear — he thinks it was the same one — got in through a doggie door. After officials left Rice’s house Tuesday night, a bear also walked under the porch at the home next door, belonging to Schindler....

A Niwot woman accused of stabbing two men in the back early Tuesday morning was engaged in a "sexual encounter" with both of them before they started fighting. According to a Boulder County sheriff's news release, Ruffin Griffin and Clint Cadigan, both 28, left a Niwot bar together and went to the house where Griffin lives with Serena M. Brooks and their 6-month-old son. "Upon arriving at the residence, the three adults engaged in a sexual encounter and a physical altercation ensued," . The men "fell to the floor" during the fight and that's when, sheriff's officials allege, Brooks used...

Like other green-leaning Colorado cities, Boulder finds good intentions aren't enough to meet greenhouse-gas goals. Even for Boulder, an icon of earthy urban planning, saving the planet doesn't come easy. Faced with a looming deadline and lagging results in its efforts to cut carbon-dioxide emissions, city leaders recently vowed to redouble their efforts. The City Council earlier this month voted to raise the city's "carbon tax" — a charge based on how much electricity one consumes — to the maximum $21 per year for residences and $94 per year for businesses. And Boulderites aren't pikers. Many of the 20 or...

A young mountain lion was trapped and relocated by the Colorado Division of Wildlife after eating a house cat Monday ... north Boulder. “He was just too close,” Churchill said. “We wanted to give him a spanking and move him out of town.” Wildlife officials previously tagged the same cougar in February when the kitten was stuck in a tree, Churchill said. He is part of the five-year Front Range Mountain Lion Study, which aims to track mountain lions between Lyons and Evergreen to better understand cougar movement trends and develop a way to mitigate aggressive behavior near human establishments,...

A nudist couple living in north Boulder is complaining about discrimination after being asked by their landlord to "dress appropriately" when outside of their unit. Neighbors complained to police last weekend after they saw Catharine Pierce, 51, and Robert Pierce, 58, gardening outside their Cherry Avenue rental home nearly naked. Catharine Pierce was wearing pasties, and both wore thongs. But the officers who responded confirmed what the Pierces already believed to be true: Their dress, though scanty, was legal. As long as a person's genitalia are covered, no law has been broken, Boulder police spokeswoman Sarah Huntley said. But not...

Program could create door-to-door energy consultants. It’s time for an in-your-face approach to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, the Boulder City Council decided Thursday night. The council unanimously approved increasing the city’s voter-approved carbon tax from its minimum to its maximum level beginning Aug. 6, providing an additional $810,000 annually toward meeting the city’s carbon-cutting goals. The tax, built into utility bills, is expected to help the city reach 95 percent of the Kyoto Protocol — which calls for reducing greenhouse gas emissions 7 percent below 1990 levels — before the tax ends in 2013. Kara Mertz, an environmental affairs manager...

If Boulder is serious about meeting the goal it set in 2002 when city leaders agreed to meet the Kyoto Protocol -- reducing greenhouse gas emissions 7 percent below 1990 levels -- it's time for city officials to play hardball in their negotiations with Xcel Energy. That's the message a group of business, community and environmental leaders hope to convey to the Boulder City Council on Monday when they meet at the Stazio Ballfields to listen to speakers rally the crowd from a pile of faux coal. With the slender towers of the Valmont Coal Plant as a backdrop, the...

A man caught puncturing the tire of a Boulder police car and who is accused of slashing tires on about 50 other vehicles through the city told police he blames "radiation" from Rocky Flats and his relationship with his mother for the vandalism spree... Kabelis has a lengthy criminal history, including arrests on suspicion of damaging property, assault and resisting arrest. Boulder police spokeswoman Sarah Huntley said Kabelis gave several reasons for why he went on the alleged slashing rampage. "He said he was frustrated with the relationship with his mother," Huntley said. "He said he was angry with losing...

Boulder High rules! A student groups' campaign to rename one of Colorado's oldest high schools Barack Obama High after the new president fizzled today in the face of widespread opposition from students and residents of left-leaning Boulder. "It's become a lot more controversial than we wanted to. It's garnered a lot of negative reactions," said 16-year-old Ben Raderstorf, president of the school's Student Worker Club, which drew national publicity when it proposed the idea Wednesday. "We were somewhat naïve about it," Raderstorf said of the backlash. The goal was to use the attention to stir up support among fellow students....

A 16-year-old junior at Boulder High School is spearheading an effort to change the name of the school to Barack Obama High School in honor of the new president. Ben Raderstorf, who was the youth volunteer coordinator for Democrat Will Shafroth's bid to win the 2nd Congressional District, will hold a news conference today announcing his hope that the school will be renamed. "We think the election of Barack Obama is one of the most significant events in our country and shows the progress we've made in this country," Ben said Wednesday between classes. "We think he is deserving of...

Kirlins say they will only have to cede 15 percent of south Boulder lot. Two Boulder neighbors have settled an adverse-possession case that made national headlines last year and prompted changes to the state's law, according to a joint statement released Tuesday. Don and Susie Kirlin, who originally lost 34 percent of one of their vacant south Boulder lots to their neighbors Richard McLean and Edith Stevens, said they had settled a lawsuit and will only cede 15 percent of the lot. "This settlement allows the parties to put this longstanding and difficult dispute behind them," the couples wrote in...

Backers say citizenship shouldn’t be necessary to serve on city boards. If Boulder’s voters approve Ballot Question 2E this fall, city residents who aren’t eligible to vote — and who aren’t U.S. citizens — will be eligible to serve on the city’s 20 boards and commissions. The measure would remove the charter requirement that applicants to serve on those boards and commissions be “registered electors” — that is, registered to vote. Instead, applicants hoping for an appointment from the City Council to those boards would simply have to be 18 years old and have lived in the city for at...

Exactly as some legal experts predicted, Boulder's courts saw a spike in claims of "adverse possession" filed by people apparently trying to beat the clock on changes to the controversial land law. Of the 25 active adverse-possession lawsuits in Boulder County -- where a person or company claims someone else's land after trespassing on it for at least 18 years -- 15 of those cases were filed in June Some of those cases were filed just hours before changes to the law went into effect last Tuesday, court records show. The changes, drafted by a bipartisan group of state legislators...

Two commercials from Democratic congressional candidate Jared Polis paint him as a man of the people who will stand up to special interests. But ... the facts of Polis’ campaign do not exactly match up with the rhetoric in his commercials. "How can we reform health care when the politicians won't stand up to the lobbyists? ” However, Polis took at least $10,000 from members of large lobbying firms or people who identified themselves as lobbyists, Federal Election Commission records show. Another ad says: "Jared Polis will do things differently; he'll stand up to the oil companies ..." But Polis...

BOULDER — A cyclist in Boulder County was injured after a run-in, literally, with a bear. Tim Egan, 53, was riding on Old Stage Road Tuesday afternoon when suddenly a bear appeared in front of him. Egan hit the bear and ended up skidding across the road. "This bear looked at me with a look of terror on his face and sort of made a noise," said Egan. "I looked at him with a look of terror and we went, 'aaaahhhhh.'"

Internet entrepreneur Jared Polis changed the dynamics of his Democratic congressional primary race in March when he wrote his campaign another $50,000 check. That donation took his self-financing bid beyond the $350,000 mark, triggering the aptly named but little known federal "millionaires' amendment." Polis has contributed nearly $3.7 million of his money to his campaign. He now ranks among the top 10 self-funded House candidates in the 2008 election cycle nationally and will likely become Colorado's largest-ever self-donor. That puts pressure on his 2nd Congressional District primary competitors - former state Senate President Joan Fitz-Gerald, of Coal Creek Canyon, and...

As Tim Egan flew down Old Stage Road in Boulder County on Tuesday afternoon on his bike, he saw a large, unusual obstacle in the way. Before he could squeeze the brakes, the 53-year-old former Colorado College hockey player was in the midst of a bike-vs.-bear accident. A black bear crossing the road from west to east collided with Egan, who estimated he was going 45 mph. Egan, of Boulder, was tossed into the air and skidded across the asphalt, suffering a nasty case of road rash, cracked ribs and lacerations to his head, he said. “If it wasn’t me...

Ward Churchill is baaaaack! by: Deborah Lambert, June 05, 2008 Although Ward Churchill was finally fired by the University of Colorado, Boulder for plagiarism and dishonest scholarship rather than his 9-11 remarks, you'd never know it from his website at www.wardchurchill.net, aka the “Ward Churchill Solidarity Network,” dedicated to “Defending Academic Freedom and Political Dissent.” The site includes a petition to reinstate Ward Churchill, and a statement of support from Noam Chomsky....

Now members of the Hispanic community are concerned that the sole Mexican teacher, whom they see as a positive role model for their children, was singled out unfairly because she speaks little English.

BOULDER — It wasn't exactly pistols at 30 paces, but police say a security company supervisor and a restaurateur shot each other with Tasers in a confrontation over parking. Officers said neither man needed medical attention after the confrontation Saturday, but Harvey Epstein, a co-owner of Mamacitas restaurant in Boulder, was arrested on suspicion of felony menacing and using a stun gun. A police report said Epstein and Casey M. Dane, a supervisor for Colorado Security Services Inc., were arguing over a metal boot that one of Dane's guards had clamped on a wheel of a van parked behind Mamacitas....

A Boulder salon owner ticketed in March for dyeing her poodle pink has made a deal with the city attorney's office that could dismiss the charge against her in six months if she doesn't commit a similar violation in that time. Wednesday morning, Joy Douglas' famous formerly pink poodle, Cici, was seen outside the Zing Salon at 1100 Spruce St. -- and the pooch was white. Douglas only commented to say her case has been dropped and she needs to have an attorney present before saying more. Officials with the city's municipal court said the case isn't dropped yet, and...