DENVER (AP) – The shooting at a Planned Parenthood and a brutal attack on a pregnant woman in Colorado Springs could fuel more fiery political contests over abortion and reproductive rights in the socially liberal swing state this year. A U.S. Senate seat and control of the U.S. House delegation is on the line in Colorado, where party affiliation is roughly even between Democrats and Republicans. Statewide contests often come down to the votes of suburban women who belong to neither party.
FORT COLLINS (AP) – A fund set up by the Colorado State University athletic department to help basketball player Emmanuel Omogbo after his parents and two other relatives died in a fire has raised more than $84,000. CSU set up a GoFundMe Wednesday and as of Friday morning it has earned more than $84,000.
BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) – A federal judge says the U.S. Interior Department must re-analyze a 117-million ton expansion of a Montana coal mine after environmentalists sued over the project’s potential climate change impacts. Judge Susan Watters says federal officials have nine months to re-examine the proposal for the Spring Creek mine near the Wyoming border. That follows similar rulings affecting two coal mines in Colorado.
DENVER (AP) – Colorado’s graduation rate failed to improve last year after four years of consecutive growth, while the dropout rate grew slightly for the first time in nearly a decade. State data show public schools statewide graduated 77.3 percent of students in the spring of 2015. That was the same rate as the previous year. The state’s 2015 dropout rate increased for the first time since 2006.