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Ameristar Casino sued by card counter after police detainment

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:02:15 GMT

BLACK HAWK, Colo. (KDVR) -- A Georgia blackjack player has filed a federal lawsuit in Colorado claiming he was illegally detained for doing something that's perfectly legal: counting cards at a casino.Joseph Shiraef told the Problem Solvers that what happened to him at the Ameristar Casino in Black Hawk on Oct. 19, 2021, was the most bizarre experience of his life."Well, I knew that it was wrong and I was just kind of in a state of shock at how ignorant that city officials were acting," he said.Colorado casino demands to see player's IDThe 34-year-old said he was down $4,000 when a floor manager demanded to see his identification. Shiraef said he still had about $1,800 in chips to cash out but the manager refused to let Shiraef cash out unless he handed over his driver's license. Problem Solvers: Case dismissed for man who trolled Thornton mayor — and video shows what happened Cell phone video shows Shiraef was already wearing a wristband he had been given to prove his age. He tol...

United plane catches fire on takeoff from Denver International Airport

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:02:15 GMT

DENVER (KDVR) — A United Airlines flight aborted takeoff at Denver International Airport over the weekend after a fire on the airplane.UA329 was bound for Boston Logan International Airport on Saturday.A preliminary report from the Federal Aviation Administration said the plane, a Boeing 737, aborted takeoff because of smoke and fire under the right wing.In recordings on LiveATC.net, an air traffic controller can be heard telling the pilot he saw fire and smoke under the plane. The pilot suggested it may have been the brakes and said there was a flat tire.Listen to those recordings in the video above. Delta flight diverts to Denver after hydraulic issue The pilot aborted takeoff. Aircraft Rescue and Firefighting crews, which are part of the Denver Fire Department, extinguished the fire, according to the FAA.United Airlines responded in a statement Wednesday night, saying passengers were transferred to another plane."United flight 329 experienced a mechanical issue at the begi...

Despite claims of change and housing, Denver begins clearing encampments

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:02:15 GMT

DENVER (KDVR) — In July, Denver Mayor Mike Johnston declared a citywide homelessness emergency and a big goal: house a thousand people by the end of the year.The city put a spotlight on clearing out the encampment at Eighth Avenue and Logan Street near the Governor's Residence at Boettcher Mansion last week. The mayor announced dozens of people would be housed and the Salvation Army gave a tour of a new shelter. United flight catches fire on takeoff from Denver International Airport On Wednesday, FOX31 learned that other​ homeless encampments are getting cleaned up but aren't​ getting that same kind of publicity.At a town hall meeting last week, the mayor said he was not going to approach the problem like others before him. On Wednesday, the city cleared out a homeless camp on 16th and Sherman streets, and now some said it's just more of the same."This sweep was something that was not something that resulted in any kind of housing opportunity offered, hotel stay, anything like tha...

WWII photographer honored for 100 years of service to country, community

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:02:15 GMT

BROOMFIELD, Colo. (KDVR) – A century of service. That’s what a Broomfield veteran has brought to his community and his country. Later this month, Bill Stremel will celebrate his 100th birthday.He’s crammed a lot into a century. Stremel served in the Army Air Corps in World War II as a photographer. He entered France 10 days after D-Day and captured some of the most brutal days of the war on film.“We took pictures of the damage that they thought they had caused,” Stremel told FOX31. Historic D-Day plane salvaged from the rubble heap After the war, he put down the camera and picked up the Bible. Following in his father’s footsteps, he spent decades as a Lutheran minister.“I’ve always wanted to help people,” Stremel said.He’s still working. Just a couple of weeks ago, he officiated the wedding of his granddaughter at Red Rocks. He’s married off generations of relatives.“I’m the pastor for the family,” Stremel joked.All that time in the clergy taught him an important life lesson.“Lear...

Policing the world: Michael Froman on limits to US power

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:02:15 GMT

Listen on Spotify Apple Music Google Play EN_Google_Podcasts_Badge Created with Sketch. Acast The crisis in the U.S. House of Representatives is resonating far beyond Washington, not least in Ukraine, where the durability of America’s commitment to the war effort has been thrown into doubt after future funding was omitted from its recent stopgap funding deal.Can Ukraine and its allies in Europe go it alone without agreement on...

Exorcising King Leopold’s ghost: Brussels takes on its colonial monuments

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:02:15 GMT

This article is part of POLITICO’s Global Policy Lab: Living Cities, a collaborative journalism project exploring the future of cities. Sign up here.BRUSSELS — The Black Lives Matter movement forced Brussels to confront Belgium’s brutal colonial past. But the city’s architecture keeps that fraught legacy squarely in the present. With eight months until the next election, the Brussels regional government is wrestling with a series of proposals designed to put some of the city’s most controversial monuments in historical context — or eliminate them altogether. While the ideas being floated are relatively modest, they have already elicited pushback from those who accuse the city of planning to erase history.Brussels is run through with monuments to Leopold II, the Belgian king who ran the Congo as his personal fiefdom in the late 19th and early 20th century, and to the country’s later period as a colonial power. A walk around the city will reveal dozens of monuments to ...

Europe’s monumental challenge: How do you solve a problem like Hitler?

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:02:15 GMT

Europe’s monumental challenge: How do you solve a problem like Hitler?Berlin worked to eliminate the monuments of Hitler’s Third Reich. Rome remains full of reminders of Il Duce.Aitor Hernández-MoralesAleksandra StanglewiczThis article is part of POLITICO’s Global Policy Lab: Living Cities, a collaborative journalism project exploring the future of cities. Sign up here.BERLIN — Within the warehouse of a 450-year-old citadel in a suburb of Berlin, an oversized bust sits in the dark, waiting to be restored.The giant marble head has seen better days — its skin is scuffed, its ears are chipped and its nose is missing — but even in this run-down state, its severe hairstyle and Charlie Chaplin mustache ensure it’s instantly recognizable. It’s a monumental portrait of Adolf Hitler — and it’s remarkably rare.“Unlike other dictators, Hitler didn’t want to create a traditional cult of personality around his person, at least not with statues,” sa...

On the hunt for the missing statues of Francisco Franco

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:02:15 GMT

OPTICSOn the hunt for the missing statues of Francisco FrancoBanished from public spaces, the dictator’s discarded monuments lie scattered in government buildings across Spain.Photos by Julia Schulz-DornburgThis article is part of POLITICO’s Global Policy Lab: Living Cities, a collaborative journalism project exploring the future of cities. Sign up here.Julia Schulz-Dornburg first became intrigued by Spain’s disappearing monuments after she oversaw an exhibition in Barcelona that included a decapitated stone statue of former Spanish dictator Francisco Franco.That it was missing its head didn’t save the statue from becoming a target of instant ire: Dozens of people pelted it with eggs and tomatoes, spray-painted it with leftist symbols and draped it with Catalan separatist flags. The guards on hand couldn’t prevent the protesters from toppling the dictator within days of his reappearance.Struck by the intense reaction, Schulz-Dornburg, a German architect, started wonderin...

EU cash is being increasingly misused, auditors warn

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:02:15 GMT

The race to spend EU funds before they expire means there’s been a rise in countries misspending the money, the bloc’s financial watchdog said on Thursday. Investigations into €196 billion in funds paid out from the EU budget in 2022 found there were irregularities connected to 4.2 percent, according to the European Court of Auditors. That’s up from 3 percent a year earlier. Countries can claim payments under the previous budget cycle until the end of this year while money under the bloc’s post-pandemic recovery fund must be spent by 2026.“The administrations within the member states will be under much more pressure to spend the money quickly,” ECA President Tony Murphy told POLITICO. “The issue this time is that there’s so much more money around to be spent within a short period of time.” He said this “increases the risk of either errors, or suboptimal projects, or, at the worst end of it, it means fraud as well.”Auditors a...

Casstevens: Congress mulls putting heavier trucks on roads

Published Thu, 20 Feb 2025 16:02:15 GMT

New products come to the market regularly, and consumers have come to expect significant testing and safeguards, especially for products that can affect public safety.This is why law enforcement nationwide is concerned with legislation under consideration in Congress that would allow bigger trucks on our roads. Some bills would dramatically increase the allowable weight of semi-trailer trucks that have already been approved by the House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee. And there continues to be talk of allowing even longer double-trailer trucks.One proposal would create a 10-year “pilot project” allowing 91,000-pound trucks — five and a half tons heavier than today’s limits. The goal: to see how many of these trucks are involved in crashes and to report the number of injuries and deaths. The usual years of data analysis and testing? Not for these 91,000-pound behemoths. The goal is to skip the typical due diligence and put them on roads immediately across America. Moto...