Winter Park News | Online Colorado Newspaper

All photos available for purchase, click here: www.skyhidailynews.com/purchasephotos/

For the first time since the early '90s, the U.S. Alpine Championships will return to the Colorado Rocky Mountains when Winter Park Resort hosts the event March 31-April 3, 2011.
Athletes expected to compete include Olympic medalists Lindsey Vonn (Vail), Julia Mancuso (Olympic Valley, Calif.), Ted Ligety (Park City, Utah) and Andrew Weibrecht (Lake Placid, N.Y.).
Winter Park hosted a string of championships from 1992-94 and has been an integral host to early season technical races on the NorAm circuit for over a decade.
"It's clear that Winter Park has an exceptional desire and pride to host the U.S. Alpine Championships," said Calum Clark, Vice President Events for the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association. "Their competition center sets the standard in snow preparation and has been a key partner in organizing early season races on the NorAm circuit for well over a decade. I have no doubt that experience will translate into outstanding conditions for the U.S. Championships."
Th

GRANTS PASS, Ore. (AP) - A federal judge Wednesday ordered the U.S. Forest Service to take a tougher look at the possibility that routinely dropping toxic fire retardant on wildfires from airplanes will kill endangered fish and plants.
U.S. District Judge Donald W. Molloy in Missoula, Mont., ruled that the current environmental assessment is inadequate in light of federal biologists' findings that fire retardant that lands in creeks and on rare plants jeopardize the survival of endangered species and their habitat.
Molloy did not restrict the use of fire retardant this summer, but in a sternly written order gave the Forest Service until the end of 2011 to do a tougher environmental impact statement. He warned the agency could be found in contempt for failing to meet the deadline and refused to hear further arguments on the issue.
He also sent environmental analyses in support of the Forest Service assessment, known as biological opinions, back to the U.S. Fish and Wildli

ATLANTA (AP) - Eighteen states and the District of Columbia were named finalists Tuesday in the second round of the federal "Race to the Top" school reform grant competition, giving them a chance to receive a share of $3.4 billion.
The states are Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Illinois, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and South Carolina.
The competition rewards ambitious reforms aimed at improving struggling schools and closing the achievement gap. Dozens of states have passed new education policies to foster charter school growth and modify teachers evaluations, hoping to make themselves more attractive to the judges.
In a speech announcing the finalists at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., Tuesday, Education Secretary Arne Duncan said a "quiet revolution" of education reform is taking place across the country.
"It's b

DENVER (AP) - A new national report says the percentage of Colorado children living poverty rose to 15 percent from 10 percent in the last decade, tying with New Hampshire for the fastest increase.
The report 2010 Kids Count Data Book released Tuesday by the Annie E. Casey Foundation looks at 10 areas affecting children's well-being from 2000 to 2008.
The report ranks Colorado 20th in the nation overall, up from 22nd last year. It says Colorado improved in five areas: infant mortality rate, child death rate, teen death rate, teen birth rate and teens not in school and not graduating from high school.
But the state lost ground in the percentage of children living in poverty, low-birthweight babies and children in single-parent families.

ASPEN - As an ongoing scientific study of a vast system of underwater caves funded by the National Geographic Society started to yield findings, researchers and divers, including freelance photographer Wes Skiles, presented what they had discovered to the society's magazine editors.

After the presentation, which happened more than a year ago, photo editor Sadie Quarrier approached Skiles and said the magazine wanted to do a story on the caves, called Blue Holes, which litter the Bahamas.

And for its August 2010 issue, Skiles, along with writer Andrew Todhunter, produced what National Geographic Magazine Editor-in-Chief Chris Johns hailed as an incredibly poignant piece of journalism, a "major production" to add to the magazine's rich history of telling the world about itself.

But in an unexpected blow to the publication's staff, editors learned last week that Skiles, 52, died last week in a Florida diving accident that is being investigated by the Palm Beach