One lane of eastbound and westbound Interstate 70 in Glenwood Canyon will be reopened by the end of today, the Colorado Department of Transportation says.

Tom Barrett has always been involved in community events, but cancer had a way of dictating those events. The 53-year-old owner of Standard Tire & Service Center in Montrose now channels his focus toward raising money for the fight against cancer.

When a team gets it right defensively, good things happen. The Olathe High School girls basketball team is one of the best defensive teams in the state, and that defensive focus has taken the Pirates to the final eight of the Class 3A state playoffs, which begin today at Moby Arena at Colorado State University in Fort Collins.

It?s too soon to tell how much it will cost to repair damage done to Interstate 70 in Glenwood Canyon because of a rockslide or how long it will take to fix it, Colorado Department of Transportation officials said Wednesday. But rest assured, despite the state?s revenue problems, CDOT will find the money needed to repair it, spokeswoman Mindy Crane said.

2 women sought in theft Crime Stoppers needs help finding two adult women who have been accused of stealing more than $2,000 worth of tools at 11:50 a.m. Feb. 28 from Murdoch?s Ranch & Home, 3217 Interstate 70 Business Loop.

The closure of Interstate 70 in Glenwood Canyon is continuing into its fourth day today, but work crews Wednesday eliminated a major obstacle to reopening the route when they blasted a big boulder perched 800 feet above the roadway. Colorado Department of Transportation spokeswoman Nancy Shanks said ?it sure could happen? that I-70 reopens sometime today, assuming workers don?t encounter unanticipated problems.

State road crews had done some minor work inside the Hanging Lake Tunnels weeks before Monday?s rockslide on Interstate 70, but that work had nothing to do with the incident, Colorado Department of Transportation officials said Wednesday. The Daily Sentinel had received word that CDOT crews might have been blasting in Glenwood Canyon a few days before the slide occurred Monday, but department spokeswoman Mindy Crane said some people may be confusing that with routine rockfall mitigation that occurred last week in De Beque Canyon, which is more than 70 miles away.

Farm and Ranch Day on Saturday The third annual Farm and Ranch Day will be from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday at Coop Country, 1650 U.S. Highway 6&50 in Fruita.

Raymond Robert Jor ?Bobby? Blackman, 36, Grand Junction, died March 6, 2010, at St. Mary?s Hospital. A service will be at 1 p.m. today at Callahan Edfast Mortuary Chapel. A private interment is at the Blackman Family Cemetery in Collbran.

Grand Junction 9, Pueblo South 0 Wednesday at Pueblo

Colorado?s Unemployment Insurance Trust Fund has been broke for nearly two months, but those receiving unemployment checks need not worry their mailbox will be empty anytime soon. The fund officially ran out of state money Jan. 20, but the state has borrowed $122 million from the federal government as of Wednesday to keep benefits flowing to unemployment insurance recipients, according to Wayne Peel, chief financial officer of the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment. The state borrows the money from the federal government on a daily basis and does not exceed what the state needs to pay unemployment benefits.

Medical marijuana sellers that bake the product into food could soon face the same checks for sanitary kitchen conditions that restaurants experience. House Bill 1284, which lays out regulations and licensing processes for medical marijuana centers, may open the door to sanitation checks from county health inspectors, according to Ned Calonge, the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment?s chief medical officer.

Grand Junction unemployment hit a current-recession high in January, climbing to 9.4 percent in the metropolitan area. The area was just beginning to experience sweeping job losses in January 2009, when the unemployment rate in Grand Junction was 5.5 percent.

Palisade police will not pursue criminal charges against the owner of a local bar who posted a message on Facebook indicating elected town officials, including the mayor, were ?overdue? for an ?(expletive) kickin.? Police Chief Carroll Quarles said although it was clear Livery owner John VanLandingham threatened Mayor Dave Walker, his words didn?t rise to a criminal level.

An attorney for a man accused of killing his wife in western Colorado told a judge Wednesday that a life sentence would be ?inhuman? for his client, according to a British media report. Ben Cooper, who is fighting 46-year-old Marcus Bebb-Jones? extradition from England to Colorado, told a judge that life behind bars without the possibility of parole would be a ?grossly disproportionate? punishment if Bebb-Jones is convicted in the 1997 murder of his wife, Sabrina, according to a report from the British Broadcasting Corp.

When a team gets it right defensively, good things happen. The Olathe High School girls basketball team is one of the best defensive teams in the state, and that defensive focus has taken the Pirates to the final eight of the Class 3A state playoffs, which begin today at Moby Arena at Colorado State University in Fort Collins.

Tom Barrett has always been involved in community events, but cancer had a way of dictating those events. The 53-year-old owner of Standard Tire & Service Center in Montrose now channels his focus toward raising money for the fight against cancer.

Gov. Bill Ritter has instructed his administration to create a task force to study numerous questions surrounding the concept of storing carbon underground to keep it from contributing to climate change. The Ritter administration is taking the step to help support Colorado?s coal industry at a time of increasing concern about that fuel?s contribution to carbon levels in the atmosphere.