ON CAMPUS
• Oprah Winfrey will deliver the commencement address on Sunday, May 19. (CC)
• Ramilla Cody, a Grammy Nominee, multiple Native American Music Awards winner, 46th Miss Navajo Nation, one of NPR’s 50 Great Voices, a Black History Maker Honoree, and the founder of the “Strong Spirit: Life is Beautiful not Abusive” campaign, is speaking at Colorado College on Friday, March 29. (CC)
C-SPRINGS
• President Donald Trump announced the United States Space Command will be based in Colorado Springs, with Air Force Gen. Jay Raymond in charge. (Gazette)
• Palmer High School seniors Cristian Granados and Gabriel Wright won first prize in C-SPAN’s 2019 StudentCam contest, taking home $3,000. (Gazette)
• Colorado Springs will build 15,000 ramps over the next 14 years to settle an accessibility lawsuit. (KKTV11)
• Cheyenne Mountain Zoo welcomed a baby howler monkey this week. (9news)
COLORADO
• Seven Western states, including Colorado, agreed on a plan to manage the Colorado River amid a 19-year drought, voluntarily cutting their water use to prevent the federal government from imposing a mandatory squeeze on the supply. (NYT)
• The U.S. Drought Monitor report released Thursday says only about 46 percent of Colorado is now listed in some kind of drought status, down from 83 percent last week. (Gazette)
• The Denver City Council unanimously voted to get rid of a tax on feminine hygiene products. (CBS4)
• The National Weather Service says winds reached a record 96 mph in Colorado Springs during last week’s blizzard. (DenPo)
• The Anti-Defamation League ranked Colorado third in the nation for white supremacist propaganda. (DenPo)
USA
• In Nebraska, record-breaking flooding killed four people, displaced thousands, and is expected to cost $1 billion in agriculture and livestock losses. The governors of Nebraska, South Dakota, and Wisconsin have declared emergencies, and Iowa’s governor has issued a disaster proclamation. (NPR)
• The Pentagon authorized the transfer of $1 billion in order to build 57 miles of wall on the southern border. (Hill)
• The father of a Sandy Hook school shooting victim was found dead in an apparent suicide in Connecticut, the local police said. (NYT)
• Purdue Pharma will pay almost $275 million to settle a lawsuit brought by the State of Oklahoma, accusing the company of deceptive marketing and playing down the opioid’s power to addict. (NYT)
• The all-female spacewalk by NASA was cancelled due to a lack of spacesuits in the right size. (Guardian)
• Alex Trebec, the host of Jeopardy, has pancreas cancer. (CNN)
WORLD
• Cyclone Idai, in Mozambique, Zimbabwe, and Malawi, destroyed 90 percent of the country’s fourth-largest city. Hundreds of thousands are stranded, and more than 700 are dead in Mozambique alone. (AP)
• New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced that the country would ban the sale of all assault rifles and semi-automatic guns less than a week after a shooter opened fire at two mosques in Christchurch, killing 50 people. (Hill)
• More than a million students around the world protested their governments’ lack of climate action on March 15. (CNN)
• Scientists discovered a likely new species of orca off southern Chile. The currently-named Type D whales are “the largest undescribed animal left on the planet.” (Nat Geo).