Today is July 27, 2023, and here’s what you need to know:

With a potential merger between two national supermarket chains hanging in the balance, dozens of concerned employees and consumers showed out to Attorney General Phil Weiser’s town hall Wednesday night in Colorado Springs to share their stories and push for action.

Attendees say the merger between Kroger and Albertsons, which operate King Soopers and Safeway, respectively, puts communities’ food security and employees’ jobs at risk.

“We spend our lives building these reputations,” said Mary Slyter, an employee at the West Colorado Avenue Safeway. “We’re the ones that make the name. We’re the ones that bust butt to make sure that they see their profit, but yet we’re the ones which always get left out in the rain.”

The town hall, led by Weiser and state Sen. Tony Exum Sr. at Carmel Community School, not far from the South Academy Boulevard King Soopers closed due to asbestos, is the 13th such “listening session” Weiser has held in order to better understand community concerns and answer questions.

The U.S. is concealing a longstanding program that retrieves and reverse engineers unidentified flying objects, a former Air Force intelligence officer testified Wednesday to Congress. The Pentagon has denied his claims.

Retired Maj. David Grusch’s highly anticipated testimony before a House Oversight subcommittee was Congress’ latest foray into the world of UAPs – or “unidentified aerial phenomena,” which is the official term the U.S. government uses instead of UFOs. While the study of mysterious aircraft or objects often evokes talk of aliens and “little green men,” Democrats and Republicans in recent years have pushed for more research as a national security matter due to concerns that sightings observed by pilots may be tied to U.S. adversaries.

Grusch said he was asked in 2019 by the head of a government task force on UAPs to identify all highly classified programs relating to the task force’s mission. At the time, Grusch was detailed to the National Reconnaissance Office, the agency that operates U.S. spy satellites.

“I was informed in the course of my official duties of a multi-decade UAP crash retrieval and reverse engineering program to which I was denied access,” he said.

Asked whether the U.S. government had information about extraterrestrial life, Grusch said the U.S. likely has been aware of “non-human” activity since the 1930s.

The Colorado suicide prevention lifeline received more than 11,200 calls – 22% of which went unanswered – between April and May of this year, according to a new report from a health policy research group.

The 988 suicide and crisis lifeline went live in July of 2022, providing both phone and text support for individuals experiencing a mental health crisis. As a federally-mandated part of the National Suicide Hotline Designation Act of 2020, each state is required to have a call center that puts callers in contact with a live counselor. The program combined the former National Suicide Prevention Hotline and Veterans Crisis Line under a 3-digit alias.

KFF, the health policy research group, notes that since its inception, 988 has made almost five million contacts nationally. But the program’s ability to answer calls has proven to be a tough task.

Between April and May, five states reported answer rates between 55% and 69%.

The Colorado Supreme Court announced earlier this month that it will review multiple criminal cases, with issues ranging from racial bias in jury selection and the meaning of a parent-child relationship to the law justifying deadly force against home intruders.

At least three of the court’s seven members must agree to hear a case on appeal.

The justices also resolved three appeals that came directly from the trial courts. One case was terminated as moot, another returned to the trial court with an admission that the judge committed an error, and the third case saw the Supreme Court let the trial judge’s ruling stand.

The Colorado Springs City Council granted a request to postpone an appeal hearing on a controversial apartment complex designed to support homeless young adults.

The council voted 8-1 Tuesday, with Councilman David Leinweber opposed, to delay the hearing on the 50-unit Launchpad Apartments planned to be built on the city’s west side until Aug. 8, the council’s next regular meeting.

Plan for Colorado Springs apartment complex for homeless young adults gets greenlight

Councilmembers said they supported postponing the item because Tuesday’s agenda was robust and included five public hearings on various land-use items, the Launchpad Apartments appeal among them.

“We would not be able to give the Launchpad session the right amount of time, energy and effort from councilmembers up here,” Council President Randy Helms said during a work session Monday, when the council discussed but did not vote on the appeal request.

Residents intend to ask the City Council to overturn the Planning Commission’s June 14 decision to uphold city planning staff’s administrative approval of plans to build the apartments just north of the intersection of West Uintah and North 19th streets.