Colorado lawmakers returned to the Capitol on Monday to consider a $220 million stimulus package for restaurants, movie theaters, child care centers and other businesses that have been hard hit by coronavirus restrictions.

But lawmakers spent the week leading up to the special session trying to manage their constituents’ expectations for the state-funded stimulus.

Rep. Dylan Roberts, D-Avon, said at a recent town hall the package would not be a “silver bullet.”

Monuments and statues in at least four U.S. cities have been toppled or graffitied with the words "land back" this week. "Land back" is a movement for indigenous sovereignty, and these actions occurred during the week of Thanksgiving, which many Native Americans call the National Day of Mourning.

Discovering the origins of the monolith in 2001: A Space Odyssey requires only a keen cinematic eye or time spent with Arthur C. Clarke's novel. But the mystery surrounding its apparent real-life counterpart just got stranger.

A metallic monolith of unknown origin, discovered more than a week ago, has vanished from the Utah desert as mysteriously as it appeared, according to the Bureau of Land Management's Utah division.

For many Native Americans, Thanksgiving is a day of mourning to grieve over ancestors lost to massacres, land grabs and European-borne illness.

Today, Native Americans are among the hardest hit by COVID-19. The Indian Health Service federal agency reported a 25% positivity rate among Native Americans in the Great Plains, which includes North and South Dakota.

For Walter Fleming, an enrolled member of the Kickapoo tribe in Kansas, Thanksgiving will be difficult this year because so many Native Americans have died from COVID-19.

"Particularly because it's been among our elders, the grieving is gonna be that much more," Fleming said. "These are the cultural guardians."

Fleming is a professor of Native American studies at Montana State University, who observes the holiday. He says it's a chance for people to come together, feast and celebrate.

Patients hospitalized with COVID-19 can require long and intensive care, and with this most recent surge in new cases, hospitals and medical providers in parts of the country are strained.

In Utah, intensive care units are at 87% capacity, according to the state, which is well above what’s recommended by the Utah Department of Health. 

State officials were flying over southeastern Utah looking for sheep as part of a routine task. Instead they found something straight out of a sci-fi movie.

From a helicopter, officers from the Utah Department of Public Safety spotted a large metal monolith — a single block of metal — last week. It was sitting in Utah's Red Rock Country in the southeast. Officials have no idea how or when it got there — or who might have placed it.