It’s safe to say that aphids don’t have many friends in Aspen these days, what with their blanketing the town in their poop and denuding our cottonwood trees.

But as of last night, not only do the aphids have few friends; they have hundreds of thousands of enemies brought in to kill and eat them.

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Former Secretary of State James A. Baker III said Thursday in Aspen that the United States should aim nuclear weapons at Iran, just as it aimed them at the Soviet Union during the Cold War.

“We still have all those nukes, 2,200 of them, and it doesn’t take 20 seconds to re-aim them at Iran,” said Baker, who was secretary of state from 1989 to 1992 under President George H.W. Bush. “And we ought to let those hard-line mullahs know that if they continue to pursue their nuclear program, we’re gonna re-aim them at them. And those people may be flaky and crazy, but they are not so flaky that they want themselves blown off the face of the earth.”

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A whirlybird operation that shut down Aspen’s back yard (aka Smuggler Mountain) on Thursday apparently went according to plan.

City forester Chris Forman, who assisting in the operation, said the helicopter pilot adroitly executed his mission: Picking up 202 beetle-infested trees that were felled and scattered throughout 130 acres of open space and dropping them off at a centralized location on top of Smuggler Mountain, where they are getting processed.

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Although it may have seemed like the rainiest June ever, it wasn’t. But on top of a rather soggy May, this week’s sun has been a welcome relief, especially for those who couldn’t escape to sunnier locales this off-season.

Total rainfall in June was 1.47 inches, not too much higher than the average precipitation of 1.29 inches, according to preliminary data from the city of Aspen water department. City water treatment plant supervisor Laura Taylor said she was surprised when she did the calculations that June didn’t come out wetter.

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A Pulitzer-prize winning author and professor emeritus of history at Stanford University spoke Thursday in the Hotel Jerome ballroom about the historical development of the West and its past and future affects on water management.

David M. Kennedy, who is also director of the Bill Lane Center for the American West at Stanford University, used maps, tables, figures and photographs to show the development of the country west of the 1009th meridian, the role of water in the West and the challenges facing the nation in future management of the resource.

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A man accused of unlawful sexual conduct on a local teenaged girl will remain in the Pitkin County Jail, despite a judge’s ruling that he could be sent to an alcohol rehabilitation program on a reduced bond.

Landin Smith, 44, has been in jail since March when he was charged for felony contributing to the delinquency of a minor and unlawful sexual conduct. The felonies against him were thrown out by a district court judge, but he still faces misdemeanor charges for allegedly touching a young girl inappropriately at the fire pit in downtown Aspen.

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