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Syrian government services come to a 'complete halt' as state workers stay homeThe countdown to launch has begun for a small Washington state company developing something long dreamed of in the space industry. Andy Lapsa, co-founder and CEO of Stoke Space, a standout in the state’s burgeoning space technology industry, calls it “this Holy Grail of rocketry, which is fully, rapidly reusable rockets.” At Stoke’s newly built headquarters in Kent, engineers and technicians are assembling the giant barrel-shaped sections of a rocket and two very different engines designed to make not just the booster but the upper stage of the spacecraft reusable. The goal is a rocket capable of launching into orbit, returning to Earth and then lifting off again almost daily. The plan, said Tom Feldman, Stoke co-founder, is spaceflight on “an aircraftlike schedule.” This would provide transformative cost savings and access that could open up space for commercial expansion and accelerate further innovation. Kelly Hennig, Stoke’s chief operating officer, said the initial rocket launch from Florida’s Cape Canaveral is planned toward the end of next year, though that one will be expendable, not reused. Reaching the Holy Grail, she said, will take about another year beyond that. Stoke is designing and building its rocket in Kent and test firing engine prototypes at Moses Lake in Central Washington. There, on 75 sprawling acres of sagebrush desert, tall white fuel tanks containing liquid hydrogen, oxygen or liquid natural gas rise like pillars around a set of intricately designed test facilities. Those include a test stand for the booster-stage engine, rising above a 60-foot-deep flame trench where the first hotfire engine test is scheduled for later this month. Nearby is a smaller engine stand, where Stoke has already been testing what engineer Sophia Yu calls an “insane engine” with a unique ring-of-fire design that will power the second stage of the rocket. “It’s one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen,” said Yu, 27, who joined Stoke in March after 3 1⁄2 years at Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin rocket company, also headquartered in Kent. At Moses Lake last year, Stoke conducted a short hop-and-hover test of a second-stage prototype, successfully demonstrating that engine. Lapsa said leading his just over 160 employees to develop his rocket has been “an unbelievable experience.” Stoke is hiring and expects to double in size next year. Butch and Sundance Lapsa and Feldman met as rocket propulsion engineers at Blue Origin and left to found Stoke in fall 2019. On a tour of the new headquarters, the two were an odd-couple team. Lapsa, 42, trim with silvering hair and a boyish face, wore a neat black T-shirt and jeans in tech startup fashion, the image of someone who has so far raised more than $185 million from venture capitalists. Endearingly, fashion seems of zero concern to his buddy Feldman, 36, who wore his standard work uniform: faded blue denim cutoff shorts with a puffy black vest, his hair sticking out every which way from under a baseball cap. Lapsa, who’d worked at Blue for more than a decade, said leaving to start a company on their own was “easily the hardest decision that I’ve made.” Feldman had been at Blue just over six years. Shaping Stoke’s engineering concept, he said, “We spent the first six months working out of my basement, heads down, doing the math on, like, ‘Is this a good idea?’ Combined with, like, ‘How do you start a company and raise money?'” At the time, he had a 3-month-old baby at home, and the two engineers had no Rolodex of financiers to call. “We really just jumped off the cliff together,” Feldman said. A “ring-of-fire” engine Together, they’ve created something new. Feldman, who says he chose to study rocket propulsion in college because it seemed “the most badass engineering thing to do,” notes that space rockets are basically giant cylindrical fuel tanks with fiery engines at their base. Typically a large, powerful engine lifts the payload from the bounds of Earth’s gravity. Then that stage separates and a smaller second stage pushes it the rest of the way into orbit or further in space. While early NASA space programs developed expendable rockets that were used once then fell away into the ocean, Elon Musk’s Texas-based SpaceX and Bezos’ Kent-based Blue Origin succeeded in designing first-stage rockets that could land and be reused. More than half a century after the Apollo moon landings, the engineering ingenuity has fired up the public imagination and a new generation’s enthusiasm for space technology. SpaceX last month achieved a startling feat: “catching” its giant new Starship’s first stage between the waiting arms of the launch tower. Musk’s not-yet-achieved goal is also to land and make reusable the Starship’s second stage. Stoke too aims to have a reusable second stage. That’s a difficult design problem because the second stage will burn like a meteor when it reenters the atmosphere and requires a heat shield to survive. SpaceX plans for the second stage of Starship to “belly flop” through the atmosphere with about 18,000 tiles protecting the belly, then flip to a vertical position when near the ground. Stoke has devised a very different, more elegant solution. Its second-stage rocket will come down vertically. The design problem was how to fire an engine that would slow the rocket’s descent when there’s a domed heat shield in the way to protect the circular base. The result is that Stoke’s novel design looks nothing like a standard rocket engine, which typically has a large, bell-shaped exhaust nozzle. Instead, around the heat shield’s circular perimeter, 24 small thrusters will fire to slow the rocket’s descent in a “ring of fire.” The heat shield is deeply integrated with the thrusters so that it’s part of the engine. The second-stage rocket’s fuel — cryogenic hydrogen — is also used as coolant fed through intricate internal channels in the heat shield. When the shield gets hotter, it heats the fuel in these channels, which then drives the pumps faster and automatically increases the cold fuel flow through the heat shield. On NASA’s now-retired space shuttle and on Starship’s second stage, each of the thousands of heat shield tiles must be inspected closely for damage before reuse. But Lapsa said Stoke’s heat shield is designed to be “just as indestructible as possible.” Its design is so robust that “even if it was shot with a 9-mm pistol” and suffered a fuel leak, “it would still work,” said Feldman. Building the pieces of this rocket In January last year, Stoke moved into a new 168,000-square-foot Kent headquarters, where the workforce is young and diverse. Manufacturing engineer McKenzie Kinzbach, 28, who previously worked at SpaceX and Universal Hydrogen, said that in a field still dominated by men, she found Stoke’s culture welcoming for women. A tour of the facility this month started at a control room that allows remote viewing and monitoring of tests at Moses Lake and future launches at Cape Canaveral. Beyond that, in a high-ceilinged, clean factory space, engineers and technicians worked to complete rocket engines, heat shields shaped like giant satellite TV dishes 14 feet in diameter, and immense stainless steel barrel sections that will make up the body of the rocket. The body of Stoke’s 123-foot-tall rocket has remarkably thin walls, less than a tenth of an inch thick. The steel arrives here as flat sheet metal, which is cut with lasers and formed in-house. Some small spherical internal fuel tanks made of steel are blown up like balloons. Stoke’s rocket will have seven large engines on the first stage, burning oxygen and liquid natural gas and each developing 100,000 pounds of thrust. Inside the chambers where the fuel combusts, the temperature rises to about 6,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Engine parts engineered with cooling features to withstand that temperature are made from copper, inconel — a nickel-chromium alloy resistant to extreme heat — and a proprietary material Stoke has developed for components that interface with hot oxygen. The thrust chambers, turbine housings, fuel injectors and nozzles are all manufactured using 3D printers large enough to make metal components up to 2 feet tall. The parabolic heat shield is fabricated by welding together 198 rectangular panels, each one 3D printed with those intricate coolant channels embedded. A test site carved out of the desert When Katherine Cruz, Stoke’s vice president of test operations and another Blue Origin alumnus, arrived in the spring of 2021 to set up Stoke’s Moses Lake site, it was an expanse of empty desert and they had no power, internet or piped water. She said it took “grit and a lot of passion” to build the impressive test facility. At the entrance of the site, a “light tree” with green, amber and red lights indicates access restrictions to each test area. When a hotfire test is imminent, a red light means no one can go in. “We’re intentionally playing with fire,” said Cruz, 33. In June, impatient to test-fire its first-stage engine, Stoke mounted it on a stand and shot its fiery exhaust out horizontally into empty desert. With a massive new test stand now complete, that engine can now be tested in its proper vertical orientation. This month, engineers will hang the engine from heavy metal rings built into the top of the reinforced concrete structure and let that exhaust flow downward into a “flame diverter” stretching 60 feet below. Stoke broke ground on this newest structure just a year ago, digging out a deep, wide trench below and at its lowest point installing the flame diverter — a tall, curving waterfall of pipes underneath where the engine will hang. In a hotfire test, water will be pumped through those pipes and gush from holes directly under the rocket engine’s fiery plume to absorb the energy. The steam produced will rush along the 165-foot-wide, 262-foot-long gash in the desert floor. To find out if the novel ring-of-fire concept was feasible, Stoke built a smaller stand for testing that engine first and has fired it hundreds of times since 2022. An updated version of that engine is now being assembled in Kent and will begin testing early next year. “The intention of this next iteration engine is to get very, very close to what we are hoping to fly,” said Cruz. The mission and the vision The space industry in the Pacific Northwest has swelled in recent years and spawned a host of startup companies. The sector is anchored by Blue Origin in Kent and two major satellite projects: Amazon’s Project Kuiper in Kirkland and SpaceX’s Starlink in Redmond. Other notable companies include Aerojet Rocketdyne, now part of L3Harris, in Redmond, and BlackSky in Seattle. Kelly Maloney, co-founder of the trade group Space Northwest, said the industry now supports 13,000 direct employees with currently about 1,500 open positions. Stoke’s avionics manufacturing manager James Miller, 32, who worked at Blue Origin for six years and then on Project Kuiper at Amazon, said he took a cut in salary to move to Stoke 2 1⁄2 years ago. When he interviewed and heard the details of Stoke’s technology plan, “I said, ‘Man, I really can’t say no to this. This is too cool.’ " Technician manager David Hilts-Hoskins, 31, grew up in Puyallup and learned his mechanical skills mostly working on boats before he joined Blue Origin. After eight years there, he joined Stoke in January. “I love all the novelty of everything,” he said. “It’s been amazing.” Stoke assembly manager Tyler Crews, 37, likewise learned his skills practically, not in college, “hands-on and really being curious.” He was raised in Lynnwood, his dad worked for Boeing and his whole family is excited to see what he’s working on. CEO Lapsa said Stoke’s rockets are designed to be reused 100 times with quick turnarounds, vastly reducing the cost of access to space. “You wouldn’t throw a 737 away at the end of every flight,” he said. “It’s silly to do the same for a rocket.” COO Hennig said the ability of Stoke’s rocket to bring things down from orbit as well as bring things up adds more commercial possibilities. That could facilitate asteroid mining, space junk cleanup and orbital manufacturing — where microgravity has been touted as an advantage for making some protein-based drugs, optical fibers and even artificial eye retinas. Hennig said Stoke has also talked to the government about potentially using the rocket to deliver military cargo at high speed across the globe, though that would presumably strand the second stage far away and make it not reusable. Beyond these far-out concepts, everyone in this new space industry seems to share a wilder vision, one straight from the rhetoric of Musk and Bezos: humans populating space and other planets in our solar system. For outsiders, that’s just science fiction. While envisioning scientific bases on Mars makes sense — like the bases established in Antarctica — surely no one would want to live there full time, even if it were possible. Yet Musk, with more sway than ever after aggressively backing Donald Trump in the presidential election, has successfully sold a vision of “cities on Mars.” And people in the space industry want to believe. “I absolutely think we will have colonies and cities on Mars or the moon,” says Lapsa, politely disagreeing with a skeptical journalist. “Whether that’s in 15 years or 150 years, I don’t know, but I think we will have them.” The first small step for man, among the many steps to that far-off future, he sees as Stoke’s idea of making access to space routine. “I’m very excited about all of those visions,” Lapsa said. “But I think that if any of them are going to come true, you really need a healthy, vibrant, competitive economy in space.” While Stoke still has many technical challenges ahead to reach even its initial launch, he believes rapid reusability is within grasp. Standing on the shoulders of the Apollo generation and using advances in computing and materials, Lapsa said, “We can do things with a cost structure and a timeline that was never possible before.” ©2024 The Seattle Times. Visit seattletimes.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
By DEVNA BOSE and JOHN SEEWER “Wanted” posters with the names and faces of health care executives have been popping up on the streets of New York. Hit lists with images of bullets are circulating online with warnings that industry leaders should be afraid. Related Articles National News | How to protect your communications through encryption National News | Military service academies see drop in reported sexual assaults after alarming surge National News | Unidentified drones spotted flying at locations across NYC, including LaGuardia Airport National News | About 2.6 million Stanley cups recalled after malfunctions caused burns. Is your mug included? National News | Woman who falsely accused Duke lacrosse players of rape in 2006 publicly admits she lied The apparent targeted killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson and the menacing threats that followed have sent a shudder through corporate America and the health care industry in particular, leading to increased security for executives and some workers. In the week since the brazen shooting , health insurers have removed information about their top executives from company websites, canceled in-person meetings with shareholders and advised all employees to work from home temporarily. An internal New York Police Department bulletin warned this week that the online vitriol that followed the shooting could signal an immediate “elevated threat.” Police fear that the Dec. 4 shooting could “inspire a variety of extremists and grievance-driven malicious actors to violence,” according to the bulletin, which was obtained by The Associated Press. “Wanted” posters pasted to parking meters and construction site fences in Manhattan included photos of health care executives and the words “Deny, defend, depose” — similar to a phrase scrawled on bullets found near Thompson’s body and echoing those used by insurance industry critics . Thompson’s wife, Paulette, told NBC News last week that he told her some people had been threatening him and suggested the threats may have involved issues with insurance coverage. Investigators believe the shooting suspect, Luigi Mangione , may have been motivated by hostility toward health insurers. They are studying his writings about a previous back injury, and his disdain for corporate America and the U.S. health care system. Mangione’s lawyer has cautioned against prejudging the case. Mangione, 26, has remained jailed in Pennsylvania, where he was arrested Monday . Manhattan prosecutors are working to bring him to New York to face a murder charge. UnitedHealthcare’s parent company, UnitedHealth Group, said this week it was working with law enforcement to ensure a safe work environment and to reinforce security guidelines and building access policies, a spokesperson said. The company has taken down photos, names and biographies for its top executives from its websites, a spokesperson said. Other organizations, including CVS, the parent company for insurance giant Aetna, have taken similar actions. Government health insurance provider Centene Corp. has announced that its investor day will be held online, rather than in-person as originally planned. Medica, a Minnesota-based nonprofit health care firm, said last week it was temporarily closing its six offices for security reasons and would have its employees work from home. Heightened security measures likely will make health care companies and their leaders more inaccessible to their policyholders, said former Cigna executive Wendell Potter. “And understandably so, with this act of violence. There’s no assurance that this won’t happen again,” said Potter, who’s now an advocate for health care reform. Private security firms and consultants have been in high demand, fielding calls almost immediately after the shooting from companies across a range of industries, including manufacturing and finance. Companies have long faced security risks and grappled with how far to take precautions for high-profile executives. But these recent threats sparked by Thompson’s killing should not be ignored, said Dave Komendat, a former security chief for Boeing who now heads his own risk-management company. “The tone and tenor is different. The social reaction to this tragedy is different. And so I think that people need to take this seriously,” Komendat said. Just over a quarter of the companies in the Fortune 500 reported spending money to protect their CEOs and top executives. Of those, the median payment for personal security doubled over the last three years to just under $100,000. Hours after the shooting, Komendat was on a call with dozens of chief security officers from big corporations, and there have been many similar meetings since, hosted by security groups or law enforcement agencies assessing the threats, he said. “It just takes one person who is motivated by a poster — who may have experienced something in their life through one of these companies that was harmful,” Komendat said. Associated Press reporters Wyatte Grantham-Philips in New York and Barbara Ortutay in San Francisco, contributed to this report.One day, when actor and comedian Rosie O'Donnell was in her 50s, her body ached and her arms felt sore, but she pushed through the pain, not realizing she was having a massive heart attack. She had surgery to put in a stent that saved her life. Shortly after her 2012 heart attack, O'Donnell shared her experience on her blog. During her 2015 television standup special, she spoke about how the experience changed her life. The segment included a heart attack acronym the comedian coined: HEPPP (hot, exhausted, pain, pale, puke). O'Donnell's candidness about her heart attack helped spread awareness about how it can present differently in women. She's one of countless celebrities over the years who have opened up about their health conditions, including breast cancer, HIV, depression, heart disease and stroke. When celebrities reveal and discuss their health issues, the impact can be far-reaching. It not only helps to educate the public, but it also can reduce stigma and inspire others. People are also reading... 2 Statesville men face murder charges in 2011 shooting death of Joey Brewer Iredell County deputies charge 7 people in drug trafficking investigation Woman charged with stabbing car dealership employee on test drive in Mooresville 3 men face arson charges in Statesville house fire that severely burned woman Iredell-Statesville Schools OK $3.3 million in stadium upgrades at Lake Norman High School See balloons light up Statesville Park and Soccer Complex on Saturday Hear the songs, see Santa at Sunday's Statesville Christmas Parade Statesville wrestler reaches milestone; Carolina Panthers honor Mooresville standout HIGH SCHOOL BASKETBALL ROUNDUP: Steinhour, Lake Norman topple 4A state runner-up New Hanover Quilts of Valor presented to 5 veterans at Charles Mack Citizen Center H&W Drug, owned by Haupt family for nearly 100 years, closes in Newton Families prepare for mass deportations: 'A sad and painful time' How to carve a turkey like a pro Raleigh writer: NC can go bigger on regulatory reform New school chairman rules 2 fellow board members out of order in Iredell "Health disclosures by celebrities do matter, and we know this from decades of research across a lot of different health conditions and public figures," said Dr. Jessica Gall Myrick, a professor of health communication at Pennsylvania State University in University Park. "They absolutely do influence people." Some of the earliest celebrity health disclosures happened in the 1970s and 1980s with U.S. presidents and first ladies. When first lady Betty Ford was diagnosed with breast cancer just weeks after Gerald Ford became president in 1974, she spoke openly about her diagnosis, inviting photographers into the White House and helping make talk of cancer less taboo. In 1987, first lady Nancy Reagan used her breast cancer diagnosis as a chance to advocate for women to get mammograms. Her disclosure came two years after President Ronald Reagan's colon cancer diagnosis, about which the couple was equally as vocal. "Individuals throughout the country have been calling cancer physicians and information services in record numbers," the Los Angeles Times reported after Nancy Reagan's widely publicized surgery. The public showed a similar interest years earlier following Betty Ford's mastectomy. Another major milestone in celebrity health disclosures came in 1991, when 32-year-old NBA superstar Earvin "Magic" Johnson revealed he had tested positive for HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. "Life is going to go on for me, and I'm going to be a happy man," Johnson assured fans during a news conference. He immediately retired, only to return to the Los Angeles Lakers in 1996. His disclosure, along with his work as an advocate for safe sex, helped shatter stigmas around HIV and AIDS. Calls to testing centers increased significantly in the days and weeks after Johnson's announcement. "That celebrity disclosure really helped people see there was a wider susceptibly to HIV," Gall Myrick said. "People were more likely to say, 'I need to think about my own risks.' It was very powerful." When it comes to heart and stroke health, President Dwight Eisenhower helped make heart attacks less frightening and mysterious. During a news conference in 1955, millions of Americans learned from the president's doctors about his heart condition, his treatment, and concrete steps they could take to reduce their own heart attack risk. Other notable figures have shared their health experiences over the years. Soap opera legend Susan Lucci , who was diagnosed with heart disease in 2018, has advocated for women's heart health. Basketball great Kareem Abdul Jabbar talks about his irregular heartbeat, known as atrial fibrillation, and advocates for regular health screenings. Lawyer, author and television personality Star Jones continues to speak about heart disease risk after having lifesaving heart surgery in 2010. Longtime TV and radio personality Dick Clark brought stroke and aphasia into the national spotlight when he returned to hosting "New Year's Rockin' Eve" in Times Square just a year after his 2004 stroke and continued until his death in 2012. And actor and comedian Jamie Foxx recently revealed he had a stroke last year. "Celebrity disclosures represent teachable moments," said Dr. Seth M. Noar, director of the Communicating for Health Impact Lab at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill. "Searches for different health conditions often spike in the wake of these types of announcements. They cause people to think about these health issues, learn more about them, and in some cases change their behaviors." Celebrities have also highlighted the importance of CPR and the use of an automated external defibrillator, or AED, to restore a person's heartbeat if they experience cardiac arrest. Interest in CPR and AEDs spiked in 2023 after Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin went into cardiac arrest during an NFL game broadcast on national TV. Views of the American Heart Association's hands-only CPR pages jumped more than 600% in the days following Hamlin's cardiac arrest. Three months later, around 3 million people had watched the AHA's CPR video. Family members of celebrities who have died from a heart issue have also spread awareness. After actor John Ritter died of an undiagnosed aortic dissection in 2003, his wife, actor Amy Yasbeck, started the Ritter Foundation to raise awareness about the condition and help others avoid a misdiagnosis. A literature review published in Systematic Reviews in 2017 found that people are conditioned to react positively to celebrity advice. Research also has found that people often follow advice from celebrities who match how they perceive – or how they want to perceive – themselves. The most effective celebrity disclosures are frequently the ones that tell a compelling story and include clear steps people can take to apply lessons the celebrity learned to their own health situation, Gall Myrick said. "People are more likely to take action when they feel confident and capable." Research has shown that celebrity disclosures often impact calls to hotlines and page views on health-related websites, and they can spark behavioral and even policy changes. Anecdotally, Gall Myrick said, people ask their doctor more questions about health conditions and request medical screenings. Celebrities can have a big impact because people tend to have parasocial relationships with them, Gall Myrick said. These are one-sided relationships in which a person feels an emotional connection with another person, often a celebrity. People may feel as if they know the basketball player they've watched on the court for years, or the Hollywood actor they've followed, she said. They want to comfort them after a health disclosure. Social media has only increased this feeling of familiarity, as celebrities regularly share mundane – but fascinating – details of their daily lives, like what they eat for breakfast, their favorite socks, or the meditation they do before bed. "We spend a lifetime being exposed to celebrities through the media, and over time, you get to know these public figures," Gall Myrick said. "Some feel like friendships." A study published in the journal Science Communication in 2020 compared reactions to actor Tom Hanks, who had COVID-19 early in the pandemic, and an average person with COVID-19. Researchers found that participants identified more with Hanks when it came to estimating their own susceptibility to COVID-19. The participants also felt more emotional about the virus that causes COVID-19 when thinking about it in relation to Hanks versus an average person. When a celebrity reveals a health condition, it's a surprise that may feel personal, especially if they are well-liked and the health issue is dramatic and sudden. "We feel like we know them, and the emotional response is what can then push people out of their routine," Gall Myrick said. Noar said a celebrity health story is often a more interesting and powerful way to learn about a health condition than just the facts, which can feel overwhelming. People are drawn to the slew of media coverage that typically follows a celebrity disclosure, he said. "Some of these high-visibility public figures' stories are now woven into some of these illnesses," Noar said. For example, Angelina Jolie is often linked to the BRCA1 gene mutation after the actor shared she had a preventive double mastectomy because of her elevated breast cancer risk and had her ovaries and fallopian tubes removed because of her increased risk for ovarian cancer. "It's a narrative, a story that humanizes the condition in a way that very informational communication really doesn't," Noar said. "People remember it, and it can potentially be a touch point." After a disclosure, patients may bring up a celebrity's story during a doctor's appointment and connect it to their own care. Today's multiplatform digital culture only amplifies celebrity messages. "You're seeing everyday people react to these events, and that can have a ripple effect too," Gall Myrick said. "We know from research that seeing messages more than once can be impactful. Often it's not just one billboard or one commercial that impacts behavior; it's the drip drip drip over time." Still, there's a cautionary tale to be told around the impact of celebrity health news, especially if the celebrity has died. An unclear cause of death may lead to speculation. Gall Myrick said that guesswork could potentially end up hurting rather than helping if patients were to act on misinformation or a lack of information. "Maybe the death was atypical or it needs more context," she said. "That's where advocacy groups and public health organizations come in. They need to be prepared for announcements or disclosures about celebrity deaths, and to fill in some of those gaps." American Heart Association News covers heart and brain health. Not all views expressed in this story reflect the official position of the American Heart Association. Copyright is owned or held by the American Heart Association, Inc., and all rights are reserved. Sign up here to get the latest health & fitness updates in your inbox every week!
DENVER (AP) — Amid renewed interest in the triggered in part by a new Netflix documentary, police in Boulder, Colorado, refuted assertions this week that there is viable evidence and leads about the 1996 killing of the 6-year-old girl that they are not pursuing. JonBenet Ramsey, who competed in beauty pageants, was found dead in the basement of her family’s home in the college town of Boulder the day after Christmas in 1996. Her body was found several hours after her mother called 911 to say her daughter was missing and a ransom note had been left behind. The details of the crime and video footage of JonBenet competing in pageants propelled the case into one of the highest-profile mysteries in the United States. The police comments came as part of their annual update on the investigation, a month before the 28th anniversary of JonBenet’s killing. Police said they released it a little earlier due to the increased attention on the case, apparently referring to the three-part Netflix series “Cold Case: Who Killed JonBenet Ramsey.” In a video statement, Boulder Police Chief Steve Redfearn said the department welcomes news coverage and documentaries about the killing of JonBenet, who would have been 34 this year, as a way to generate possible new leads. He said the department is committed to solving the case but needs to be careful about what it shares about the investigation to protect a possible future prosecution. “What I can tell you though, is we have thoroughly investigated multiple people as suspects throughout the years and we continue to be open-minded about what occurred as we investigate the tips that come into detectives,” he said. The Netflix documentary focuses on the mistakes made by police and the “media circus” surrounding the case. JonBenet was bludgeoned and strangled. Her death was ruled a homicide, but nobody was ever prosecuted. Police were widely criticized for mishandling the early investigation into her death amid speculation that her family was responsible. However, a prosecutor cleared her parents, John and Patsy Ramsey, and brother Burke in 2008 based on new DNA evidence from JonBenet’s clothing that pointed to the involvement of an “unexplained third party” in her slaying. The announcement by former district attorney Mary Lacy came two years after Patsy Ramsey died of cancer. Lacy called the Ramseys “victims of this crime.” John Ramsey has continued to speak out for the case to be solved. In 2022, he supported an online petition asking Colorado’s governor to intervene in the investigation by putting an outside agency in charge of DNA testing in the case. In the Netflix documentary, he said he has been for several items that have not been prepared for DNA testing to be tested and for other items to be retested. He said the results should be put through a genealogy database. In recent years, investigators have identified suspects in unsolved cases by comparing DNA profiles from crime scenes and to DNA testing results shared online by people researching their family trees. In 2021, police said in their annual update that help solve the case, and in 2022 noted that some evidence could be “consumed” if DNA testing is done on it. Last year, police said they convened a panel of outside experts to review the investigation to give recommendations and determine if updated technologies or forensic testing might produce new leads. In the latest update, Redfearn said that review had ended but that police continue to work through and evaluate a “lengthy list of recommendations” from the panel. ____ Amy Beth Hanson contributed to this report from Helena, Montana. Colleen Slevin, The Associated PressWhat to Watch the Weekend of Friday the 13th (Like You Have to Ask)
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The Indiana vs. Notre Dame matchup in the first round of the College Football Playoff is the most expensive ticket on StubHub, but it's Tennessee vs. Ohio State that's selling the fastest. StubHub spokesperson Adam Budelli said Monday that the game being hosted in Columbus, Ohio, on Dec. 21 has sold 34% more tickets than the game in South Bend, Indiana, on Dec. 20. “The expanded college football playoffs are seeing early high demand, especially as we see new teams enter the competition for the first time,” Budelli said. StubHub lists tickets for sale from official event organizers, but most of its offerings are from the resale market. Here's the ticket marketplace's average CFP first-round prices as of Monday evening: 1. Indiana at Notre Dame — $733 2. Clemson at Texas — $518 3. Tennessee at Ohio State — $413 4. SMU at Penn State — $271 Get poll alerts and updates on the AP Top 25 throughout the season. Sign up here . AP college football: https://apnews.com/hub/ap-top-25-college-football-poll and https://apnews.com/hub/college-footballNational highway development to be completed by December 2025, says Tourism Minister P.A. Mohamed Riyas