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Woman dies while hiking on Colorado trail, prompting heat warning from officials
A woman died while hiking in western Colorado on Monday as a heat dome blanketed pockets of the American West and drove up temperatures in a number of states. Marsha Cook, from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, was pronounced dead after collapsing around the two-mile mark of a hiking trail at Colorado National Monument, officials said Wednesday. She was 54.
Mesa County Coroner’s Office will investigate Cook’s death and determine what caused it, the National Park Service said in a statement. Although officials did not share more information about the circumstances around her collapse, they warned other people visiting the monument to be aware of excessively high temperatures in the area during the summer season and the potential dangers of those warm conditions for human health, especially when participating in an outdoor physical activity.
“Hiking in hot weather can lead to serious health risks including heat exhaustion and heat stroke,” the park service said in its statement about Cook’s fatal hike. “Daytime temperatures in Colorado National Monument have exceeded 90 degrees in the past week, and hot weather is expected throughout the summer.”
Anyone planning to hike at the Colorado National Monument should either do so early in the mornings or late in the afternoons — finishing before 10 a.m. or starting after 4 p.m. — to lower their exposure to the heat, according to the National Park Service.
National Park Service
Park officials said their staff received a report at about 2:30 p.m. on Monday that a woman collapsed and lost consciousness while hiking the Lower Monument Canyon Trail. She collapsed roughly two miles into the hike, which is a loop that runs for about five miles. The park service describes the difficulty level of that hike as “moderate to steep” and notes in the description that completing the full loop generally takes hikers between four and six hours.
Multiple agencies responded to the scene where Cook collapsed, including park rangers, state wildlife officers and fire officials, as well as search and rescue crews from the surrounding counties, the park service said. The hiker’s family along with first responders attempted life-saving measures like CPR, but she was ultimately pronounced dead on the trail.
Located in the semi-arid desert landscape of western Colorado, near the Utah border, the Colorado National Monument draws hikers, campers and wildlife enthusiasts from across the country to see its monoliths and red rock canyons. The national park and broader region have experienced an extreme heat wave recently, with meteorologists issuing various heat watches and warnings for parts of Colorado this week as temperatures soared.
While Denver set a new heat record on Wednesday, the National Weather Service noted that above-average temperatures in the counties surrounding the Colorado National Monument could reach triple digits on Thursday. The weather service said conditions in that area could pose “major” health threats to “anyone without effective cooling and/or adequate hydration.”
A complete mastodon jaw was discovered in the backyard of a home in New York’s Hudson Valley, marking the state’s first such find in more than a decade, officials announced this week.
The Stockton, New York, homeowner initially spotted two teeth hidden in the fronds of a plant on their property and proceeded to uncover two more teeth buried inches underground, the New York State Museum said. Staff from the museum, which is based in Albany and has an archaeological research department, and SUNY Orange launched an investigation at the property.
New York State Museum
Their excavation unearthed additional fossils, including a full, well-preserved adult jaw and fragments of rib and toe bones that once belonged to a mastodon — ancient giants that existed during the Ice Age and became extinct some 10,000 years ago. The term refers to a group of massive elephant-like species, like the mammoth.
“When I found the teeth and examined them in my hands, I knew they were something special and decided to call in the experts,” said the homeowner in a statement to the New York State Museum. “I’m thrilled that our property has yielded such an important find for the scientific community.”
New York State Museum
Remnants of mastodons have been discovered in New York before. According to the museum, more than 150 fossils of these prehistoric creatures have been documented to date statewide, with around one-third of them coming from Orange County, where the latest bones were found.
But experts said the findings offer an opportunity to learn something new.
“This discovery is a testament to the rich paleontological history of New York and the ongoing efforts to understand its past,” said Robert Feranec, a research director and curator at the New York State Museum whose work centers on ice age animals, in a statement. “Fossils are resources that provide remarkable snapshots of the past, allowing us to not only reconstruct ancient ecosystems but also provide us with better context and understanding of the current world around us.”
The mastodon fossils will undergo carbon dating and analysis to determine the creature’s age, diet and habitat while it was alive, the museum said. After that analysis and subsequent preservation work are complete, the bones will be featured on public display in 2025.
CBS News
U.K. court says police can seize millions in unpaid taxes from misogynist influencer Andrew Tate
London — A court in the United Kingdom ruled Wednesday that police could seize the equivalent of $3.3 million in frozen financial assets from misogynist social media influencer Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan to cover years of unpaid taxes.
The money has been held in seven bank accounts, frozen by British authorities, belonging to Tate, who previously lived in the U.K., his brother Tristan and a woman identified by the British authorities only as J.
Chief Magistrate Paul Goldspring at the Westminster Magistrates’ Court said in his Wednesday ruling that transactions made by the brothers, including transfers amounting to almost $12 million to J, had been a “straightforward cheat” to evade tax authorities.
Lawyers for the Devon and Cornwall Police force had argued that Tate and his brother were serial tax evaders who paid no taxes on around $26.5 million in revenue from their online businesses.
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According to the French news agency AFP, lawyer Sarah Clarke, who represented the police force, quoted during the proceedings from a video posted online by Tate, in which he said: “When I lived in England I refused to pay tax.”
Tate railed against the ruling, accusing the government of “outright theft.”
“This is not justice; it’s a coordinated attack on anyone who dares to challenge the system,” he said in a statement, claiming the seizure of his assets raised “serious questions about the lengths authorities will go to silence dissent.”
The Associated Press quoted a lawyer for the men, Martin Evans, as defending the bank transfers in question as “entirely orthodox” for the owners of online businesses.
Tate gained millions of followers online before being banned by TikTok, Facebook and YouTube when the platforms accused him of posting misogynistic hate speech.
Tate and his brother are currently under house arrest in Romania, where they face criminal human trafficking charges. When that case is concluded, the brothers are set to be extradited to the U.K., where they face additional allegations of human trafficking and rape.
The Tate brothers have denied all the charges of sexual violence and human trafficking.
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