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10 cent bag fee takes effect in Breckenridge

BRECKENRIDGE, Colo. (AP) — A disposable bag fee of 10 cents per bag is taking effect at all retail and grocery stores in Breckenridge.

Summit Daily reports that Breckenridge officials are marking Tuesday’s change by declaring it “Reusable Bag Day”. The 10-cent fee applies to most paper and plastic bags.

Breckenridge officials ordered 50,000 reusable “Breck Bags” to launch the effort. The bags are on sale for 99 cents each.

The bag fee was supposed to go into effect Oct. 1, but the town council extended the start date in order to have more time to educate the public.

Revenues from the fee are used to provide public information about the fee and promote the use of reusable bags.

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‘Unborn human beings’ question makes Colorado ballots

DENVER (AP) — A ballot measure involving crimes and pregnant women will be on 2014 Colorado ballots.

Secretary of State Scott Gessler announced Monday that anti-abortion backers turned in signatures to put the ballot measure to voters next year. The question would direct state lawmakers to add “unborn human beings” to state criminal code.

Supporters say state law doesn’t adequately punish crimes against pregnant women.

The measure is different from previous attempts to add so-called “personhood” measures to the constitution. Those measures have failed twice in Colorado.

Abortion-rights advocates say the ballot measure under consideration this year still goes too far. They say the criminal code could curb abortion rights and some infertility treatments.

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Boulder limiting climbing access trails

BOULDER, Colo. (AP) — Mountain climbers are upset after Boulder officials limited access to off-trail climbing locations in Boulder open space.

According to the Boulder Daily Camera, many popular climbing routes can only be reached by hiking off the designated trails.

Climbing was limited following floods in September, but climber organizations are worried the bans will become permanent.

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A glance at the Nobel economics prize winners

WHO WON?

Americans Eugene Fama, 74, and Lars Peter Hansen, 60, of the University of Chicago; and Robert Shiller, 67, of Yale University.

FOR WHAT?

All three studied the movement of prices of assets — things like stocks, bonds and housing — but they came at it from different angles. Fama found that it is hard to predict whether prices will move up or down over the short run, but two decades later Shiller concluded that it was possible to make such predictions over periods of three years or more. Hansen developed a statistical method to test theories of asset pricing.

SIGNIFICANCE?

Fama’s work suggested that it is impossible for individuals to beat the markets. It revolutionized investing, leading to the rise in index funds. Shiller showed that things weren’t so neat and that people’s behavior and inefficiencies in the market made things more complicated. Hansen came up with the statistical tools to help further the debate.

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Unions put off Bay Area Rapid Transit strike to allow 1 more day of contract talks

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — With a midnight strike deadline approaching Sunday, the Bay Area Rapid Transit’s two largest unions announced they won’t walk off the job to allow one more day of contract negotiations on Monday.

“We are not going to go on strike because the public deserves to have a riding system that works. We will give the (transit agency) one more day to get it together,” said Antonette Bryant, leader of Amalgamated Transit Union Local 1555, one of the two unions in talks with BART.

She warned that workers will go on strike at midnight Monday if an offer isn’t reached by then.

The 11th hour announcement came after weekend-long talks to avert a second commute-crippling strike in less than three months.

BART workers went on strike for nearly five days in July and were set to do so again Friday when a cooling-off period ordered by Gov. Jerry Brown ended, but they agreed to negotiate through the weekend.

But the Bryant complained that BART presented a last, final offer Sunday afternoon just as the parties came close to reaching a full agreement.

The executive director of the other union involved in the talks, Service Employees International Union Local 1021, said the parties made progress on pay, pension and health care benefits but were still at odds on issues related to work rules.

BART General Manager Grace Crunican said the “last best and final offer” presented to the unions Sunday is $7 million higher than the one presented Friday. She said the unions have two weeks from Sunday to accept the deal before it is taken off the table.

“We are open to any ideas over those two weeks that they may have, we will try and keep that conversation open,” she said in a statement. “It is time to bring this to a close. The Bay Area is tired of going to bed at night and not knowing if BART will be open or not.”

Nearly 370,000 riders take BART every weekday, and its 104 miles of track make it the nation’s fifth-largest commuter rail system.

In a sign of how seriously another shutdown is looming over the region, state lawmakers from the Bay Area and Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom dropped by the talks Sunday to encourage the two sides to reach a resolution.

Newsom, a former San Francisco mayor, told reporters he believed a deal was close.

“It would be preposterous for both sides at this stage when you’re getting this close to put, at risk, your reputation and the economy of the entire region,” he said.

Sticking points in the 6-month-old negotiations include salaries and workers’ contributions to their health and pension plans. BART workers currently pay $92 a month for health care and contribute nothing toward their pensions — generous benefits BART management is seeking to curtail.

The unions, which represent 2,375 mechanics, custodians, station agents, train operators and clerical workers, want a raise of nearly 12 percent over three years, while BART has proposed a 10 percent increase over four years. Workers from the two unions now average about $71,000 in base salary and $11,000 in overtime annually, BART said.

Labor leaders were also pressing demands to make stations safer, such as better lighting in tunnels, bulletproof glass in agents’ booths and improved restroom access

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Utah, Colorado reopen national parks

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — Colorado’s governor has struck a deal with federal officials to reopen one of its national parks, becoming the second state to accept an offer to send money to the federal government to save lucrative tourist seasons.

Federal officials announced Friday that Colorado has agreed to pay about $360,000 to reopen Rocky Mountain National Park through Oct. 20.

The Obama administration on Thursday announced it would allow states to foot the bill for reopening parks.

Utah was the first taker, with Gov. Gary Herbert wiring $1.67 million to federal officials to temporarily reopen five national parks and other national park units by Saturday.

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Scott Carpenter, 2nd American astronaut in orbit and Boulder native, dies

DENVER (AP) — Scott Carpenter, the second American to orbit the Earth, was guided by two instincts: overcoming fear and quenching his insatiable curiosity. He pioneered his way into the heights of space and the depths of the ocean floor.

“Conquering of fear is one of life’s greatest pleasures and it can be done a lot of different places,” he said.

His wife, Patty Barrett, said Carpenter died in a Denver hospice of complications from a September stroke. He lived in Vail.

Carpenter followed John Glenn into orbit, and it was Carpenter who gave him the historic send-off: “Godspeed John Glenn.” The two were the last survivors of the famed original Mercury 7 astronauts from the “Right Stuff” days of the early 1960s. Glenn is the only one left alive.

In his one flight, Carpenter missed his landing by 288 miles, leaving a nation on edge for an hour as it watched live and putting Carpenter on the outs with his NASA bosses. So Carpenter found a new place to explore: the ocean floor.

He was the only person who was both an astronaut and an aquanaut, exploring the old ocean and what President John F. Kennedy called “the new ocean” — space.

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said Thursday that Carpenter “was in the vanguard of our space program — the pioneers who set the tone for our nation’s pioneering efforts beyond Earth and accomplished so much for our nation. … We will miss his passion, his talent and his lifelong commitment to exploration.”

Life was an adventure for Carpenter and he said it should be for others: “Every child has got to seek his own destiny. All I can say is that I have had a great time seeking my own.”

The launch into space was nerve-racking for the Navy pilot on the morning of May 24, 1962.

“You’re looking out at a totally black sky, seeing an altimeter reading of 90,000 feet and realize you are going straight up. And the thought crossed my mind: What am I doing?” Carpenter said 49 years later in a joint lecture with Glenn at the Smithsonian Institution.

For Carpenter, the momentary fear was worth it, he said in 2011: “The view of Mother Earth and the weightlessness is an addictive combination of senses.”

For the veteran Navy officer, flying in space or diving to the ocean floor was more than a calling. In 1959, soon after being chosen one of NASA’s pioneering seven astronauts, Carpenter wrote about his hopes, concluding: “This is something I would willingly give my life for.”

“Curiosity is a thread that goes through all of my activity,” he told a NASA historian in 1999. “Satisfying curiosity ranks No. 2 in my book behind conquering a fear.”

Even before Carpenter ventured into space, he made history on Feb. 20, 1962, when he gave his Glenn send-off. It was a spur of the moment phrase, Carpenter later said.

“In those days, speed was magic because that’s all that was required … and nobody had gone that fast,” Carpenter explained. “If you can get that speed, you’re home-free, and it just occurred to me at the time that I hope you get your speed. Because once that happens, the flight’s a success.”

Three months later, Carpenter was launched into space from Cape Canaveral, Fla., and completed three orbits around Earth in his space capsule, the Aurora 7, which he named after the celestial event. It was just a coincidence, Carpenter said, that he grew up in Boulder, Colo., on the corner of Aurora Avenue and 7th Street. Boulder dedicated a park in his namesake in 1962. After Carpenter dedicated the park’s pool the following year, then-Mayor John Holloway tossed him in, fully clothed.

His four hours, 39 minutes and 32 seconds of weightlessness were “the nicest thing that ever happened to me,” Carpenter told a NASA historian. “The zero-g sensation and the visual sensation of spaceflight are transcending experiences and I wish everybody could have them.”

His trip led to many discoveries about spacecraft navigation and space itself, such as that space offers almost no resistance, which he found out by trailing a balloon. Carpenter said astronauts in the Mercury program found most of their motivation from the space race with the Russians. When he completed his orbit of the Earth, he said he thought: “Hooray, we’re tied with the Soviets,” who had completed two manned orbits at that time.

Things started to go wrong on re-entry. He was low on fuel and a key instrument that tells the pilot which way the capsule is pointing malfunctioned, forcing Carpenter to manually take over control of the landing.

NASA’s Mission Control then announced that he would overshoot his landing zone by more than 200 miles and, worse, they had lost contact with him.

Talking to a suddenly solemn nation, CBS newsman Walter Cronkite said, “We may have … lost an astronaut.”

Carpenter survived the landing that day.

Always cool under pressure — his heart rate never went above 105 during the flight — he oriented himself by simply peering out the space capsule’s window. The Navy found him in the Caribbean, floating in his life raft with his feet propped up. He offered up some of his space rations.

Carpenter’s perceived nonchalance didn’t sit well some with NASA officials, particularly flight director Chris Kraft. The two feuded about it from then on.

Kraft accused Carpenter of being distracted and behind schedule, as well as making poor decisions. He blamed Carpenter for low fuel.

On his website, Carpenter acknowledged that he didn’t shut off a switch at the right time, doubling fuel loss. Still, Carpenter in his 2003 memoir said, “I think the data shows that the machine failed.”

In the 1962 book “We Seven,” written by the first seven astronauts, Carpenter wrote about his thoughts while waiting to be picked up after splashing down.

“I sat for a long time just thinking about what I’d been through. I couldn’t believe it had all happened. It had been a tremendous experience, and though I could not ever really share it with anyone, I looked forward to telling others as much about it as I could. I had made mistakes and some things had gone wrong. But I hoped that other men could learn from my experiences. I felt that the flight was a success, and I was proud of that.”

One of 110 candidates to be the nation’s first astronauts, Carpenter became an instant celebrity in 1958 when he was chosen as a Mercury astronaut. Like his colleagues, Carpenter basked in lavish attention and public rewards, but it wasn’t exactly easy. The astronauts were subjected to grueling medical tests — keeping their feet in cold water, rapid spinning and tumbling and open-ended psychological quizzes. He had to endure forces 16 times gravity in his tests, far more than in space, something he said he managed with “great difficulty.”

“It was the most exciting period of my life,” he said.

Carpenter never did go back in space, but his explorations continued. In 1965, he spent 30 days under the ocean off the coast of California as part of the Navy’s SeaLab II program.

“I wanted, No. 1, to learn about it (the ocean), but No. 2, I wanted to get rid of what was an unreasoned fear of the deep water,” Carpenter told the NASA historian.

Inspired by Jacques Cousteau, Carpenter worked with the Navy to bring some of NASA’s training and technology to the sea floor. A broken arm kept him out of the first SeaLab, but he made the second in 1965. The 57-by-12-foot habitat was lowered to a depth of 205 feet off San Diego. A bottlenose dolphin named Tuffy ferried supplies from the surface to the aquanauts below.

“SeaLab was an apartment but it was very crowded. Ten men lived inside. We worked very hard. We slept very little,” Carpenter recalled in a 1969 interview. Years later, he said he actually preferred his experience on the ocean floor to his time in space.

“In the overall scheme of things, it’s the underdog in terms of funding and public interest,” he said. “They’re both very important explorations. One is much more glorious than the other. Both have tremendous potential.”

After another stint at NASA in the mid-1960s, helping develop the Apollo lunar lander, Carpenter returned to the SeaLab program as director of aquanaut operations for SeaLab III.

He retired from the Navy in 1969, founded his company Sea Sciences Inc., worked closely with Cousteau and dove in most of the world’s oceans, including under the ice in the Arctic.

When the 77-year-old Glenn returned to orbit in 1998 aboard space shuttle Discovery, Carpenter radioed: “Good luck, have a safe flight and … once again, Godspeed, John Glenn.”

Malcolm Scott Carpenter was born May 1, 1925, in Boulder, Colo. (He hated his first name and didn’t use it). He was raised by his maternal grandparents after his mother became ill with tuberculosis.

He attended the University of Colorado for one semester, joined the Navy during World War II, and returned to school but didn’t graduate because he flunked out of a class on heat transfer his senior year. The school eventually awarded him a bachelor’s degree in aeronautical engineering in 1962 after he orbited the Earth.

He rejoined the Navy in 1949 and was a fighter and test pilot in the Pacific and served as intelligence officer.

He married four times and had seven children; a daughter helped him write his memoir, “For Spacious Skies: The Uncommon Journey of a Mercury Astronaut.” He also wrote two novels: “The Steel Albatross” and “Deep Flight.” In addition to his children, he is survived by his wife, Patty Barrett.

He earned numerous awards and honorary degrees. Carpenter said that he joined the Mercury program for many reasons: “One of them, quite frankly, is that it is a chance for immortality. Most men never have a chance for immortality.”

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CU Antarctica teams waiting for budget resolution

BOULDER, Colo. (AP) — University of Colorado scientists worry the government shutdown may freeze their scheduled research in Antarctica.

The National Science Foundation runs three stations on the frozen continent. The Boulder Daily Camera reports the foundation has suspended essential research there because it will run out of money for the stations on Monday.

CU researchers are waiting to see if they’ll deploy to Antarctica for summer there, which runs from October to January.

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Stocks soar on hopes for deal to avoid US default

NEW YORK (AP) — The stock market broke out of a three-week funk Thursday as Washington moved closer to a deal to avert a U.S. government default.

The Dow Jones industrial average jumped 207 points, or 1.4 percent, to 15,004 after the first hour of trading.

The Standard & Poor’s 500 index rose 24 points, or 1.4 percent, to 1,680. The Nasdaq composite index added 62 points, or 1.7 percent, to 3,740.

The market has been sliding since mid-September as Washington’s gridlock got investors worried that the U.S. could default on its debt and wreak havoc on financial markets. As of Wednesday the S&P 500 index had fallen 4 percent since reaching an all-time high of 1,725 on Sept. 18.

President Barack Obama will meet with top House Republicans at the White House in an effort to break a logjam that has left the government shuttered for more than a week.

House Republican leaders appear to be ready to advance a short-term increase in the government’s borrowing authority that would prevent a default on U.S. government debt next week. Sources told The Associated Press in Washington that House Speaker John Boehner was trying to rally support for a six-week extension for the debt ceiling.

A potential compromise between the two political parties could not come soon enough.

On Thursday, Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew urged Congress to raise the government’s borrowing limit before the current cap is reached on Oct. 17, warning that a Republican idea to prioritize payments with cash on hand could cause “irrevocable damage” to the U.S. economy.

On Wednesday, Fidelity Investments, the nation’s largest money market fund manager, said it had sold all of its short-term U.S. government debt in an effort to limit money market investors’ exposure to a potential default.

There were hopeful signs in the market for short-term U.S. government debt early Thursday. The yield on the one-month Treasury bill dropped to 0.17 percent from 0.27 late Wednesday.

The yield had spiked from near zero at the beginning of the month to as high as 0.35 percent Tuesday as investors dumped the bills out of concern that the government might not be able to pay them back when they’re due. Investors demand higher yields when they perceive debt as being risky.

Among stocks making big moves:

  • Teva Pharmaceuticals rose $4.40, or 3 percent, to $144.50 after the generic drug maker announced it was cutting its workforce by 10 percent.
  • Ruby Tuesday plunged $1.38, or 18 percent, to $6.18. The restaurant chain reported a wider first quarter loss than expected, citing increased competition a difficult economic climate.
  • Citrix Systems dropped $8.39, or 12 percent, to $58.28 after the company warned investors that its third-quarter revenue and profit will miss Wall Street’s expectations.

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State: E. coli found in Boulder, other Colo. flood zones

DENVER (AP) — Samples collected in 29 locations in eight rivers in the Colorado flooding zone show high levels of E. coli in the Boulder Creek and Big Thompson River watershed, the state health department said Tuesday.

The testing also showed high levels of E. coli in locations in the South Platte Basin. The highest levels of E. coli were detected in Boulder and near Niwot. But no outbreaks of illness or communicable disease have been reported.

The samples were collected on Sept. 26.

The state is tracking multiple spills from oil and gas operations in the South Platte Basin, but the testing showed no evidence of contamination.

“Although much attention was focused on spills from oil and gas operations, it is reassuring the sampling shows no evidence of oil and gas pollutants,” said Larry Wolk, chief medical officer of the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.

A broken city of Boulder main allowed raw sewage to pour into Boulder Creek in the days following the worst of the flooding, which began Sept. 11.

Slightly lower levels were detected along Boulder Creek northeast of Boulder, near Erie and near Boulder Creek’s confluence with the St. Vrain.

Elevated levels were detected near the confluence of the St. Vrain and South Platte north of Platteville, east of Milliken near the confluence of the South Platte and Big Thompson, and long the Platte west of Kersey and near Orchard and Brush. Elevated levels also were found on the Big Thompson in two spots between Estes Park and Loveland.

The health department also sampled for metals that may have been released from mining areas, but that analysis is not complete.

Five public drinking water systems remain on boil or bottled water advisories: Jamestown, Lyons, Mountain Meadow Water Supply, Lower Narrows Campground and Sylvan Dale Ranch.

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