FIRE AFFECTED ONE-THIRD OF ASPEN FLIGHTS

ASPEN» An Aspen-area airport says 34 percent of its scheduled flights this month were canceled or diverted because of the Lake Christine fire, near Basalt.

The Aspen Daily News reports temporary flight restrictions were put in place by the Federal Aviation Administration this month because of a need for more firefighting planes to put out the fire.

The flight restrictions closed the Aspen-Pitkin County Airport to all flights within the firefighting path from 9 a.m. to 9:15 p.m.

Aviation Director John Kinney says one-third of scheduled flights between July 4 and July 22 were canceled or diverted.

Parasite found in cat feces could reduce people’s fear of failure, study shows.

A parasite found in cat feces could reduce humans’ fear of failure, leading more people to become entrepreneurs, according to a study.

Researchers found that Toxoplasma gondii — the behavior-altering parasite that infects an estimated 2 billion people worldwide — could be responsible for breaking down mental barriers that stop people from taking risks, like launching a business, the study found.

Toxoplasmosis can increase the risk of “car accidents, mental illness, neuroticism, drug abuse and suicide,” the study’s authors write in the paper — which doesn’t prove a causal relationship between the parasite and a decrease in people’s fear of failure.

Stefanie Johnson, a business professor at the University of Colorado and an author of the study, teamed up with her husband — a biology professor at CU — to look at college students and business professionals to determine the parasite’s influence.

They tested the saliva of nearly 1,700 subjects for antibodies to toxoplasma. About 22 percent of the people they tested had once been infected.

Students who tested positive for T. gondii were 1.4 times more likely to major in business and 1.7 times more likely to focus on management and entrepreneurship compared with other business-related areas of study, they found.

Endurance athlete, ski coach dies in mountain fall.

FRICSO» Endurance athlete and youth ski club coach Hannah Taylor died in a mountaineering accident west of Denver. The Summit Nordic Ski Club said Taylor and club head coach Olaf Hedberg were on a climb in the Gore Range on Saturday when she grabbed a rock that came loose. She fell to her death. She was 39. Taylor, a native of Hopkinton, N.H., had been an assistant coach with the team for 14 years and lived in Silverthorne.

Two killed in three-vehicle crash involving sheriff’s office car.

COLORADO

The State Patrol says two people have died in a crash in El Paso County that involved three vehicles, including a county sheriff’s patrol car. The crash happened about 1:20 p.m. Tuesday on U.S. 24 in a rural area northeast of Colorado Springs. The State Patrol says the accident occurred when a deputy in a marked patrol car was passing a westbound pickup while a dump truck was traveling east.

The State Patrol said 75-year-old Kenneth Wuerfele and 71-year-old Dorothy Wuerfele of Peyton died. They were in the pickup that the patrol car was passing.

Two occupants of the dump truck were injured.

The deputy, identified as 29-year-old Quinlan Linebaugh, had minor injuries.