 From Carnegie Studios in Long Rock, Colorado, it's Huppet News. Good evening. I'm Herman Hansen, and I still don't know how to pronounce Cofev. Co-fe-ve, Co-fe-ve, Co-fe-ve. I don't know. And I'm Miranda Larower, and this is This Week's Stories. President Joe Biden on Thursday did not rule out the possibility of U.S. troops staying in Afghanistan through the end of the year, and one of his top generals told Congress that Afghanistan's military forces need American assistance to successfully counter the Taliban. Biden at his first news conference as president repeated his assessment that it will be hard for the United States to meet the May 1 deadline for a full American troop withdrawal as outlined in a peace agreement between the Trump administration and the Taliban. It's not my intention to stay there for a long time, Biden said. We will leave. The question is when we will leave. Earlier in the day, General Richard Clark, the head of U.S. Special Operations Command, echoed the sentiments of other military leaders when he said it was clear that the Taliban have not upheld their commitment to reduce violence in Afghanistan and instead have made a deliberate decision to increase attacks. Those attacks have largely been against Afghans and haven't targeted Americans. With his commitment, which are backed by assessments from military commanders about the precarious security situation in Afghanistan, Biden may be laying the groundwork for a decision to at least temporarily extend America's force presence in the country beyond the May 1 deadline, nearly two decades after the war there began. After nearly 20 years of persistent counter-terror operations in war zones and around the globe, Special Operations forces have seen spikes in suicides and bad behavior. Clark, who ordered a review last year to address the problems, said they have cut back deployments by about 20% and have shifted leadership out of overseas headquarters so they can more closely supervise and train their forces. Boulder County encourages hikers, trail runners and mountain bikers to avoid muddy trails due to the damage it can cause. The damage can result in a lot of maintenance and repair. Boulder County taxpayers not only pay for trail maintenance teams, but people from the area also annually volunteer thousands of hours of work to help rebuild and maintain trails. Similar work also is done in city parks in Longmont and Boulder. The county works to be proactive to avoid too much damage, but it also hopes those who use the trails will do so with some personal responsibility. Should trail blazers find themselves on muddy trails, Susie Alcatitis Deputy Director for the Leave No Trace Center for Outdoor Ethics says to prepare to get dirty as the best way forward is through the mud in order to protect our state's trails. Our solar system's first known interstellar visitor is neither a comet nor asteroid as first suspected and looks nothing like a cigar. A new study says the mystery object is likely a remnant of a Pluto-like world and shaped like a cookie. Arizona State University astronomers reported this week that the strange 45-meter object appears to be made of frozen nitrogen, just like the surface of Pluto and Neptune's largest moon Triton. The study's authors, Alan Jackson and Stephen Desh, think an impact knocked a chunk off an icy nitrogen-covered planet 500 million years ago and sent the piece tumbling out of its own star system toward ours. It's named Oumuamua, Hawaiian for Scout, in honor of the observatory in Hawaii that discovered it in 2017. Visible only as a pinpoint of light millions of miles away at its closest approach, it was determined to have originated beyond our solar system because its speed and path suggested it wasn't orbiting the sun or anything else. But what is Oumuamua? It didn't fit into known categories. It looked like an asteroid but sped along like a comet. Unlike a comet, though, it didn't have a visible tail. Speculation flipped back and forth between comet and asteroid, comet and asteroid, comet and asteroid, and it was even suggested that it could be an alien artifact. Everybody's interested in aliens and it was inevitable that this first object outside the solar system would make people think of aliens, Desh said in a statement, but it's important in science to not jump to conclusions. Using its shininess, size and shape, and that it was propelled by escaping substances that didn't produce a visible tail, Jackson and Desh devised computer models that helped them determine Oumuamua was likely a chunk of nitrogen ice being gradually eroded the way a bar of soap thins with use. Not all scientists buy the new explanation. Harvard University's Avi Lyub disputes the findings and stands by his premise that the object appears to be more artificial than natural. In other words, something from an alien civilization, perhaps a light sail. His newly published book, Extra-Terrestrial, the first sign of intelligent life beyond Earth, addresses the subject. Given that Oumuamua is unlike comets and asteroids and something not seen before, we cannot assume business as usual, as many scientists argue, Lowell wrote in an email Wednesday. If we contemplate something that we had not seen before, we must leave the artificial origin hypothesis on the table and collect more evidence on objects from the same class. If you leave a cookie on the table, and I'm around. Anyway, it's now long gone beyond the orbit of Uranus, more than 3.2 billion kilometers away and far too small to be seen, even by the Hubble Space Telescope, even if the telescope was on Uranus. As a result, astronomers will need to rely on the original observations and hopefully continue to refine their analyses, Jackson said. So maybe Oumuamua was consistent with a cookie when we saw it, but will soon be literally as flat as a pancake dish, said in an email? Well, that's the way the cosmic cookie, or at least this one, crumbles. And if it is a cookie, just keep me away from it. I am, after all, a puppet. And we all know about cookies and puppets. Pharmaceutical company Novartis Gene Therapies is ceasing operations at its six-building manufacturing plant in Longmont, which will close July 9. The company will lay off about 400 employees in Colorado and at some select locations in other parts of the company's operations. Novartis, in a statement, did not say what led to the closure of the 692,000-square-foot Longmont facility, which it opened in January 2020. The company said gene therapies and advanced platforms are still expected to play an increasingly important role in the years and decades to come at Novartis. It is continuing to invest significantly in gene therapy work, the company stated. Swiss-based Novartis bought the Longmont facility from fellow big biopharma company AstraZeneca to grow its gene therapy work and help its AVEXIS unit in the production of therapies, including Zoginsma, according to a 2020 bioprocess international study. Scientists have discovered the ultimate case of regeneration. Some decapitated sea slugs can regrow hearts and whole new bodies. This wonder of nature reported in a biology journal on Monday could eventually help scientists better understand and tackle regeneration of human tissue. Biology researcher Sakaya Mito said she loves studying Japanese sea slugs because they are cute, small, and weird. They can even briefly photosynthesize like a plant drawing food from the sun. One day in the lab she saw something bizarre. A sea slug had decapitated itself and the head kept on moving and living. Then a couple more did the same, according to a study in current biology. So, the doctoral student and Nara Women's University Aquatic Ecology professor Yohichi Yusa tried it themselves, cutting the heads off 16 sea slugs. Six of the creatures started regeneration, with three succeeding and surviving. One of the three even lost and re-grew its body twice. Two different species of Japanese sea slugs did this regeneration trick. Three library consulting firms are scheduled to be interviewed in April, as the city decides on the next steps for the undersized but popular Longmont Public Library. An interview panel will quiz the prospective consultants during the second week of April. The panel will include the library management team of Karen Roney, the city's head of community services, Longmont Museum director Kim Manajak, and president of the library board, and the president of the friends of the library director Nancy Kerr said in an email. The city's population in 2020 was more than 98,000, according to the US Census Bureau estimates. The consultants estimate the library should be at least 85,000 square feet. A library built up to 100,000 square feet would be big enough to handle Longmont's future growth, Roney said. The consultant will determine what does the community want and need from its library moving forward. How much does that cost? What are some ways to afford necessary expansion or improvements? And what types of models for library service will work best for the future of Longmont's library? Police have made an arrest following a 15-month-long investigation into vandalism at a group of rock configurations in New Hampshire called America's Stonehenge. Mark Russo, 51, of Sweetersboro, New Jersey, has been charged with one count of felony criminal mischief accused of defacing the stone in Salem in September 2019. A lawyer entered a not-guilty plea on his behalf Tuesday. Police said the rock tablet appeared to have been damaged by a power tool. It was carved with WWG1WGA and IM Mark. Police said the first stands for Where We Go Won We Go All, a model affiliated with the QAnon conspiracy theory. An 18-inch tall wooden cross was found suspended between two trees and attached to the cross were several photographs and hand-drawn images. Police arrested Russo after finding images of the stone and Russo online and linking him to an IM Mark Twitter account with a reference to a few improvements made to the site. Images on the cross were also linked to Russo. Bail was set at $3,000 cash for Russo who was scheduled for hearing on April 21. An email seeking comment from Russo's lawyer was sent Tuesday. America's Stonehenge, which features cave-like granite enclosures, has drawn believers who say it's 1,000 or more years old. And skeptics who say the evidence suggests it was the work of a 19th century shoemaker. The middle school's band programs receive two percussion mallet bags filled with various sticks, mallets, beaters, and brushes for the percussion instruments. Megan Ruben, director of bands and jazz band teacher at Meade Middle School, received the donated drumsticks and percussion equipment Saturday morning, which sixth through eighth grade students will have the opportunity to use when they return to school next week following spring break. Between four and seven students at each grade level use percussion equipment regularly, according to Ruben, with more than 120 students drumming throughout the school year. Instruments can go pretty quickly in a band program, she said. We don't always have a ton of money and when something breaks, we have to tape it back together. This is really nice because we can provide students with brand new high quality instruments. Stat Toyota donated $3,000 to purchase the equipment. And that's all we have time for. For Puppet News, I'm Herman Schmerman. And I'm Miranda Larower. Good night. Hello, I'm Aaron Arnold. I'm the voice of Herman Hansen and the show's producer. Our news director, Macy May and I, we found ourselves a little bit of a loss this week. Regarding the shooting that was just in our own neighborhood, basically, about a 25-minute drive from where I'm recording right now was the terrible tragedy of King Super's. Finally decided to say something without our puppets. As you may know, it's a semi-satirical news show and there's just nothing funny about this. There's nothing funny about a lot of the stories we cover, but this one being just so close to home, it cuts especially deeply for us here in Boulder County. A lot of people are saying, well, it's the guns themselves. And then some people saying it's a mental health issue and you hear all these arguments from both sides. And maybe it's the guns in a world where people feel so alienated. I can't do anything to fix the just the insane number of assault rifles out there right now. And I can't do anything to improve access or funding for mental health services. What I can do is be a better neighbor and be a better member of my community. Just little things. You can shovel your neighbors' walk. I can look my cashier in the eye and say thank you. I can smile and greet people. Just little things like that. You never know what a person is going through. Trust me, there's enough pain in this life to go around for everybody. And that's the thing you can do tomorrow, right now. Just reach out to somebody. Make people know that they're a part of your life and that they matter. And that won't solve everything right away. Nothing will. But it's what you can do today. And I would ask you to do that. I express my deepest condolences for the families of the victims and everybody here in our community and the whole country. We're so tired of hearing, oh, not this again. Oh, it's another one of these. And there's part of us that says, oh, it's another one of these. And it's just human nature. Maybe part of us starts to check out a little bit. When it's this close, though, I don't know, maybe it's because it was so close. This one feels extra raw to me personally. I've been to that store so many times. Don't check out. Don't close down. Thank you.