More than 100 firefighters battle massive blaze in Denver
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(DENVER) — More than 100 firefighters battled a massive five-alarm fire Friday evening in Denver at an apartment building construction site — about the size of a city block — working for hours to keep the flames from spreading to nearby structures, officials said.
One firefighter was injured battling the fire and taken to the hospital, the Denver Fire Department told ABC News.
There were no other injuries immediately reported.
The fire spurred evacuation orders for nearby residents.
By late evening, the fire was largely under control but not fully extinguished. Officials estimated the blaze was about 70% contained, with pockets of deep-seated fire still burning inside the structure. Firefighters were expected to remain on scene through the night to fully suppress hot spots.
The building, which was in the early to mid-stages of construction, was primarily made of wood, with some plastic materials used in wrapping and construction.
Stock image of police lights. Douglas Sacha/Getty Images
(PUEBLO, Colo.) — At least five people are dead following a pile-up crash involving dozens of vehicles in Colorado that occurred as high winds blew dirt, making for low to zero visibility, authorities said.
The incident occurred around 10 a.m. local time Tuesday on I-25 near Pueblo, which is about 40 miles south of Colorado Springs, authorities said.
Over 30 vehicles, including seven semis, were involved in the crash, according to Colorado State Patrol.Pickups pulling horse trailers, SUVs and passenger vehicles were also involved, according to Maj. Brian Lyons with Colorado State Patrol.
The pile-up occurred during “adverse weather conditions,” Lyons said, with heavy winds blowing dirt and causing “brownout” conditions.
“Visibility was next to nothing,” Lyons said during a press briefing Tuesday.
There were four fatalities in separate vehicles — two men from Walsenburg, Colorado, and two women, one from Rye and one from Pueblo — authorities said Tuesday.
A fifth person who had been transported to a hospital later succumbed to his injuries, Colorado State Patrol said Wednesday.
Another 28 people were transported to area hospitals, with moderate to serious injuries, Colorado State Patrol said.
Authorities were working to account for everyone in the vehicles involved in the crash, Lyons said.
One of the vehicles was a pickup hauling a gooseneck trailer containing 32 goats, Colorado State Patrol said. Four of the goats died, while the rest were safely removed, it said.
Northbound I-25 was closed for several hours as crews worked to clear vehicles, before reopening late Tuesday.
“Due to low visibility, drivers are urged to delay traveling until conditions improve,” Colorado State Patrol said. “If travel is necessary, avoid I-25 in this area, use caution, and reduce speed.”
High wind warnings were in effect for the region on Tuesday. The National Weather Service in Pueblo warned that “significant blowing dust” was possible on the plains, where gusts could be up to 65 mph. Gusts of at least 85 mph were also forecast for mountain areas, it said.
The first full Moon of the spring on March 3, 2026. (Photo by Nicolas Economou/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — It’s been 100 years since the 1st modern rocket launched. Humans are heading back to the moon
The experiment lasted only two and a half seconds, but it ignited a century of space exploration that sent humans to low Earth orbit and eventually to the moon.
On March 16, 1926, Robert H. Goddard launched the world’s first liquid-fueled rocket on a snowy farm in Massachusetts. Historians say that Goddard’s 10-foot rocket would pave the way for the modern machines that do everything from putting satellites in orbit to sending humans to the International Space Station and beyond.
“His unlocking of that ability to use liquid fuel really just sets the stage for any other country around the world that is launching rockets,” Ed Stewart, a curator at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center, told ABC News. “It all comes back down to March 16 in 1926 because he was the one that proved that it could be done and then actually did it.” The rocket was the first of its kind, powered by liquid propellant rather than gunpowder or other solid fuels used by most rockets at the time, according to NASA. The rocket flew for less than three seconds and reached an altitude of about 41 feet.
While scientists overseas had already been experimenting with rocketry in places like Russia and Germany, according to historical documents, it was Goddard’s 1919 paper, “A Method of Reaching Extreme Altitudes,” that made the physicist’s discovery famous worldwide, explained Stewart.
“It caught the attention of people all around the world, even people that were doing some experimentation with rockets and liquid fuels and things like that in other parts of the world,” Stewart said.
The paper suggested that rockets could one day travel to the moon and caught the attention of the Smithsonian Institution, which invested money in rocket research.
“I think the breakthrough was, first of all, that Goddard had this dream of getting a rocket ship off the surface of the Earth,” said Charles “Chuck” Agosta, a physics professor at Goddard’s alma mater, Clark University. “And then, of course, the dream was to go to Mars.”
Other scientists, like Hermann Oberth of Germany, later built on Goddard’s theory, and that progress eventually contributed to the development of the V-2 rocket, Stewart noted. And eventually, rockets based on Goddard’s pioneering work led to sending astronauts into space and to the moon.
Goddard earned his master’s and doctorate in physics at Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, before returning to teach at the school in 1914. He eventually served as director of the physics department for two decades.
Today, faculty at Clark say his legacy still looms large on campus.
Goddard once used a bicycle wheel to show funding agencies how gyroscopes could help steer rockets in space. Today, Agosta uses that same wheel to teach his students about angular momentum.
Despite his legacy, Goddard’s breakthrough didn’t immediately capture the public’s imagination. Stewart says that when the first liquid-fueled rocket launched, space travel was still widely viewed as science fiction by many.
“I do think that at the time it was still so far-fetched that even once he proved that the basic version of the technology would work, people still were thinking of it more as a novelty,” Stewart said.
Much of what we know about those early experiments comes from Goddard’s wife, Esther Christine Kisk Goddard, a photographer from Worcester, Mass. She documented many of the tests, leaving behind footage that offers a window into the creation of the world’s first modern rockets.
According to NASA, Goddard created and launched more than 35 rockets throughout his lifetime. It was because of his pioneering work in modern rocketry that, in May 1959, NASA renamed its first spaceflight complex to the “Goddard Space Flight Center.”
The center is home to missions such as the Hubble Space Telescope, the James Webb Space Telescope, and the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, scheduled to launch as early as fall 2026.
The global return to the moon and beyond
During his initial launch tests, Goddard fueled his rocket with gasoline and liquid oxygen, according to the Roswell Museum in New Mexico, where the physicist spent part of his career. Today’s modern rockets no longer use gasoline, opting for other fuels such as liquid hydrogen, liquid methane and refined kerosene along with liquid oxygen, which acts as an oxidizer.
On the 100th anniversary of Goddard’s discovery, the United States is on the cusp of sending the first astronauts to the moon since 1972 as part of the Artemis II mission. The 10-day trip will send four astronauts around the far side of the moon in NASA’s Orion spacecraft, launched into orbit by the most powerful rocket ever to send people into space. A rocket that may never have come to fruition had Goddard not experimented on that faithful day in 1926.
What could the next 100 years of rocket technology bring?
“I’m pretty confident that in a hundred years, we’re going to be all over space,” Agosta said.
Considering the thousands of airplanes in our own skies every day, he says it’s “inevitable” and that we’ll “at least be in the planets close to us” by the next century.
Luigi Mangione attends a suppression of evidence hearing in the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in Manhattan Criminal Court on December 18, 2025 in New York City. (Photo by Shannon Stapleton-Pool/Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — Accused CEO killer Luigi Mangione could stand trial by the end of the year, the judge in his federal case said Friday at a hearing in a Manhattan courtroom that was filled with Mangione’s supporters.
Mangione was back in federal court, where the defense presented arguments seeking to dismiss the death penalty counts against him if he is convicted of stalking and killing UnitedHealthcare chief executive Brian Thompson on a New York City sidewalk in 2024.
U.S. District Judge Margaret Garnett did not rule on the death penalty question at the conclusion of the hearing, but suggested that if the death penalty remains on the table, jury selection would begin in early September, and the trial would commence sometime in December or January.
If the death penalty is excluded, the judge suggested the trial could start in September.
She set a date for the next hearing on Jan. 30.
Judge Garnett also ruled Friday that Mangione’s backpack was lawfully seized by police when Mangione was apprehended in a Pennsylvania McDonalds’s five days after the shooting.
Two women who flew in from Sicily and came straight from the airport were among those in the courtroom gallery, which was filled with Mangione’s supporters, mostly young women. Many of them were wearing green, the color that has come to represent advocacy for Mangione.
“We have a full house here today,” Judge Garnett said at the outset of the hearing. “It is very important that decorum be maintained.”
The appearance of Mangione, who has pleaded not guilty to federal charges, follows a three-week hearing in state court during which Mangione sought to convince the judge in his state case to exclude some of the critical evidence police said they found in his backpack, including writings and the alleged murder weapon. The judge has yet to issue a ruling.
Judge Garnett, in issuing her ruling on the legality of the backpack’s seizure, said, “I don’t think it’s really disputed that if you’re arrested in a public place, the police are supposed to safeguard your personal property.”
Garnett said she does not need to schedule a hearing to determine whether to exclude evidence taken from the backpack, but that she reserves the right to reconsider that decision. She has yet to rule on what, if anything, should be suppressed.
“The Government searched the contents of the defendant’s notebook pursuant to a judicially authorized search warrant that expressly covered, among other things, handwritten materials, including notebook entries, contained within the defendant’s backpack,” prosecutor Sean Buckley argued in an earlier court filing.
“To the extent that the defendant now seeks to challenge the validity of the Government’s warrant — an argument the defendant similarly did not make in either his moving or reply papers — that argument would also fail on the merits because the warrant, which disclosed the initial search of the defendant’s backpack by the Altoona Police Department, was supported by ample probable cause,” wrote Buckley.
Paresh Patel, a lawyer from Maryland who recently joined Mangione’s defense team, argued stalking “fails to qualify as a crime of violence” and therefore cannot be the predicate to make Mangione eligible for the death penalty.
Mangione entered the courtroom with his ankles shackled but his hands free. Unlike his recent appearance in state court, when he wore slacks and blazer, Mangione was dressed in a beige smock and pants and a white long-sleeve T-shirt as he took a seat at the defense table between defense attorneys Karen and Mark Agnifilo.
Earlier this week, prosecutors disputed a defense claim that Mangione should not face the death penalty because of a purported conflict of interest by Attorney General Pam Bondi.
The defense said Bondi is continuing to benefit from a 401k established while she worked at the lobbying firm Ballard Partners, which represents UnitedHealthcare.
Prosecutors said Ballard has made no contributions to her retirement plan since her Senate confirmation as attorney general, and argued that she stands to gain nothing from a “capital outcome” in the Mangione case.
“There is simply no factual basis for the assertion that outside corporate interests influenced the Attorney General’s charging decision in any fashion. The defendant’s insinuations otherwise rest on an inaccurate financial narrative,” Buckley wrote in a court filing.
