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Search for Jefferson City Native in Russia Escalates

Russian police have stepped up the search for an American student who went missing on a hike in the mountains on Sunday. 

Twenty-five-year-old Colin Madsen of Jefferson City disappeared a day after he arrived as part of a group from the east Siberian city of Irkutsk, where he was a university student. Madsen is believed to have ventured out before dawn in below-freezing conditions from a guest house in a mountainous stretch of Buryatia in eastern Siberia. The group planned to hike in the mountains later that day.

Police in Buryatia said in a statement Thursday that they were stepping up the search and that regional police chief Major General Oleg Kudinov is supervising it. Madsen's parents were heading Wednesday to Russia to be closer to the search.

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