The sheriff leading the investigation into the disappearance of Nancy Guthrie revealed new details about the case in a recent interview with CBS News, disclosing that a hair sample collected from Guthrie’s Tucson, Arizona, home came back inconclusive as the search for the 84-year-old mother of “Today” show co-host Savannah Guthrie passes the six-month mark.

Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos told CBS News correspondent Jonathan Vigliotti that forensic testing on the hair sample, found at Guthrie’s home following her disappearance, did not produce results pointing to a suspect. “It came back with no results,” Nanos said. According to the sheriff’s department, the results from the hair sample were actually verified in early June, but Thursday marked the first time investigators shared that specific finding with the public.

Guthrie was reported missing Feb. 1 after failing to appear for a scheduled Sunday church livestream, with authorities believing she was forcibly taken from her Catalina Foothills home in the middle of the night. The case has remained an active investigation involving both the Pima County Sheriff’s Department and the FBI in the months since, even as the passage of time without a named suspect has drawn increased public scrutiny of the investigation’s progress.

Nanos addressed broader questions about the pace of the investigation directly during a separate, more extensive interview given in late July, pushing back firmly against any suggestion that the case has gone cold. “I think every day we’re closer only because we have a lot of work ahead of us in terms of lab work, scientific work with DNA, working with not just our lab or the FBI lab, but labs across the country,” Nanos said. “All of these labs work together. They’re sharing information.”

The sheriff has also faced questions about his agency’s forensic testing protocols, including its longstanding practice of sending DNA evidence to a laboratory in Florida rather than splitting evidence across multiple facilities. Nanos defended that approach in his interview with Vigliotti, explaining that his agency has worked with the same Florida lab for years and sees no benefit in dividing evidence between separate labs. “It adds a step that’s not needed,” Nanos said. “If you have two labs you’re looking at, and one’s bad or one’s better, that’s fine.”

Investigators previously disclosed that DNA collected from Guthrie’s property did not match either Guthrie herself or individuals known to have been in close contact with her, though the sheriff’s department has not disclosed where on the property that DNA evidence was found. Authorities have said they continue working to identify whose DNA it is.

Throughout the investigation, Nanos has consistently maintained his belief that Guthrie remains alive, a position he reaffirmed and explained further during his late-July interview. “I understand why people would say she’s dead,” Nanos said. “But where’s the benefit in me believing she’s dead when there’s no proof of her death in front of me? … Everybody has a right to have an opinion and voice it. But as the sheriff of Pima County, as the head of the law enforcement here in this community, what is the benefit of the sheriff saying she’s dead? If the family believes that there’s hope, that there’s some chance that she might still be with us, why should I crush that hope?” Nanos has separately said that while investigators have not received proof that Guthrie is alive, there has also been no sign of her death.

The investigation has faced complications beyond the forensic evidence itself. A pair of ransom notes sent to Guthrie’s family in February, including one indicating that she had died, are believed by investigators to have likely originated from her abductor, according to CBS News reporting. Separately, local officials in Arizona have pushed to remove Nanos from his position, alleging he lied under oath during a deposition connected to an unrelated lawsuit when he denied having been suspended during his earlier career as a police officer in El Paso, Texas, before joining the Pima County Sheriff’s Department in the 1980s. Records obtained by CBS News showed Nanos had in fact been suspended multiple times during his time with the El Paso Police Department for a range of alleged infractions, including “unnecessary violence” and tardiness.

Nanos has also publicly disputed characterizations of the investigation’s early handling made by FBI Director Kash Patel, who has placed some blame on local officials in Arizona over how the case was managed. The sheriff has said certain claims made by Patel about the investigation were inaccurate, adding another layer of tension to an inquiry that has already drawn scrutiny from multiple directions.

Savannah Guthrie has continued to make public appeals for information throughout the case, including a recent social media post featuring clips from a family home movie showing her mother at a younger age. “We will never give up on her,” Guthrie wrote in the post.

With the investigation now well past the six-month mark and no named suspect publicly identified, Nanos has continued to express confidence that the case will ultimately be solved, pointing to the ongoing collaboration among multiple forensic laboratories nationwide and the volume of video evidence investigators continue to review as reasons for that optimism, even as families of missing persons and outside observers alike continue to press for faster answers in a case that has drawn sustained national attention since Guthrie’s disappearance in February.

China’s SSE Composite Index rose 0.72% on Friday, adding 27.57 points to close at 3,832.26, as a rally in semiconductor stocks helped mainland Chinese equities finish the week on a positive note even as weak manufacturing data and a broader monthly decline underscored ongoing concerns about the pace of the country’s economic recovery.

Friday’s gains were driven substantially by strength in chip and technology-adjacent names. Cambricon Technologies rose 10.2%, while Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp., China’s largest chipmaker, climbed 8.1%. Optical component makers posted even sharper gains, with Zhongji Innolight up 13.7% and Eoptolink Technology rising 14.4%, according to data from Trading Economics. The rally in Chinese chip and technology stocks came as part of a broader rebound sweeping across Asian markets, following blowout quarterly earnings from Microsoft, Amazon and Meta Platforms that eased global investor concerns about the sustainability of artificial intelligence infrastructure spending.

Despite Friday’s advance, official economic data released during the session pointed to continued softness in China’s underlying economy. China’s manufacturing purchasing managers’ index slipped into contraction territory in July for the first time since February, according to Trading Economics, while the non-manufacturing PMI also declined unexpectedly. The weak readings added to broader concerns about slowing growth following the release of second-quarter gross domestic product figures that had fallen below the government’s stated target range of 4.5% to 5%.

In response to the disappointing data, China’s Politburo pledged what it described as timely and effective policy support, though the leadership body offered few specific details about additional stimulus measures that might be forthcoming. Despite Friday’s gains, both the Shanghai and Shenzhen benchmarks remained on track for monthly losses when measured over the full course of July, reflecting a month defined by volatile swings between technology-driven optimism and sharper corrections tied to both domestic economic signals and external geopolitical developments.

The volatility that characterized July fit a broader pattern that has defined mainland Chinese equities through much of 2026. Earlier in the month, the SSE Composite had touched multi-month highs above 4,070 points on the back of a rally in semiconductor and technology names, only to give back a substantial portion of those gains during a subsequent selloff tied to escalating tensions between the United States and Iran. That earlier episode saw the index fall as low as roughly 3,913 points in mid-July, its weakest level since early April at the time, before staging a partial recovery in the weeks that followed.

The market experienced additional turbulence in the days immediately preceding Friday’s rally. On Tuesday, the SSE Composite fell 1.16% to 3,813.31 points as a dramatic selloff in semiconductor and memory-chip stocks swept across Asia-Pacific markets, tracking a similar rout that hit South Korean chipmakers particularly hard that week. Thursday’s session saw the index decline a further 0.62% to 3,804 points, giving back a meaningful portion of a 0.35% gain posted the prior Wednesday, as renewed weakness in technology and semiconductor names once again weighed on mainland equities ahead of the Politburo meeting.

Trading activity within the broader mainland market showed notable divergence throughout the week between the SSE Composite’s larger, more state-owned enterprise-weighted constituents and smaller, growth-oriented names listed on the Shenzhen exchange. On Thursday, the Shenzhen Component Index, which carries heavier weighting toward smaller-capitalization growth and technology stocks, fell 2.73% to 13,285 points, while the tech-heavy ChiNext Index tumbled 3.97% to 3,244 points, a far steeper decline than the headline Shanghai benchmark experienced that same session. Analysts covering mainland equities have said that pattern, with selling concentrated more heavily in growth-oriented Shenzhen and ChiNext-listed names rather than in the SSE Composite’s larger state-owned enterprise constituents, suggests the market’s recent volatility reflects a recalibration of technology-sector valuations specifically rather than a broader loss of confidence in the Chinese economy as a whole.

Combined turnover across the Shanghai and Shenzhen exchanges has remained elevated throughout the recent volatility, with Thursday’s session alone recording approximately 2.34 trillion yuan in trading activity, up from 2.3 trillion yuan the previous day, indicating that the market’s swings have unfolded on relatively active trading volumes rather than thin, illiquid conditions.

The SSE Composite’s 52-week trading range spans from a low of 3,547.16 to a high of 4,258.86, according to Investing.com data, illustrating the scale of volatility that has characterized the index over the past year even as it remains 7.69% higher than a year ago despite having declined 6.78% over just the past month, according to Trading Economics.

With the Politburo’s policy statement offering only broad assurances of support rather than concrete new stimulus measures, and Friday’s gains driven substantially by a rebound in chip and technology stocks tied to overseas earnings catalysts rather than domestic economic strength, market participants are likely to continue watching closely for more specific policy signals from Chinese authorities in the weeks ahead, particularly given the disappointing manufacturing and services PMI readings that have reinforced concerns about the durability of the country’s economic recovery heading into the second half of 2026.

ET Now: There are two ways of looking at it the top level exits in Infosys. On the one hand, a lot of people say that there was a team that was probably not performing well and now they are exiting and that will probably be a positive for the stock over the long run. The sceptics, on the other hand, would argue that there are a lot of people who have been manning the company for the last many years and it is not a pint-sized company, but a Rs 1 lakh 70 thousand crore behemoth. Why have there been so many high profile exits in the company?

Mohandas Pai: There is a leadership vacuum in the company, because they made the wrong choice of CEO three years ago and that is playing out right now. The company has not performed and in June 2011, they had appointed three members on the board and all three of them have gone now and all three have been extraordinary individuals.

Ashok Vemuri is now the CEO of another company, V Balakrishnan had left and has started his own fund and BG Srinivas, I am told, would now be joining some other company as CEO.

So obviously, all three have been CEO materials. It is obvious that the chemistry did not work, or they were not fully empowered. There is a need for the board to sit down and work out a good succession plan and put a new team in place because the entire layer of people below the executive board are now gone and many of them were outstanding performers.

Yes, a few of them possibly were not pulling the weight, but it is not possible that all of them were not doing so. They were extraordinary people and they are performing at other places.