Новини

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denver — Twelve people were rescued Thursday night after being trapped for about six hours at the bottom of a former Colorado gold mine when an elevator malfunctioned at the tourist site, authorities said. One person died in the accident.

The elevator was descending into the Mollie Kathleen Gold Mine near the town of Cripple Creek when it had a mechanical problem around 150 meters beneath the surface, creating a “severe danger for the participants,” and one person was killed, Teller County Sheriff Jason Mikesell said.

The 12 adults who were trapped were about 305 meters below ground, but they had access to water and the atmosphere was considered good. They were safe and in communication with authorities with radios while waiting, Mikesell said.

They were in good spirits after they were rescued, and authorities gave them pizza once they were out and told them everything that had happened, he said. While at the bottom, authorities had told them only that there was an elevator issue.

Mikesell said during a nighttime briefing that authorities do not know yet what caused the malfunction and an investigation is underway. Engineers worked to make sure the elevator was working safely again before bringing the stranded visitors back up on it. They had been prepared to bring them up by rope if necessary, had they not been able to get the elevator fixed.

Mikesell declined to reveal the identification of the victim.

The incident, which was reported to authorities at about noon, happened during the final week of the Mollie Kathleen Gold Mine season before it shuts down for the winter, Mikesell said.

Earlier in the afternoon — while the 12 were stuck at the bottom — 11 other people who were riding the elevator were rescued. Four had minor injuries. The sheriff did not elaborate on how they were injured.

The elevator ride typically takes about two minutes, travelling about 152 meters per minute, according to the mine’s website.

Mikesell said the last time there was an incident was in the 1980s when a couple of people were trapped on the elevator. Nobody died in that incident.

Mines that operate as tourist attractions in Colorado must designate someone to inspect the mines and the transportation systems daily, according to the state Division of Reclamation, Mining and Safety. Mikesell said he didn’t know the date of the last inspection. Records of the inspections weren’t immediately available online.

Gov. Jared Polis sent state resources including a mine rescue team.

Cripple Creek is a town of about 1,100 in the Rocky Mountains southwest of Colorado Springs.

The mine opened in the 1800s and closed in 1961, but still operates tours. Its website describes a one-hour tour in which visitors descend 304 meters. It says they can see veins of gold in the rock and ride an underground tram.

A woman named Mollie Kathleen Gortner discovered the site of the mine in 1891 when she saw quartz laced with gold, according to the company’s website.
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За повідомленням організації, на території півострова за цим звинуваченням російські силовики затримали щонайменше 19 людей
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When major disasters like hurricanes and floods hit the United States, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, coordinates major rescue efforts that would overwhelm local officials. VOA’s Jessica Stone reports on how the agency works. 
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WASHINGTON — Disinformation and conspiracy theories have spread quickly in response to natural disasters in the southeastern United States, creating distrust in the government response, according to the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

“It is absolutely the worst I have ever seen,” FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell told reporters on a Tuesday call.

The spread of lies surrounding the natural disasters comes at a time when social media infrastructure will allow “virtually any claim” to amplify and spread, experts say.

Hurricane Helene left more than 200 people dead and many more injured or without power, and Hurricane Milton has left at least four dead after ravaging Florida, according to the Associated Press.

Some frequently spread falsehoods include accusations that FEMA prevented Florida evacuations and claims that funding for storm victims was instead given to undocumented migrants.

Such misinformation is “demoralizing” to first responders, Criswell said in the press call.

Additionally, the fabrications could put first responders and residents of impacted areas in even more danger, according to Matthew Baum, a Harvard University professor who focuses on fake news and misinformation.

“When you’re talking about life-and-death situations, [misinformation] can cause people not to take advantage of help that’s available to them, and it can also be dangerous for first responders who are being accused of all sorts of badness,” Baum told VOA. “And if first responders start to worry about their own safety, that’s going to undermine how they do their jobs.”

Many of the other falsehoods stem from former President Donald Trump’s campaign and allies.

In an October 3 rally, the former president falsely claimed that the Biden-Harris administration was diverting FEMA funding to house illegal migrants.

Last week, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican from Georgia, claimed that “they control the weather” in a post on social media platform X, formerly Twitter. She did not specify who “they” are.

To combat popular conspiracies surrounding hurricane relief efforts, FEMA launched a “Hurricane Rumor Response” webpage to “help correct rumors and provide accurate information,” according to a press release.

Baum, however, told VOA that those who believe the false claims may not be swayed by the government-funded website, as they are already “deep down the rabbit hole of conspiratorial thinking.”

“I don’t think the website will have a significant effect, but it’s still worth doing because journalists read it and having that information out there gets it into the news ecosystem,” Baum said. “But fundamentally, it’s not likely to reach many of the people that are at risk of being harmed by this disinformation.”

FEMA put up a similar rumor response webpage during the 2020 coronavirus pandemic.

On social media platforms such as X, misinformation tends to spread faster than true stories, a 2018 MIT study found. False news stories are 70% more likely to be reposted than true ones are.

Media scholar Matt Jordan told VOA the vast amount of disinformation circulating is part of a “firehose of falsehood” strategy, in which bad actors publish so much “garbage” that people don’t know what to believe.

“It’s a way of eliminating the capacity for the press to help generate democratic consensus by just putting so much garbage into the zone,” the Penn State professor said.

U.S. President Joe Biden said during a Tuesday morning briefing that this misinformation “misleads” the public.

“It’s un-American, it really is,” he said in his remarks. “People are scared to death; people know their lives are at stake.”
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Станом на зараз відомо про вісьмох загиблих внаслідок атаки Росії на Одеський район увечері 9 жовтня
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«Серед поранених – троє дітей:  2, 5 та 15 років з гострою реакцією на стрес»
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Hurricane Milton left behind widespread destruction as it hit Florida on Wednesday as a dangerous Category 3 storm – the second time in two weeks the southeastern state was hit by a powerful hurricane. VOA’s Richard Green has the latest.
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The vibrant world of yellow-skinned giants, surreal landscapes and a massive mechanical zoetrope have taken over the Hirshhorn Museum in the largest U.S. showcase of work by Brazilian twin brothers OSGEMEOS. It’s the most comprehensive display of the siblings’ art ever presented in the United States. Maxim Adams has the story. Camera: Sergii Dogotar.
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Депутатку заарештували на два місяці із правом внесення застави у 49 мільйонів гривень
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Також парламентарі ухвалили поправку до закону, яка залишає військовий збір для військовослужбовців на рівні 1,5%
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Двоє українців загинуло в ДТП у селі Медика поблизу польсько-українського кордону
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У міністерстві уточнюють, що до 15 листопада в Україні мають провести аудит «критичних» підприємств, які отримали такий статус
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NEW YORK — You’ve heard the horror stories: Someone casting multiple ballots, people voting in the name of dead relatives, mail-in ballots being intercepted. 

Voter fraud does happen occasionally. When it does, we tend to hear a lot about it. It also gets caught and prosecuted. 

The nation’s multilayered election processes provide many safeguards that keep voter fraud generally detectable and rare, according to current and former election administrators of both parties. 

America’s elections are decentralized, with thousands of independent voting jurisdictions. That makes it virtually impossible to pull off a large-scale vote-rigging operation that could tip a presidential race — or almost any other race. 

“You’re probably not going to have a perfect election system,” said Republican Trey Grayson, a former Kentucky secretary of state and the advisory board chair of the Secure Elections Project. “But if you’re looking for one that you should have confidence in, you should feel good about that here in America.” 

What’s stopping people from committing voter fraud? 

Voting more than once, tampering with ballots, lying about your residence to vote somewhere else, or casting someone else’s ballot are crimes that can be punished with hefty fines and prison time. Non-U.S. citizens who break election laws can be deported. 

For anyone still motivated to cheat, election systems in the United States are designed with multiple layers of protection and transparency intended to stand in the way. 

For in-person voting, most states either require or request voters provide some sort of ID at the polls. Others require voters to verify who they are in another way, such as stating their name and address, signing a poll book or signing an affidavit. 

People who try to vote in the name of a recently deceased friend or family member can be caught when election officials update voter lists with death records and obituaries, said Gail Pellerin, a Democratic in the California Assembly who ran elections in Santa Cruz County for more than 27 years. 

Those who try to impersonate someone else run the risk that someone at the polls knows that person or that the person will later try to cast their own ballot, she said. 

What protections exist for absentee voting? 

For absentee voting, different states have different ballot verification protocols. All states require a voter’s signature. Many states have further precautions, such as having bipartisan teams compare the signature with other signatures on file, requiring the signature to be notarized or requiring a witness to sign. 

That means even if a ballot is erroneously sent to someone’s past address and the current resident mails it in, there are checks to alert election workers to the foul play. 

A growing number of states offer online or text-based ballot tracking tools as an extra layer of protection, allowing voters to see when their ballot has been sent out, returned and counted. 

Federal law requires voter list maintenance, and election officials do that through a variety of methods, from checking state and federal databases to collaborating with other states to track voters who have moved. 

Ballot drop boxes have security protocols, too, said Tammy Patrick, chief executive officer for programs at the National Association of Election Officials. 

She explained the boxes are often designed to stop hands from stealing ballots and are surveilled by camera, bolted to the ground and constructed with fire-retardant chambers, so if someone threw in a lit match, it wouldn’t destroy the ballots inside. 

Sometimes, alleged voter fraud isn’t what it seems 

After the 2020 election, social media surged with claims of dead people casting ballots, double voting or destroyed piles of ballots on the side of the road. 

Former President Donald Trump promoted and has continued to amplify these claims. But the vast majority of them were found to be untrue. 

An Associated Press investigation that explored every potential case of voter fraud in the six battleground states disputed by Trump found there were fewer than 475 out of millions of votes cast. That was not nearly enough to tip the outcome. Democrat Joe Biden won the six states by a combined 311,257 votes. 

The review also showed no collusion intended to rig the voting. Virtually every case was based on an individual acting alone to cast additional ballots. In one case, a man mistakenly thought he could vote while on parole. In another, a woman was suspected of sending in a ballot for her dead mother. 

Former election officials say that even more often, allegations of voter fraud turn out to result from a clerical error or a misunderstanding. 

Pellerin said she remembered when a political candidate in her county raised suspicion about many people being registered to vote at the same address. It turned out the voters were nuns who all lived in the same home. 

Patrick said that when she worked in elections in Maricopa County, Arizona, mismatched signatures were sometimes explained by a broken arm or a recent stroke. In other cases, an elderly person tried to vote twice because they forgot they had already submitted a mail ballot. 

“You really have to think about the intent of the voter,” Patrick said. “It isn’t always intuitive.” 

Why voter fraud is unlikely to affect the presidential race 

It would be wrong to suggest that voter fraud never happens. 

With millions of votes cast in an election year, it’s almost guaranteed there will be a few cases of someone trying to game the system. There also have been more insidious efforts, such as a vote-buying scheme in 2006 in Kentucky. 

In that case, Grayson said, voters complained, and an investigation ensued. Then participants admitted what they had done. 

He said the example shows how important it is for election officials to stay vigilant and constantly improve security in order to help voters feel confident. 

But, he said, it would be hard to make any such scheme work on a larger scale. Fraudsters would have to navigate onerous nuances in each county’s election system. They also would have to keep a large number of people quiet about a crime that could be caught at any moment by officials or observers. 

“This decentralized nature of the elections is itself a deterrent,” Grayson said. 
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Серед евакуйованих: 28 українців, 40 іноземців і дві собаки
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