One person is dead and 12 others trapped hundreds of metres underground after an elevator failure at a former Colorado gold mine that is now a tourist attraction.

Another 11 people were rescued from the Mollie Kathleen Gold Mine attraction in Cripple Creek, Colorado, Teller County Sheriff Jason Mikesell told reporters.

Emergency responders were attempting to repair the elevator to bring back the 11 tourists and one tour guide who were trapped, he added.

A mechanical failure in the elevator occurred with one tour group below ground and another group aboard while it was about halfway down the mine shaft.

This resulted in one fatality while four other people suffered minor injuries, Mikesell said without providing details of how the person died.

Responders had radio communication with the people trapped below, and they had water, blankets and chairs to keep them comfortable, Mikesell said.

Engineers from the state, mine safety experts and firefighters were on hand.

In the event the elevator cannot be safely repaired, firefighters were preparing for a rescue operation, but using the elevator would be much safer.

“If we have to, we can bring people up on those ropes, but it also subjects those first responders now to the threat and endangerment of doing so,” Mikesell said.

A family business has been operating tours at the mine, which is about 180 km south of Denver, for 50 years.

With agencies

The renters’ rights bill, which passed its second reading in the House of Commons this week, is set to be the biggest change to the private rented sector in England for over 30 years with proposed changes to ban Section 21 evictions, the introduction of open-ended tenancies and new requirements for property standards and rent increases (Report, September 12).

Propertymark is the UK’s leading membership body for property agents. While we want to see improved standards, the government must fully understand the impact these changes will have, with agents left wondering how this legislation will help meet the much-needed demand for homes for people to rent.

Our monthly Housing Insight Report shows on average eight registrations for each available property with fewer new properties coming on to the market. The bill in its current form is highly likely to exacerbate this situation with more landlords withdrawing homes from the private rented sector, frequently moving them to short-term lets.

Tax is reducing the investment appetite of new and existing landlords with higher rates of stamp duty on buy-to-let properties and the withdrawal of tax relief on mortgage interest costs. Ministers must recognise the financial implications of this bill and the impact it has on the supply of homes to rent.

Through the renters’ rights bill, the UK government must commit to reviewing all costs and taxes impacting on private landlords to ensure landlords continue in the market and more landlords can meet the demand for homes to rent.

Additionally, with no security of a rental term for a landlord beyond the proposed two months’ notice period and no long-term guarantee of rent, we would expect to see a significant number of landlords attracted to higher rents in the short-term letting market, which also offers them the advantage of being unregulated.

With landlords exiting the private rented sector, the result would be a reduction in the rental stock available for long-term tenants and increased rents. To help mitigate this, the government must also enact the registration of short-term rental property requirements, as passed in the Levelling-up and Regeneration Act 2023, alongside these reforms to level the playing field for landlords and the long-term rental market.

Timothy Douglas
Head of Policy and Campaigns, Propertymark, Warwick, UK

Your report (October 4) that giving the Chagos Islands to Mauritius means the sun has finally set on the British empire reminds me of a comment by Krishna Menon, a defence minister in post-independence India. The British empire had reached its zenith on September 29, 1923 having acquired enormous amount of territories following the first world war. It then covered nearly 14mn square miles, 150 times the size of Great Britain. This was a quarter of the world’s land area with 460mn people, a fifth of the world’s population. George V, as King Emperor, could proudly claim that the sun never set on the British empire.

This prompted Menon, then based in London campaigning for India’s freedom, to mockingly say: “The sun never set on the empire because God doesn’t trust the British in the dark.” Now the sun has set on the empire the British will surely regain God’s trust.

Mihir Bose
London W6, UK

Tesla loves to put on a show, and Thursday’s Robotaxi reveal might just be the flashiest of them all.

The electric vehicle maker is slated to unveil its much-hyped Robotaxi vehicle at Warner Bros. Discovery’s movie studio in Burbank, California. For those attending, doors will open at 5 p.m. PT, with remarks beginning at 7 p.m. PT today.

Tesla will livestream the “We, Robot” event on X, which Elon Musk owns. The automaker usually streams events live on its YouTube page but hasn’t yet said if it will do so for the Robotaxi reveal. However, that might be a smart option, considering the technical issues X’s livestreams have faced. And you can follow along with our own live blog of the event here.

The future will be streamed live

10/10, 7pm PT https://t.co/YJEjZIYoTA

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— Tesla (@Tesla) October 9, 2024

Musk first teased the Robotaxi event in April, setting a date of August 8 for a reveal — a date that Tesla had to push back due to “an important design change to the front.”

The Robotaxi appears to have come at the expense of a next-generation $25,000 EV that Musk also promised. A few weeks after Musk announced the Robotaxi event, he slashed more than 10% of Tesla’s workforce and said the automaker was going “balls to the wall for autonomy.”

Musk has promised autonomous capabilities in Tesla vehicles for years. The company’s advanced driver-assistance system is rather brazenly named Full Self-Driving (FSD), even though it is not fully self-driving and requires a human driver to pay attention and take over if needed — a fact that is borne out again and again in drive-along videos that fans regularly post on social media.

When Musk first floated the idea of robotaxis in 2019, the idea was that some existing Teslas would be able to act as autonomous robotaxis with only software updates, potentially unlocking an opportunity for Tesla owners to make money from their cars when not driving them. That plan, which was supposed to result in millions of robotaxis on the road by 2020, has never been implemented. At the time, Musk said that in places where there aren’t enough people to share their cars, Tesla would provide a dedicated fleet of robotaxis.

We expect this reveal — which we remind you is at a Hollywood studio — to be less about the autonomous technology and more about the vehicle itself. Musk has said he wants to build a robotaxi without a steering wheel or pedals, and images of the vehicle that were included in Walter Isaacson’s Elon Musk biography, which was published in 2023, reveal a Cybertruck-inspired, two-door, two-seater compact vehicle.

Whatever the event brings, TechCrunch will be following it live and bringing you the news as it happens, so stay tuned.

Please check back in for updates.