One dead and 12 tourists trapped in Colorado gold mine

"There is an elevator issue to resolve before they could be brought up," Teller County Sheriff Jason Mikesell told reporters on Thursday.

Emergency workers have rescued 11 people, including two children, so far. At least four have minor injuries.

The group were touring Mollie Kathleen Gold Mine in Cripple Creek - a privately-owned tourist attraction for more than 50 years.

At least one person has died and 12 remain trapped in a disused Colorado gold mine after a lift malfunctioned, officials say.

The hour-long tour takes visitors 1,000ft (305m) down the shaft into the south-west side of Pikes Peak, according to the tour company’s website.

Officials said the lift descending into the gold mine had a mechanical issue around 500ft beneath the surface, creating a “severe danger for the participants”.

"We did have one fatality that occurred during this issue at 500ft," Sheriff Mikesell said.

Rescue teams are using radio to communicate with the 12 others who are stuck near the bottom of the mine.

"They have chairs, blankets, water and are at a safe temperature," Sheriff Mikesell said. "This was due to an equipment malfunction. The mine did not collapse."

Officials are hoping to fix the lift.

"But we also have a plan B and a Plan C already set in place with rescue officers in case of an issue," Sheriff Mikesell said.

Several agencies, including search and rescue teams, are responding to the incident with heavy equipment.

Colorado Governor Jared Polis said state resources had been allocated to assist with the rescue efforts.

“We will do everything possible and assist the county to ensure a speedy and safe resolution of the situation,” Governor Polis said.

According to the tour company’s website, entering the 1890s gold mine is comparable to riding in a lift.

The ride itself takes two minutes. The temperature at the bottom is 50F (20C) . There are no toilets underground and visitors are given hard hats.

Visitors to the Mollie Kathleen view several exposed gold veins in their natural state, the website says.

The mine was named after Mollie Kathleen Gortner, the first woman in the Cripple Creek Gold Camp to strike gold in 1891.

The tours were set to close this Sunday for the season.

Northern Lights seen over UK skies in stunning photos

A Weather Watcher sent us this spectacular image taken in Frieth, Buckinghamshire

BBC Weather Watchers , readers and viewers have been sending in their photos of the display - here are some of the best.

People are advised to use a long exposure camera to capture the auroras, as the phenomenon is not always visible with the naked eye.

The Met Office earlier said the lights, also known as aurora borealis, might be seen only as far south as the Midlands.

The Northern Lights have splashed vivid colour across UK night skies once again, with stunning images captured from Scotland to as far south as Kent and East Anglia .

Northern Lights spotted over Renfrewshire in Scotland

The UK has seen more of the Northern Lights in 2024 than in many recent years.

Aurora displays occur when charged particles collide with gases in the Earth's atmosphere around the magnetic poles.

As they collide, light is emitted at various wavelengths, creating colourful displays in the sky.

The auroras are most commonly seen over high polar latitudes, and are chiefly influenced by geomagnetic storms which originate from activity on the Sun.

Met Office spokesman Stephen Dixon said increased UK sightings were helped by the Sun being at the peak of an 11-year "solar cycle".

He said it would still be possible to see the Northern Lights in the UK once the Sun passed the peak, but stargazers should expect a "gradual decline" in visibility.

The auroras have been particularly visible in 2024 due to the biggest geomagnetic storm since 2003, according to Sean Elvidge, a professor in space environment at the University of Birmingham.

Craig Snell, a weather forecaster at the Met Office, said a solar storm caused a powerful flare from the sun on Wednesday, which arrived in our atmosphere on Thursday evening.

He said the strength of the lights would ebb and flow throughout the evening, but the lights may be captured at different times throughout the night.

‘I nearly died drinking a ginger beer – my school’s EpiPen saved my life’

BBC Elaine Fraser recognised the symptoms of anaphylactic shock thanks to training by the school where she works

When teacher Elaine Fraser collapsed at home after drinking a ginger beer, she had no idea she had an allergy. “It escalated unbelievably quickly,” Elaine recalls. “My chest was concave trying to pull in breath.” The 53-year-old began to recognise the symptoms of anaphylactic shock, as staff at her school had been trained to spot them and to use an adrenalin pen in emergencies. “I knew that my time was running out, and it was a cold, clear realisation that I needed to make one very good call,” Elaine says. The call she made was to the school caretaker, Jason Jaekel, who lives just two minutes from her home. “You could tell from how she sounded it was a life-threatening situation,” remembers Jason. “My first thought was to grab the [adrenaline pen] kit from the school office and just get round as quick as I could.” Jason dashed to Elaine’s house and administered the EpiPen as he’d been taught at York House School in Hampstead. “It was just a lightbulb moment,” he says. “The pen went in, and I saw the light come back into her eyes. Her breathing steadied off, her eyes came back, she started to talk. I just felt an immediate relief.” Elaine's life was saved because of a change to the law in 2017 which allowed schools in the UK to stock and administer adrenaline pens.

It followed the death of 13-year-old Karanbir Cheema, who died after another student flicked a piece of cheese at him, triggering his dairy allergy. His own EpiPen was out of date - and didn’t work when it was administered. But the school EpiPen scheme is optional and unfunded, and it is estimated that only half of schools have signed up. Some MPs have called for the scheme to be mandatory and many campaigners and medics want it to be extended beyond schools, perhaps to restaurants and other public places.

Family photo Karanbir Cheema died after his out-of-date EpiPen failed to work

The adrenaline pen which saved Elaine’s life was supplied by Zak Marks’s firm Kitt Medical, which supplies adrenaline to around 500 schools. He told us that since launching in 2023, the company’s pens have been used seven times to treat life-threatening allergic reactions. Zak says he cries every time he is told this has happened. And his company’s ambition goes well beyond schools. “Our goal is to be every defibrillator’s next-door neighbour,” says Zak. “We want adrenaline pens and training in every public place.” Nasar Ahmed died in 2016 after an allergic reaction to his school dinner. At the 14-year-old's inquest, his paediatrician and the coroner asked if adrenaline could be available in public places, in much the same way as defibrillators. The Chief Medical Officer wrote to the coroner to say there were serious clinical and practical concerns about adrenaline pens being administered by an untrained member of the public in the same way as defibrillators.

Family photo Nasar Ahmed died of an allergic reaction in 2016

The Medicines and Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency told the BBC this could only happen with another change in the law. Similar legislation is in place in Ireland which crucially allows only trained individuals to administer adrenaline in an emergency. Nasar’s paediatrician, Dr Chinedu Nwokoro, acknowledges there are obstacles to bringing EpiPens to more locations. “Unlike a defibrillator, this is a medicine,” Dr Nwokoro says. “It's something that can expire, and there's a question around who carries responsibility for replacing it and who pays for it.” But he still believes a change in law should happen. “What we're seeing is a continued trickle of deaths - or serious near misses - from anaphylaxis that might be mitigated by this kind of change in legislation and policy,” he says. “If it’s has been rolled out safely in schools, why not elsewhere?” The law changed in exactly this way in Ireland following the death of 14-year-old Emma Sloan. She had a reaction to a Chinese meal and died in the street after a pharmacist said he was unable to give her a life-saving adrenalin pen without her prescription.

Family photo Emma Sloan's death prompted a change in the law in Ireland

Ministers to consider scrapping short jail terms

PA Media Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood has said jails "are on the point of collapse"

Scrapping short prison terms is among a number of ideas set to be considered by an upcoming government review of sentencing. Ministers are interested in proposals to toughen up community orders as an alternative to jail, to reduce the number of offenders in prisons. David Gauke, a former justice secretary and Conservative MP, is the frontrunner to head the work, the BBC has been told by multiple sources. The review will be announced later this month and is expected make recommendations to ministers next spring. As justice secretary in 2019, Gauke said there was a strong case for scrapping jail terms of less than six months. The BBC has approached Gauke for comment.

Shabana Mahmood, the current justice secretary, is known to want to toughen community sentences, which could involve strict conditions and punishments but no time behind bars. Several government sources pointed to advances in technology, such as sobriety tags monitoring alcohol use, that could be used more widely to detain criminals in their homes. One source argued community orders could be tougher than prison because those convicted could not “mong out for 23 hours a day on drugs”. Ministers are also exploring international examples of reducing crime in Texas and Louisiana, where prisoners can reduce their sentences by earning credits for good behaviour. Officials also pointed to New York, where offenders convicted of drug-related crimes can be sent on a treatment programme. If they complete it, they can have their charges dismissed or reduced. It comes as prisons across the country are struggling to deal with overcrowding after the number of offenders behind bars hit a record high. The Labour government has been exploring options to relieve the immediate pressure on prisons, and has already released some offenders early to free up space. But further emergency measures to stop prisons breaching capacity will be needed next year, sources have told the BBC.

Ministers had hoped the existing early release scheme would buy them 12 months. But the riots this year mean prisons are expected to be full again next summer, before any changes to sentencing can be made. In the long term, ministers want to consider sentencing changes that could reduce crime. Ending or moving away from short sentences could have a particular effect on the number of women in jail, after the Prison Reform Trust found last year that over half (58%) of jail terms given to women in 2022 were for less than six months. Ministry of Justice figures show more than half of adults (57%) released from prison sentences of less than 12 months went on to reoffend. One Ministry of Justice source said the government would be encouraging the reviewer “to follow the evidence in terms of how sentencing can cut crime”. “Prisons are creating better criminals, not better citizens,” the source said. A solicitor who was seen as being on the centrist wing of the Conservative Party, Gauke could be viewed as a contentious choice to lead the review. In 2019, he made a series of speeches to call for a shift away from short prison sentences and towards punishment in the community. But Gauke’s successor, Robert Buckland, said he did not believe abolishing short sentences was the right way forward.

Getty David Gauke talked about reforming sentencing when he was justice secretary

Lord Woolf, a former chief justice of England and Wales, told the BBC he thought Gauke would be a “very good person” to lead the sentencing review. He said the government should consider launching a public inquiry into the penal system. “I think there is ignorance over what prisons can achieve,” he said. He wrote a report about the Strangeways prison riot in 1990 and has consistenly highlighted the problems of prison overcrowding since then. The retired barrister was one of five former lord chief justices who signed a paper that blamed “sentence inflation” for the lack of space in prisons. “The public want longer and longer sentences,” Lord Woolf said. “But they don’t know that’s self-defeating and it’s a very expensive policy.” Tory leadership contender Kemi Badenoch criticised Labour for "taking short-term decisions and putting the public at risk", adding she wanted to tackle the "root causes" of prison overcrowding. Robert Jenrick, the other remaining candidate in the leadership contest, said Labour was showing a "soft-on-crime approach", and repeat offenders needed "massively tougher sentences" to protect the public.

Will I be diagnosed with Alzheimer's like my mother?

Sally Magnusson Sally Magnusson has already written a book about how her family coped with her mother's dementia

There can’t be many people who spend years raging and grieving over the decline of a parent from dementia without wondering if it awaits them too. I’m one. My mother died of this vicious brain condition in 2012. And hardly a day has passed since when that question hasn’t been darting around the edge of my mind, flaring ridiculously into view every time I misplace a word, a name or a pair of glasses. Actually it’s perfectly normal in a busy life to lose your specs or wonder what you went looking for in the cupboard. But tell that to those of us in the traumatised next generation, who have watched loved ones suffer in ways we can still hardly bear to think about. Is this, we ask ourselves, the start of the horror again?

Curing Alzheimer's is within our grasp

Now, for the first time, we can find out for sure. A simple blood test, taken as part of a research programme and backed up where necessary by a lumbar puncture and PET scan - which produce three-dimensional images of the inside of the body - can tell us if amyloid, a brain protein implicated in Alzheimer’s disease, is already present. I’ve made a film about what that means for individuals like me in their 50s and 60s with a family history of Alzheimer’s, the most common of the illnesses leading to dementia. And guess what? Deciding if you want to go through with it is not so simple.

My mother, Mamie Baird, was one of the pioneering female journalists of the 1950s. Bright, clever, quick-witted and funny, she was still writing and giving hilarious after-dinner speeches into her 60s. But like a million or so others in the UK, she succumbed to a disease that gnawed at her personality and cognition until it consumed her ability to function at all.

Sally Magnusson Sally's mother Mamie (centre) was a pioneering journalist who was still writing and giving after-dinner speeches into her 60s

There was nothing to help her: Little support, and no drug to mitigate the symptoms that over time made life an agony for her and for all of us who loved her. Dementia is not a natural part of ageing, although the risk increases with age. It’s an illness caused by one, or a combination, of a number of brain conditions. My mother was diagnosed with both Alzheimer’s and vascular dementia, and although we had good times together in the years afterwards, many laughs and much joyfulness in the moment, the progressive incapacity and disconnection from herself were painful to her beyond words.

Sally Magnusson Sally's daughter Anna Lisa is afraid of the implications of Sally finding out if she has the brain protein

Finestripe Sally playing with her granddaughter Remy

In 2014, I published the book Where Memories Go, a mixture of memoir and journalism, to highlight what the experience is like for families who have to struggle on without hope of improvement – and I was stunned by the reaction. In the thousands of messages I got from across the country, it felt as if a great floodgate of pain and family loneliness was opening. Now 10 years on, there is hope.

Testing, treatments and cure

Scientists have shown that the build-up of amyloid in the brains of people with Alzheimer’s can be successfully cleared. They’re convinced that if drugs already in development (and at least one, lecanemab, is now licensed for use in the UK, although not yet on the NHS) are given to people before they develop symptoms, Alzheimer’s can be stopped in its tracks.

Finestripe Prof Craig Ritchie says thousands of people need to come forward for testing before they are conscious of symptoms

As Prof Craig Ritchie, who runs the pioneering Scottish Brain Sciences (SBS) in Edinburgh, says: “We can cure Alzheimer’s before it becomes dementia – just as we learned to stop HIV before it became AIDS.” But to do that, scientists like him need many thousands of people to come forward for testing before they’re conscious of symptoms. Which means that folk like me, still gaily going about normal lives and tackling demanding jobs, have to be prepared to find out that they already have the disease process of Alzheimer’s going on in their brains. Prof Ritchie, who I originally met through my work with the music and dementia charity Playlist for Life, suggested I join the enormous research cohort he is trying to gather at SBS. “After all, Sally,” he said, “you might equally discover you’re not amyloid-positive. Imagine the relief that would be.” And if it turns out that I am? If I know what cannot be unknown, what then?

Sally Magnusson Sally and husband Norman with their daughter Anna Lisa and sons Jamie, Rossie, Magnus and Siggy.

Meet the team paid to break into top-secret bases

Getty Images Red Teams try to break into high security facilities

A crack team assembles and breaks into a top secret military base or corporate headquarters - you've probably seen it in a film or on TV a dozen times. But such teams exist in the real world and can be hired to test the tightest security. Plenty of firms offer to test computer systems by attempting to remotely hack into them. That's called White Hat Hacking. But the skills involved in breaching physical security, known as Red Teaming, are rare. Companies that offer the Red Team service have to assemble staff with very particular skills. Often using former military and intelligence personnel, Red Teams are asked one question. “How can you break into this top-secret project?”

Leonardo, the giant defence company, offers such a service. It says hostile states seeking disruption and chaos are a real threat and sells its Red Team capability to government, critical infrastructure, and defence sector clients. Its Red Team agreed to speak to the BBC under pseudonyms. Greg, the team leader, served in the engineering and intelligence arms of the British Army, studying the digital capabilities of potential enemies. “I spent a decade learning how to exploit enemy communications,” he says of his background. Now he co-ordinates the five-strong team. The attack is about gaining access. The objective might be to stop a process from working, such as the core of a nuclear power plant. The first step for Greg and his team is called passive reconnaissance. Using an anonymous device, perhaps a smartphone only identifiable by its sim card, the team build a picture of the target. “We must avoid raising suspicions, so the target doesn’t know we’re looking at them,” Greg says. Any technology they employ is not linked to a business by its internet address and is bought with cash.

Getty Images Red Teams will look for demotivated security gaurds

Charlie spent 12 years in military intelligence, his techniques include studying commercial satellite imagery of a site, and scanning job ads to work out what type of people work there. “We start from the edges of the target, staying away. Then we start to move into the target area, even looking at how people who work there dress.” This is known as hostile reconnaissance. They are getting close to the site, but keeping their exposure low, wearing different clothes every time they show up, and swapping out team members, so security people don’t spot the same person walking past the gates.

Technology is devised by people and the human factor is the weakest point in any security set-up. This is where Emma, who served in the RAF, comes in. With a background in psychology Emma happily calls herself “a bit of a nosy people watcher”. “People take shortcuts past security protocols. So, we look for disgruntled people at the site.” She listens in to conversations at adjacent cafes and pubs to hear where dissatisfaction with an employer surfaces. “Every organisation has its quirks. We see what the likelihood of people falling for a suspicious email due to workload and fatigue is.” An unhappy security guard may get lazy at work. “We’re looking at access, slipping in with a delivery for instance.” A high turnover rate evidenced by frequently advertised vacancies also flags up dissatisfaction and a lack of engagement with security responsibilities. Tailgating, spotting people who are likely to hold an access door open for a follower, is another technique. Using that intelligence, plus a little subterfuge, security passes can be copied, and the Red Team can enter the premises posing as an employee.

Katsuhiko TOKUNAGA Leonardo is best known for its work on big defence projects like the Eurofighter