Aug. 26 (UPI) — At least one person was killed and several others were injured in a landslide that hit the Alaskan coastal city of Ketchikan on Sunday, according to officials who have ordered mandatory evacuations over the potential of additional landslides.
City officials said in a statement that the landslide occurred at about 4 p.m., damaging multiple homes. Third Avenue Bypass, Second Avenue, First Avenue and White Cliff Avenue were all affected, it said.
The city declared a disaster emergency, stating in the declaration that the landslide has also forced road closures and caused flooding.
Ketchikan Gateway Borough Mayor Rodney Dial said that in his 65 years, he has “never seen a slide of this magnitude.”
The officials said one person was killed and three others were hospitalized with injuries suffered during the slide. Of those injured, only one has been released from the hospital as of late Sunday.
“Friends, is with a heavy heart we relay that a landslide in the city has taken a life, caused several injuries, damaged homes and impacted our community,” Dial said in the statement. “As we work through this, please keep the affected families in your prayers.”
City officials are warning over the potential of another landslide and have ordered the mandatory evacuation of some residents. An emergency shelter has been erected and stocked with supplies at the Ketchikan high school, they said.
Gov. Mike Dunleavy of Alaska said late Sunday that he has declared a disaster declaration and has directed all state agencies to provide the city with “what ever assistance is needed.”
With posting pictures online of utility poles that had been toppled by tons of earth and felled trees, local KPU Electric said the landslide had caused power outages in the city.
It said many homes and businesses had power restored by 8 p.m. but that those without electricity would remain that way until the landslide was cleared.
“There are six poles down that cannot be repaired at safely at this time,” it said in a statement.
“Praying for everyone in Ketchikan right now,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski said on X.
Located in the Southeast Alaska Panhandle, Ketchikan is home to about 8,200 people, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
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Messaging app Telegram has said its chief executive has “nothing to hide” after French authorities detained Pavel Durov at the weekend for alleged failures in content moderation.
In a surprise move that has escalated the global debate over free speech and raised tensions with Moscow, the Russia-born billionaire was arrested at Paris-Le Bourget airport when he arrived in the country on his private jet from Azerbaijan on Saturday evening, according to French news agency AFP.
The Paris prosecutor’s office has confirmed an active investigation into Durov, and French media have reported he is alleged to have failed to moderate adequately criminal activity on the platform.
In a statement on Sunday, Dubai-based Telegram said its moderation was “within industry standards and constantly improving”, adding that it was abiding by EU laws including the Digital Services Act. The legislation, which came into force this year, requires platforms to police harmful content and disinformation more closely, or risk penalties or being restricted in the bloc.
“It is absurd to claim that a platform or its owner are responsible for abuse of that platform,” Telegram said. “We’re awaiting a prompt resolution of this situation. Telegram is with you all.”
Durov’s detainment marks the most drastic national action against a social media chief to date and threatens to further ignite global debate over whether platforms should prioritise online safety or free speech. Free speech proponents such as Elon Musk have been hitting out at French authorities, with the billionaire owner of rival platform X posting the hashtag “#freepavel” on his platform.
French authorities had been investigating whether Telegram’s moderation failures had helped facilitate illegal activity including terrorism, drug peddling, money laundering, fraud and child exploitation, according to several French television outlets. Some reports suggested there had been a warrant out for Durov’s arrest, but Telegram on Sunday said the entrepreneur “has nothing to hide and travels frequently in Europe”.
Durov has been known as the “Mark Zuckerberg of Russia” after co-founding the country’s most popular social media network, VKontakte, in his native St Petersburg in 2007. He fled Russia in 2014 after allegedly refusing to comply with Moscow’s demands for access to the data of Ukrainian users protesting against a pro-Russia administration.
Founded in 2013, Telegram has exploded in popularity, nearing 1bn users and becoming one of the key communication tools in conflict zones and humanitarian crises such as the Russia-Ukraine war and the Israel-Hamas conflict.
Durov has taken a hands-off approach to moderation and cast the app as unassailable by governments. However, some researchers have warned that it has become a hub for illicit activity and extremism as a result.
While Durov now has dual French-Emirati citizenship, his Russian roots prompted some lawmakers in Moscow to call for his release and suggest the arrest was politically motivated, while the Russian embassy in France said it had requested consular access to Durov.
In recent years, Durov has tried to distance himself and the app from Russia, amid claims by critics that the Kremlin might still have links to or leverage over Telegram.
“He thought his biggest problems were in Russia and left . . . he wanted to be a brilliant ‘citizen of the world’, living well without a homeland,” former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev, now a prominent rightwing commentator, wrote on his Telegram channel on Sunday.
“He miscalculated. To our common enemies, he is still Russian — unpredictable and dangerous, of different blood.”
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Hello and welcome to the working week.
One event worth keeping an eye on is set to happen high above our heads on Tuesday when the Polaris Dawn space mission is set to launch with billionaire Jared Isaacman and three others on board. The mission, privately funded by Isaacman and operated by SpaceX, is using the company’s Falcon 9 rocket and spacesuits.
The spacecraft’s crew are planning to attempt a spacewalk during their mission, which is predicted to last five days. If they pull it off, the crew will be the first non-government astronauts to complete a spacewalk. While mainly symbolic, the feat would be a sign of the increase in private companies that are making more ambitious plans for space.
Already this year we have had the first commercial space flight to successfully land on the moon. Elon Musk’s SpaceX is also an integral part of Nasa’s Artemis programme to return to moon as the global space race gathers pace.
Back on solid ground, there are some headline acts to watch out for in this week’s company results, including chipmaker Nvidia reporting its second-quarter results on Wednesday. In the group’s first-quarter results it reported a staggering 262 per cent increase in revenue. At the time the company’s boss Jensen Huang told investors that Nvidia would see “a lot” of revenue from its new Blackwell chips that power generative AI models that the company unveiled in June.
Since then the chipmaker has become the world’s most valuable company, lost about $750bn in value, and then gained it all back. No matter what happens, Nvidia’s results will be one to watch. It will also be worth catching the results for CrowdStrike, the first since a software update by the cyber security group caused an outage for large companies including Delta. This will be the first chance for investors to see in detail how the outage affected the company’s bottom line.
In the UK it has been a surprisingly pleasant summer with only a few dull days. But as August winds down this week, our weather is set to take a turn from better to wetter. The UK Met office is aware of this and on Thursday will announce storm names for 2024-25. Names can be suggested by the public but cannot start with the letters Q, U, X, Y and Z so that they are aligned with the US National Hurricane Center naming conventions. So, sadly, we will never see a storm Zane.
Here is a more complete list of what to expect in terms of company reports and economic data this week.
Sweden: The central bank publishes the minutes from its monetary policy meeting
UK: summer bank holiday. Markets closed (not Scotland)
Philippines: National Heroes Day holiday. Financial markets closed
Spain: PPI for July
Hungary: Central bank interest rate decision
UK: British Retail Consortium Shop Price Index, giving a picture of the inflation rate of 500 of the most commonly bought high street products for August
UK: Britvic shareholders vote on acquisition by Carlsberg
Results: BHP FY preliminary, Bank of Nova Scotia Q3
Israel interest rate announcement
UK: Bank of England Monetary Policy Committee member Catherine Mann participates in the Central Bank Research Association annual meeting in Frankfurt
UK: Q2 GDP estimate for Scotland
Results: Bath & Body Works Q2, Prudential HY, Lego interim results, Nvidia Q2, Woolworths FY 2024, Royal Bank of Canada Q3, HP Q3, CrowdStrike Q2, Salesforce Q2
UK: Resolution Foundation annual Living Standards Audit
US: Revised growth figures for Q2 2024
Sweden: Q2 GDP data
Results: Qantas FY preliminary results, Autodesk Q2, Gap Q2, Best Buy Q2, Dollar General Q2
India: GDP for Q1
Peru: Santa Rosa of Lima Day. Financial markets closed
Czech GDP Q2
Turkey: Victory Day. Financial markets closed
Kazakhstan: Constitution Day. Financial markets closed
Finally, here is a rundown of other events and milestones this week.
US: Scheduled launch of Polaris Dawn mission from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on board a Falcon 9 rocket
US: Two-day Intelligence and National Security Summit is held just outside Washington DC. Speakers include FBI deputy director Paul Abbate and the CIA deputy director David S Cohen
UK: The Met Office announces its names for storms for the 2024-25 season
75th anniversary of the Soviet Union testing it first atomic bomb. The same day is also the international day against nuclear tests
Azerbaijan parliamentary elections
Germany: Parliamentary elections in Saxony and Thüringen state
First day of autumn by the UK Met meteorological calendar
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Babe Ruth’s New York Yankees jersey, that he’s said to have worn in a memorable Game 3 of the 1932 World Series, is displayed at Heritage Auction in Irving, Texas, days before its record sale.
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LM Otero/AP
A New York Yankees jersey worn by Babe Ruth during perhaps the most storied moment of the baseball legend’s career has sold for $24.12 million, shattering the record for most expensive sports collectible sold at auction.
The gray road jersey, sold by Heritage Auctions on Sunday in Dallas, was said to be worn by Ruth when he “called his shot” in Game 3 of the 1932 World Series against the Chicago Cubs.
The sale almost doubles the previous auction record for the most paid for a piece of sports memorabilia. That was for a 1952 Topps card of another Yankee legend, Mickey Mantle, which fetched $12.6 million at a Heritage auction in 2022. Before Sunday, the most expensive game-worn sports jersey was that worn by Michael Jordan in the first Chicago Bulls game of the 1998 NBA Finals; it sold for $10.1 million in 2022.
To authenticate the jersey, it was photo-matched by several third parties, using three photos that were taken before and after the famed World Series game, according to Heritage.
It was during that 1932 game at Wrigley Field in which Ruth was said to have prophesized the placement of his second and final home run of the game, which the Yankees won 7-5 before taking the series win from the Cubs. It happened after Ruth got two balls and two strikes on the count.
With grainy black-and-white video footage serving as evidence of the moment, the slugger appears to be pointing beyond the outfield, possibly indicating where he’s about to sink the homer, just before hitting it far over the center field fence.
Another telling has it that Ruth was gesturing toward the Cubs’ dugout, where players had been taunting the Yankee who then decided return the razzing before his hit.
Ruth himself has supported different versions of the event, at one point claiming that he called his shot.
What really happened has been disputed as much as its been memorialized in film and imitated on amateur baseball fields.
“It is a mystery to this day,” sports journalist Joe Posnanski told NPR’s Scott Simon last year. “What we do know is that the Cubs dugout was really riding Ruth, and he was really, you know, sort of riding them back. And we know he made some very grand gestures with his hand. There are those who say he held up his finger just to say it only takes one swing. And there are some who say he held up two fingers because they say he was saying, ‘OK, I have two strikes, and watch what I do now.’ ”
Fittingly, there’s been an equally meticulous debate in the process to authenticate the jersey, with one third-party company ruling ahead of the auction that their photo-matching was unable to confirm a match.
The myth surrounding Ruth’s play that day has only strengthened his legendary status in baseball history, Heritage Director of Sports Chris Ivy suggested, after a more than six-hour bidding war over the jersey.
“It is clear by the strong auction participation and record price achieved that astute collectors have no doubt as to what this Ruth jersey is and what it represents,” Ivy said in a statement. “The legend of Babe Ruth and the myth and mystery surrounding his ‘called shot’ are united in this one extraordinary artifact.”
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