Peruvian authorities are developing a plan for a high-speed railway along its coast, supported by a South Korean company, Transport and Communications Minister César Sandoval confirmed on Friday.

“The government of President Dina Boluarte has established a new policy to revolutionize the national railway infrastructure. This is a strategic commitment that promotes a portfolio of national projects aimed at connecting and integrating—safely, quickly, and sustainably—more than 33 million Peruvians,” Sandoval said.

The pre-feasibility study to be conducted by Asian technicians envisions a length of approximately 2,446 kilometers, connecting the northern region of Tumbes (near Ecuador) to the southern region of Tacna (near Chile).

It will feature stations in 10 coastal regions: Tumbes, Piura, Lambayeque, La Libertad, Áncash, Lima, Ica, Arequipa, Moquegua, and Tacna.

The train is expected to cover the entire Peruvian coast in just 16 hours. Sandoval described the project's impact as “transformative,” estimating it will carry 113 million passengers and over 61.5 million tons of cargo annually.

Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has fired a top official with the National Institutes of Health who blew the whistle on internal clashes over vaccine research in the early months of the Trump administration.

On Wednesday, Dr. Jeanne Marrazzo received a letter from Kennedy — which CBS News reviewed — informing her that her role leading NIH's National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, or NIAID, had been terminated. He did not cite a cause beyond his constitutional authority to do so. Last month, in an exclusive interview with CBS News, Marrazzo said she had been silenced when she and her colleagues pushed back against NIH officials appointed by President Trump who questioned the importance of childhood flu vaccines and canceled long-running clinical trials.

The High Speed Rail Network is expected to be completed in 20 years and a European study estimates the cost of implementation will be €546 billion.

Fancy a trip from Athens to Istanbul in four hours? Or perhaps hopping on board in Madrid and getting off in Milan is more to your taste.

It sounds like a train travellers dream but that's the plan for the European High-Speed Rail Network, promoted by the Community of European Railway and Infrastructure Companies (CER) and expected to be adopted by the European Commission.

The ambitious network, connecting all major EU cities, is expected to cover more than 49,400 kilometres of track carrying trains travelling at speeds from 250 km/h to 350 km/h.

Speaking in Athens, CER's Executive Director Alberto Mazzola told Euronews that the European Commission's Sustainable Transport and Tourism Committee is putting train travel at the top of the list of priorities for greener and more resilient transport.

"I understand that the European Commission, probably on 21 October, will present the Masterplan for High Speed Connections for all capitals and major cities. We believe it is feasible," he says.

The cost of the high-speed electric train connecting Las Vegas to the Los Angeles area just went up, now estimated at $21.5 billion, according to a document obtained by 8 News Now.

A U.S. Department of Transportation document says Brightline West is seeking a $6 billion loan, raising the projected cost by nearly 40%.

Storefront in Berkeley (of course it is Berkeley).

Archive link: https://web.archive.org/web/20251002200413/https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/02/arts/design/trump-eisenhower-king-charles-sword.html

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) is providing the following information to urge the Southeastern Pennsylvania Transit Authority (SEPTA) to take immediate action on the safety recommendations in this report concerning electrical fires aboard Silverliner IV railcars in passenger service. We identified this issue during our investigation into a February 6, 2025, fire in Ridley Park, Pennsylvania, and four additional fires involving Silverliner IV railcars over the following months.

The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, today hailed the success of his bold air quality policies which have led to the capital’s air pollution levels falling to within the legal limit for the first time.  

In 2019, leading experts at Kings College London estimated that without additional action it would take 193 years for London to meet legal limits, but Sadiq has achieved this aim in just nine years – 184 years early.  

New air quality data from Defra (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs), published today, reveals that London met the Air Quality Standards regulations for the first time in 2024 (1). This is assessed through modelling and Defra’s approved air quality monitoring networks (2).

Sadiq has achieved this important milestone almost 200 years ahead of predictions, demonstrating the transformative impact of his bold policies to improve London’s air quality and protect Londoners’ health and the environment. Since he took office in 2016, following the implementation of his ambitious policies, such as ULEZ (Ultra Low Emission Zone), levels of toxic NO2 at roadsides has nearly halved (3).

In London, around 4,000 premature deaths per year were previously attributed to toxic air (4) and a recent report from the Royal College of Physicians estimates that air pollution costs the UK more than £27 billion per year (5). Air pollution increases the risk of developing asthma, lung cancer, heart disease and stroke, and there is growing evidence that air pollution exposure increases the risk of developing dementia (6). Reaching this milestone of achieving legal limits, years ahead of where we would have been without action, shows that bold policy can produce important benefits.

Despite huge pressure from many different quarters, from politicians to vested interests, the Mayor pressed on with expanding the ULEZ to all of London and it's proven to be even more effective at cutting air pollution than previously predicted.

The Europe-wide study, covering 142 international routes across 31 countries, found that flying is cheaper than taking the train on more than half of all cross-border journeys. And when it comes to the UK, the situation is among the worst in Europe: trains are more expensive than flights on a staggering 95% of routes to and from Britain.

Low-cost carriers like Ryanair, easyJet and Wizz Air dominate the skies with fares that often come in at less than the price of the bus to the airport. Greenpeace points out that this is only possible because aviation fuel is tax-free and airline tickets escape VAT—while rail operators are clobbered with full VAT, rocketing energy costs and sky-high track access charges.

The result? Families hoping to make climate-friendly choices are effectively punished for trying. As the report highlights, a flight from Barcelona to London can cost just €15—while the train on the same route is an eye-watering €389.

Multiple sources close to Fox25 have told us that State Superintendent Ryan Walters is planning to resign, with an announcement expected on Friday, Sept. 26, with plans to take a position in the private sector.

Sources say one person under consideration is former state representative Mark McBride.

Fox25's Wendy Suares asked McBride about the possible appointment, and he stated he hasn't discussed it with the governor but would probably accept the position.

On Tuesday, Walters issued a release advocating for a Turning Point USA (TPUSA) Club America Chapter in every Oklahoma high school.

"We will fight back against the liberal propaganda, pushed by the radical left, and the teachers' union," said Walters in the release. "Our fight starts now."

A Reform government would scrap new high-speed rail schemes expected to be announced by ministers within weeks, the party’s deputy leader said.

Richard Tice told companies considering bidding for contracts to build Northern Powerhouse Rail (NPR) they should “not bother” as the party would “spend the money instead on things the country needs more”.

NPR is a proposal to boost east-west rail connections across northern England. Labour is expected to make a commitment to NPR in the coming weeks. Mr Tice made his comments in a forward to a report by centre-right think tank Policy Exchange.

• 299.8km Yan'an - Xi’an (famous as the home of the Terracotta Army)
• 98.3km Panzhou - Xingyi
• 77.5km Jingmen - Jingzhou

If you’ve wandered onto social media in the last week, chances are good that an algorithm seemingly designed to reward snuff films served you a video of a gruesome killing. Among the clips is footage of 23-year-old Iryna Zarutska being brutally, fatally stabbed on the Charlotte Light Rail by Decarlos Brown Jr., who faces both a first-degree murder charge and a federal charge for committing an act of death on a mass transit system.

Over the past few days, the right has sought to capitalize on Zarutska’s horrific murder, arguing that Democrat-controlled cities are hotbeds of violence and lawlessness and using it as further evidence of the wisdom of the Trump administration’s decision to dispatch National Guard troops to Los Angeles, Washington D.C., Chicago, and Boston in the name of law and order. In the case of the murder in Charlotte, the right has zeroed in on a particular target: public transit. “The problem is a lot of people, unlike the rich liberals, they can’t ride Uber, they don’t have a vehicle, they have to take public transportation, and public transportation has become an epidemic of violence and homelessness across the country,” Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy told Fox News’s Sean Hannity. Those same liberals, Duffy said, “hate cars” and “want us all to ride public transportation.”

Duffy’s argument isn’t subtle: Use mass transit, and you’ll get yourself killed. There’s just one problem: He couldn’t be more wrong. According to one recent study, car travel is 10 times as deadly as travel by mass transit. Another report from the nonprofit National Safety Council finds that, for every 100 million miles traveled by passengers, rates of car deaths were 17 times greater than deaths from train travel, and 50 times greater than deaths from bus travel.

The Webuild Group, in consortium with Ghella, Pizzarotti and SELI, has been awarded a 1.6 billion EUR contract for the Paola–Cosenza section of the Salerno–Reggio Calabria high-speed rail line in Italy.

Webuild holds a 60% share of the contract, which has been commissioned by Rete Ferroviaria Italiana (RFI), part of the FS Italiane Group.

The project involves doubling 22.2 kilometres of railway, most of it underground, including construction of the new Santomarco Tunnel. At more than 15 kilometres in length, the twin-tube tunnel will run roughly 100 metres from the existing single-track tunnel, which will be decommissioned when works are complete. Excavation will employ four tunnel boring machines.

An eyewitness said that the driver of a grey BMW 52I hit a man in his 30s walking his German shepherd and dragged him for at least a block, and then looped back, rammed another car, jumped the sidewalk and hit a man on a bicycle, which was left mangled at the scene.

Then, another woman who was jogging was hit so hard that she flipped over the BMW and cracked her head on the sidewalk, the eyewitness said. The BMW now has a large crack in the windshield from the impact of striking the woman.

KTVU obtained some graphic Ring video of the BMW driving on the sidewalk, striking the man with the dog, which then takes off barking. The BMW driver then is seen driving fast on the sidewalk back toward the UC Berkeley campus.

Taxing Britain’s SUVs in line with other European countries could raise almost £2bn a year for the public finances, research has shown.

The Transport & Environment thinktank has urged the government to use the autumn budget to bring in a levy on the largest vehicles, which it said would reflect the damage they caused to the environment and infrastructure.

T&E said the current UK vehicle tax system was not keeping up with the change in the profile of cars sold, with heavier and more polluting cars escaping adequate taxation and coming to dominate the market.

An “SUV loophole” meant UK buyers paid up to 20 times less tax on the biggest models than counterparts in other European countries, it said. Vehicle tax on a new £85,000 BMW X5 would amount to £3,200 in the UK, but the sale would incur taxes of £66,600 in France – driving UK SUV sales to four times the level in France.

California could pay hundreds of millions of dollars to cover maintenance costs at Valero Energy Co.’s refinery in Benicia in an effort to stave off the plant’s closure, according to Bloomberg. 

The outlet reported that California legislators are in talks to spend between $80 million and $200 million in state funds on the facility, which was built in 1968 and is the sixth-largest refinery in California. 

Valero, which is headquartered in San Antonio, said in April that it was considering closing the plant, six months after state and local regulators handed it a record setting fine.

Old Grudge

There's an old wives' tale that Hitler doesn't care for cyclists.

The story (which is not new) is that, in the early days of National Socialism, Hitler was once roaring and ranting at the Jews at a public meeting in Munich.

Screamed the pudgy little horror: "WHO stabbed Germany in the back? THE JEWS! Who grew rich while the Fatherland starved? THE JEWS! Who engineered the Treaty of Versailles? THE JEWS! Who fomented rebellion in the German Navy? THE JEWS!"

Thunderous applause.

Then up got a mild, bespectacled little bloke who said, "Yes, that's right, the Jews and the cyclists!"

"Why the cyclists?" bawled the Fuehrer.

"Why the Jews?" retorted his questioner.

I now read that in France the Gestapo are attacking the cyclists as being carriers of anti-German propaganda. They have forbidden them to ride abreast in the streets of Paris as this...

Daily Mirror Aug 24, 1940

The federal public defender’s office in Los Angeles moved to disqualify acting US attorney Bill Essayli, citing a decision that ruled New Jersey’s top federal prosecutor ineligible to serve on similar grounds.

Essayli, who was kept as the acting head of the Central District of California office at the close of his 120-day interim period, has no lawful authority to participate in criminal prosecutions now under federal appointments law, deputy federal public defenders James Anglin Flynn and Ayah A. Sarsour said in their motion that was signed Thursday and filed Friday.

Essayli is among a “pattern of improper appointments” to lead US attorneys offices under the Trump administration in at least four districts, the attorneys said in the document submitted in Los Angeles federal court before Judge Sunshine Suzanne Sykes.

The motion said that Essayli didn’t hold a role that would qualify him as an “acting” official under the Federal Vacancies Reform Act, has already run out the clock on 120 days of service, and hasn’t been confirmed by the Senate to serve in his role indefinitely, the motion said.

“A private citizen—not lawfully appointed to any government position—is purporting to wield one of the most powerful offices in our criminal-justice system,” the motion said. “Other private individuals’ liberty is on the line.”

A misguided proposal to give state DOTs yet more “flexibility” in spending federal dollars is one more example of how the desire for bipartisanship on transportation too often leads to bad policy and outcomes. This proposal would almost certainly result in more money being transferred into wasteful highway spending, especially in states that are currently failing to produce good outcomes with the massive “flexibility” that they already have. Why give these low performers more in exchange for nothing in return?

Senators Kevin Cramer (R-ND) and Angela Alsobrooks (D-MD) have put forth a bipartisan proposal intended to be included in the upcoming 2026 transportation law. The Senators’ proposal is very straightforward, increasing the amount of flexibility in highway formula programs from 50 percent up to 75 percent. What does that mean? States could transfer more money from one program to another, giving them yet more discretion and Congress even less control. All under the banner of “streamlining” the federal program and providing more accountability (while actually reducing accountability and oversight.)