DrunkEngineer

Project leaders have been focused on completing the 171-mile Bakersfield to Merced line, which was expected to cost taxpayers an estimated $35.3 billion with a completion date sometime between 2030 and 2033, according to the California High Speed Rail Project’s 2024 business plan.

Consultants have now been informed and documents obtained by KCRA 3 show the Bakersfield to Merced project estimate could now grow by up to another $3.2 billion, reaching a total of $38.5 billion. In the project update report, project leaders pointed to inflation and the rising cost of certain materials, such as concrete and copper as some of the reasons for the possible increases. A spokesperson for the High-Speed Rail Authority confirmed the information.

More than 100 Harvard researchers received termination notices for federally funded research projects on Thursday, as sweeping cuts to the majority of Harvard’s federal grants begin taking effect across the University’s labs.

The notices, delivered via email from Harvard’s Grants Management Application Suite, informed recipients that their projects had been terminated “per notice from the federal funding agency” and contained a list of terminated grants.

“You are receiving this e-mail because one (or more) of your projects have been terminated,” the emails read.

Harvard Assistant Vice President for Sponsored Programs Kelly Morrison and Chief Research Compliance Officer Ara Tahmassian had warned the researchers in a separate Wednesday email that the majority of Harvard’s awards from federal agencies were terminated.

“The University has received letters from most federal agencies indicating that the majority of our active, direct federal grants have been terminated,” they wrote to recipients.

Some of the terminated grants exceeded $1 million, funding entire research operations, including salaries for graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and lab technicians.

Tesla blocked shareholders who own less than 3% of its shares from suing its directors or officers on behalf of the electric vehicle maker for breach of duties, according to a filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Friday.

Three percent of Tesla's shares amounts to about 97 million shares worth about $34 billion as of Friday's close.

That is far higher than the nine shares owned by Richard Tornetta when he sued Tesla's CEO Elon Musk and several of its directors over his $56 billion pay package in 2018. Tesla was at the time incorporated in Delaware, where such a threshold does not exist.

PAKISTAN’s federal minister for railways, Hanif Abbasi, says the government has approved in principle plans to introduce a new high-speed rail service linking Lahore and Islamabad in the province of Punjab. After a meeting with Punjab senior minister, Maryam Aurangzeb, on April 26, Abbasi says the new line could reduce journey time between the two cities from 4 hours to 2h 45min.

Funding for the project, estimated at up to $US 10bn, has yet to be agreed and Aurangzeb is liaising with Pakistan Railways (PR) over a number of potential options, including a public-private partnership (PPP) model.

Florida became the second state in the country after Utah to ban local governments from adding fluoride to their public water systems.

Gov. Ron DeSantis signed the bill at Simpson Lakes in Dade City -- about 38 miles northeast of Tampa -- on Thursday. The law is set to go into effect on July 1.

"We certainly now, in our society in 2025, we have the ability to deliver fluoride through toothpaste and all these other things," DeSantis said at an event for the signing of the bill. "You don't gotta force it and take away people's choices. But the whole crux of the issue is you should be able to make decisions on the basis of informed consent."

"Forcing this in the water supply is trying to take that away from people who may want to make a different decision rather than to have this in water," DeSantis added.

An exclusive report by the New York Post claims that on Monday evening between 18:30 to 21:30, flights out of Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR) were handled by just one air traffic controller and a trainee. The report quotes a New York-based controller describing the situation as “pure insanity.” It also noted that an FAA spokesperson said that there were at least three controllers scheduled for each hour on Monday night but did not clarify how many of them were fully certified personnel.

The New York Times reported something similar, adding that four people familiar with the situation said that the number of fully certified controllers on duty to manage Newark’s air traffic was sometimes one or two. These figures are shocking because the target number of controllers for Newark to manage traffic in those hours is around 14-15.

France's Alstom is in talks about supplying high-speed double-decker trains for use through the Channel Tunnel, but no contract has been signed yet, the train maker said on Wednesday.

The Food and Drug Administration on Tuesday announced it will begin the process of pulling prescription fluoride drops and tablets for children off the market. The supplements are usually given to kids at high risk for cavities.

The federal government and some state legislatures are increasingly drawing attention to what they claim are the risks associated with fluoride, a mineral that’s been used for decades in community water systems, toothpastes and mouth rinses to prevent tooth decay.

Dentists fiercely contest the notion that the harms of fluoride outweigh the benefits.

Alongside the fleet renovation, OUIGO plans to expand its network. From December 2025, a new daily service will connect Paris to Hendaye, via Dax, Bayonne, Biarritz, and Saint-Jean-de-Luz. This extension towards the southwest will add another daily connection to Bordeaux as part of the same operation.

On the Paris–Rennes line, a third OUIGO high-speed round-trip will be introduced from December 2025, supplementing the existing two daily services. An additional third round-trip on the Paris–Rennes route using OUIGO Train Classique is scheduled to start on 12 May 2025.

The Paris–Montpellier service via Lyon Saint-Exupéry will see the addition of a third daily high-speed round-trip during the summer of 2026. Furthermore, the Paris–Lyon high-speed link, which currently operates two daily round-trips, will add a third round-trip during weekends starting in December 2026.

Senior presidential adviser Kari Lake appears to have resolved any doubts about what she wants to do with the Voice of America.

Lake seeks for it to look and sound a lot like the far-right One America News Network: on Tuesday night she announced that she had struck a deal to serve up the pro-Trump outlet's news reports for Voice of America's foreign audiences, at no taxpayer cost.

Staff members at the US National Science Foundation (NSF) were told on 30 April to “stop awarding all funding actions until further notice,” according to an email seen by Nature.

The policy prevents the NSF, one of the world’s biggest supporters of basic research, from awarding new research grants and from supplying allotted funds for existing grants, such as those that receive yearly increments of money. The email does not provide a reason for the freeze and says that it will last “until further notice”.

Earlier this week, NSF leadership also introduced a new policy directing staff members to screen grant proposals for “topics or activities that may not be in alignment with agency priorities”. Proposals judged not “in alignment” must be returned to the applicants by NSF employees. The policy has not been made public but was described in documents seen by Nature.