US President Barack Obama pressed on Thursday for the US to move swiftly to a system of high-speed rail travel to relieve congestion, help clean the air and save on energy.
Appearing with US Vice President Joe Biden and US Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, Obama said the country could not afford failure to invest in a major upgrade to rail travel. He said he understood it necessarily would be “a long-term project” but said the time to start was now.
The president allocated US$8 billion in the enormous US$787 billion economic stimulus spending package for a start on establishing high-speed rail corridors nationwide.
“This is not some fanciful, pie-in-the-sky vision of the future. It’s happening now. The problem is, it’s happening elsewhere,” Obama said.
He cited superior high-speed rail travel in countries including China, Japan, France and Spain.
The rail upgrades are critically needed, Obama said, because the nation’s highways and airways “are clogged with traffic.”
The money will go to high-speed rail development as well as a parallel effort to improve rail service along existing lines, upgrades that would allow faster train travel.
The White House said money would move into the rail system through three channels, first to upgrade projects already approved and only in need of financing, thus providing jobs in the short term. The second and third channels would focus on high-speed rail planning and a commitment to help in the execution of those plans far into the future when the stimulus money is no longer available.
The US Federal Railroad Administration said the term “high-speed rail” applied to trains traveling more than 145kph. The EU standard is above 200kph.
Many overseas high-speed trains, most powered by overhead electricity lines, run faster than that. In France, for example, the TGV (Train a Grande Vitesse) covers the 400km between Paris and Lyon in one hour, 55 minutes at an average speed of about 210kph.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
‘POLITICAL EARTHQUAKE’: Leo Varadkar said he was ‘no longer the best person’ to lead the nation and was stepping down for political, as well as personal, reasons Leo Varadkar on Wednesday announced that he was stepping down as Ireland’s prime minister and leader of the Fine Gael party in the governing coalition, citing “personal and political” reasons. Pundits called the surprise move, just 10 weeks before Ireland holds European Parliament and local elections, a “political earthquake.” A general election has to be held within a year. Irish Deputy Prime Minister Micheal Martin, leader of Fianna Fail, the main coalition partner, said Varadkar’s announcement was “unexpected,” but added that he expected the government to run its full term. An emotional Varadkar, who is in his second stint as prime minister and at
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia