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A train carrying toxic chemicals has derailed and caught fire causing thousands of people to be evacuated. More 5,000 people have been forced to leave their homes after a train with 'highly flammable and toxic gas' derailed and caught fire near Knoxville, Tennessee. Seven police officers were taken to hospital after breathing in fumes from the blaze, while fire-fighters in gas masks have been going from door to door to evacuate residents. As many as three cars derailed, Blount County Sheriff's spokeswoman Marian O'Briant said. Local fire authorities ordered a one-mile evacuation, and Hazmat crews responded to the scene. 'Evacuation...

Via Truth Revolt and the Daily Mail, here’s the best evidence lefties have that Dolezal isn’t the racial equivalent of Caitlyn Jenner. The basic story she tells might well be true: Albert Wilkerson, the man she passed off as her dad, did serve in the Corps and did migrate north as a young child after his father “had a confrontation with a police officer” in Birmingham. But he isn’t her father, of course, and the fact that she went so far as to steal his history to back up her own claim of being black is a step that Jenner...

The political class -- they build themselves new office buildings and such -- live in a different universe from the rest of us, and the rest of us are getting routinely pickpocketed. No greater proof of this truth exists than the remarks of St. Paul's own City Council Member Dave Thune last week after Metro Transit released the financial figures for the first six months of the Green Line. Passengers boarding the Green Line from its debut in June, 2014 through the end of the year paid $6.21 million into the farebox, or about 35.8 percent of what it costs...

While Metro Transit's Green Line isn't exactly paying for itself through passenger fares, it's doing a better job than most other Minnesota public transit options. Passengers boarding the state's second light-rail line from its debut in June through the end of 2014 paid $6.21 million into the fare box, or about 35.8 percent of what it costs to operate the 11-mile route. "I think 35 percent is a really good percentage," said St. Paul City Council member Dave Thune. "I love it. I think it has been a success. The kind of traffic it's seeing, going from one end of...

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) — A transit train driver says he saw a “trespasser” on the tracks moments before an unknown object struck a window on the train. The SEPTA train was struck on the same night and in close proximity to the Amtrak train that derailed on May 12th in Philadelphia. According to SEPTA officials, the engineer saw a trespasser on the track moments before an unidentified object smashed a window.

Could Bostian’s disturbed sex life have masked a deeper disturbance?

PHILADELPHIA — An assistant conductor on the Amtrak train that derailed on Tuesday believes she heard the engineer tell another regional train operator in a radio transmission that the train had been struck by something just before the accident, according to the National Transportation Safety Board. At a news conference on Friday, Robert L. Sumwalt, the safety board official who is leading the investigation, said the F.B.I. had been asked to examine what he described as a fist-size impact area found on the lower left side of the train’s windshield. Officials said that the F.B.I. had been called in because...

The FBI has been asked to investigate the possibility that the Amtrak train that crashed outside of Philadelphia was hit by a bullet or some other object. According to the The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB), an assistant conductor in the train’s café car claimed to have overheard a regional train engineer saying he had been “hit by a rock or shot at.”

The 39-year-old assistant conductor was listening in on Brandon Bostian’s radio conversations with a SEPTA train engineer, who told the Amtrak engineer his train had been hit by a rock or shot at. The SEPTA engineer said he had a broken windshield and made an emergency stop, she said. Bostian also said something about his train being struck by an object, she told National Transportation Safety Board investigators Friday.

CHATSWORTH Investigators probing Friday's fatal Metrolink collision planned to interview the freight train's brakeman and the conductor Wednesday, the first full day of resumed service along the stretch of track that was closed after the crash that killed 25 people and injured 135 others. Investigations have linked the cause of the crash to Metrolink engineer Robert Martin Sanchez, a La Crescenta resident who previously lived in Menifee. Authorities Tuesday staged a re-creation of the collision, bringing two trains nose-to-nose on the tracks in Chatsworth and then moving them back and forth to determine what the engineers on each was able...

BREAKING: GotNews IDs Gay Activist Train Engineer Who Caused Amtrak Crash UPDATED W/ PHOTOS! May 13, 2015 by Charles C. Johnson 184 Comments Gotnews.com has independently identified the engineer at the center of the Amtrak crash that has killed at least seven. Brandon Bostian is the 32-year-old gay man who lawyered up after a deadly derailment in Philadelphia. The train was reportedly going twice the speed limit.

DEVELOPING: The Amtrak train that derailed near Philadelphia Tuesday night-- killing at least seven and sending over 200 to area hospitals-- appeared to have been traveling at more than 100 miles an hour as it approached a sharp curve on the track, two people with knowledge of the investigation told The Wall Street Journal.

At least six people were killed and over 140 people hurt after an Amtrak train, carrying 238 passengers and five crew members, derailed and rolled onto its side in the Port Richmond section of Philadelphia Tuesday night, according to officials. The death toll from the crash rose to six Wednesday morning when Temple University Hospital officials confirmed one patient had died of their injuries overnight. 54 patients were treated at Temple, 25 remained hospitalized Wednesday morning including eight patients in critical condition, chief medical officer Dr. Herbert Cushing said at a briefing. -excerpt- The derailment occurred at almost the exact...

As recently as 2010, the estimated cost for the Southwest Light Rail Transit line was estimated to be $1.2 billion, or about the cost of a new football stadium. Then the cost jumped to $1.7 billion because somebody spun the magic wheel. Now the cost is projected to be $2 billion. OK, $1.994 billion, but if they find an endangered earthworm or an especially exotic cattail, all bets are off and the project will shoot over $2 billion in a European minute, for the Metropolitan Council loves to keep playing Europe. The train stops are called Royalston, West Lake, Blake...

12:40 p.m.: Remarkable, on-the-spot video from WGNO-TV of the train falling off the track at Huey P. Long Bridge embedded below; see our report here.

It took an agreeable 15 minutes Monday to get from the Westgate Station to the Warehouse/Hennepin Avenue station on the Green Line. There was merriment in the air all right, but not enough actual humidity to smell the green grass of Target Field. We are unseasonably dry, and a bit of moisture in the air is essential to bring about the full flowering of the baseball home opener. I watched passengers get on and off; there are seven stops between Westgate and Warehouse, or probably two too many. I don't know who paid and who didn't. Impossible to tell, really,...

ST. LOUIS (KTVI) – St. Louis police have announced arrest in connection to an assault on a MetroLink train a week ago. Police say they have taken into custody a 15-year-old male juvenile and 21-year-old male. The other male pictured in the surveillance video was identified and is no longer wanted in connection to the assault. The attack that happened a week ago showed a 43-year-old male victim being attacked by several suspects after a man in a red hat asked him what he thought about the Michael Brown case. That’s when other suspects began to punch the man in...

Some armless, others hobbling on spindly prosthetic legs, Honduran migrants came to Mexico City this week to protest their plight. Maimed in Mexico when they tried to catch a precarious train to reach the United States, they feel forgotten, ignored and with little reason to live. “Our visa [to enter the U.S.] is our mutilation, our handicap, our lost arms and legs,” said Jose Luis Hernandez, 29, of Progreso, Honduras. He fell off the train, known here as La Bestia — the Beast — in the northern border state of Chihuahua; caught under its wheels, Hernandez’s leg, left arm and...

New numbers show that Northstar Commuter Rail Line ridership is down and, after five years of operation, an important goal has not yet been met. Metro Transit numbers show ridership in 2014 was down 8 percent for weekday rides. In 2008, Metro Transit had a goal of removing 5,000 cars from the road by encouraging commuting on Northstar. However, only about 2,500 commuters ride during the week, which is well below the goal set seven years ago. Taxpayers paid $315 million to build the Northstar system. Approximately $15 million each of the five years it's been running for operations and...

Mexican authorities said Tuesday they staged 153 raids over the last year on a train known as “La Bestia” that rolled toward the U.S. border crowded with hundreds of Central American migrants. Following a big surge in child migrants reaching the U.S. border last year, Mexico’s government cracked down on routes commonly used by migrants to travel from Guatemala to the U.S. border. The head of the National Immigration Institute, Ardelio Vargas, said the 153 train raids were part of 758 immigration inspections over the last year. …