Free Republic

Investigations are reportedly underway as 60,000 pounds of toxic ammonium nitrate have been reported missing while being transported from Wyoming to California.An empty railcar was found at a rail stop in the California Mojave Desert, two weeks after it had departed its initial location.Multiple entities have announced through their representatives that The Federal Railroad Administration, the California Public Utilities Commission, Union Pacific, and Dyno Nobel (the company responsible for the transport) are looking into the incident.On May 10th, the report was sent by Dyno Nobel to the government National Response Center, or NRC. Last Wednesday, the report was published in...

Construction for a maglev train line that would take passengers from Washington to Baltimore in 15 minutes could alter a D.C. neighborhood and affect nearby properties for years, District officials said Monday. A maglev station in the Mount Vernon Square area has the potential to change the character of the neighborhood and bring “substantial construction and long-term operational implications on nearby properties,” Andrew Trueblood, director of the D.C. Office of Planning, said in a statement that urged residents and city leaders to engage in the federal review of the multibillion-dollar project. The 40-mile “superconducting magnetic levitation train system,” commonly called...

The Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) recently published a Notice of Grant Funding Opportunity (NOFO) for a shade over $24 million for the Magnetic Levitation Technology Deployment Program (Maglev Grants Program). […] Published in the Federal Register, the NOFO notes that existing projects proposed for Pittsburgh, Baltimore-Washington and Atlanta-Chattanooga are the only ones eligible for the full $24.03 million. Applicants with otherwise eligible Maglev projects may apply only for the $10 million in 2019 Funds. …

President Obama communicated with Hillary Rodham Clinton via email but didn’t know the “details” of how his secretary of state was using a private, off-the-books email address, the White House said Monday.

A unanimous Supreme Court ruled Monday that Amtrak is more like a part of the government than a private corporation when it helps federal agencies craft rules to keep trains running on time. But the justices said it’s up to lower courts to decide whether Congress gave the passenger rail company too much power to develop standards that other private railroads must follow. A 2008 law directs Amtrak to work with the Federal Railroad Administration to create standards that let Amtrak keep priority over freight trains along common railroad tracks. That upset the freight railroad industry, which argues that Amtrak...

The U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) has appointed Sarah Feinberg as acting administrator of the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA). Former FRA Administrator Joseph Szabo stepped down on Friday. Feinberg becomes the second woman to lead the FRA since its founding in 1966. She joined the USDOT in September 2013 as chief of staff. One of her key priorities in the position was to lead efforts on the $302 billion surface transportation reauthorization plan sent to Congress last year. "Sarah has been my partner and served as my closest advisor during her tenure as chief of staff. With her ability to...

A KEY suspect in the alleged plot to mount an attack in Germany on the scale of 9/11 is on the run in Britain, German security officials disclosed yesterday. Scotland Yard counterterrorism detectives are hunting the man, who escaped from Germany after a plot to explode bombs at Frankfurt airport and a US airbase. The collective power of the bombs would have exceeded those in Madrid and London in 2004 and 2005. The plot was foiled on September 4 when three men were arrested at a rented holiday apartment near the central German town of Kassel. Police recovered chemicals and...

BERLIN (Reuters) - Three suspected Islamist militants who were planning to attack American targets in Germany had orders to act by September 15 and knew police were hot on their trail before their arrest, a magazine said on Saturday. The plan was foiled on Tuesday when police arrested two German converts to Islam and a Turk in the biggest German police investigation in the last 30 years. According to surveillance details published in Der Spiegel magazine, the men had been given a two-week deadline for their planned strikes in a late August call from northern Pakistan that was monitored by...

The prime suspect in the alleged German terror plot to blow up hundreds of people may have had contact with Mohammed Atta, the suicide pilot who smashed a hijacked plane into the Twin Towers. German police reports are vague about the encounter, but it has helped investigators to trace Fritz Gelowicz’s path from average Bavarian schoolboy to Islamic radical. His case has also highlighted the curious and sinister role of Neu-Ulm — a small township in the Roman Catholic heart of southern Germany — as a cradle of Islamic extremism. The connection between Gelowicz, 28, who was arrested this week,...

As Washington postures in anticipation of next week’s report from Gen. David Petraeus, we are again reminded — this time by events in Germany — of the enemy’s nature and the wages of defeat. German authorities have arrested three Islamic terrorists, and are looking for at least ten others, in connection with a plot to strike multiple targets — most prominently, Ramstein Air Base and Frankfurt International Airport, critical hubs for American military operations and civilian travel, respectively