As freight trains have grown longer, the U.S. has seen an increase in the number of a type of derailment caused by the forces of railcars pushing and pulling against each other, the National Academies of Sciences said Tuesday in a long-awaited report that urges regulators, Congress and the industry to reexamine their risks. Railroads should take special care in the way they assemble trains that routinely measure more than a mile or two, especially those with a mix of different types of cars, the report said, echoing a warning the Federal Railroad Administration issued last year. “Long trains aren’t inherently dangerous. But if you don’t have adequate planning on how to put the train together, they can be,” said Peter Swan, a Penn State University professor who was one of the report’s authors. The increased use of long trains has allowed the major freight railroads — CSX, Union Pacific, BNSF, Norfolk Southern, CPKC and Canadian National — to cut costs because they can employ fewer crews and maintain fewer locomotives. The average length of trains increased by about 25% from 2008 to 2017. By 2021, when the report was commissioned, some trains had grown to nearly 14,000 feet (4,267 meters), or more than 2 1/2 miles (4 kilometers) long. The unions representing train crews have said that longer trains are harder to handle, especially when they travel across uneven territory, because of the way cars push and pull against each other. On a train that’s more than a mile (1.6 kilometers) long, one section can be going uphill while another section is going downhill. Such trains are so long that the radios rail workers use might not work from the front to the back of them. “Anybody and everybody that’s in rail safety knows that this is a problem. It cannot be overstated,” said Jared Cassity, the top safety expert at the SMART-TD union that represents conductors. “Long trains absolutely are a risk to the public and a risk to the workers and anybody with common sense can see that.” Mark Wallace with the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen said Tuesday’s report reinforces what engineers have long known: “Long trains have a greater risk of derailing, have communications issues, and pose a threat to the public due to blocked crossings, among other issues.” The union urged Congress and regulators to act quickly. The railroads say they work to ensure their trains are safe at any length. The president and CEO of the Association of American Railroads trade group, Ian Jefferies, said many railroads use software that helps them model train forces before railcars are hooked together. “As operations continue to evolve, railroads are pulling on three key levers — technology, training and infrastructure — to further enhance safety and reliability,” Jefferies said. But Cassity said countless derailments over the years have shown that software and the cruise control systems that help engineers operate a train are imperfect. The number of derailments in the U.S. has held steady at more than 1,000 a year, or more than three a day, even as rail traffic decreased. Railroads say two-thirds of those are minor. Derailments have gotten increased attention since a disastrous one in East Palestine, Ohio, in February 2023 in which hazardous chemicals leaked and burned for days. That Norfolk

A freight train carrying fuel derailed and caught fire Friday near the Arizona-New Mexico state line, forcing the closure of an interstate highway that serves as a key trucking route. Initial passersby posted video and photos on social media of crumpled train cars and billowing, black smoke. No injuries were reported in the midday train wreck near Lupton, Arizona. BNSF Railway spokesperson Lena Kent said company personnel were on site working to clear the wreckage. Kent said the cause of the derailment is under investigation. Interstate 40 was closed by authorities in both directions in the area in the early afternoon, directing trucks and motorists off the freeway to alternate routes, New Mexico State Police and the Arizona Department of Public Safety announced. The train was transporting non-odorous propane and gasoline, and a half-dozen rail cars caught fire and burned for hours after the derailment, New Mexico State Police Lt. Phil Vargas said. “It looks like they’re just letting those (rail) cars burn themselves out,” Vargas said. Nearby residences and a truck stop were evacuated as a precaution as winds carried away thick smoke and local firefighting crews responded. The derailment also led Amtrak to cancel some passenger travel, including on the route between Los Angeles and Albuquerque, New Mexico. Traffic on I-40 backed up for more than 10 miles, though detours were opened on two-lane roads and highways, said Kristine Bustos-Mihelcic, a spokesperson for the New Mexico Department of Transportation. The agency warned Friday evening of an extended highway closure that would increase traffic on other interstate highways, including I-25 and I-10. The Arizona Corporation Commission that oversees railroad safety said in a social media post on X that 10 rail cars were involved in the derailment and that two were transporting liquid petroleum. The agency said it planned to send a railroad inspector to the site but later learned the derailment happened on the New Mexico side of the tracks. (AP)

President Joe Biden got a firsthand look Friday at efforts to clear away the “mangled mess” of remains of the collapsed Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, as cranes, ships and diving crews work to reopen one of the nation’s main shipping lanes. Aboard Marine One, circling the warped metal remains and the mass of construction and salvage equipment trying to clear the wreckage of last week’s collapse, which killed six workers, Biden got an up close view of the devastation. On the ground later, he received a briefing from local officials, the U.S. Coast Guard and Army Corps of Engineers on the situation in the water and its impacts on the region. The president also greeted police officers who helped block traffic to the bridge in the moments before it was hit by a ship — which helped avert an even larger loss of life. “I’m here to say your nation has your back and I mean it,” Biden said from the shoreline overlooking the collapsed bridge in Dundalk, just outside Baltimore. “Your nation has your back.” Eight workers — immigrants from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador — were filling potholes on the bridge when it was hit by a huge cargo ship and collapsed in the middle of the night of March 26. Two men were rescued and the bodies of two others were recovered in subsequent days. Authorities announced Friday evening that salvage divers had recovered, in the hours before Biden arrived, a third body from the water, that of Maynor Yasir Suazo-Sandoval, 38, one of the missing workers. They said the search for the other victims will continue. The president also met for more than an hour with the families of those killed. “The damage is devastating and our hearts are still breaking,” Biden said. Officials have established a temporary, alternate channel for vessels involved in clearing debris. The Army Corps of Engineers hopes to open a limited-access channel for barge container ships and some vessels moving cars and farm equipment by the end of this month, and to restore normal capacity to Baltimore’s port by May 31, the White House says. That’s important since longer delays in reopening shipping lanes could send shockwaves through the economy. As much as $200 million in cargo normally moves through Baltimore’s port per day, and it is the leading hub for importing and exporting vehicles. More than 50 salvage divers and 12 cranes are on site to help cut out sections of the bridge and remove them from the key waterway. Officials told Biden they had all the resources they need to meet the targets for opening the channel into the Baltimore port. The president announced that some of the largest employers affected by the collapse, including Amazon, Home Depot and Domino Sugar, have committed to keeping their employees on payroll until the port is reopened. That followed days of outreach by state and federal officials to try to mitigate the economic impact. “From the air I saw the bridge that has been ripped apart,” Biden said, “but here on the ground I see a community that’s pulled together.” It is still unclear, though, how the costs of cleanup and building a new bridge will be covered. The Federal Highway Administration has provided $60 million in “quick release”

A container ship struck a major bridge in Baltimore early Tuesday, causing it to plunge into the river below. From 1960 to 2015, there have been 35 major bridge collapses worldwide due to ship or barge collision, with a total of 342 people killed, according to a 2018 report from the World Association for Waterborne Transport Infrastructure. Eighteen of those collapses happened in the United States. A list of notable disasters involving ships or barges hitting bridges in the U.S.: POPP’S FERRY BRIDGE March 20, 2009: A vessel pushing eight barges rammed into the Popp’s Ferry Bridge in Biloxi, Mississippi, resulting in a 150-foot section of the bridge collapsing into the bay. QUEEN ISABELLA CAUSEWAY: 8 DEAD Sept. 15, 2001: A tugboat and barge struck the Queen Isabella Causeway in Port Isabel, Texas, causing a midsection of the bridge to tumble 80 feet into the bay below. Eight people died after motorists drove into the hole. EADS BRIDGE: 50 INJURED April 14, 1998: The Anne Holly tow traveling through the St. Louis Harbor rammed into the center span of the Eads Bridge. Eight barges broke away. Three of them hit a permanently moored gambling vessel below the bridge. Fifty people suffered minor injuries. BIG BAYOU CANOT: 47 DEAD Sept. 22, 1993: Barges being pushed by a towboat in dense fog hit and displaced the Big Bayou Canot railroad bridge near Mobile, Alabama. Minutes later, an Amtrak train with 220 people aboard reached the displaced bridge and derailed, killing 47 people and injuring 103 people. SEEBER BRIDGE: 1 DEAD May 28, 1993: The towboat Chris, pushing the empty hopper barge DM3021, hit a support tier of the Judge William Seeber Bridge in New Orleans. Two spans and the two-column bent collapsed onto the barge. Two cars carrying three people fell with the four-lane bridge deck into a canal. One person died and two people were seriously injured. SUNSHINE SKYWAY BRIDGE: 35 DEAD May 9, 1980: The 609-foot freighter Summit Venture was navigating through the narrow, winding shipping channel of Florida’s Tampa Bay when a sudden, blinding squall knocked out the ship’s radar. The ship sheared off a support of the Sunshine Skyway Bridge, dropping a 1,400-foot section of concrete roadway during the morning rush hour. Seven vehicles, including a bus with 26 aboard, fell 150 feet into the water. Thirty-five people died. (AP)

President Joe Biden was returning from church a week ago when he stepped out of his armored SUV onto the driveway of his Wilmington, Delaware, home on an important mission: He wanted to inspect the landscaping. The sprawling home on a manmade pond, three miles or five kilometers from downtown, has a special place — some might call it an obsession — in his heart. When he met special prosecutor Robert Hur to talk about the sensitive documents he’d improperly kept after his vice presidency, Biden offered a confession. Three times over the five hours, Biden told Hur he is a “frustrated architect.” He allowed that his wife, Jill, once offered to send him to architecture school if he’d only stop running for the Senate. It was not to be. But he still seems to have architectural design in his blood. And he’s mused privately about redesigning elements of the home after his presidency. The house is central in the controversy over Biden’s handling of classified documents. FBI agents and the president’s lawyers identified at least 28 items there that contained classified information or markings from his time as vice president. Hur this past week defended his assessment that there was not sufficient evidence to charge Biden with willfully retaining the classified information. In a transcript of Hur’s interview, conducted in the fall and released on the day a House committee heard the special counsel’s testimony, Biden lays out in meticulous detail the specifications of his home, prompting Hur to comment on his “photographic” recall even as he had questioned the president’s memory on other fronts. When Biden hopped out to inspect the landscaping, the area had just been replanted after a roughly yearlong project by the Secret Service to improve security at the president’s compound. The work included new fencing and vehicle barriers, bulletproof windows and extensive modifications to the home demanded by the agency to make it more secure. Satellite imagery from last year showed construction crews had dismantled the second-floor balcony and the sunroom overlooking the pond as part of the renovations to the south side of the 7,000-square-foot (650-square-meter) home and the grounds. Ceiling fans from the sunroom were stored in Biden’s cluttered garage alongside his beloved Corvette in January 2023, when FBI agents spent nearly 13 hours doing a top-to-bottom search of the house looking for classified documents. Referred to by Biden aides as the “lake house,” the home has been at the center of Biden’s life since he moved there in 1998. It has been the scene of meetings with aides and the occasional lawmaker for decades and the site of the makeshift basement studio from which he ran much of his 2020 presidential campaign during the pandemic. Biden regularly spends his weekends at the Wilmington house, often staying from Friday to Monday. One bonus: It’s a quick hop to the Philadelphia area, the Democratic base in a critical swing state as Biden campaigns for reelection. His Wilmington visits are something of a continuation of the commuting schedule he kept as vice president. During his three-decade Senate tenure before that, Biden commuted from Delaware to Washington daily on Amtrak. The Delaware home is more than a gathering spot for members of his family and a few of his close friends or a respite from

The late crush of holiday travelers picked up steam Wednesday, with about 2.7 million people expected to board flights and millions more planning to drive or take the train to Thanksgiving celebrations. Airline officials say they are confident they can avoid the kind of massive disruptions that have marred past holiday seasons, such as the meltdown at Southwest Airlines over last Christmas. As of Wednesday evening that appeared to be the case. U.S. airports reported 59 flight cancellations into, out of or within the U.S. Wednesday and 2,750 flight delays, according to FlightAware, a tracking service. FlightAware said anything less than 300 cancellations and 4,000 delays per day is considered very good. Buffalo Niagara International Airport in New York said it was checking all vehicles arriving at the airport and performing additional security screenings after a car crashed and exploded at a nearby checkpoint on the U.S.-Canada border. But the airport said it remained open and fully operational. All four border crossings in the area were closed, the Niagara Falls Bridge Commission said. Snow showers could snarl traffic in other parts of the country. The National Weather Service was predicting accumulating snow in northern New England Wednesday, including up to 8 inches (20 centimeters) of snowfall in northern Maine. Snow was also expected to hit the northern Rocky Mountains on Thanksgiving Day, bringing up to 1 foot of snow to parts of Wyoming by Friday. Security lines at airports could be long. Delta Air Lines is telling passengers to arrive at the airport at least two hours before their flight if they are traveling within the United States, three hours early if they’re flying overseas — and maybe earlier on Sunday and Monday. Jordan Sessions heeded that advice and got to the airport early Wednesday for a flight from Portland, Oregon, to Oakland, California. But the Portland airport wasn’t crowded and the check-in lines were short, so he wound up waiting a bit for his flight. That wasn’t the case for Brittany Dandridge, who found lines out the door when she arrived for her flight from Dallas to Oakland. “Luckily I was traveling with my dog and they allowed me to skip the line,” she said. The Transportation Security Administration said it screened more than 2.6 million passengers Tuesday and it expected another 2.7 million passengers to come through airport security on Wednesday. On Sunday, it expects to screen 2.9 million passengers, which would surpass a previous record set on June 30. Lines ebbed and flowed all morning Wednesday at Moynihan Train Hall in New York. Some travelers said they opted to travel by train for convenience or lower prices. Others said they just wanted to avoid any chaos at the airport. Matthew Hudnall and Abby Greenbaum were traveling from Atlanta to New York to Boston to visit family with their 5-year-old daughter. By the time they reach Boston, they will have taken a total of nine trains, they said. “I think we thought it would be calmer and less stressful than flying. So, far that’s true,” Greenbaum said. Amtrak said it was expecting 750,000 passengers between Nov. 19 and Nov. 26. The company said travelers could see some boarding delays this weekend because of high passenger volumes. The holiday will also test the Federal Aviation Administration, which faces shortages

The Biden administration announced Monday that it has awarded more than $1.4 billion to projects that improve railway safety and boost capacity, with much of the money coming from the 2021 infrastructure law. “These projects will make American rail safer, more reliable, and more resilient, delivering tangible benefits to dozens of communities where railroads are located, and strengthening supply chains for the entire country,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said in a statement. The money is funding 70 projects in 35 states and Washington, D.C. Railroad safety has become a key concern nationwide ever since a train carrying hazardous chemicals derailed and caught fire in East Palestine, Ohio, in February. President Joe Biden has ordered federal agencies to hold the train’s operator Norfolk Southern accountable for the crash, but a package of proposed rail safety reforms has stalled in the Senate where the bill is still awaiting a vote. The White House is also saying that a possible government shutdown because of House Republicans would undermine railway safety. The projects include track upgrades and bridge repairs, in addition to improving the connectivity among railways and making routes less vulnerable to extreme weather. Among the projects is $178.4 million to restore passenger service in parts of Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi along the Gulf of Mexico for the first time since Hurricane Katrina struck in 2005. “This is a significant milestone, representing years of dedicated efforts to reconnect our communities after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina,” Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss., said in a statement. “Restoring passenger rail service will create jobs, improve quality of life, and offer a convenient travel option for tourists, contributing to our region’s economic growth and vitality.” The grant should make it possible to restore passenger service to the Gulf Coast after Amtrak reached an agreement with CSX and Norfolk Southern railroads last year to clear the way for passenger trains to resume operating on the tracks the freight railroads own. “We’ve been fighting to return passenger trains to the Gulf Coast since it was knocked offline by Hurricane Katrina. That 17-year journey has been filled with obstacles and frustration — but also moments of joy, where local champions and national advocates were able to come together around the vision of a more connected Gulf Coast region,” Rail Passengers Association President & CEO Jim Mathews said. The single biggest grant — nearly $202 million — will help eliminate seven rail crossings in California as part of the larger project to build a high-speed rail line in that state. That will reduce traffic delays and help ensure that first responders can get where they need to go. In one of the biggest other grants, the Palouse River & Coulee City Railroad in Washington state will get $72.8 million to upgrade the track and related infrastructure to allow that rail line to handle modern 286,000-pound railcars. A project in Kentucky will receive $29.5 million to make improvements to 280 miles of track and other infrastructure along the Paducah and Louisville Railway. And in Tennessee, $23.7 million will go to helping upgrade about 42 bridges on 10 different short-line railroads. (AP)

The first big test of whether privately owned high-speed passenger train service can prosper in the United States will launch Friday when Florida’s Brightline begins running trains between Miami and Orlando, reaching speeds of 125 mph (200 kph). It’s a $5 billion bet Brightline’s owner, Fortress Investment Group, is making, believing that eventually 8 million people annually will take the 3.5-hour, 235-mile (378-kilometer) trip between the state’s biggest tourist hubs. The company is charging single riders $158 round-trip for business class and $298 for first-class, with families and groups able to buy four round-trip tickets for $398. Thirty-two trains will run daily. Brightline, which began running its neon-yellow trains the 70 miles (112 kilometers) between Miami and West Palm Beach in 2018, is the first private intercity passenger service to begin U.S. operations in a century. It’s also building a line connecting Southern California and Las Vegas that it hopes to open in 2027 with trains that will reach 190 mph (305 kph). The only other U.S. high-speed line is Amtrak’s Acela service between Boston and Washington, D.C., which began in 2000. Amtrak is owned by the federal government. “This is a pretty important moment, whether you’re thinking about it in the context of the state of Florida or what it might mean for these kinds of products as they develop elsewhere in the United States,” Brightline CEO Mike Reininger said in a recent interview. “The idea that my car is the only way for me to get where I need to go is being challenged by a new product. A new product that’s safer, that’s greener, that is a great value proposition (and) it’s fun.” The Florida trains, which run on biodiesel, will travel up to 79 mph (127 kph) in urban areas, 110 mph (177 kph) in less-populated regions and 125 mph (200 kph) through central Florida’s farmland. Brightline plans possible extensions to Tampa and Jacksonville. John Renne, director of Florida Atlantic University’s Center for Urban and Environmental Solutions, said the Miami-Orlando corridor is a perfect spot for high-speed rail — about 40 million Floridians and visitors make the trip annually, with more than 90% of them driving. If Brightline succeeds that could lead to more high-speed lines between major cities 200 to 300 miles (320 to 480 kilometers) apart, both by Brightline and competitors, he said. “It is quite exciting for South Florida to kind of be a test bed for what could be seen as a new paradigm for transportation, particularly high-speed rail transportation, in the United States,” Renne said. Because Brightline is privately owned and seeking a profit, it was more sensitive to getting the project completed quickly to save money. On the government side, Renne pointed to California’s effort to build a high-speed rail system. Approved by voters in 2008, it isn’t near fruition, has already cost billions more than expected and its prospects for completion are uncertain as finding a route through mountains is proving difficult and politicians added dubious side projects. Brightline began planning in 2012. Brightline’s development has suffered setbacks, though. COVID-19 shut down the Miami-West Palm Beach line for 17 months. A 2018 partnership with Richard Branson’s Virgin Group to rebrand Brightline as Virgin Trains USA quickly soured. Brightline terminated the partnership in 2020 and Virgin sued in London. According

A man who died as a result of a drowning accident in his home is Vermont’s first death related to recent storms and historic flooding, the state’s emergency management agency said. Stephen Davoll, 63, of Barre, died on Wednesday, said Mark Bosma, spokesperson for Vermont Emergency Management. The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner investigated the death, in cooperation with local police, Bosma said in a news release late Thursday afternoon. He said Vermonters are urged to continue to take extra care as they return to their homes and repair damage. “The loss of a Vermonter is always painful, but it is particularly so this week,” Vermont U.S. Sen. Peter Welch said in statement. It was the second flood-related death stemming from a storm system and epic flooding in the Northeast this week. The first was in New York — a woman whose body was found after she was swept away in Fort Montgomery, a small Hudson River community about 45 miles (72 kilometers) north of New York City. More rain came through the region Thursday evening. There were no reports of any flash flooding from the storm, the emergency management agency said. A tornado warning was issued for parts of the state and Vermont. There were high winds, but no confirmation of a tornado and no major damage reports. As floodwaters receded, the good news was that there were no new rescue missions, dams were holding up and more roads reopened. The bad news was that the storms aren’t over. More rain was expected Friday, Sunday, and into next week. “The period we are more concerned about is Sunday because that could be more widespread and heavier, but not nearly on the scale of what we saw earlier in the week,” National Weather Service meteorologist Seth Kutikoff said. Gov. Phil Scott said it’s important for Vermonters to be vigilant, and that includes not going into the water. “We’ve seen many pictures on social media of kids swimming in floodwaters. This is not typical rainwater — it’s filled with chemicals, oil, waste, and more. It’s simply not safe,” he said. Other New England states to the south were also drying out, including Connecticut, where officials warned boaters and others about dangerous debris in the Connecticut River, including large trees. A dock with several boats attached was washed away in Glastonbury, just south of Hartford, and was seen floating down the river a few towns away. In Vermont, communities were cleaning up from the floods that were more destructive in some places than 2011’s Tropical Storm Irene and regarded as the worst natural disaster since the 1927 floods, which killed dozens of people and caused widespread destruction. Transportation officials were moving equipment to areas that were considered more flood-prone to prepare for more storms as they continued to evaluate damage, including to rail lines. Amtrak and other railroad service has been suspended. Scott submitted a request for a major disaster declaration to President Joe Biden. “It’s separate from, and in addition to, the federal emergency declaration the president already signed” on Tuesday, he said. If approved, the declaration would provide federal support for recovering communities. In Vermont’s small state capital of Montpelier, where the swollen Winooski River had flooded downtown, the elevator at City Hall was damaged, making the building inaccessible,

President Joe Biden and his wife, Jill, made $579,514 last year and paid $137,658 in federal income taxes. That works out to a 23.8% tax rate, more than the average of roughly 14% for all U.S. households. The Bidens’ earnings have trended slightly downward over the past three years, after averaging more than $600,000 in 2020 and 2021. The median U.S. household income was $69,717 in 2021, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The White House on Tuesday released the tax returns of the Bidens and Vice President Kamala Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff. This once routine rite of passage for presidents and aspirants to the Oval Office became a source of controversy under Biden’s predecessor, Donald Trump, who declined to release his taxes and ultimately had six years’ worth of returns released last year by a House committee. The Bidens’ income has dropped since 2019, when they earned nearly $1 million, primarily from book sales, speeches and their teaching positions at the University of Pennsylvania and Northern Virginia Community College. The former vice president and Delaware senator often notes in speeches that he was once the poorest lawmaker in the Senate, so much so that he could not afford a home in Washington and had to commute by Amtrak. In a Rose Garden speech about child care Tuesday, Biden said he couldn’t keep a home in Delaware and also afford a home for his family in Washington during his 36 years as a senator. As president, Biden earned a salary of $400,000. His wife, Jill, was paid $82,335 for her job teaching at Northern Virginia Community College. They paid state taxes of $29,023 in Delaware and $3,129 in Virginia. The Bidens gave $20,180 to 20 different charities. The largest gift was $5,000 to the Beau Biden Foundation, a nonprofit that works to combat child abuse and is named for their son Beau, who died of brain cancer in 2015 at age 46. They gave $1,680 to St. Joseph on the Brandywine, the church in Delaware that the president attends. The Bidens also donated $2,000 to the Fraternal Order of Police Foundation. The tax filings of the vice president and her husband showed them earning $456,918. They paid $93,570 in federal income tax for a rate of 20.5%. They also paid $17,612 in California income tax, while Harris’ husband paid $9,697 in District of Columbia income tax for his work at Georgetown University’s law school. They contributed $23,000 to charity. Biden campaigned on the transparency of his personal finances, releasing 22 years of tax filings ahead of the 2020 election. It was a direct challenge to Trump, who argued for years that an audit prevented him from releasing his taxes — though the IRS had mandated for four-plus decades that the tax returns of sitting presidents and vice presidents be audited. Tuesday was the deadline for paying federal taxes. (AP)

A rare tornado touched down in a Los Angeles suburb, ripping roofs off a line of commercial buildings and sending the debris twisting into the sky and across a city block, injuring one person. The National Weather Service sent teams to assess damage in Montebello and later confirmed that a tornado had touched down around 11:20 a.m. Wednesday. The weather service said that the tornado was an EF1, a measurement on the Enhanced Fujita Scale that indicates it had winds of 86 mph to 110 mph (138 kph to 177 kph). That made it the strongest tornado to hit the Los Angeles metropolitan area since March 1983, the weather service said. “It’s definitely not something that’s common for the region,” said meteorologist Rose Schoenfeld with the weather service. One person was injured and was taken to a hospital in Montebello, said Alex Gillman, a city spokesman. He didn’t know the severity of the injury. Michael Turner could hear the winds get stronger from inside his office at the 33,000-square-foot (3,065-square-meter) warehouse he owns just south of downtown Montebello. When the lights started flickering, he went outside to find his employees gazing up at the ominous sky. He brought everyone inside. “It got very loud. Things were flying all over the place,” Turner said. “The whole factory became a big dustbowl for a minute. Then when the dust settled, the place was just a mess.” Nobody was hurt, but the gas line was severed, fire sprinklers broke, all the skylights shattered and a 5,000-square-foot (465-square-meter) section of roof was “just gone,” Turner said. He said his polyester fiber business, Turner Fiberfill, could be closed for months. “I’ve been in California since 1965. Never seen anything like this,” Turner said. “Earthquakes — we’re used to that.” Debris was spread over more than one city block. Inspectors checked 17 buildings in the area, and 11 of them were red-tagged as uninhabitable, according to the fire department. Several cars were also damaged. The rare and violent weather came amid a strong late-season Pacific storm that brought damaging winds and more rain and snow to saturated California. Two people died Tuesday as the storm raked the San Francisco Bay Area with powerful gusts and downpours. An on-duty San Francisco police sergeant was hospitalized with life threatening injuries after a tree fell on him Tuesday, the department said. The weather service also sent assessment teams to the Santa Barbara County city of Carpinteria, where it confirmed that a tornado hit a mobile home park on Tuesday, with gusts up to 75 mph (120 kph) that damaged about 25 residences. That tornado was measured at a relatively weak EF0, with winds of 65 mph to 80 mph (105 kph to 129 kph). The last time the weather service’s Los Angeles office sent out tornado assessment teams was 2016 near Fillmore in Ventura County, where it was determined that a small twister had touched down, Schoenfeld said. A tornado warning based on radar also was issued Tuesday night for the Point Mugu area west of Malibu. The warning was later canceled and the Ventura County Sheriff’s Office tweeted there was no evidence a tornado touched down. The storm was tapering off in California from north to south while pushing inland across the Southwest, the Four Corners region and

Self-help author Marianne Williamson, whose 2020 White House campaign featured more quirky calls for spiritual healing than actual voter support, launched another longshot bid for the presidency on Saturday, becoming the first Democrat to formally challenge President Joe Biden for the 2024 nomination. “I, as of today, am a candidate for the office of president of the United States,” she said in a campaign kickoff in the nation’s capital. The 70-year-old onetime spiritual adviser to Oprah Winfrey will almost certainly provide only token primary opposition — a testament to how strongly national Democrats are united behind Biden. Still, she tweaked the president, a longtime Amtrak rider, by holding her opening rally at the presidential suite at Union Station, Washington’s railway hub. Biden gave his own speech from Union Station, close to the Capitol, just before last November’s elections, when he led Democrats to a surprisingly strong showing, urging voters to reject political extremism and saying “democracy itself” was at stake. Williamson, whose red, blue and black campaign signs feature the dual slogans “A New Beginning,” and “Disrupt the System,” plans to campaign in early-voting states on the 2024 election calendar, including New Hampshire, which has threatened to defy a Biden-backed plan by the Democratic National Committee to have South Carolina lead off the nominating contests. Democrats and Republicans in New Hampshire have warned that if Biden skips the state’s unsanctioned primary and a rival wins it, that outcome could prove embarrassing for the sitting president — even if that challenger has no real shot of actually being the nominee. “You can appreciate what the president has done, defeating the Republicans in 2020, and still feel that it is time to move on,” Williamson said in a recent interview with “Good Morning New Hampshire.” Biden, 80, is the oldest president in U.S. history and would be 86 at the end of a second term. Most people in the United States — and even most Democrats — say they don’t want him to run again, according to a poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. The president is expected to announce in the coming weeks that he’s running again. First lady Jill Biden recently told the AP that there was “pretty much” nothing left for the president to do but pick a time and place to announce his reelection bid. Biden’s political advisers say they aren’t worried about the Democratic primary and say Biden is anxious to defeat Donald Trump again in the general election. They say a 2024 campaign against another GOP nominee, such as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, would look much the same because top Republicans remain promoters of Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement. The Democratic establishment — and even potential presidential hopefuls who could have competed against Biden from the left or middle — is behind Biden, showing how smooth his path to the nomination probably will be. Even if other Democrats follow Williamson’s lead and jump into the race, the party is not planning to hold primary debates. Williamson insists her 2024 campaign is about far more than just making a statement. In an online post last weekend, she didn’t mention Trump by name but noted that few predicted he would ride an unconventional campaign all the way to the White House seven years

Flag-waving admirers lined the sidewalk outside the National World War II Museum in New Orleans on Wednesday to greet the oldest living survivor of the Japanese Attack on Pearl Harbor as he marked his upcoming 105th birthday. “It feels great,” Joseph Eskenazi of Redondo Beach, California, told reporters after posing for pictures with his great-grandson, who is about to turn 5, his 21-month-old great-granddaughter and six other World War II veterans, all in their 90s. Eskenazi turns 105 on Jan. 30. He had boarded an Amtrak train in California on Friday for the journey to New Orleans. The other veterans, representing the Army, Navy and Marines, flew in for the event. They were visiting thanks to the Soaring Valor Program, a project of actor Gary Sinise’s charitable foundation dedicated to aiding veterans and first responders. The program arranges trips to the museum for World War II veterans and their guardians. Eskenazi was a private first class in the Army when the attack occurred. His memories include being awakened when a bomb fell — but didn’t explode — near where he was sleeping at Schofield Barracks, reverberating explosions as the battleship USS Arizona was sunk by Japanese bombs, and machine gun fire from enemy planes kicking up dust around him after he volunteered to drive a bulldozer across a field so it could be used to clear runways. “I don’t even know why — my hand just went up when they asked for volunteers,” Eskenazi said. “Nobody else raised their hand because they knew that it meant death. … I did it unconsciously.” He was at the Army’s Schofield Barracks when the Dec. 7, 1941, attack began, bringing the United States into the war. About 2,400 servicemen were killed. Eskenazi and his fellow veterans lined up for pictures amid exhibits of World War II aircraft and Higgins boats, designed for beach landings. “Thank you guys for providing us a country that was worth fighting for,” veteran Billy Hall, a who rose to the rank of major in the Marines after enlisting in 1941, shouted to well-wishers. The museum opened in 2000 as the National D-Day Museum and has expanded in size and scope since then. (AP)

Travelers across much of the eastern United States were bracing Thursday for one of the most treacherous Christmas weekends in decades, with forecasters warning of a “bomb cyclone” that will pack heavy snow and wind while sending temperatures plummeting 50 degrees Fahrenheit in a matter of hours. The frigid air was moving through the central United States to the east, with windchill advisories affecting about 135 million people over the coming days, weather service meteorologist Ashton Robinson Cook said Thursday. Places like Des Moines, Iowa, will feel like minus 37 degrees, making it possible to suffer frostbite in less than five minutes. There were already widespread disruptions in flights and train travel. “This is not like a snow day when you were a kid,” President Joe Biden warned Thursday in the Oval Office after a briefing from federal officials. “This is serious stuff.” Forecasters are expecting a bomb cyclone — when atmospheric pressure drops very quickly in a strong storm — to develop near the Great Lakes, which will increase winds and create blizzard conditions, Cook said. In South Dakota, Rosebud Sioux Tribe emergency manager Robert Oliver said tribal authorities have been working to clear roads to deliver propane and fire wood to homes, but face a relentless wind that has created drifts over 10 feet in some places. “This weather and the amount of equipment we have — we don’t have enough,” Oliver said, noting that rescues of people stranded in their homes had to be halted early Thursday when the hydraulic fluid in heavy equipment froze amid a 41 below zero windchill. He said five have died in recent storms, including a blizzard from last week. “It’s just kind of scary for us here, we just kind of feel isolated and left out,” said Shawn Bordeaux, a Democratic state lawmaker, who said he was running out of propane heat at his home near Mission on the tribe’s reservation. In Texas, temperatures were expected to quickly plummet Thursday, but state leaders promised there wouldn’t be a repeat of the February 2021 storm that overwhelmed the state’s power grid and was blamed for hundreds of deaths. The cold weather extended to El Paso and across the border into Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, where migrants have been camping outside or filling shelters as they await a decision on whether the U.S. will lift restrictions that have prevented many from seeking asylum. Elsewhere in the U.S., authorities worried about the potential for power failures and warned people to take precautions to protect older and homeless people and livestock — and, if possible, to postpone travel. Some utilities were urging customers to turn down theirs thermostats to conserve energy. “This event could be life-threatening if you are stranded,” according to an online post by the National Weather Service in Minnesota, where transportation and patrol officials reported dozens of crashes and vehicles off the road. Michigan State Police prepared to deploy additional troopers to help motorists. And along Interstate 90 in northern Indiana, crews were braced to clear as much as a foot of snow as meteorologists warned of blizzard conditions there starting Thursday evening. More than 2,156 flights within, into or out of the U.S. had been canceled as of Thursday afternoon, according to the tracking site FlightAware. Airlines have also canceled 1,576 Friday

President Joe Biden on Monday asked Congress to intervene and block a railroad strike before next month’s deadline in the stalled contract talks, and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said lawmakers would take up legislation this week to impose the deal that unions agreed to in September. “Let me be clear: a rail shutdown would devastate our economy,” Biden said in a statement. “Without freight rail, many U.S. industries would shut down.” In a statement, Pelosi said: “We are reluctant to bypass the standard ratification process for the Tentative Agreement — but we must act to prevent a catastrophic nationwide rail strike, which would grind our economy to a halt.” Pelosi said the House would not change the terms of the September agreement, which would challenge the Senate to approve the House bill without changes. The September agreement that Biden and Pelosi are calling for is a slight improvement over what the board of arbitrators recommended in the summer. The September agreement added three unpaid days off a year for engineers and conductors to tend to medical appointments as long as they scheduled them at least 30 days in advance. The railroads also promised in September not to penalize workers who are hospitalized and to negotiate further with the unions after the contract is approved about improving the regular scheduling of days off. Hundreds of business groups had been urging Congress and the president to step into the deadlocked contract talk and prevent a strike. Both the unions and railroads have been lobbying Congress while contract talks continue. If Congress acts, it will end talks between the railroads and four rail unions that rejected their deals Biden helped broker before the original strike deadline in September. Eight other unions have approved their five-year deals with the railroads and are in the process of getting back pay for their workers for the 24% raises that are retroactive to 2020. If Congress does what Biden suggests and imposes terms similar to what was agreed on in September, that will end the union’s push to add paid sick time. The four unions that have rejected their deals have been pressing for the railroads to add that benefit to help address workers’ quality of life concerns, but the railroads had refused to consider that. Biden said that as a “a proud pro-labor president” he was reluctant to override the views of people who voted against the agreement. “But in this case — where the economic impact of a shutdown would hurt millions of other working people and families — I believe Congress must use its powers to adopt this deal.” Biden’s remarks and Pelosi’s statement came after a coalition of more than 400 business groups sent a letter to congressional leaders Monday urging them to step into the stalled talks because of fears about the devastating potential impact of a strike that could force many businesses to shut down if they can’t get the rail deliveries they need. Commuter railroads and Amtrak would also be affected in a strike because many of them use tracks owned by the freight railroads. The business groups led by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, National Association of Manufacturers and National Retail Federation said even a short-term strike would have a tremendous impact and the economic pain would start to

American consumers and nearly every industry will be affected if freight trains grind to a halt next month. One of the biggest rail unions rejected its deal Monday, joining three others that have failed to approve contracts over concerns about demanding schedules and the lack of paid sick time. That raises the risk of a strike, which could start as soon as Dec. 5. It wouldn’t take long for the effects of a rail strike to trickle through the economy. Many businesses only have a few days’ worth of raw materials and space for finished goods. Makers of food, fuel, cars and chemicals would all feel the squeeze, as would their customers. That’s not to mention the commuters who would be left stranded because many passenger railroads use tracks owned by the freight railroads. The stakes are so high for the economy that Congress is expected to intervene and impose contract terms on railroad workers. The last time US railroads went on strike was in 1992. That strike lasted two days before Congress intervened. An extended rail shutdown has not happened for a century, partly because a law passed in 1926 that governs rail negotiations made it much harder for workers to strike. Here are some of the expected impacts of a rail strike: $2 BILLION A DAY Railroads haul about 40% of the nation’s freight each year. The railroads estimated that a rail strike would cost the economy $2 billion a day in a report issued earlier this fall. Another recent report put together by a chemical industry trade group projected that if a strike drags on for a month some 700,000 jobs would be lost as manufacturers who rely on railroads shut down, prices of nearly everything would increase even more and the economy could be thrust into a recession. And although some businesses would try to shift shipments over to trucks, there aren’t nearly enough of them available. The Association of American Railroads trade group estimated that 467,000 additional trucks a day would be needed to handle everything railroads deliver. CHEMICALS RUN DRY Chemical manufacturers and refineries will be some of the first businesses affected, because railroads will stop shipping hazardous chemicals about a week before the strike deadline to ensure that no tank cars filled with dangerous liquids wind up stranded. Jeff Sloan with the American Chemistry Council trade group said chemical plants could be close to shutting down by the time a rail strike actually begins because of that. That means the chlorine that water treatment plants rely on to purify water, which they might only have about a week’s supply of on hand, would become hard to get. It would be hard for manufacturers to make anything out of plastic without the chemicals that are part of the formula. Consumers will also pay more for gasoline if refineries shut down either because they can’t get the ingredients they need to make fuel or because railroads aren’t available to haul away byproducts like sulfur. Chemical plants also produce carbon dioxide as a byproduct, so the supply of carbon dioxide that beverage makers use to carbonate soda and beer would also be restricted, even though the gas typically moves via pipelines. PASSENGER PROBLEMS Roughly half of all commuter rail systems rely at least in part on