Infozone Breaking World News

New York taxi driver Mohammed Alam got more than he bargained for when he picked up investment banker John Belitsky and his friend Dan Wuebben. Instead of a cross town fare, the two decided to do something ‘magical’ and asked Mr Alam how much it would be to take them to Los Angeles, a 2448 mile trip.

The $5,000 (around £3,000) drive took six days to complete with a stop off in Las Vegas where the two friends won $2,000. To document the trip, Mr Belitsky used the popular social networking site Twitter, but has not said how they plan to get back to New York.

A local New York news blog has calculated that if the taxi meter was running for the whole trip it would of cost nearly $17,000 (around £10,000).

For those of you that say the traffic is bad in the UK (especially during bank holiday weekends!), it’s nothing compared to the one near Beijing which lasted for nine days. Local media state that a queue stretching around 100km (62miles) formed after a combination of heavy traffic, breakdowns and road works grinded the road to a holt.

The vehicles drivers, which were mainly lorries bound for Beijing complained that local people were charging them over the odds for food and water while they were stuck. State television said that the road has “basically returned to normal,” but there could be further disruptions as the road works aren’t expected to be finished till the middle of September.

The traffic jam was between Jining (in Mongolia) and Huai’an (in the Hebei Province near Beijing) and is a part of the Beijing-Tibet expressway; it is used heavily by lorries carrying coal to Beijing from Mongolia.

A Swedish driver who was caught speeding at 170km/h over the speed limit in Switzerland faces having to pay a whopping 1.08 million Swiss Francs (equivalent to $1m or £656,000) fine. The 37 year old unnamed driver was clocked going 290km/h in his Mercedes SLS AMG sports car and faces this huge fine because under Swiss law, a speeding fine is determined by the wealth of the driver and the recorded speed.

Earlier this year in January, a Swiss driver was fined $290,000 (the current world record) for speeding at 135km/h, 57km/p over the speed limit.

The Swede’s car has now been impounded and he could be forced to pay 3,600 Swiss Francs per day for up to 300 days.

Only last week Michael Schumacher stated that he would be returning to F1 to fill in for injured Massa Ferrari’s 2nd driver.

After undergoing intense testing Michael Schumacher will not be returning to F1 due to a neck injury that happened during a bike accident.

Luca Badoer is now the stand in for Massa and has vowed to do all he can to help Ferrari.

Massa’s injury was sustained after a lose spring broke free from a Brawn GP car only moments earlier on the same lap.

Michael Schumacher is set for a dramatic Formula 1 return to temporarily replace the injured Felipe Massa.
Massa was injured by a spring on the race track that had fallen from Rubens Barrichello’s Brawn GP car, only minutes earlier.

Earlier this week Schumacher’s agent said he was 200% sure that he wouldn’t be getting back into the Ferrari car to race in F1 again.

Schumacher is now 40 and will be the oldest driver on the track. He is set to undergo a special training program to prove that he is still fit enough to compete in Formula 1.

He will be set for a comeback for the GP of Europe at Valencia, it will be interesting to see how he copes with tracks that he hasn’t raced on before  and the evening race in Singapore.