Bullets

NEWTOWN, Conn. - School shooter Adam Lanza carried hundreds of bullets when he shot his way into Sandy Hook Elementary School and used an assault rifle to do most of the killing, authorities confirmed Sunday. Lanza, 20, fired a Bushmaster .223 semiautomatic rifle to kill many of the 20 children and six adults at the school Friday, Connecticut State Police Lt. J. Paul Vance said. He used a Glock 10-millimeter handgun to shoot himself in the head. He also carried at Sig Sauer pistol.

This post has been corrected. See the note at the bottom for details. NEWTOWN, Conn. -- After the gunfire subsided, some of the children ran out of the school to safety. Others walked in a single-file line, hands on each other's shoulders, as if they were heading to lunch. Then they leaped into the arms of tearful parents and recounted their morning of terror at Sandy Hook Elementary School, where a gunman killed 26 people, including 20 students, authorities said. Some of the children heard the shots, which one student described as sounding like someone kicking in a door.

A few hundred faithful pass through the doors of Pastor Bob Childress' sanctuary every Sunday, but he worries that sometime in the next decade a 220-mph bullet train may take their place. The future route of the train, as currently drawn, takes dead aim for the Church of the Canyons, an evangelical refuge on Sand Canyon Road in Santa Clarita with a congregation of 450. "This will be an excellent test of our faith," Childress said. California's bullet train has generated plenty of opposition in the areas around the San Gabriel Mountains.

Re “ Bullet train leg to finish later ,” Nov. 16 It has been my experience that high-speed rail has brought untold benefits wherever it has been developed. The early decision to solve Japan's transportation needs with bullet trains had many side benefits, including the development of both industrial and commercial centers that were and are major supporting elements to the success of the system. The same can be said for the TGV in France. Jobs, growth and more freedom of movement are but a few of the positive elements from this long-overdue project.

The Expendables 2 Lionsgate, $29.95; Blu-ray, $39.99 Available on VOD beginning Nov. 20 Doubling down on what worked just fine two years ago, this sequel brings back Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Bruce Willis and Arnold Schwarzenegger, and adds Chuck Norris and Jean-Claude Van Damme to the roster of action veterans paying homage to the big, dumb guns-and-bombs flicks of the 1980s. The plot this time has the team of mercenaries losing one of their own and exacting revenge, but "plot" isn't really the point of either of the "Expendables" movies; the idea is to show buff, beloved old stars, swapping quips and bullets while running in slow-motion ahead of explosions.

The California High-Speed Rail Authority said Thursday that it was adding 12 months to the construction schedule for 130 miles of track in the Central Valley, easing what some outside experts have contended was an overly aggressive and risky timeline. Jeff Morales, chief executive of the authority, said the revised schedule would have the track completed by December 2017 rather than a year earlier as set under the agency's contracting documents. The new timetable will allow contractors to use less overtime and other practices that were expected under the accelerated plan in place earlier, Morales said.

Re“ Rail line's Big Dig ,” Nov. 13 FOR THE RECORD: Bullet train: In the “Train to somewhere” letters to the editor on Nov. 16, the word “million” was missing in this quote: “Fully operational, the bullet train will need an estimated 2.7 million kilowatt hours of electricity every day.” I am old enough to think that not much can astound or surprise me. But the article on the bullet train construction did just that....

Civil War veteran William Hood arrived at the mosquito-infested swamps near Bakersfield in 1874 to build a rail line that would soar through the Tehachapi Mountains, linking the Bay Area and Southern California for the first time. Hood, Southern Pacific Railroad's chief assistant engineer, assembled 3,000 Chinese immigrants with picks, shovels and dynamite. They snaked the track up treacherous mountain ridges, twisted it back and forth around canyons and punched it through sheer rock in a series of 18 tunnels - climbing 4,025 vertical feet along the way. It's a feat no one has attempted to duplicate.

Re "How to save Prop. 30," Opinion, Nov. 2 I agree 100% with Dan Schnur's suggestion that Gov. Jerry Brown and the Legislature should immediately drop support for high-speed rail. Continued support of this project would be the biggest cause of a Proposition 30 defeat. With so many really important infrastructure projects that California desperately needs, to stubbornly cling to the rail project - especially by a governor who has substantially improved things in this state - is nothing short of suicidal.

Officials at the California bullet train agency have pushed back by months a key milestone in the upcoming construction, though they say the project is not falling behind and that they will be able to build 130 miles of track in the Central Valley by 2017. Jeff Morales, chief executive officer of the project, acknowledged long-standing rumors in the construction industry that the deadline for submitting bids on the first segment would be pushed back from this week to Jan. 18, coming after an earlier revision that pushed the deadline back from September.