Trains could be cancelled or delayed until the end of the day due to the damaged wires, National Rail said
Rail passengers faced major disruption after damaged electric wires led to lines being blocked in and out of Birmingham New Street.
The incident was first reported just before 14:00 BST on Wednesday and the delays and cancellations continued into the evening, with New Street posting on X that it had brought in extra staff to help passengers.
New Street is the busiest railway station outside of London and the damage was affecting services for many operators, National Rail said.
Services running from or through New Street to cities including London, Manchester, Glasgow and Cardiff were among those affected, as well as many services within the West Midlands.
On some affected lines, passengers could use their train tickets on other routes, National Rail said
Passengers were warned their trains could be cancelled, delayed by up to three hoursor not run for their full route.
There was also a knock on effect with trains between Cambridge and Stansted Airport being cancelled as staff were displaced.
Those arriving at Birmingham New Street were confronted with electronic departure boards warning of severe disruption.
At Wolverhampton’s railway station, a BBC reporter said all the signs warned of delays.
Shel, a train driver, posted on X shortly after 17:00 BST that she had been stuck in Redditch for three hours due to the disruption.
“Today hasn’t quite gone as planned!” she posted.
Nick Cosgriff
The disruption was affecting services at Derby’s railway station, according to one passenger
Nick Cosgriff, a passenger at Derby’s station told the BBC that trains travelling to New Street from the north of the country were terminating at Derby instead, with trains arriving “every few minutes or so”, resulting in large crowds.
He said there were hundreds of stranded rail passengers were waiting in Derby for promised replacement coaches to arrive.
“Throughout the late afternoon the crowds grew larger, as further trains arrived, decanting more passengers at Derby,” he said.
Ian Farnell from West Bromwich got onto a train at Walsall which was headed for Birmingham.
He said: “The driver said New Street had lost power and that we could be stuck here for three minutes or three hours – he couldn’t say which.
“Thankfully I could get a bus home from Walsall instead.”
The wires were damaged between New Street and Water Orton in Warwickshire, according to post on X by Transport for West Midlands.
A spokesperson for Network Rail said that at 13:40 BST “damaged overhead power lines were reported on the approach to Birmingham New Street station, near to Curzon Street”.
Curzon Street is due to be the Birmingham terminus for the new HS2 line.
Network Rail
Repairs to the damaged wires would be carried out overnight, Network Rail said
A post on Network Rail’s New Street X account, showed a photo of the damage, with loose cables hanging from a metal gantry. Repairs would be carried out overnight, the post said.
On some affected lines, passengers could use their train tickets on other routes, while on other lines, replacement buses were being used or had been requested, National Rail said.
By about 16:10 BST, they added that some lines had reopened following the damage to the wires but urged passengers to check before they travelled.
GFG style produces one-off reflective supercar peralta S
GFG Style rolls out Peralta S, a reflective supercar with a mirror-polished aluminum frame and a design that takes after the Maserati Boomerang. To debut at the Monterey Motorsports Festival on August 16th, 2025, the vehicle was first shown at the Pastejé Automotive Invitational in Mexico on March 22nd, 2025. It is the first one-off supercar made by the Italian car design company, GFG Style, created for a Mexican car collector named Carlos Peralta and his two sons, Juan Carlos and Nicolas. From the get-go, the body of the reflective supercar Peralta S mimics the surroundings because of the handmade mirror-polished aluminum covering the entire frame.
It gives the vehicle both a gleaming and silver look, as if the windows and the frame were one, turning the supercar into a monolithic ride. The driver steps inside the vehicle by lifting up the entire top part called the dome. The side windows can open separately, moving upwards like gull wings, and from the side, the reflective supercar Peralta S resembles a silver bullet, drawn from the singular-looking silhouette it has from the front to the back. When viewed from above, however, the vehicle features a teardrop shape, still glinting because of its mirror-polished body.
all images courtesy of GFG Style
Glowing lights under the vehicle’s frame
If one is to look for the lights around GFG Style’s reflective supercar Peralta S, they can find them hidden underneath the vehicle, both in the front and the back. When the driver fires up the ride, the rear lights appear within a glowing effect dubbed the shadow light. Then, the rear spoiler also lifts up to allow for better airflow and style, and when the vehicle isn’t used, the spoiler stays hidden. The company says that the only parts of the reflective supercar Peralta S that aren’t made from aluminum are the front spoiler, rear diffuser, and side sills. It is because these are forged from carbon fiber, making them lightweight and helping the vehicle speed away without adding a drag.
Inside the reflective supercar Peralta S, GFG Style brings back the look and colors of the vehicles from the 1970s. First off, the design team covers the seats and the dashboard in leather, refining them with a metallic chrome effect to continue the mirror-like exterior frame. The bucket seats wrap around the driver and passenger, and the steering wheel comes with built-in car controls, which is a modern touch from the design team. For the center console, there aren’t any frills or advanced technologies that are now common in modern cars. Instead, the design has a back-to-basic approach with the knobs and controls, colored in silver to mimic the mirror-polished aluminum body.
GFG Style rolls out Peralta S, a reflective supercar with a mirror-polished aluminum frame
Design influences from the 1972 Maserati Boomerang
The reflective supercar Peralta S by GFG Style has strong ties to the Maserati Boomerang in the 1970s. The designer of the 1972 vehicle is the renowned Italian automotive designer Giorgetto Giugiaro, and his son, Fabrizio Giugiaro, designed the Peralta S, drawing the design influences of his automobile from his father’s work. The Maserati Boomerang had a wedge shape, a series of sharp angles, and a futuristic look, three design elements that the reflective supercar Peralta S shares. The Maserati model, however, was just a concept car, unlike the Peralta S. During its time, the Giorgetto Giugiaro-designed vehicle was ahead of its time in terms of design. Most of the cars then had rounder and softer bodies, but the Maserati Boomerang owned its semi-rectangular frame.
It also embodied flat surfaces, straight lines, and a pointed front, which only came out over the years. Inside the Maserati model, the steering wheel and the dashboard were combined into a single unit, and the gauges and controls were placed inside the steering wheel. Then, the wheel itself turned around the instruments, which was found novel at the time. The vehicle also had a low roofline, and Giorgetto Giugiaro designed the body to look like a triangle from the side. Another feature that the reflective supercar Peralta S shares with the Maserati Boomerang is the two doors and the seating for two people. Then, under the body of the Fabrizio Giugiaro-designed vehicle is the Maserati MC20 platform, which means that the engine, including the twin-turbo V6, wheels, and other parts are the same as those in the MC20. So far, the reflective supercar Peralta S is a one-off vehicle from GFG Style.
Joseph Kosinski‘s racing drama “F1: The Movie” has been justly celebrated for its high-octane racing sequences, which incorporate cutting-edge filmmaking technology to convey a visceral sense of what it’s like to drive a Formula One car. However, those set pieces would not work if the entire film were a constant blur of speeding cars. The film’s quieter moments — focusing on actors Brad Pitt, Damson Idris, Kerry Condon, and Javier Bardem — also needed to have the same level of tension, beauty, and artistry, even when a starting grid was nowhere in sight.
For this, Kosinski turned to his longtime collaborator Claudio Miranda, the cinematographer who has shot all of the director’s films going back to “Tron: Legacy” in 2010. When it came to those character beats, the filmmakers were guided by the same principles as the racing scenes: Make them as grounded as possible. “There weren’t many sets on this movie,” Miranda told IndieWire. “The locations were our sets.”
And so, in a big way, were the cars. Although Miranda admired John Frankenheimer’s 1966 film “Grand Prix,” he felt that many of the other racing films he looked at were lacking when it came to capturing the actual speed and intensity of the sport. “ One of the things we really wanted to improve on was speed,” Miranda said. “A lot of movies use process cars or biscuit rigs, and those things only go maybe 60 miles an hour. And knowing that these cars go 200 miles an hour, that’s just way too slow.”
Miranda and Kosinski resisted suggestions to shoot scenes with a car on a platform. “That’s not our movie,” Miranda said. “We watched movies that were done in that style, and they do tricks like speeding it up or putting the vehicle on a gimbal or in the volume… but that seems a little bit sad. I think the audience can recognize that stuff, and they just feel when it’s AI or the volume, and it’s not real. The excitement level probably drops because of it.”
With that in mind, Miranda collaborated with Sony, Formula One, Mercedes, and other companies to create a system for filming the actors as they drove their cars at 200 miles per hour – no easy task given that even the slightest amount of extra weight slowed down the vehicles. “The smallest cameras that existed at the time were just way too big,” Miranda said, noting that this created a challenge he didn’t have to face on “Top Gun: Maverick,” where the planes he was mounting cameras on could handle hundreds of extra pounds — and didn’t require the same kind of visibility for the pilot.
“This wasn’t like ‘Top Gun,’ where I could block up the whole front view and it doesn’t really matter,” Miranda said. “These drivers really needed to see where they were going; that was critical.” Ultimately, Sony designed cameras that Miranda described as “sensors on a stick,” which could capture high-quality footage and relay it across the track to recorders via state-of-the-art radio frequency tech. Miranda was able to capture up to a dozen unique angles at a time on each car, and could pan and tilt rather than being constricted to a fixed camera position.
All of this led to the most kinetic and realistic racing movie ever made, but the methodology didn’t stop on the track. “The thing I love about Joe is that he’ll always try to shoot in a real place, a real environment,” Miranda said. That meant that not only did the racing sequences avoid process shots and green screen, but the more intimate moments did too — even when they theoretically could have been shot on a stage with much less expense and effort. At one point, Pitt’s character opens up about his regrets and failures to Condon on a hotel balcony in Las Vegas in what is the movie’s most emotional scene; it also, thanks to Miranda and Kosinski’s approach, is the most visually beautiful.
“We did that with just one camera — multiple set-ups, but one camera,” Miranda said. He noted that a dialogue scene like the balcony exchange could easily have been done on a set and would have looked convincing, but again, being on location in Vegas created an emotional effect that might otherwise have been elusive. “The city lights come from underneath, and it feels like they’re really lighting that scene. Sometimes, signs will blink and it lifts the whole scene up, but you probably wouldn’t make that choice on a stage where you’re trying to make things more consistent. And the fountains in the background give it a great view.”
The balcony scene is also emblematic of one of Miranda’s greatest and most underrated strengths, his talent for showcasing movie stars. While it’s not necessarily difficult to find a way of shooting Tom Cruise or Brad Pitt in ways that display their charisma, in “Maverick” and “F1” Miranda takes their star power to an extra level through his careful lens selection and lighting. Simple images of Pitt walking toward a long lens take on a mythic grandeur in Miranda’s hands; it’s the kind of pleasing classical style that used to be more common in the glory days of the Hollywood studio system but which has become more and more rare in recent years.
The precision of Miranda’s visuals is all the more impressive given how often he had to grab them on the fly, as the drama was staged in between breaks during real races where Kosinski and his crew were piggybacking on Formula One events to take advantage of their resources and scale. “They don’t give you grace,” Miranda said. “If you’re not done in 10 minutes, you have to get the car off the track. There were scenes we shot that we had one chance to get, and that was nerve-wracking.”
The company’s ability to execute difficult shots in tight windows was thanks largely to careful rehearsal and planning. “We just had to have everything really buttoned up,” Miranda said. “It was a collaboration between many people across different spectrums, not just my grips and the camera department and the art department, but Formula One and Mercedes and more — half the people helping us weren’t even in the film industry.”
The camaraderie between Formula One and the “F1” crew led to some of the movie’s most extraordinary shots, images that Miranda said would have been unachievable otherwise and which spoke to the special nature of the cross-industry collaboration. “One day, there was a red flag moment and they said some of the teams would help us,” Miranda said. “They all did. They all brought their cars out, and they were all out there for real — that’s not a CG shot. I was almost crying, it was such an emotional moment.”
Fans slam Kris Jenner’s leg leaves fans shocked and confused
Kris Jenner has come under fire for an alleged ‘Photoshop fail’ that appeared to distort one of her legs in a recently shared sultry photo.
The 69-year-old momager, who recently showcased the results of her $100k facelift, channelled daughter Kim Kardashian’s style by wearing the same Dolce & Gabbana dress and a diamond pendant necklace at Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez’s wedding in Venice over the weekend.
While Kris looked glamorous in the purple outfit, fans quickly took to social media to call out what they described as a glaring editing error in the images.
One viewer zoomed in on her leg and suggested it resembled a Photoshopped replica of Kim’s, while another jokingly compared the limb to that of a ‘skeleton Barbie.’
‘I am sorry- what? This may be the worst Photoshop I’ve ever witnessed,’ someone wrote on Reddit. ‘The front leg looks like Kim’s with airbrush turned up to 100 and the back one looks like a skeleton Barbie leg.
‘Saw photos of her natural legs the other days-while they show her age, that’s NORMAL and wasn’t remotely as horrified as I was when I saw this,’ they added.
The controversy comes on the heels of another viral moment involving the reality TV star.
Kris was spotted having a seemingly tense exchange with longtime boyfriend Corey Gamble during the lavish wedding celebrations in Venice.
According to lip reader Nicola Hickling, who spoke to DailyMail, the Keeping Up With the Kardashians star appeared to insist on travelling alone in a water taxi, refusing to share the ride with other guests.
An object that appears to be from beyond our Solar System has been spotted hurtling towards the Sun, which if confirmed would be the third visitor from the stars ever detected, the European Space Agency said Wednesday.
The object, which is currently being referred to as A11pl3Z, poses no threat to Earth, the ESA’s planetary defence head Richard Moissl told AFP.
“It will fly deep through the Solar System, passing just inside the orbit of Mars,” but will not hit our neighbouring planet, he said.
Excited astronomers are still refining their calculations, but the object appears to be zooming more than 60 kilometres (37 miles) a second.
This would mean it is not bound by the Sun’s orbit, unlike comets and asteroids, which all originate from within the Solar System.
Its trajectory also “means it’s not orbiting our star, but coming from interstellar space and flying off to there again,” Moissl said.
“We are not 100 percent certain at the moment, but anything else would be a surprise,” he added.
Official confirmation is expected to come from the International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Center, which has recorded more than 100 observations of the object so far.
The NASA-funded ATLAS survey in Hawaii first discovered the object on Tuesday, US astronomer David Rankin wrote on the social media platform Bluesky.
Professional and amateur astronomers across the world then searched through past telescope data, tracing its trajectory back to at least June 14.
The object is currently estimated to be roughly 10-20 kilometres wide, Moissl said. But the object could be smaller if it is made out of ice, which reflects more light.
“It will get brighter and closer to the Sun until late October and then still be observable (by telescope) until next year,” Moissl said.
– Our third visitor –
It would be the third time humanity has detected something coming from the stars.
The first, ‘Oumuamua, was discovered in 2017. It was so strange that at least one prominent scientist became convinced it was an alien vessel — though this has since been dismissed by further research.
Our second interstellar visitor, 2I/Borisov, was spotted in 2019.
Mark Norris, an astronomer at the UK’s University of Central Lancashire, told AFP that the new object appears to be “moving considerably faster than the other two extra-solar objects that we previously discovered.”
The object is currently roughly around the distance from Jupiter away from Earth, Norris said.
He lamented that he would not be able to observe the object on his telescope on Wednesday night, because it is currently only visible in the Southern Hemisphere.
Norris pointed to modelling estimating that there could be as many 10,000 interstellar objects drifting through the Solar System at any given time, though most would be smaller than the newly discovered object.
If true, this suggests that the newly online Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile could soon be finding these dim interstellar visitors every month, Norris said.
Moissl said it is not feasible to send a mission into space to intercept the new object.
Still, these visitors offer scientists a rare chance to study something outside of our Solar System.
For example, if we detected precursors of life such as amino acids on such an object, it would give us “a lot more confidence that the conditions for life exist in other star systems,” Norris said.
BBC
Nick Cosgriff
Network Rail
