Winning an open-skies freight deal could also open the way to creating a British freight-carrying airline, at which Mr Souter may eventually want to try his hand.

ECONOMIST: Transport

First off, AppleInsider is reporting that some supa' secret shipments are about to make their way via air-freight from the Far East to the United States around the 5th of September.

ENGADGET: Scraping the bottom of the endless Apple rumor barrel

We have also developed COSAC-AWB (Air Way Bill) and COSAC-Customs, to facilitate the industry adoption of digital air way bills and eventually e-freight.

FORBES: The Decade of the CIO is Here - The Beyond CIO Series

That would include one additional train hourly both ways between Manchester and Birmingham, via Stone, and a further freight train every hour each way through Stafford, it said.

BBC: Work on Staffordshire rail 'bottleneck' begins

Meanwhile, trains, which carry about a third of all transalpine freight, have to wind their way up and down steep gradients, slowly and fairly lightly laden, to reach the existing St Gotthard railway tunnel, which was opened in 1882.

ECONOMIST: Switzerland

Work is under way to come up with technologies to screen air freight.

ECONOMIST: Bureaucracy not technology

The algorithms that came out of Powell's lab in the 1980s had changed the industry's "less-than-truckload" segment (consisting of parcels and smaller freight) by mapping out a more efficient way to plan routes and using terminals that break down shipments.

FORBES: Magazine Article

But this "re-regulation" is not the way to stoke competition, says the American Association of Railroads, whose members include Amtrak and the four major freight lines, CSX, BNSF Railway, Norfolk Southern and Union Pacific.

FORBES: All Aboard

But this "re-regulation" is not the way to stoke competition, says the American Association of Railroads, whose members include Amtrak and the four major freight lines, CSX (nyse: CSX - news - people ), BNSF Railway, Norfolk Southern and Union Pacific (nyse: UNP - news - people ).

FORBES: All Aboard