CRH380A, China An increasing number of countries are turning to high-speed rail to link cities, citing its advantages over air travel for mid-distance trips. With well-designed and well-operated systems, weather conditions are less likely to affect journeys, proponents such as the US High Speed Rail Association say. It's not surprising that countries are pushing technological limits to provide the most efficient (and fastest) ways to travel by rail. In 2012, China launched the world's first-ever high-speed train capable of operating...

For boaters who can't decide whether they'd prefer a casual cruise or a dive to the depths of the ocean to avoid inclement weather, the new design for a 377-foot yacht called the Migaloo combines the best of both worlds. The design comes from Austrian yacht studiomotion code: blue. The studio has previously worked on yachts and super yachts in Asia, Europe and the U.S. "In our minds as designers, the concept was to submerge to travel or stay in...

Two French 'Tigre' helicopters fly over Le Bourget airport on June 17, 2013, north of Paris, on the opening day of the International Paris Air show which will be held until June 23, 2013. (Eric Feferberg/AFP/Getty Images) If the Paris Air Show is anything to go by, flying is about to get faster, greener, and more comfortable. The 50th anniversary of the exhibition, which runs from June 17 to 23 and includes 2,215 exhibitors, will feature new models from Boeing...

In this Sunday, May 26, 2013 photo, a flight takes off for Katmandu from Lukla airport, Nepal. (AP Photo/Niranjan Shrestha) LUKLA, Nepal - As soon as the decades-old Twin Otter landed at Lukla airport, passengers burst out in applause. They do that for nearly every safe landing at the often terrifying airport at the gateway to Mount Everest. At an altitude of 2,843 meters (9,325 feet), the small airstrip here has earned a reputation as one of the most extreme...

ICEHOTEL Entrance (Ben Nilsson/Big Ben Productions) With the summer months quickly approaching, most folks are already ditching layers of clothing in favor of tank-tops, bikinis, and a few sweat-inducing hours under the sun. But not in Jukkasjärvi, Sweden. Sunscreen and sand are in short order in this tourist hub situated just north of the Arctic Circle. Here you're much more likely to find yourself in a pair of thermal underwear nuzzled into the warmth of a reindeer hide. That's because...

Boa constrictor, close-up. (Thinkstock) TYLER, Texas — Samuel L. Jackson would have been cursing up a storm. An East Texas man has pleaded guilty to smuggling snakes on several planes from South America to the United States. During a court hearing Wednesday in Tyler, William Lamar pleaded guilty to importing wildlife taken in violation of foreign law. Prosecutors say the 63-year-old eco-tourism guide bought the seven live snakes in August 2012 in a market in Lima, Peru, and smuggled them...

Matt Silver-Vallance gets ready to fly across the sea from Nelson Mandela's apartheid island prison using helium-filled giant party balloons, on April 6, 2013 in Cape Town. (RODGER BOSCH/AFP/Getty Images) Traveling by balloons might look exciting, but with unpredictable wind conditions it can make for a bumpy ride. Matt Silver-Vallance floated from Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela was imprisonned for 18 years during apartheid, to the coast of South Africa -- using nothing but 160 helium-filled balloons and a paragliding...

Bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus) underwater. (Tom Brakefield/Thinkstock) Taking pictures of the local flora and fauna while on vacation can be a good way to remember the trip, but a group of tourists in China went too far when they saw a dolphin in shallow water. An injured dolphin died off the coast of the Hainan Province in southern China after a group of tourists repeatedly hoisted it out of the water to take pictures with it. According to the Shanghai...

Gerard dAboville, captain of the world's largest solar boat, Switzerlands MS Turanor PlanetSolar, stands on the boat's solar panels on June 18, 2013 at North Cove Marina in New York. Solar panels cover more than 5,554 square feet of the ship's surface. (Don Emmert/AFP/Getty Images) Boats have relied on the wind to travel around the world for hundreds of years, but last year was the first time that a vessel powered only by the sun completed the full circumnavigation. And...

The Frontier Drive-In located in Center, Colo. (Credit: Craig Deman) Santa Monica, Calif.-based photographer Craig Deman captures eerie yet stunning photos of deteriorating drive-in movie theaters that have been fashioned by the effects of weather over time in his photo series, “The Drive-In Project.” “Decades of heat, wind and rain ‘organically stylized’ the remnants of screens, ticket booths and projection booths in a distressed manner,” explained Deman in an interview with Weather.com. “Capturing the effects of these atmospheric conditions on...

An image from Viennese artist Andreas Franke's underwater art gallery on the USS Mohawk near Sanibel Island, Fla. (Andreas Franke) Austrian photographer Andreas Franke has taken his works of art underwater again, transforming the USS Mohawk CGC, now a living reef, into a below sea level art gallery. Franke and his team mounted 12 images inside the 165-foot World War II warship’s walls off the coast of Sanibel Island. According to Diver magazine, the Mohawk is the last remaining ship...

A Chinese worker tends to one of the endangered Giant Panda twins born at the Wolong Nature Reserve in China's southwest Sichuan province (STR/AFP/Getty Images) This slideshow has been edited to include more baby animals born at zoos; the meerkats appear after the newborn Giant Panda twins and a sloth bear making his debut at the Smithsonian National Zoo. Weighing less than a tenth of a pound, meerkats Fips and Luck were born on April 23 to fanfare at the...

A beached whale art installation by the Belgian collective 'Captain Boomer' lies on the shore of the river Thames at Greenwich on June 20, 2013 in Greenwich, England. (Oli Scarff/Getty Images) When a bottlenose whale swam up the Thames River and became beached on the shore in 2006, thousands of people came to watch in awe and horror as scientists struggled and failed to returned the animal to its natural habitat. Spectators may have felt similar emotions upon seeing another...