Daily Business Report: September 21, 2026
The Bullet Train to Nowhere Made Great Time to the Nightclub
By Jay Rogers | California Globe
The one thing in California that runs on schedule turns out to be a consultant’s Uber Black, pulling away from a Sacramento nightclub at 2:30 in the morning. On the taxpayer’s dime. First class, naturally.
That’s the picture from this week’s report by the Office of the Inspector General for the California High-Speed Rail Authority, released Tuesday. Investigators reviewed about $1.15 million of more than $2 million in travel billed by four outside consulting firms, and found nearly $600,000 in charges the state should never have paid. Roughly $680,500, about 60%, went out the door with no documented approval before anyone boarded a plane. The report reads like an expense-account fever dream: premium rideshares to a tiki bar, a cigar lounge, an escape room, and a nightclub, repeated runs to Planet Fitness, and one consultant who flew his private plane from Washington and billed it at a first-class fare. One flagged charge was a roughly $40 premium car for a trip of less than a mile through downtown Sacramento, walking distance at limousine prices. Another slice, about $118,000 worth, was international travel the contracts flatly forbade.
$400,000 per bed? Why it costs so much to build affordable student housing in California
by William Melhado | EdSource
Facing a student housing crisis and flush with a historic budget surplus, California leaders in 2021 made an unprecedented $2 billion investment to build more dorms at public universities and colleges.
Since then, universities and colleges have leveraged that funding to collectively build more than 9,000 beds for students. But higher education institutions have also encountered a distinctly California reality in trying to expand student housing: It’s very expensive to build in the Golden State.
At UC San Diego, for example, a 1,423-bed dorm opened in 2024 cost $260,000 per bed to build. At California State University, Northridge, the 200 beds in two residence halls that opened in 2025 cost $360,000 each. And at Lake Tahoe Community College, the per-bed cost for a 100-bed dormitory stretched to $400,000.
by Viasat
Space42 (ADX: SPACE42), the UAE-based AI-powered SpaceTech company, and Viasat, Inc. (NASDAQ: VSAT), a global leader in satellite and secure communications, today announced the signing of an agreement at World Space Business Week in Paris to formally establish Equatys, a shared space and ground infrastructure platform that will support the extension of mobile coverage and overlay in the places terrestrial networks cannot serve, including in coverage gaps in populated metro areas. Upon the formation of Equatys, Space42 and Viasat will commit to an initial equity contribution of up to USD1 billion.
Development of the initial constellation accelerates with the simultaneous signing of an agreement to step-up joint funding. Upon formation of Equatys, Viasat is expected to be appointed as the company’s prime technology contractor.
The company is being established as global demand for satellite-enabled mobile connectivity accelerates. With 3GPP NTN standards enabling everyday smartphones and connected devices to access satellite networks, the addressable Direct-to-Device (D2D) and advanced MSS market is expected to expand significantly over the coming decades. Together, Viasat and Space42 bring unmatched global reach through commercial relationships with more than 400 mobile operators worldwide and access to the largest amount (>100MHz) of globally coordinated MSS spectrum available for D2D deployment, creating a uniquely scalable foundation for growth.
