Federal judge strikes down public transit mask mandate - April 19, 2022

A U.S. district judge in Florida struck down mask mandates for public transportation, ruling that the mandate went beyond the purview of U.S. health officials. The Transportation Security Administration and United Airlines both announced they would no longer be enforcing mask wearing while the White House called the ruling “disappointing.” Mask mandates have proven to be an effective tool for limiting the spread of COVID-19, with some research showing a drop in mask wearing can lead to a surge in cases. The price of natural gas reached its highest level since 2008 as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has caused global energy markets to spike. Natural gas is among a number of commodities experiencing a surge in price beside corn and wheat, placing additional pressure on already-strained gas reserves in the U.S. Experts have warned consumers to expect further surges in gas prices with some states having already suspended excise taxes on the resource to lower prices. A U.S. appeals court ruled for the second time that scraping information from publically available data was legal in a win for archivists and journalists and a legal loss for professional networking site Linkedin. The decision also represents a win for the commercial sector where web scraping is used for market analytics and product analysis. Tech companies have opposed data scraping practices in recent years, leading some academics to accuse companies of making it difficult to research their technologies. A new report found that large retail companies have used inflation to hike prices for consumer products and generated dizzying profits as a result. The companies analyzed all gained a cumulative profit increase of roughly $99 billion in the last two years, far beyond what the researchers determined would be needed to cover increasing business costs. The report’s release comes at a time when economic analysts and government officials have said inflation will likely remain high while consumers may continue to see hiked prices as companies probe to see how