Flesh-Eating Cattle Screwworm Spreads Beyond Texas As USDA Accelerates Eradication Push

Virginia Governor Signs Law Banning 'Ghost Guns' Authored by Michael Clements via The Epoch Times, Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger signed a bill to ban so-called “ghost guns,” another making it easier to sue gunmakers and sellers, and two other bills concerning possession of firearms by persons under court orders. The bills - signed on April 10 - are among more than two dozen gun control and gun safety bills that the Virginia General Assembly sent to Spanberger after its regular session ended on March 24. “Preventing gun violence is an issue of public...

Maryland Protests Data Center Costs By Ethan Howland of UtilityDive A group of 80 Maryland state lawmakers are backing a complaint at the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission over the PJM Interconnection’s cost allocation for transmission lines that support data centers. Driven by the way PJM spreads transmission costs, Maryland ratepayers will pay $1.6 billion over the next decade for transmission projects that were approved in the grid operator’s last three regional transmission expansion plans that are designed to mainly serve out-of-state data centers, Maryland’s ratepayer advocate — the Office of People’s Counsel —...

US Retail Sales Dropped In January As Weather, Weak Gas Prices Weigh This morning's retail sales data is for January (still lagging due to the govt shutdown) and is expected to be a decline (BofA's omniscient analysts see a worse than consensus drop MoM, due in large part to weather disruptions). The actual print was a decline but slightly better than expected at -0.2% MoM. Despite two months of no increase, sales rose 3.2% YoY in January (increased from December) Source: Bloomberg The decline was driven by a decline in sales at gas...