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 high they can push prices.

Official data revealed that China’s economy grew during the first three months of the year, although economists noted the fallout of prolonged lockdown orders in the country may darken the country’s financial outlook for the year. Some economic experts have warned the global ripples of economic turmoil from China’s isolation orders may be felt worldwide, with worsening supply chain disruptions and inflation listed as primary concerns. The International Monetary Fund lowered China’s growth forecast for the year and warned many nations may grow slower due to large amounts of accumulated debt from the pandemic.

CONTENT FACTS.

https://turbinelabs.com/ (Turbine Labs) has tracked 17,221 media articles and blogs and 13,670 social media posts over the last 24 hours.

The next Turbine Labs https://turbinelabs.com/future-of-work-briefing/ (Leadership Briefing) will be delivered on Wednesday, April 20, at 9:30AM ET.

Questions or feedback? Don't hesitate to reach out to us directly.