News roundup: Ascension Parish considering a new public transportation system … InfoWars banned by Apple, YouTube and Spotify … Utilities prices slip below zero in high solar, wind powered areas

Wheels on the bus: A committee of the Ascension Parish Council will meet tonight at 6 p.m. to discuss whether a public transit system would alleviate some of the parish’s traffic problems. Councilman Aaron Lawler says the process for a transit system is in the preliminary stages and the committee will only explore options for a new system today. The parish’s current transit system only benefits the elderly or disabled. Read the full story.
Signing off: Apple and Facebook has clamped down on content by Alex Jones, with the former pulling five of his podcasts and the latter removing four pages controlled by him, CNBC reports. Apple confirmed this morning that it had removed five out of six podcasts, which includes Jones’ infamous “The Alex Jones Show” as well as a number of other InfoWars audio streams. Jones, a controversial conspiracy theorist who has claimed that the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting was a hoax, has been hit with other content bans from the likes of Google’s YouTube and Spotify. Read the full story.
Supply and demand: Power prices are slipping to zero or even below more often in more jurisdictions around the world where wind and solar power have grown in popularity, adding to headaches for generators from NRG Energy Inc. in California to RWE AG in Germany and Origin Energy Ltd. in Australia, Bloomberg reports. The surplus that causes the drop in prices prompts traditional coal and gas plants to shut down production for a period even though many of the facilities aren’t designed to switch on and off quickly, and utilities are complaining that they can’t earn the returns they expected for their investment in generation capacity. Read the full story.