MovEBR purchases: East Baton Rouge Parish is preparing to purchase 300 parcels of land along Bluebonnet Boulevard, Essen Lane, Jones Creek, Hooper Road, and Lee Drive for MovEBR infrastructure projects, WAFB-TV reports. Transportation and Drainage Director Fred Raiford says most of the projects will involve widening roads to add capacity and smooth out traffic. Read the full story.
Record sales: Americans have wagered hundreds of millions of dollars on lottery tickets just in the past two days, catapulting the Mega Millions jackpot to more than $1 billion for only the fourth time, Axios reports. However, an individual’s chance of winning the jackpot—about 1 in 300 million—is statistically indistinguishable from zero. You’re much more likely to be eaten by a shark, or struck by lightning, or even killed by an asteroid. Read the full story.
Moderna agreement: The Biden administration said this morning it has reached an agreement with Moderna to buy 66 million doses of the company’s next generation of COVID-19 vaccine that targets the highly transmissible omicron variant, enough supply this winter for all who want the upgraded booster. The order for the shots follows the announcement last month that the federal government had secured 105 million doses of a similar vaccine from rival drugmaker Pfizer. Read the full story.
