Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has arrested an alleged MS-13 gang member, who was charged with aggravated homicide in El Salvador and found hiding in a Northern Virginia suburb.

Israel Flores Ortiz, an undocumented immigrant, was found guilty on nine counts of assault and battery for groping multiple high school girls in Fairfax County, Virginia. The case has drawn criticism towards the local prosecutor.

Arhaus, a home furnishings retailer, has expanded its footprint in Northern Virginia with the opening of a new showroom in Ashburn.

PJM Board Approves $11.8BN Transmission Expansion Plan By Ethan Howland Of UtilityDive The PJM Interconnection’s board last week approved $11.8 billion in baseline transmission projects, with Dominion Energy’s Virginia utility landing roughly $4.8 billion in those projects. The projects are part of PJM’s 2025 Regional Transmission Expansion Plan Window 1, which is designed to bolster grid reliability that is strained by accelerated load growth in multiple areas across its Mid-Atlantic and Midwest footprint. The projects are also needed to handle new generation in southern Virginia, future generation in western PJM, delays to New Jersey offshore wind projects and increased regional flows toward the eastern parts of PJM’s footprint, the grid operator said Friday. PJM will monitor load and generation in its footprint to make sure needed transmission development is progressing in a timely manner, the grid operator said in its board-approved plan. DataBank’s IAD4 data center under construction in Ashburn, Va “PJM also clarified that siting, routing and regulatory processes, as well as construction, take a long time, and PJM needs the plan to be ready and advanced for the forecasted conditions proactively rather than bringing needed development late, which introduces impediments to development and reliability risks to stakeholders,” the grid operator said. Meanwhile, transmission costs are making up a growing share of the price of wholesale electricity in PJM. In 2024, transmission contributed $17.71/MWh to the cost of wholesale power in PJM, up 23%, or 5.8% a year, from $14.40/MWh in 2022, according to reports from Monitoring Analytics, PJM’s market monitor. Transmission costs totaled $13.9 billion, or 32% of total wholesale costs of $43.6 billion, in 2024, the last full year of Monitoring Analytics’ reporting. Energy costs made up nearly 59% of the cost of wholesale power that year and capacity accounted for 6.6% of the total. As part of PJM’s transmission expansion plan, Dominion Energy Virginia intends to build a $2.3-billion, 525-kV underground “backbone” transmission line in Virginia. The project, set to be online by June 2032, also calls for building two high-voltage direct current converter stations at each end of the 185-mile line for about $1.5 billion. The project is designed to deliver 3,000 MW into Loudoun County in northern Virginia, the area with the most data center capacity in the world. Like other multi-zone projects in the RTEP, the costs of the project will be shared across PJM’s footprint. The just-approved plan also includes a $1.7-billion transmission line across central Pennsylvania proposed by NextEra Energy Transmission and Exelon. The project was opposed by Pennsylvania’s Office of Consumer Advocate, which argued that there were less expensive alternatives to the project. The project addresses system-wide, structural reliability needs in PJM’s northeastern region that cannot be met with incremental upgrades or “terminal-only” solutions, NextEra and Exelon said in a Jan. 29 letter to PJM’s board. “PJM’s own analyses and the convergence of independent developer proposals, demonstrates that new high-voltage backbone infrastructure is required to maintain reliable service under plausible future conditions,” the companies said. The project is slated to be operating by June 2031. The transmission plan includes a $1.1 billion project in central Ohio proposed by Grid Growth Ventures, a joint venture between Transource Energy — a partnership between American Electric Power and Evergy — and FirstEnergy Transmission. The project includes 300 miles of 765-kV lines. Under the plan, PPL Electric will build transmission projects totaling about $580 million, while Exelon subsidiaries Commonwealth Edison and Potomac Electric Power Co. will build projects totaling about $276 million and $292 million, respectively. PJM’s RTEPs for 2024 and 2023 included $5.9 billion and $6.6 billion in baseline projects. Tyler Durden Thu, 02/19/2026 - 09:50

Brookfield-backed Compass Datacenters has decided to pull out of its plans to develop a major data center corridor in Northern Virginia.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents have apprehended an individual accused of being an MS-13 killer who was reportedly hiding in a Northern Virginia suburb.

Esthetique Dentistry of Ashburn has opened a state-of-the-art cosmetic and implant dental center in Northern Virginia.

A recent groping case involving an illegal immigrant at Fairfax High School is the latest in a series of sexual misconduct allegations, intensifying scrutiny on the Fairfax County Public Schools system.

Google executives meet with officials at a Google data center in Midlothian, Texas. Fortune via Reuters Connect Northern Virginia is home to the world's largest data center market. That could soon change, as Big Tech ramps up data center construction across the US. West Texas, Tennessee, Wisconsin, and Ohio are emerging as key markets. The old saying "Everything is bigger in Texas" now applies to data centers. The Lone Star State is on track to unseat Virginia as the world's largest data center market by 2030, new research from Jones Lang LaSalle shows. The shift indicates how drastically the data center development boom has reshaped the US's digital infrastructure map and the landscape as a whole. Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and Meta plan to spend more than $600 billion on AI infrastructure expansion in 2026 — a number so dizzyingly high that Wall Street is on high alert for signs of an AI bubble. More than half of all data center construction in the US now happens outside the industry's traditional hubs, according to JLL's North America Data Center Report — Year-End 2025. Tennessee, Ohio, Wisconsin, and Texas are now considered the top emerging markets for data centers. Texas alone has 6.5 gigawatts of data center capacity under construction. That amount of power is roughly equivalent to more than three Hoover Dams or over 17,000 Tesla Model 3s when using the US Department of Energy's standard, and it accounts for about one-fifth of the 35 gigawatts of data center capacity the US added to its pipeline. That 35 gigawatts is roughly equivalent to the annual electricity consumption of the UK or Italy, and adding it would nearly double the existing data center capacity in the US, according to JLL. Part of Texas's appeal is its sprawl. The state houses some of the most ambitious data center projects in the country. Oracle and OpenAI's flagship Stargate data center is in Abilene, Google is planning a $40 billion expansion in West Texas, and Meta is building a massive new site in El Paso, just to name a few. Texas also has abundant energy resources, which is good news for data center developers. The AI boom has driven electricity demand to new heights and strained the nation's power grid. In Texas, several data centers — including Stargate — are being built alongside on-site power plants. Northern Virginia has been the data center industry's central hub for more than 15 years, going back to the early days of cloud computing. That has changed rapidly as Big Tech spreads out across the country in search of available power, cheap land, and the best tax incentive packages for the coming wave of AI data centers. Have a tip? Contact this reporter via email at ethomas@businessinsider.com or on Signal at 929-524-6964. Read the original article on Business Insider

Brookfield-backed Compass Datacenters has halted a large data center project in Northern Virginia following intense opposition from local residents.

DHS has called on Governor Abigail Spanberger to not release an illegal immigrant repeat offender, who is now charged with attempted rape in Arlington, amid growing crime concerns in Northern Virginia.

Arhaus, a home furnishings retailer, is expanding its footprint in Northern Virginia with the opening of a new showroom located in Ashburn.

In a region widely regarded as the data centre capital of the world, voters are pushing back against soaring electricity prices.