U.S. communities along the path of the April 8 total solar eclipse are preparing for the year's biggest astronomic event, with millions of visitors expected to brighten local economies -- and snarl up logistics. Near the US-Canada border in Burlington, Vermont, which is set to experience the totality just before 3:30 pm (1930 GMT), many hotels have been sold out for months. The few remaining rooms, which typically go for around $150 a night, show online prices of $600-$700 for the night of the eclipse. "I don't know that we'll have anything quite like this again," Jeff Lawson, a vice president in the chamber of commerce, told AFP. Lawson marveled at his city's "incredible luck" at an opportunity "quite literally falling out of the sky into your lap." If skies are clear, the small city of 40,000 could see its population double for the day, with visitors arriving by car, train and even private jet, Lawson said. An estimated 32 million people live inside the "path of totality" -- under which the
moon will fully block out the Sun -- with an additional 150 million residing less than 200 miles (320 kilometers) from the strip,
NASA says. - Traffic jams - Preparations for the big day began years ago, Matt Bruning of the Ohio Department of Transportation told AFP. He said the agency reached out to counterparts along the last major US eclipse, in 2017, and "one of the things that we heard resoundingly was it's never too early to start planning." Despite those efforts, there will inevitably "be delays, there will be heavy congestion," he warned. Businesses are leaping into the bonanza with special events and in Cleveland, where local officials expect some 200,000 visitors, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame plans a four-day "Solarfest" of live
music. The Perryman Group, a Texas-based research firm, estimates direct and indirect economic impacts of this year's eclipse could reach $6 billion. This year's path of totality is about 115 miles wide, wider than in 2017. It begins in western
Mexico, arches up through the US cities of Dallas, Indianapolis, and Buffalo, before ending in eastern
Canada. Many schools along the path will be closed or letting students out early, including in Cleveland and Montreal. Several airlines have advertised flights scheduled to pass under the eclipse, while Delta has even planned two special trips along the path of totality, the first of which sold out in 24 hours, the company said. NASA warns that only in the path of totality -- and only during the few minutes of the actual totality -- is it safe to look at the eclipse without eye protection. - 'Cosmic coincidence' - Almost all of the
United States will get to experience a partial eclipse, but UCLA astronomer Jean-Luc Margot says the trip to see the totality is definitely worth the hassle. "If you have a 99 percent partial eclipse, that is a completely different experience than being in the path of totality," he told AFP. He will be accompanying a group of UCLA alumni to view the eclipse in rural Texas, after similar trips in 2017 to Oregon and to Chile in 2019. When people finally see the eclipse, they "tend to be emotional," Margot said. "It is such a beautiful event. It's due to this complete cosmic coincidence, that the angular size of the Sun and the angular size of the Moon are about the same." Scientists have traditionally used the eclipses to observe the solar corona, an outer layer of plasma that's difficult to study due to the Sun's bright light, Margot said. New tools such as the space-based Parker Solar Probe have made such research less eclipse-dependent, but scientists will still be taking full advantage. NASA recently highlighted several studies being planned for the eclipse, from effects on Earth's atmosphere and animal behavior to even human psychology. "Eclipses have a special power," NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said recently. "They move people to feel a kind of reverence for the beauty of our universe." Fast food workers in
California on Monday hailed a pay raise that takes their minimum wage to $20 an hour, even as firms warned of likely price increases in an already expensive state. Staff flipping burgers or filling burritos at large chain restaurants will now be guaranteed one of the highest base rates in the country. "It'll help me breathe a little easier in terms of paying my rent and even buying groceries," said Angelica Hernandez, who works at a McDonald's in Los Angeles. "In all of my 19 years working in this industry... maybe 25 cents would be the max (raise) that we would get a year if we were 'good workers,' so this is a huge raise." Pizza Hut worker Julieta Garcia from Guatemala told AFP that with the cost of living so high in California, the big rise in the minimum wage -- up from $16 an hour -- was extremely important. "We go to the supermarket with $100 and we don't have enough," she said. "Our rents as well are increasing every year." More than half a million people in California are employed in the fast food sector, at globally familiar chains like Burger King and Taco Bell, but also at smaller homegrown brands like In-N-Out Burger. Tia Koonse of the University of California,
Los Angeles Labor Center said the vast majority of workers in the industry are
Women and people of color, with a sector-wide median annual wage of $25,800 -- way below the state average of $43,000. "There's a common misconception that fast food workers are teenagers working for pocket change or the latest iPad or whatever," she told reporters. "But the truth is that well over half are over 25... and a quarter are actually the main earners in their home." The California legislation, signed into law last year by
Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom, applies only to establishments with little or no table service and that have at least 60 sites nationwide. Some chains have said they will need to increase prices and warn the wage hikes could ultimately cost jobs. "Everyone is going to have to pay more," said Jack Hartung, chief financial officer of Chipotle Mexican Grill, according to the Wall Street Journal. - 'Layoffs' - Chipotle, which is headquartered in California, has already raised its prices four times in the last two years, and says it is considering further increases of up to nine percent to cover wage costs. Alexander Johnson -- who operates a number of franchises of Cinnabon bakeries and Auntie Anne's, a pretzel chain, in the San Francisco Bay area -- told ABC7 that he was considering layoffs and higher prices to cover the $470,000 increase in costs. "It means that we have to raise prices, which we don't want to do," he said. Economists are divided on the effects of the minimum wage, which is set at $7.25 federally, though varies widely by state. A recent Congressional Budget Office study found raising the federal minimum to $17 an hour could help 18 million people over the next five years, but could cost 700,000 jobs. UCLA's Koonse argued that layoffs in California were both unlikely and unnecessary. "California has added 142,000 jobs to the fast food industry since minimum wage started going up in 2015," she said. Outlets in some of the state's more expensive cities are already paying staff upwards of $20 an hour, either because of local rules or market forces, she said, adding the industry's big names have experienced record profits since 2018, further fueled by the pandemic. "Surely instead of layoffs, they can share some of those profits with the poorest workers in California." CONTINUE READING Show less A person in the US state of
Texas is recovering from bird flu after being exposed to dairy cattle, officials said Monday amid growing concern over the current global strain of the virus as it spreads to new species. It is only the second case of a human testing positive for bird flu in the country, and comes after the infection sickened herds that were apparently exposed to wild birds in Texas, Kansas and other states over the past week. "The patient reported eye redness (consistent with conjunctivitis), as their only symptom, and is recovering," said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). They were told to isolate and are being treated with the antiviral drug used for the flu. The current outbreak began in 2020 and has led to the deaths of tens of millions of poultry, with wild birds also infected as well as land and marine mammals. Cows and goats joined the list last week, a surprising development for experts because they were not thought susceptible to this type of influenza. The infected person was likely a farm worker, Louise Moncla, a pathobiologist at the University of
Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine, told AFP. "If we find continued clusters of infections in cows, then it means we need to start surveilling cows -- and that would be a big change to how we think about these viruses," she added. "But at this time, there's not an enormous need for concern by the public," she said. The CDC said that the infection does not change its bird flu human health risk assessment for the US, which it rates as low. The first US bird flu case in a human occurred in a
Colorado prison inmate in 2022 -- however, that was through infected poultry. - Milk supply safe - Experts are worried about the increasing number of mammals infected by the current H5N1 strain of Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) and whether it is actually spreading between them. "Initial testing has not found changes to the virus that would make it more transmissible to humans," the US Department of Agriculture, the CDC, and the Food and Drug Administration said in a joint statement last week. The strain appears to have been introduced by wild birds but spread between cows hasn't been ruled out, the statement added. The Texas health department said the cattle infections do not present a concern for the commercial milk supply, as dairies are required to destroy milk from sick cows. Pasteurization also kills the virus. The findings marked the first time ever that HPAI has been detected in dairy cattle, according to the
American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA). Earlier in March, Minnesota reported bird flu cases among goats. - Ongoing outbreak - The affected cows were primarily older animals that showed decreased lactation and low appetite, "with little to no associated mortality reported," added the AVMA. Dead wild birds were generally found nearby. A nine-year-old boy died from the virus in Cambodia in February, adding to the three deaths there in 2023 -- though the bird flu spreading in Europe and North America appears to cause milder infections, said Moncla. Bird flu has killed tens of thousands of marine mammals since spreading in South America, according to the Scientific Committee on Antarctic Research.
British seabird populations are suffering "widespread and extensive declines" according to a recent impact assessment. The disease has hit European farms hard too, with French authorities raising the risk level to "maximum" in December, and Czech officials reporting in February they had culled 140,000 birds in 2024 alone. CONTINUE READING Show less The U.S. conglomerate General Electric, co-founded more than 130 years ago by Thomas Edison, is opening a new chapter in its history on Tuesday: its break-up into three independent entities which will then concentrate on their disparate core businesses. The group announced its "spin-off" project in November 2021, which was to be carried out in several stages. An initial split took place in January 2023 with the creation of GE HealthCare, bringing together all the health care activities. The official finalization of the separation comes Tuesday, with General Electric disappearing in favor of GE Vernova, dealing with energy activities, and GE Aerospace, the new name of the late GE. They will be listed in
New York, one on Nasdaq and two on the NYSE. There will be no holding company, and the three firms will publish their results independently of one another. "As independently run companies, the businesses will be better positioned to deliver long-term growth and create value for customers, investors and employees," General Electric explained in 2021 when it announced the demerger. Among the "many reasons" for the spin-offs were a desire to simplify the company by getting rid of non-core activities and improving performance by withdrawing from low-growth or low-profitability sectors, Neil Saunders of GlobalData told AFP. "Within this there is usually always a value play that either bolsters the share price or creates more value for investors and owners," he said. "Managing multiple divisions across disparate areas is harder for a board of directors," he continued, adding: "It is also harder in terms of communicating vision and strategy to investors." - Capital allocation - The conglomerate 3M -- which manufactures scotch tape and post-it notes, among other things -- has also taken the route of General Electric's demerger: In July 2022, it announced the separation of its health-related activities. The new company, named Solventum, began trading on the NYSE on Monday. "This is an important day for 3M and Solventum," 3M chief executive Mike Roman said in a statement. "Both companies are positioned to pursue their respective growth and tailored capital allocation plans," he added. Like GE, which distributed all the shares in GE Vernova to the conglomerate's shareholders, 3M distributed all the shares in the new company to its shareholders. Both firms gave one share in the "child company" for every four shares held in the "parent company." However, the parent company can still retain a stake, usually with the intention of monetizing it at a later date. This is what General Electric did with GE HealthCare, in which it retained a 19.9 percent stake. However, its spinoff GE Aerospace now holds just 6.7 percent of the company, according to a spokeswoman for the group. "It won’t be GE Aerospace's intent to hold this in perpetuity," she told AFP. According to McKinsey, an ancillary business that has become independent can develop further by doing business with companies that are competitors of its former "parent company." Other big names on Wall Street have also chosen in recent years to spin off certain activities. For example, the giant Johnson & Johnson has retained its business-to-business activities and created the listed Kenvue for its consumer products. And in June 2021, the breakfast behemoth Kellogg announced its intention to split into three companies, but in the end opted for just two: WK Kellogg for cereals, and Kellanova for snacks, which came into being in October 2023. "Kellogg's is a good case in point with the company splitting off its low-growth cereals business from the very fast-growing snacks business," said Saunders from GlobalData. "But it's not without its disadvantages." These include the loss of economies of scale resulting from the sharing of certain structural functions like accounting and human resources, or a size effect, as is the case in health insurance. According to CNBC, some thirty-six spin-offs are planned worldwide by 2024. On March 19, British hygiene and food giant Unilever announced its intention to spin off its ice cream businesses - including Ben & Jerry's and Magnum - following disappointing sales in 2023. "A demerger of Ice Cream is the most likely separation route," the company said at the time, adding it was seeking above all to "maximize returns for shareholders." In Unilever's case, the aim is simplification, Neil Saunders said, because ice cream operates on "a very different operating model" from Unilever's other products. CONTINUE READING Show less