Buffalo looking for its day out of the sun
When the sky above Buffalo briefly goes dark on the afternoon of April 8, the city will transcend its dreary place in the public consciousness — measured as it so often is by snowstorms and Super Bowl shortcomings — if only for about three minutes.
After that, it’s up to Buffalo to make the most of its moment in the sun (or should that be: out of the sun?), when it will be met with an estimated 1 million eclipse tourists. Owing to the city’s excellent vantage for witnessing a rare total eclipse, nearly every room in every hotel in the region is booked, the campgrounds are almost full, and good luck finding a rental car anywhere along the Erie Canal.
“For a couple of minutes, the whole world will be thinking about Buffalo,” said Dave Horesh, the cofounder of Oxford Pennant, a local felt flag factory. Horesh ran a nationwide sweepstakes called “The Best Seat in the Universe,” and is flying the winner to Buffalo to watch the eclipse from a love seat on the lawn of a former mental institution now converted into a boutique hotel. “I was thinking: All this city has ever been known for is bad sports teams, snow and chicken wings,” he said. “This is an opportunity.”
Buffalo’s Erie County and nearby Niagara County lie in what astronomers call “the zone of totality,” a band stretching from Dallas to Montreal in which the moon will fully block out the sun. Officials in the region first realized that the eclipse would be a big deal seven years ago — that’s when, in 2017, the area’s tourism agency received its first group tour booking: 56 people in a bus from Pennsylvania, according to Patrick Kaler, the president and CEO of Visit Buffalo Niagara.
Officials have spent the past year getting ready in earnest, poring over white papers on how comparable cities have handled past eclipses, Kaler said. Regular meetings brought together emergency medical workers, astronomers and even an ophthalmologist to answer anxious questions about eyeballs and eclipses.
The visitors expected in Buffalo could nearly double the area’s population, jam traffic and overload cellphone signal capacity. To mitigate the concerns, the region has collaborated with cellphone companies to bring in mobile units to boost signals, and will be staging ambulance and emergency crews across the area to better reach people in need, according to Mark C. Poloncarz, the Erie County executive.
To limit overcrowding, the official messaging to locals has been similar to what they hear during blizzard season: Stay put. “We are just telling people there is no bad vantage point,” Poloncarz said, adding that he most likely will be watching from his own telescope. “Just stay at home,” he said.
Now, just weeks from the big day, Buffalo is ready to party: There are at least 50 events open to the public, according to Visit Buffalo Niagara, from lectures by a NASA expert to a viewing party at Highmark Stadium, where the Buffalo Bills play. There is also an eclipse-themed crafting party, something billed as a solar eclipse silent disco and a bonfire in an art park where you are encouraged to burn your eclipse-themed poetry. Across the region, schoolchildren have the day off.
The total eclipse will occur at 3:18 p.m. April 8. At 4 p.m., Dr. Andrew L. Reynolds, an ophthalmologist and clinical associate professor at the University at Buffalo Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences, will open his clinic at the Ross Eye Institute and keep it open until long after the sun sets to address any injuries.
“We all know you shouldn’t look directly at the sun,” Reynolds said, “and — bam! — you have this sudden window where people are tempted to look.”
WILMINGTON, Del. — President Joe Biden on Saturday signed a $1.2 trillion package of spending bills after Congress had passed the long overdue legislation just hours earlier, ending the threat of a partial government shutdown.
“This agreement represents a compromise, which means neither side got everything it wanted,” Biden said in a statement. “But it rejects extreme cuts from House Republicans and expands access to child care, invests in cancer research, funds mental health and substance use care, advances American leadership abroad, and provides resources to secure the border . ... That’s good news for the American people.”
It took lawmakers six months into the current budget year to get near the finish line on government funding, the process slowed by conservatives who pushed for more policy mandates and steeper spending cuts than a Democratic-led Senate or White House would consider. The impasse required several short-term spending bills to keep agencies funded.
The White House said Biden signed the legislation at his home in Wilmington, Delaware, where he was spending the weekend. It had cleared the Senate by a 74-24 vote shortly after funding had expired for the agencies at midnight.
The first package of full-year spending bills, which funded the departments of Veterans Affairs, Agriculture and the Interior, among others, cleared Congress two weeks ago with just hours to spare before funding expired for those agencies. The second covered the departments of Defense, Homeland Security and State, as well as other aspects of general government.
When combining the two packages, discretionary spending for the budget year will come to about $1.66 trillion. That does not include programs such as Social Security and Medicare, or financing the country’s rising debt.
On Ukraine aid, which Biden and his administration have argued was critical and necessary to help stop Russia’s invasion, the package provided $300 million under the defense spending umbrella. That funding is separate from a large assistance package for Ukraine and Israel that is bogged down on Capitol Hill.
LONDON — Support poured in from around the world Saturday for Kate, the Princess of Wales, after she revealed in a candid video message that she is undergoing chemotherapy for cancer following major abdominal surgery.
The princess’s poignant video, in which she spoke about the “huge shock” and “incredibly tough couple of months” for her family after her diagnosis, came after weeks of frenzied speculation on social media about her health and well-being.
“This of, course, came as a huge shock, and William and I have been doing everything we can to process and manage this privately for the sake of our young family,” Kate said in the video, which was recorded Wednesday in Windsor.
“It has taken us time to explain everything to George, Charlotte and Louis in a way that is appropriate for them, and to reassure them that I am going to be OK,” she added, referring to her three young children.
Kate, 42, did not say what type of cancer was discovered after her surgery. She said she is now in the early stages of preventative chemotherapy, and is “getting stronger every day.”
Her condition was initially thought to be noncancerous, until post-surgery tests revealed the diagnosis, she said.
The announcement will at least partly tamp down the intense and sometimes fantastical speculation and conspiracy theories about Kate’s condition that have multiplied on social media since Kensington Palace announced in mid-January that she had been hospitalized for unspecified abdominal surgery.
Hashtags including “WeLoveYouCatherine” and “GetWellSoonCatherine” were trending Friday on X, formerly Twitter, while political leaders, celebrities and cancer survivors sent messages of support.
“She has been subjected to intense scrutiny and has been unfairly treated by certain sections of the media around the world and on social media,” Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said. “She has shown tremendous bravery with her statement.”
U.S. President Joe Biden posted on social media, saying