Animal Adventure opens for the season
Animal Adventure is welcoming community members to come and visit its animal residents beginning April 22. Both Animal Adventure Park, and its drive-thru sister facility, The Preserve, will open as scheduled.
'Tomorrow, we'll welcome local families enjoying their spring break, and our faithful supporters, fondly known as the Chatters, who are scattered around the country and travel to Broome County for Opening Day,' Jordan Patch, owner of Animal Adventure Park, said. 'Whether they're from across town or across the country, having eager guests at the gates to greet our animals and teams on Opening Day is all we could ask for. The beautiful spring weather is an added bonus!'
Animal Adventure will host several family-friendly events as well adult-only outings this season. In addition, a life-sized animatronic exhibit is coming to the Park's Wilds of Asia section in June.
For more information, visit theanimaladventurepark.com.
Chobani picks Rome for site of $1.2 billion factory and 1,000 jobs
Animal Adventure opens for the season
Sunny and breezy for Earth day
Binghamton Move Out Project wins Volunteer Recognition Award
Binghamton runner participating in NYC Marathon, raising money for charity
Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Fox Sports
4 days ago
- Fox Sports
MLB Could Seek to Implement a Salary Cap, But Players Might Push Back
Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred is reportedly pushing to implement a salary cap, at the behest of the league's owners. Bruce Meyer, the deputy executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association, explained the inner workings of Manfred's potential plan, and stated that he expects "skepticism" from the players. Baseball is the only North American sport that does not have a salary cap, but the owners have pushed for it a handful of times over the last half-century. They even briefly forced one into existence during the 1994-1995 strike, before then-federal judge Sonia Sotomayor restored the previous collective bargaining agreement. In fact, Baltimore Orioles owner David Rubenstein touched on the subject while talking at the World Economic Forum when he said: "I wish it would be the case that we would have a salary cap in baseball the way other sports do." Manfred has expressed concerns over the way fans view the difference in revenues and payroll in the sport. For example, the Los Angeles Dodgers Opening Day payroll sat just shy of $329 million, an all-time high for the game. On the low end this season, the Miami Marlins started 2025 at $67 million. While there is an apparent lack of equality without a salary cap, in the sense that one team can choose to spend far more resources than another, it is also the union's view that there are teams that do have the money and choose not to spend it. "To the extent we have teams that are unwilling to compete, it's not because the Dodgers went out and signed some players. That doesn't explain why the Pittsburgh Pirates, for example, don't go out and spend money," Meyer said while appearing on the TV Show "Foul Territory." "Baseball hasn't had a repeat winner in 26 years. To fans in small markets, I would say, look, competition is crucial for us, crucial for players. Our market system that we have, it's not perfect by any means, but it relies on competition." That being said, no "small-market" team has won a World Series since the Kansas City Royals in 2015. It has historically been the union's position to treat any discussion of a salary cap as a non-starter. Executive director of the MLBPA, Tony Clark, reiterated as much in March on his spring training tour, when he said that, "We remain of the mind, as we have over the last 50 or 60 years, that the industry does not need [a salary cap]. It is not necessary." Players may push back against a salary cap simply because Manfred and the owners would be proposing it. It could also hurt players because many teams would be imposed with spending limits that would force them to spend less than they're spending right now, diminishing players' contracts. Manfred has had these conversations with owners before, but a conclusion has never come to fruition, so the reality is that the status quo could persist. In March, Manfred spoke on the subject with FOX Sports' "The Herd," saying, "We're just not in a position where we are talking about or have made decisions about what's ahead in the next round of bargaining. I think that a lot of water is going to go over the dam before we need to deal with that issue." Want great stories delivered right to your inbox? Create or log in to your FOX Sports account and follow leagues, teams and players to receive a personalized newsletter daily! recommended Item 1 of 3 Get more from the Major League Baseball Follow your favorites to get information about games, news and more
Forbes
5 days ago
- Forbes
This Barely Used Child Care Tax Break For Employers Just Got An Overhaul
The Employer-Provided Childcare Tax Credit just got a revamp. Matt Roth for The Washington Post via Getty Images Before CAKES body cofounder Taylor Capuano had her moment of fame on Shark Tank in 2023 for putting one of her retail company's nipple covers on judge Kevin O'Leary's head, she, like many working parents, had nearly reached a breaking point at her nine-to-five job. Capuano and her husband had their first child during the Covid pandemic while she was working in marketing, and it was a financial struggle. After paying for basic monthly expenses–including a hefty child care bill and health insurance–there was barely anything left to save. Coupled with a boss who she says told her to start looking for another job when she needed additional daytime flexibility, Capuano knew the corporate world was failing parents like her. Like so many others, she turned to entrepreneurship and cofounded CAKES body with her sister, Casey Sarai in 2022. It's now a $92 million (2024 revenue) viral undergarments startup with 30 employees. As the Trump Administration is floating ideas to boost the U.S. birth rate, including (as part of the just-passed tax and budget bill), putting $1,000 into a 'Trump Account' for babies born between 2025 and 2028, employers are increasingly stepping up to address one of the biggest challenges for working parents: the child care crisis. Major companies, notably Chobani, UPS and Etsy, have unveiled new child care benefits for employees in recent years, from on-site facilities to stipends for backup care. And while such programs don't typically cover the full price of daycare, research shows they're making a difference and helping companies' bottom lines by reducing absences and turnover. Still, few firms are taking advantage of one of the key incentives in the U.S. tax code to help cover some of the cost of providing such a program to their employees. Bigger Tax Breaks On The Horizon Until recently, the Employer-Provided Childcare Tax Credit allowed companies to offset 25% of the cost of building or operating a child care facility for employees, or contracting with a qualified provider, for up to a $150,000 tax break annually. But according to data Forbes obtained from the IRS, just 176 businesses operating as C corporations and pass-through corporations, including S corporations, claimed the tax credit in 2021, the most recent year the data was available. That's a minuscule fraction of the 6.7 million corporate income tax returns filed that year. The expense of constructing a facility compared to how much a business can get from the credit is one of the reasons it is underutilized, says Aaron Merchen, executive director of policy and programs at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation. The maximum amount businesses could claim under the tax break had not been updated since its creation in 2001, until last week. President Donald Trump's just-signed reconciliation package more than triples the amount that businesses can claim under the credit, while also allowing them to use a third-party to arrange child care for their employees. Companies will now be allowed to claim 40% of qualified child care expenditures up to $500,000, or 50% up to $600,000 in the case of small businesses. Investing In Retention And Productivity Since founding CAKES body three years ago, Capuano and Sarai are set on creating a supportive workplace culture for the parents on their staff, who they view as crucial to the firm's success. So they began looking into offering a subsidy for child care. After researching whether they could take advantage of child care benefits tax credits, they hit a brick wall in 'about 20 minutes,' says Sarai. None of the existing programs would completely cover their subsidy budget, or make sense for a remote workforce. They wound up offering every full-time staff member a reimbursement of up to $3,000 per month toward nanny, daycare or babysitter costs, with a prorated program for part-time employees. The startup—which expects to clear $150 million in revenue this year—has budgeted up to $500,000 for the program in 2025, which they say translates to 100% employer-sponsored child care. 'It is not just a nice thing to do,' Sarai tells Forbes . 'This is part of our growth strategy and part of investing in the top talent that we have and maintaining them.' In a 2024 study for Boston Consulting Group, Emily Kos, a managing director and partner, and her team examined five companies in a range of industries that offered childcare benefits such as reimbursements and on-site daycare: Etsy, Fast Retailing, Steamboat Ski Resort in Colorado, Synchrony, and UPS. Every single one saw a positive return on investment, which Kos says was calculated by looking at retention and productivity, ranging from 90% to 425%. Before Covid-19 hit, financial services company Synchrony provided 10 days a year of backup child care as a benefit. Now, says Aaron Brown, senior vice president of Total Rewards, the company reimburses 60 days of backup care up to $100 per day, which can cover anything from summer camp to a babysitter. 'We're glad that people are using the benefit because it means that we're getting better business performance,' he says. The company receives requests for around 4,000 days per year, which Forbes estimates would cost the company roughly $400,000. He says the cost is well worth it—the firm has had a 30% increase in applicants post-pandemic and low turnover. 'The care economy underpins the full economy,' says BCG's Kos. 'If parents can't go to work or if caregivers more broadly than just parents can't go to work, it's a significant portion of the workforce.'
Fast Company
5 days ago
- Fast Company
Lisa Smith killed the ‘blanding' trend. Now she has another plan to upend branding
Seven years ago, your grocer's dairy section became visually fantastical. You might not remember how sterile it used to be: the shelves were once dominated by similarly drab, white Greek yogurt cups that delivered on practical, nutritional performance. But truckload by truckload, the shelves transformed into a ripely colorful, whimsical, and idyllic play land of Chobani's making. The company had just undergone a monumental rebrand under the direction of designers Lisa Smith and Leland Maschmeyer, and they doled out a new design world in thousands of 5.3 ounce portions. Who knew a product like high-protein Greek yogurt could turn design off minimalism? But soon, a cohort of expressive, personality-driven, maximalist copycats emerged. Cooper Black was the new black. Smith had never been averse to stylistic shake-ups, if a brand mission calls for it. She'd rebranded the Met while at Wolff Olins; later at the design agency JKR, she satiatingly rebranded Burger King. Following six years as global executive creative director JKR, where she also rebranded Mozilla, Fanta, Impossible, and Walmart, Smith is moving to the smaller, multifunctional creative studio Uncommon as its first-ever global chief design officer, with another simple but groundbreaking idea: to expand what ' branding ' encompasses. Here, Smith explains why holistic teams that include advertising and marketing creatives are the real way to push design forward, why handoff should happen after launch day, and how she plans to build a renegade team that goes 'beyond just delivering guidelines.' 'I've always been a little bit messy,' she says. This conversation has been condensed and edited. The super-early-rate deadline for Fast Company's Most Innovative Companies Awards is Friday, July 25, at 11:59 p.m. PT. Apply today.
