Pest control: An invasive species of snail has forced a farmer in Acadia Parish to shut down his crawfish harvest on a 220-acre field, the LSU AgCenter reports. The pest, called the apple snail, clogs crawfish trap openings and complicates harvesting. It also eats the vegetation that crawfish use for food. Dustin Harrell, LSU AgCenter rice specialist, says the snails are suspected to have entered the field during the August 2016 flood. He plans to bring up the problem next week while visiting federal officials in Washington, D.C. Read more.
Dollars and cents: That family trip you’ve been planning to Walt Disney World just got a little bit more expensive. Ticket prices for Disney parks and for parking rose on Sunday, the Orlando Sentinel reports. A one-day regular ticket to Magic Kingdom increased $4 to $119. A value ticket went up $2 to $109, and a peak ticket now costs $129, a $5 hike. Ticket prices for Epcot, Hollywood Studios and the Animal Kingdom also are increasing by between $3 and $7. Parking per car has increased to $22 a day, while preferred parking now costs $45. Read more.
Cutting back: Amazon is laying off hundreds of corporate employees in a rare cutback for the company that has frantically grown over the past several years, The Seattle Times reports. The layoffs will fall on several hundred employees at the online retailer’s Seattle headquarters, along with hundreds more elsewhere in Amazon’s global operations. The rapid growth of the past two years left some units over budget and some teams with too much staff for their work, several employees say. Read more.
