it. guest: if you connect through atlanta you can go anywhere on air tran so you have, with southwest, a strong foothold in the southeast corridor. they got slots in newark because of the united continental deal and they will get more slots at that guardia so southwest has a nice presence on the east coast. shepard: and air tran goes into memphis but southwest does not. air tran goes into la guardia, all over atlanta, and down in florida where southwest is not, will be use the new southwest to get all those places? guest: absolutely. both airlines service 70 cities and combine they will service over 100 cities. and some of the southwest customers now get cities outside the u.s., including caribbean cities. shepard: most of their routes did not overlap, air tran
conditioner shampoos for nearly $4 billion in cash and paying it right now. another sign of confidence and southwest airlines putting in a bid for air tran. all that adds up to confidence. overall market, 100 of the 500 stocks in the s&p 500 at least at one-year highs and nine companies trying to debut this week here in the markets which is another sign of optimism. so, optimism rules when it comes to stocks. when it comes to education, just one question. how do we pay for it? public education with property tax sort of means people that live in rich neighborhoods get better gags than people in poor. you know, not necessarily equal and interesting thought, a conversation we ll have this week as we talk about the money side of education week. very good. and you re going to apologize to mark hanes for the comment off the top. it wasn t mark s wind i was talking about. thank you very much. there it is. thank you so much.
one of the fastest selling items, water. high demand leaving behind some empty shelves and some airlines are also taking action. air tran, american, continental, delta, waving rescheduling fees for travelers flying to and from cities along the eastern seaboard this lay dor day weekend, which also marks the end of the summer travel season. meteorologist chad myers in the cnn hurricane headquarters. there is a change in this, chad. they re saying it s a category three now. what s it mean to you? it s down to 125 miles an hour. the sustained winds in the eye. and a very small area. 131 is the threshold between category three and category four. so it was above that for a while today. it was above that 131 threshold, now down. there s a plane flying back and forth. it s called the reconnaissance plane. it s also finding the pressure is going up, which means the winds should continue to go down.
hurricane headquarters. t.j., back over to you. appreciate you and like you said there a lot of people could be affected if you re trying to travel, a lot of people are traveling the holiday weekend. some airlines trying to help you out, though, because of this hurricane. continental, delta, u.s. airways, air tran and frontier. they re going to let customers change their flight dates without a fee. this affects people flying to or from the east coast including the cities of boston, new york, fi philadelphia, washington, d.c., also down to raleigh and greensboro. you need to check with your airlines but they re at least trying to make it a little ea easier if you are affected by the storm. also, i ve been telling but this for the past hour, we are moments away starting to see people arrive here. what you re watching is something that we haven t seen in about a year and a half. direct talks, direct peace talks between the israeli leader and the palestinian leader. this is happening at
time for minding your business. with the space shuttle program ending, more than 1,300 shuttle workers in three states got layoff notices this week. the employees of united space alliance, nasa s prime shuttle contractor, were told they were being laid off at the end of the month. the company has cut about 15% of its workforce ahead of the shuttle fleet s retirement next year. two final shuttle missions are currently scheduled for november and february. air travelers who like to take their four-legged friends along on their adventure, listen up. petfinder.com is releasing its annual list of the most pet-friendly airlines. jetblue ranked number one when it came to the best amenities for your pet and health and safety. air tran took the top spot for the budget conscious consumer charging just $69 for small dogs, cats and birds. frontier airlines was named the best for transporting a wide variety of pets. they not only allow dogs and cats in the cabin, but rabbits,