Things To Do In SW Florida

ATLANTA (AP) — A record was broken ahead of the Memorial Day weekend for the number of airline travelers screened at U.S. airports, the Transportation Security Administration said Saturday.

More than 2.9 million travelers were screened at U.S. airports on Friday, surpassing a previous record set last year on the Sunday after Thanksgiving, according to the transportation security agency.

“Officers have set a new record for most travelers screened in a single day!” the TSA tweeted. “We recommend arriving early.”

The third busiest day on record was set on Thursday when just under 2.9 million travelers were screened at U.S. airports.

In Atlanta, the world’s busiest airport had its busiest day ever. Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport broke a traffic record on Thursday when 111,000 passengers, airlines crew and airport employees were screened at security checkpoints. The second busiest day followed on Friday when 109,960 people were screened, according to the TSA.

With 104.6 million passengers, the Atlanta airport was the busiest in the world last year, according to Airports Council International. read more

By Josh Garber | NerdWallet

Pride month is approaching in the U.S., typically celebrated in June. But Pride events aren’t confined to a single 30-day period. Because these events are often tied to a region’s history of LGBTQ+ equal rights movements, they happen at different times in locations around the globe.

If you want to branch out from attending Pride locally (or celebrate beyond June), consider booking a trip to visit one of these six LGBTQ+ events around the world.

1. MemDay Weekend Women’s Festival in Provincetown, Massachusetts (May 23-27)

Commercial Street is Provincetown’s main drag, dotted with shops, bars and performance venues. (Photo courtesy of Getty Images)

A historic artist colony and top LGBTQ+ destination, the picturesque Provincetown, Massachusetts is known for celebrating individuality and free expression. Ptown, as it’s called locally, hosts several LGBTQ+ events throughout the year, including MemDay Weekend Women’s Festival, celebrating LGBTQ+ women and nonbinary and transgender individuals.

MemDay happens at the end of May, just before the start of Pride Month. It’s put on by LesbianNightLife, which calls MemDay the largest lesbian takeover in the country. read more

Kevin Hardy | Stateline.org (TNS)

Just days before workers at a Mercedes-Benz plant in Alabama began voting last week on whether to unionize, Republican Gov. Kay Ivey signed a new law that would claw back state incentives from companies that voluntarily recognize labor unions.

Alabama’s move follows similar efforts in Georgia and Tennessee, where GOP leaders also have passed laws pushing against a reinvigorated labor movement.

The laws require that unions be formed only by secret ballots rather than the so-called card check process, in which employers can voluntarily recognize a union without a protracted election process. And under the laws, companies that voluntarily recognize unions risk losing state incentives, which amount to billions of dollars invested by governments to bring automakers to the region.

These new laws speak to the growing push of labor unions into Southern states — and the fierce opposition of pro-business GOP leaders there. For decades, the region has attracted investments from foreign automakers with lucrative tax breaks, low-cost labor and a lack of labor unions. Labor leaders hope that is changing now that workers at Volkswagen’s plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, overwhelmingly endorsed a union in April, becoming the first foreign auto plant in the South ever organized by the United Auto Workers. read more

The author of a new book about the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster is coming to Central Florida for a signing event.

Simply titled, “Challenger,” Adam Higginbotham took four years to pore through archive data and interview many people involved in the shuttle program, including those who raised the red flag about the shuttle design problems ultimately ignored, leading to the deaths of the seven astronauts on Jan. 28, 1986, when the shuttle exploded 73 seconds after liftoff from Kennedy Space Center.

Known for a previous New York Times bestseller “Midnight in Chernobyl,” Higginbotham said he decided to tackle Challenger’s explosion as it, like the JFK assassination and 9/11, is one of those pivotal moments that grasped the world’s attention.

“An overwhelming reason to be revisiting it is simply because there are so few of those events that in a weird way, unite the nation, in their experience and their memory.”

He was 17 and in school in England when it happened, but only found out about it after returning home where his mother had been watching it on TV. read more