#trending: Empty Cities and Easier Passport Renewals

A Visual Time Capsule

Shuttered restaurants. Empty streets. Abandoned storefronts. Most of us remember the shutdown scenes from the first few months of the pandemic. A new book from teNeues preserves the early 2020 phenomenon into a visual time capsule.

“Cities of Silence: Extraordinary View of a Shutdown World” features photos from 60 cities throughout the world, eerily bare and shrouded in silence. From an empty Parisian cafe to a deserted Brooklyn Bridge, the book gives a glimpse into a rare moment of history when the world’s doors closed and residents were stuck at home.

Passport to Convenience

You may soon be able to renew your passport online, thanks to an executive order issued by President Joe Biden in December. Currently, passports are renewed in person at a passport agency or via mail, with an average processing time of eight to 11 weeks.

The order could also improve the screening experience at airports: It instructs the Secretary of Homeland Security to test new technologies to reduce passenger wait times at security checkpoints. (Yay!) No timetable has been set for the orders.

Learn about AAA passport services.