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Through sunshine, trade winds and the lure of sandy shores ...

More than 8,000 letter carriers will convene in Honolulu July 19-23 as delegates at a convention of the National Association of Letter Carriers, an AFL-CIO union.

The event, which will take place at the Hawaii Convention Center, will bring together carriers from the United States, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands and Guam. Delegates will discuss issues critical to the U.S. Postal Service, including proposed postal reform legislation.

U.S. Rep. Neil Abercrombie will be among the convention speakers.

Agency may have violated privacy

WASHINGTON >> The government may have broken federal privacy law when it asked airlines to turn over personal data about passengers for a test of background-check project, a senator said yesterday.

Four airlines and at least two reservation systems provided the information to the government or its contractors, the acting head of the Transportation Security Administration told a Senate committee. Some of the companies denied that.

The agency previously had said only two airlines had done so.

Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, top Democrat on the Senate Governmental Affairs Committee, said the agency "may have violated" the Privacy Act, which says the government must notify the public if it intends to collect records on people.

The law also requires that the government tell people how to find out what information is being collected about them.

The disclosures, which Lieberman said were "disturbing," came out during a hearing on David Stone's nomination as the agency's administrator.

Northwest Airlines issues threat

EAGAN, Minn. >> Northwest Airlines is threatening to discipline, and possibly fire, union employees if they proceed with picketing that questions the safety and security of Northwest flights, according to a letter the airline sent to the mechanics union.

"It seems like pure intimidation," said Jim Atkinson, president of Local 33 of the Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association. The mechanics and the Professional Flight Attendants Association had planned to conduct informational picketing on July 2 at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.

The union members planned to picket to raise awareness of the company's practice of having overseas and third-party repair stations do maintenance on Northwest aircraft. They say maintenance performed in other countries poses a security risk.

"Any suggestion that safety or security has been compromised at Northwest is both false and highly damaging to Northwest's business," Northwest labor relations Vice President Julie Hagen Showers said in a June 18 letter to the mechanics union, which was posted on the union Web site yesterday.