Inside the Busy Mind of a Baby

Sure, they may while away their days eating, sleeping and soiling diapers. But Alison Gopnik says it’s high time that babies got some respect. In her new book, The Philosophical Baby, the University of California, Berkeley, psychologist argues that modern research is revolutionizing our understanding of the first years of life, revealing early childhood to be a frenzied period of intellectual, emotional and moral development

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Why Volkswagen Is Powering Through the Recession

Nobody can blame Volkswagen CEO Martin Winterkorn for smiling this past week. VW has just turned the tables on would-be raider Porsche, placing Europe’s biggest carmaker in the driver’s seat for a planned merger with the much smaller and sportier firm. And while colleagues at rivals like Daimler, Fiat, General Motors and Peugeot are busy trying to survive the current economic storm, Winterkorn seems poised to throw VW into high gear.

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Blair to be called before UK inquiry to Iraq war

Former British Prime Minister Tony Blair will be called before an inquiry into the country’s role in the Iraq war, its chairman said during the opening Thursday. John Chilcot told media he would not “offer a list of witnesses” but that “key decision-makers in the key phases of the Iraq affair” would be called. “You can work out for yourself who some of them will be, but apart from the former prime minister [Tony Blair] — who it’s obvious we must see — I don’t want to give a longer list today.” Blair’s appearance before the inquiry, whenever it happens, will be of huge interest to the British public and media

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Champs leader Button wins Spanish GP pole

World championship leader Jenson Button captured pole position for Sunday’s Spanish Grand Prix after a dramatic climax to qualifying at Barcelona’s Circuit de Catalunya. Briton Button, who has triumphed in three of the four races so far this season, took the No. 1 spot ahead of Red Bull’s Sebastian Vettel with Brawn GP team-mate Rubens Barrichello third.

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Italian rescue teams hope to find earthquake survivor

Rescue workers dug carefully but urgently through the rubble Saturday to reach a person who may still be alive after this week’s earthquake. Teams were using an excavator at the site, a building that was flattened during Monday’s 6.3-magnitude quake, to reach the possible survivor

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Virginia Tech reopens site of mass shooting

Kristina Heeger was wounded in her French class nearly two years ago when a gunman killed 30 of her classmates and instructors at Virginia Tech’s Norris Hall. Still coping with memories of the massacre, she returned to the historic stone building Friday as the university reopened the wing of the academic building where the deadliest mass shooting in recent U.S. history occurred

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