This post is in partnership with Worldcrunch, a new global-news site that translates stories of note in foreign languages into English. The article below was originally published in Die Welt. Stale dry air, narrow seats, jammed overhead compartments: today's air passenger has to be a real flying nut to think plane travel is any fun. But engineers at European manufacturer Airbus say they're working on ways to improve things. Implementing the changes will probably take up to four ...

Abby Barnes' hand shoots up nearly every time her teacher asks the 19 squirmy first-graders in her suburban Philadelphia public school to match letters of the alphabet to the sounds they make. Sitting up front with her pinchable cheeks framed by long blond hair, Abby, 7, looks as eager as any of her classmates to blurt out an answer. But every time the teacher calls on her, Abby freezes. Her face tightens. She strains to respond. And even if an ...

Muammar Gaddafi remains hunkered down in Tripoli, ever defiant despite the the heaviest bombing of NATO's three-month campaign. But outside Libya, the talk has moved on from war to the business opportunities offered by a post-Gaddafi Libya. It's hard to envision a booming Libyan economy with its communication infrastructure shattered by bombs and its oil fields abandoned and idle. Yet economists and investors say that as an intensifying NATO campaign brings Gaddafi's 42-year rule closer to its end, ...

As most parents of small children will reluctantly admit, nothing can occupy a child quite like television. Unfortunately, the scientific evidence suggests that using the boob tube as a babysitter has its price: the more time babies spend sitting in front of the screen, the more their social, cognitive and language development may suffer. Recent studies show that TV-viewing tends to decrease babies' likelihood of learning new words, talking, playing and otherwise interacting with others. A new study ...

It's possible that the Navy Seal team that killed Osama bin Laden on May 1 carried communication equipment made by L-3 Communications. It's also possible that if you were a U.S. airline passenger that Sunday, you passed through the L-3 ProVision Millimeter Wave Checkpoint Screening System--the controversial body scanner being installed in airports across the country. L-3 was in the security business before 9/11. But the New York City--based company is one of many to benefit from the rising demand ...

The group that controls top-level domain codes for Internet addresses is poised to permit non-Latin language codes for the first time in its history. And if, as expected, it does move forward, it means that Web surfing is about to get easier for about half of the world's 1.6 billion Internet users. "There are over 40 million users in the Arab world," said Wael Ghanim, Google's product and marketing manager for the Middle East and Africa, "and this number ...

The man who caused a mistrial in John Travolta's extortion trial is expected to appear before a judge Friday morning. A Bahamian judge wants Picewell Forbes to explain why he publicly announced a not guilty verdict in Travolta's trial before a jury announced its verdict. Forbes, who made the announcement at a political rally, could be held in contempt of court. On Wednesday, the judge called for a mistrial and ordered a new trial upon learning about Forbes' announcement. Jurors ...

A Northwest Airlines flight from San Diego, California, to Minneapolis, Minnesota, overshot the Minneapolis airport by about 150 miles Wednesday evening, and federal investigators are looking into whether the pilots had become distracted, as they claimed, or perhaps fallen asleep. Air traffic controllers lost radio communication with the Airbus A320, carrying 147 passengers and an unknown number of crew, when it was flying at 37,000 feet, according to the National Transportation Safety Board. There was no communication with Flight 188 ...

A celebrity gossip Web site has caught Maria Shriver a third time apparently violating California's law against using a cell phone while driving. Web site TMZ posted a 17-second video Tuesday showing the California first lady apparently speaking into a cell phone while turning a corner in Brentwood in a black SUV. She puts the phone down part way through the video, but it's not clear whether she did so because she had finished her conversation or because she noticed ...

Three scientists won the Nobel Prize in physics on Tuesday for two breakthroughs that led to two major underpinnings of the digital age -- fiber optics and digital photography, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences said. Charles K. Kao, a British and U.S. citizen, won for "groundbreaking achievements concerning the transmission of light in fibers for optical communication." Willard S. Boyle, a Canadian and U.S. citizen, and George E. Smith, a U.S. citizen, "invented the first successful imaging technology using ...