There is a region of the world where the weather is always hot and humid and it rains almost every day of the year. Sounds predictable, right? But weather in the Intertropical Convergence Zone, or ITCZ, can be volatile and dangerous. The Intertropical Convergence Zone, which circles the Earth near the equator, is where officials say Air France Flight 447 plunged into the Atlantic Ocean. While weather has not been cited as a reason for the plane's crash, the tragedy ...

Air France has agreed to replace within days sensors on all of its Airbus A330 and A340 airplanes, parts that are suspected of being involved in last week's crash, a pilots' union said Tuesday. Air France said Saturday that it had begun replacing the sensors throughout its fleet in April. An Air France representative said Tuesday the airline would not comment until after a meeting later in the day between Air France and the SNPL union. Airbus had ...

The massive amount of garbage in the ocean likely complicates the search for the remains of an Air France flight that went missing Monday near Brazil, oceanographers who spoke with CNN said. Earlier this week, investigators said they had located pieces of the plane in the southern Atlantic Ocean, which might have given them clues to the origin of Air France Flight 447's crash. But on Thursday, Brazilian officials said what they had found was nothing more than ...

As the possibility decreases that investigators will learn what happened to Air France Flight 447 on Monday over the Atlantic Ocean, the chances of it entering the folklore of mystery crashes grows. Brazilian air force officials still have not identified debris from the Airbus A330, and a former U.S. National Transportation Safety Board official said currents would be scattering any debris from the flight over an increasing area, reducing the probability of finding the jetliner's voice and flight data recorders. ...

The Brazilian air force said that debris picked up Thursday near where officials believe Air France Flight 447 crashed into the Atlantic Ocean was not from the plane. "It has been verified that the material did not belong to the plane," Brig. Ramon Borges Cardoso told reporters in Recife, Brazil, about the material recovered Thursday. "It is a pallet of wood that is utilized for transport. It is used in planes, but on this flight to Paris, there was no ...

Find yourself on the southern edge of Africa with 48 hours to spare and a good set of wheels at your disposal? Then set the GPS coordinates for Franschhoek in the Western Cape, and from there take a spin down Africa's southernmost road — the Garden Route. Here's an itinerary for two days of indulgence. DAY ONE Rise early from your luxury overnight accommodation at the Franschhoek boutique hotel — a historic, six-room retreat, tel: 876 4723, and head east along the N2 highway, with ...

It may be a long time before investigators learn what caused an Air France plane to plunge into the Atlantic Ocean, a French crash investigator said Wednesday. The Airbus 330, with 216 passengers and 12 crew members on board, disappeared from radar screens, some three hours after it took off from Rio de Janeiro in Brazil en route to Paris. Air France CEO Pierre-Henri Gourgeon said aircraft encountered heavy turbulence about 02:15 a.m. local time Monday (10:15 p.m. ET ...

Miami Dolphins defensive end Randy Starks was arrested early Sunday after police said he struck an officer with a slow-moving Freightliner truck, according to a police report. Starks, 25, faces a charge of aggravated battery, according to the report. The arrest took place about 12:20 a.m. in Miami's South Beach area. Officers said they saw the Freightliner truck in bumper-to-bumper traffic on South Beach's Ocean Drive with some 13 people inside, including a woman sitting on the lap of Starks, ...

Sri Lankan government soldiers seized the last remaining coastal stretch under the control of Tamil Tiger rebels, the Ministry of Defense said Saturday, marking a possible end to a quarter-century-long fight in the island nation. The seizure marks the total capture of coastline territory previously controlled by the rebels, the government said, after army divisions advanced from the north and south to link up. No formal declaration of victory is expected at least until the Sri Lankan President Mahinda Rajapaksa ...

With space shuttle Atlantis on its way to upgrade the Hubble Space Telescope, that leaves one shuttle, Endeavour, at the ready on the other launch pad here. And that's where everybody at NASA wants it to stay. "We have high confidence that we're just having that thing over on pad B to make it look nice," said mission flight director Tony Ceccaci. Endeavour is far more than a postcard picture -- it's on standby in case ...