The Air France plane that crashed last month with 228 people aboard "did not break up or become destroyed in flight," the French air investigation agency announced Thursday. "The plane went straight down ... towards the surface of the water, very very fast," air accident investigator Alain Bouillard said. Based on visual study of the physical remains of the Airbus A330 that have been recovered, "we were able to see that the plane hit the surface of the water flat. ...

The flight data recorders from a Yemenia Airways crash were possibly located off Comoros on Wednesday, a day after a jetliner with 153 people aboard went down in the Indian Ocean, a French official said. "It seems like the 'black boxes' have been localized, but are not very accessible, according to information we obtained this morning. But they have been localized," Alain Joyandet, a French junior foreign minister told CNN affiliate BFM TV in a phone interview from Comoros. The ...

It's probably been a while since you bought new software. That's because so many tech firms — buoyed by ads placed in Web-based applications like the Google Docs word processor and the thousands of apps on Facebook — can now afford to give their programs away for free. But don't expect the same deal when you're shopping for add-ons to bling out your iPhone. On July 11, Apple will launch its hotly anticipated iPhone App Store — and it'll ...

Tom Davis, a moderate Republican from Virginia, has emerged as a leading candidate for the Obama Administration's newly created position of cybersecurity czar. Sources familiar with the White House's deliberations on the subject say Obama officials feel a Washington power player would make a better candidate than a tech guru. "They want someone who understands technology issues, but more importantly, knows how to get things done in Washington," says a cybersecurity expert who has been consulted by the White ...

Google was going to help democratize data in China. Instead, about three years after entering the Middle Kingdom, the search company still finds itself in an uncomfortable working relationship with government censors. For about eight days between June 3 and June 11, Google.cn blocked all results that might come from searches for Beijing's Tiananmen Square. Not just politically sensitive results, not just historical accounts of the hundreds of deaths on June 4, 1989, but every single result -- including ...

Turbulence shakes the small aircraft as it dips through storm clouds. Fernando de Noronha first appears as a dot surrounded by a leaden-colored ocean. On glitzy tourist brochures, this Brazilian island is touted as a tropical paradise, a nature haven for rare species and a scuba diver's playground. The taxis are dune buggies, hotel staff pin fresh hibiscus flowers to guests' doors, and frogs as big as a hand hop through luxuriant undergrowth. But for the last week, the normally ...

In the brief history of Web sites, there are few if any second chances. Remember Friendster? That's why it's difficult for some industry observers to see a comeback for MySpace, the large online social network that has seen its popularity flatline and its hipness surpassed by younger sites like Twitter and Facebook in recent months. "If you look back at the first era of the Web, there are a bunch of companies that didn't survive that -- the search sites ...

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 ...

The search for the wreckage of an Air France plane that crashed into the Atlantic Ocean with 228 on board intensified Thursday after clues appeared to rule out a mid-air fire or explosion. As several ships trawled the crash site in the Atlantic, Brazil's defense minister said a 20-kilometer (12-mile) oil slick near where the plane went down on Monday indicated it probably did not break up until it hit the water. If true, that would rule out an ...