Anchor Lisa Mullins speaks with the BBC's Adam Mynott, who is at the Charles de Gaulle airport in Paris. That's where an Air France plane en route from Rio de Janeiro was supposed to land this morning. Investigators are still trying to determine why the plane disappeared from radar and perhaps crashed while flying over the Atlantic Ocean.

Anchor Lisa Mullins speaks with British journalist Giles Chapman about the crisis in Britain's auto industry 40 years ago. Back then, the British government intervened in a big way, just as the US government has done now.

Business is actually booming for GM in China. Sales there for the first five months of this year rose by more than a third over the same period last year. Today, GM said its problems in the US will have no impact on its thriving operations in China. The World's China correspondent Mary Kay Magistad says the Chinese aren't too worried about GM's bankruptcy.

General Motors has filed for bankruptcy protection giving the U.S. government a 60 % stake in the company. But GM is a multinational with half of its sales and workers outside the US. The World's Jason Margolis reports on how GM's troubles will impact the future of the global auto industry.

Global economic crisis

Today on The World: What the US can learn from Britain's auto crisis of forty years ago; Also, why Britain's school minister wants to import Confucian-style teaching into the country's schools. Plus, how websites like Facebook and Twitter are affecting Iran's presidential campaign.