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American Airlines and US Airways on Thursday announced they plan to merge to create the country's largest airline, with a route network stretching from coast to coast, and covering large swaths of Latin America, Europe, Canada, the Caribbean and Africa.

The merger would knit together American's parent company, Fort Worth, Texas-based AMR Corp., and Tempe, Ariz.-based US Airways Group Inc. to form a new company worth about $11 billion. The combined carrier — with more than 6,700 daily flights to 336 destinations in 56 countries — would leapfrog over its competitors in terms of passenger traffic, and would retain the name and logo of American.

Here are answers to common questions about the merger:

Why are airlines always pushing for mergers?

Airlines have a very, very hard time making profits. US Airways endured a couple of round trips to bankruptcy court, and American is still trying to pull out of a bankruptcy filed in 2011.

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American/US Airways Merger Site

It's settled. When the pontiff steps down Thursday, he'll still be known as Benedict XVI and have the title of "pope emeritus." In public, he'll wear an understated white cassock and stylish brown shoes from Mexico.

The Vatican announcement on Tuesday ends speculation over some of the thorny issues that have been the subject of speculation in the days since the world learned that the 85-year-old Benedict would voluntarily step down, the first pope to do so in more than 700 years.

Vatican spokesman Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi says instead of reverting to his birth name, Joseph Ratzinger, the 265th pope will be known as "His Holiness Benedict XVI, Roman pontiff emeritus."

According to Lombardi, Benedict will continue to wear a white cassock (sans the pontifical ornaments), but forgo his trademark red shoes. Instead, he will wear a pair of handmade brown shoes given to him during a papal visit to Mexico in 2012.

According to The National Catholic Reporter, the pope's "fisherman's ring," which contains the formal seal, will be destroyed, as is custom at the end of a papacy.

" 'It will be broken at a particular moment; when that will happen is up to the college of cardinals,' said Basilian Father Thomas Rosica, who provided English translation of the press conference.

"Rosica also said the decisions regarding the retired pope's title and clothing were made by Benedict, 'but obviously he would have discussed those with other people around him.' "

Megalomaniacs, consider yourselves warned. Anchovies will not help you build your empire. To rule long and prosper, serve corn.

That's the word from archaeologists who say they've solved a mystery that's been puzzling their colleagues for the past 40 years: How did some of the earliest Peruvians manage to build a robust civilization without corn — the crop that fueled other great civilizations of the Americas like the Maya?

The Norte Chico people, who lived some 5,000 years ago, built a thriving civilization — but from the archaeological evidence previously available, it looked like they did it solely on anchovies. And anyone who's ever nibbled an anchovy on a pizza knows there's not a lot of meat on those tiny bones.

Would that have given the Norte Chico enough oomph to build the monumental architecture they left behind, including dozens of large communities with huge earthen platforms and circular ceremonial plazas, some 40 meters across?

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In its bid to reshape itself for the future, Yahoo is returning to a workplace culture of the tech industry's past. The Internet giant has reportedly notified its employees they'll no longer be allowed to work from home. According to an internal memo leaked to tech site All Things D, employees who previously enjoyed teleworking will have to start showing up at an office by June.

The move goes against a popular workplace perk among tech companies and a wider trend toward more work-from-home options across several industries. (Public media is included — NPR has a process allowing staffers to apply for remote-work arrangements.)

Technology has made collaboration easier for employees who aren't physically in the same space, and companies who back telework say it has helped cut costs and compete for wider talent pools.

"Ten years ago, it was seen more as an employee benefit. Today, businesses around the world are seeing telework as a necessity," said Ron Markezich, the corporate vice president of Microsoft's U.S. Enterprise and Partner Group. He led a 2011 Microsoft survey of more than 4,500 information workers that showed a rise in teleworking.

Having no central workplace certainly works for Automattic, the company that controls blogging behemoth WordPress. 120 employees work from their homes in 26 countries, and its leader, Matt Mullenweg, sees distributed employees as the future of work.

"I think it's difficult for a culture to transition from being reliant on in-person interactions to being just as effective in a distributed fashion — it's something you can't do halfway, and the change has to come from the very top," Mullenweg said. "Just because Yahoo can't do it doesn't mean there's anything wrong with being distributed."

Even the government sector, which isn't considered an early adopter of workplace culture change, has a star teleworking model in its ranks. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office boasts that 64 percent of employees work from home under various models.

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For Telecommuters, It's Not About Going To Work