News In Brief

it runs in the FAMILY

There isn't an Eck of a lot of difference among the top three students in this year's graduating class at John Glenn High School in Walkerton, Ind. Two have tied for valedictorian honors, with identical 3.98 averages on a 4-point scale. Close behind, at 3.95, is the salutatorian. They are - respectively - Sarah and Hannah Eck and their brother, Aaron. The triplets' academic excellence carried over to the Scholastic Aptitude Test, on which they scored within three correct answers of each other. The Ecks do not, however, plan to attend the same colleges or pursue similar careers.

ONLINE@ALTITUDE.COM

If you've been waiting to e-mail someone in Bhutan, your patience is about to be rewarded. The remote Himalayan kingdom, one of the world's highest and most obscure countries, has gone into partnership with the UN and a regional development program to set up an Internet service provider - its first venture out onto the information superhighway.

US Airways ranked No. 1 in study of nation's carriers

Making plans to fly away for a summer vacation? If you want a smooth journey, you might be interested in a recent ranking of US airlines. The report, published by Dean Headley, associate professor of marketing at Wichita State University in Kansas, and Brent Bowen, director of the Aviation Institute at the University of Nebraska, uses 15 criteria for measuring quality in an airline. Among them: frequency of flights being on time, of flights being cancelled, of bags being mishandled, and of passengers making complaints. The nation's top 10 in quality, according to the study:

1. US Airways

2. Continental

3. American

4. Delta

5. Southwest

6. America West

7. TWA

8. Alaska Airlines

9. Northwest

10. United

- Associated Press

Compiled by Robert Kilborn

and Lance Carden