British officials are considering shifting a May holiday to April or October to lengthen the tourist season and are studying ways to streamline the process of getting a U.K. tourist visa.The plans published Friday in a government report are designed to find ways to capitalize on the tourist potential of the April 29 royal wedding and the 2012 Summer Olympics.Necessity may be the mother of invention, but in travel, frustration makes a pretty good midwife. Here are 12 products that aim to make life easier for travelers. Full storyOfficials did not endorse a plan to change Britain's clocks to European time to help tourism. The plan had been discussed but was opposed by people in the northern parts of the country.Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. [Read the full article]

Drug tests of airline personnel are three times more likely to come back positive after a crash or other accident than when testing is done at random times, a government-funded study shows."We wanted to see whether drug violations by employees are associated with their risk of being in an aviation accident," Dr. Guohua Li, the lead investigator on the study, told Reuters Health.He emphasized that illicit drug use is still rare among airline employees, and said the industry " which is considered the pinnacle of safety " can pat itself on the back.Drug testing is common across a variety of workplaces in the U.S., but it remains controversial and little is known about its impact on occupational safety.Li, of Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health, and his colleagues examined nearly 5,000 drug tests taken from employees after accidents. [Read the full article]

A Transportation Security Administration employee allegedly worked with an accused drug dealer to smuggle drug money through Buffalo Niagara International Airport, federal prosecutors say.The accused dealer, Derek Frank of Amherst, N.Y., appeared at a detention hearing on Friday in U.S. District Court in Buffalo, while TSA employee Minnetta Walker of Buffalo was not in attendance.The two were arrested earlier this week following a year-long probe by the FBI and federal Drug Enforcement Agency. Both entered pleas of not guilty in the case presided over by U.S. Magistrate Judge H. Kenneth Schroeder.Prosecutors say Walker routinely ushered suspected drug traffickers past airport security, including Frank who passed through security in February carrying $12,000 from an undercover informant to fly to Arizona and purchase drugs. [Read the full article]

When the airline industry took a nose dive a decade ago, executives at global carriers scrambled to find a quick fix to avoid financial ruin. What they came up with, according to federal prosecutors, was a massive price-fixing scheme among airlines that artificially inflated passenger and cargo fuel surcharges between 2000 and 2006 to make up for lost profits.The airlines' crimes cost U.S. consumers and businesses " mostly international passengers and cargo shippers " hundreds of millions of dollars, prosecutors say.Necessity may be the mother of invention, but in travel, frustration makes a pretty good midwife. Here are 12 products that aim to make life easier for travelers. Full storyBut the airlines caught by the Justice Department have paid a hefty price in the five years since the government's widespread investigation became public. [Read the full article]