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CUPERTINO, Calif. — Apple's iPhone 3GS, iPad and newer iPod Touch devices will soon be able to run more than one non-Apple application at a time.

A software upgrade from Apple will let users play Internet radio Pandora while searching restaurant listings, for example.

The ability to multitask has long been on the wish list of Apple customers and developers. It will be available on the iPhone 3GS and iPod Touch models this summer and the iPad this fall.

"We weren't the first to this party, but we're going to be the best," CEO Steve Jobs said at Apple's headquarters here. Multitasking on the devices today is limited to Apple's own programs.

The new iPhone operating system offers a way to see messages from multiple e-mail accounts in a single in-box; to set up folders organizing apps, such as gaming, by category; and to better protect data for corporate use.

Apple also unveiled an advertising platform called iAd, in which Apple will sell ads to run on apps made by outside developers. Nearly 100 million iPhones have been sold, Jobs said.

The new feature highlights how advertising is migrating to mobile devices as more consumers use them to work, shop and communicate, says Paran Johar, chief marketing officer for Jumptap, a mobile-advertising network.

The iPhone could get a further boost if Apple develops a version compatible with the Verizon Wireless network. AT&T has exclusive rights to the iPhone in the U.S. Verizon has told Apple it wants to carry the iPhone, but it's unclear if or when that will happen.

Meanwhile, Jobs called the iPad a "profound game-changer" and said 450,000 have sold since Saturday.

he idea of combining United Airlines and US Airways into the world's second-biggest airline captures the fancy of airline managers, industry analysts and investors, who bid up the price of the two airlines Thursday on news of merger talks.

But what about passengers — and the low fares they enjoy?

"The consumer could be negatively affected," says George Hoffer, an economics professor at Virginia Commonwealth University.

"That's one less carrier to get nervous about its declining market share or weak consumer demand (for air travel) and to respond by launching a big sale, or by putting more seats into the lower-price categories," Hoffer says. "It's also one less airline that can refuse to go along with the fare increase."

Discussions between the two money-losing U.S. airlines have been going on for several weeks and won't be completed for another two, a source involved with the talks told USA TODAY. The source, who wasn't authorized to speak publicly about the talks and so spoke anonymously, warns that any deal could collapse.

It's at least the third time the two have had merger talks since the early 1990s.

The United-US Airways talks come as carriers here and around the globe increasingly look to consolidation in the industry as they continue to lose money amid the economic downturn that has kept travelers out of the air. On Thursday, for instance, British Airways and Spain's Iberia signed a merger deal in hopes it would help shore up their sagging bottom lines. Barely two years ago, Delta Air Lines took over Northwest Airlines to create the world's biggest carrier.

Consolidation is appealing to many in the U.S. industry and to investors, who have witnessed the erosion of traffic for old-line, legacy airlines such as United and US Airways at the hands of discounters.

US Airways' stock jumped 10.7% to $7.55 a share on Thursday. United's shares rose 6.8% on Thursday to $20.23. Other carriers' shares also were up on Thursday, but by smaller percentages.

Any deal would have to pass muster with government antitrust regulators and labor unions. Analysts, however, say that could be easier than it was a decade ago, when United and US Airways first talked of combining.

Today, they say, there are more discount airlines with stronger market shares — which could avert higher fares for travelers and offset regulators' concerns about a lack of competition.

And the airlines' unions, they say, could be induced to go along with a deal with offers of big pay raises and, potentially, stock in the merged carrier. Those inducements could be funded by the cost savings and revenue gains that would be the result of a merger, they say.

A merger between the two airlines would create a giant, second only to Delta. United currently is the No. 3 U.S. carrier in passenger miles flown. US Airways is No. 6.

Globally, the pair flew a consolidated 158.4 billion revenue passenger miles in 2009, when Delta flew 163.7 billion. A revenue passenger mile equals one paying passenger flying one mile and is the basic industry expression of an airline's size.

In the U.S. market, however, a combined United and US Airways last year would have been the biggest domestic operation when the passenger miles flown by the big airlines' regional airline partners are added to the totals. They'd have had 209.2 billion revenue passenger miles compared with Delta's 188.9 billion.

UBS analyst Kevin Crissey suggested in a note to investors Thursday that a United-US Airways combination would produce a network about 3% smaller down the line than today because it would eliminate overlapping services and streamline the merged network.

Such a combination could nonetheless create competition issues in certain markets, such as in Washington. And that could attract regulators' attention.

United operates a hub at Dulles International Airport outside of Washington. Its international flights there require it to operate a large number of domestic flights to fill big planes flying the long, international routes.

US Airways, meanwhile, is the largest carrier at Washington's Reagan National Airport, one of the nation's most congested airports, where quick access to downtown Washington appeals to business and government travelers. Average fares there are relatively high as a result, which makes it an appealing airport to airlines.

In 2000, when the two airlines were in merger talks, Washington posed a potential stumbling block. (US Airways was a different company then, before the acquisition by America West.) To head off anticipated antitrust problems, United and US Airways agreed to sell its Boston-New York-Washington Shuttle operation to American Airlines. It also planned to spin off most of its remaining assets at Reagan National to a separate, independent carrier.

Those plans, and the merger, collapsed when the government raised more antitrust concerns than had been expected and the economy took a nose dive.

There's no indication yet that the carriers would shed such assets in the nation's capital this time around — and they might not have to, some analysts say.

JPMorgan analyst Jamie Baker said in a note to investors Thursday that market concentration shouldn't be as big an issue today as it was in 2000.

If United and US Airways should successfully merge this time, the combined company would be 28% smaller than United was all by itself a decade ago, Baker said. Thus, he said, it would represent a smaller threat to overall industry competition.

Others suggest that the explosive growth of low-cost airlines also eases concerns about market concentration.

Even experts such as Hoffer, who are skeptical about whether the traveler benefits with airline consolidation, say consumers won't necessarily be doomed to paying significantly higher prices if the U.S. airline industry does shrink to just three or four conventional carriers.

"The history of this industry always has been that of new entrants coming into markets where they saw opportunities," Hoffer says.

"The airline business is like the restaurant business," he says. "Every decent chef thinks he can run a restaurant, and every decently rich man thinks he can run an airline. So they keep buying or launching new restaurants and new airlines. Most of them don't succeed, but it helps to keep prices down, at least for a while."

Analyst Vaughn Cordle at AirlineForecasts said Thursday that United and US Airways likely would negotiate new contracts with their workers prior to closing on any merger in a bid to win labor's support for the deal.

How sweet would the new contracts have to be? Cordle estimates that a 10% pay raise would add $650 million to the two carriers' current labor costs. But that, he says, could be paid for out of the $1.8 billion-a-year cost savings and revenue gains he would expect a combined airline to produce.

Including the value of stock that workers could likely expect out of a deal, Cordle says, labor could end up with a package worth $1 billion to $2 billion.

"This," Cordle says, "is a lot of incentive to sign off on a merger deal."

Labor's support is no certainty, however.

Capt. Wendy Morse, head of the Air Line Pilots Union unit at United, issued a carefully worded statement saying she is concerned that a merger with US Airways won't produce the benefits envisioned by the two airlines' top executives and will distract United's management from "solving its own pressing issues." However, she said, United's pilots will work with management.

"We are not opposed to any merger that would benefit the careers and the long-term future of United pilots," Morse said. "The pilots of United Airlines stand ready to work with United management on a merger if such a merger would protect and advance our careers."

WASHINGTON — The diplomatic status of a 27-year-old Qatari Embassy worker was being reviewed Thursday after he triggered a bomb scare aboard a United Airlines flight en route to Denver on Wednesday, a spokeswoman for the embassy in Washington said.

Alison Bradley said Mohammed al-Madadi returned to Washington on Thursday after he was questioned and released by authorities. They were probing an incident aboard United Flight 663 that originated in Washington and forced fighter jets to scramble. Federal air marshals confronted al-Madadi on Wednesday evening after he left the jet's lavatory, where airline officials say the diplomat was smoking, according to two federal law enforcement officials who were briefed on the matter. The law enforcement officials, who are not authorized to comment publicly, said al-Madadi then made references to lighting his shoes.

No explosives were recovered. No charges were filed because al-Madadi is protected by diplomatic immunity. He is likely to return to Qatar, the two officials said.

Since shoe-bomber Richard Reid's failed attempt to bring down a commercial jet in December 2001, passengers have been required to remove their shoes for inspection before boarding. Reid pleaded guilty to trying to blow up the plane.

Bradley said al-Madadi, a junior diplomat in Washington, was "engaged in official embassy business" while traveling to Colorado, where he was scheduled to meet with Qatari college students and visit convicted al-Qaeda operative Ali al-Marri, a Qatari national imprisoned at the U.S. penitentiary in Florence, Colo.

The prison visit, Bradley said, was a "consular" meeting in which diplomats are able to visit citizens incarcerated in other countries.

"Consular visits to Mr. al-Marri have occurred approximately monthly since mid-2009, when Mr. al-Marri was charged by a federal grand jury in Illinois with two counts of conspiracy to provide material support to terrorism," Bradley said.

Al-Marri was sentenced to eight years and four months in prison last October after pleading guilty to a conspiracy charge. He acknowledged attending terrorist training camps from 1998 to 2001. Before his indictment, al-Marri had been held for nearly six years as an enemy combatant in a Navy brig in South Carolina.

Al-Marri began serving his sentence in Marion, Ill., where Qatari diplomats made "multiple" consular visits, Bradley said.

He was transferred to Colorado last month. Al-Madadi's visit this week would have been the first consular session since al-Marri's transfer.

In a written statement posted on the Qatari Embassy website, Ambassador Ali Bin Fahad Al-Hajri defended the employee. "We respect the necessity of special security involving air travel," Al-Hajri said. "But this diplomat was traveling to Denver on official embassy business on my instructions, and he was certainly not engaged in any threatening activity.

"The facts will reveal that this was a mistake, and we urge all concerned parties to avoid reckless judgments or speculation."

The discovery of a fossil pair in South Africa, reported by researchers Thursday, promises insights into early human origins about 1.95 million years ago.

In two papers published in the journal Science, a team led by paleontologist Lee Berger of the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg reports the discovery of Australopithecus sediba (the name means "southern ape wellspring") from the Malapa site in South Africa, a series of ancient caves exposed to the surface.

The fossils, discovered in 2008, "are going to be a remarkable window, a time machine" into human evolution, Berger says, whether the fossils' species was a direct human ancestor or not.

Africa is the birthplace of humanity, where modern humans first appear in fossil form from about 200,000 years ago and where the "hominid" precursors of modern apes and humans originated over roughly the past 6 million years, as shown by fossils and genetic evidence.

The fossil pair, a young male, perhaps 8 to 13 years old, and an adult female in her late 20s, possess a mixture of early human and ape features. They include long orangutan-like forearms and a small skull, along with the flat face and long-striding hips of human species.

"These are very interesting finds. There is bound to be a lot of argument over their exact interpretation," says paleontologist Ian Tattersall of the American Museum of Natural History in New York. "They will clearly make an important contribution to our understanding of hominid evolution at just the point when our own genus Homo was beginning to emerge."

Berger suggests the face of Australopithecus sediba would resemble that of other early human species, despite their more ape-like limbs. They climbed trees like orangutans, he says, but walked upright like people and unlike apes.

Perhaps searching for water during a drought, the pair probably fell into a "death trap," shafts at least 100 feet deep above the caves, says Paul Dirks of Australia's James Cook University, author of one of the two Science papers. Their bodies and numerous other animals, such as hyenas and antelopes, were then washed into pits in the caves and entombed in mud during a drought-ending storm.

Berger says the team is excavating at least two more "remarkably preserved" fossils of sediba, which he says is sufficiently different in appearance from other hominids to designate a new species.

Paleoanthropologist Richard Potts of the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History in Washington suspects the sediba pair represent the last descendants of the "Australopithecus africanus" hominids that arose around 2.8 million years ago, rather than a predecessor of modern humans.

"At the same time," he says, "the new fossils show a fascinating mosaic of features. They illustrate beautifully how features combined and recombined over the course of human evolution."

WASHINGTON — Coal mine operators have paid just 7% of the fines they have received for major health and safety violations in the past three years, a USA TODAY analysis of federal records shows.

The low payment rate is eroding the government's ability to pressure mining companies to improve safety, particularly at coal mines with repeated serious violations, officials and advocates say.

Unpaid fines mean coal companies "may keep on doing (unsafe) things because it hasn't really hit their pocketbook," said Tony Oppegard, a former mine-safety prosecutor in Kentucky.

The Upper Big Branch mine in West Virginia, where at least 25 miners died Monday, has paid just one major fine since 2007, which cost $10,750. It has appealed or is delinquent on 21 major fines worth $505,000, records show.

The number of unpaid fines began growing after the Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA) tried to improve safety following a series of fatal coal-mine accidents in 2006. MSHA in 2007 stepped up inspections, increased fines and vowed to close mines with chronic hazards.

Coal companies responded by routinely appealing major fines, which are those costing $10,000 or more. They have paid just $8 million of the $113 million in major penalties since April 2007 when fines were increased, USA TODAY found.

Nearly $90 million of major coal-mine fines is under appeal, buried in a backlog at the Mine Safety and Health Review Commission, records show. The commission, with 10 judges, is in line to get eight more judges to hear disputed penalties. MSHA also plans steps, such as simplifying citations and seeking broad settlements with major mine companies.

The United Mine Workers says the appeals aim to prevent MSHA from shutting troubled mines. MSHA can close mines with repeated serious violations. But if violations are under appeal, "MSHA's hands are tied," union spokesman Phil English said.

The National Mining Association, which represents mining companies, says appeals increased as MSHA began issuing fines without negotiating with mine operators. "Citations that were previously handled in consultation are now being appealed," association spokeswoman Carol Raulston said.

Raulston said unpaid fines do not mean mines are less safe, because violations must be corrected whether or not a fine is appealed.

In February, MSHA chief Joe Main told lawmakers the unpaid fines can protect repeat offenders. "Mines have the ability to continue that pattern unabated," Main said.