plane

The pilot of a water-bombing plane died when his Grumman Tracker aircraft crashed during operations to contain numerous separate forest fires in southern France, some of which are believed to have been started by arsonists.

Emiliano Sala, 28, was travelling on Monday evening from Nantes, in north-west France, to join his new club, Premier League side Cardiff, when the single-engined Piper plane carrying him and two other people disappeared without trace from radar off the Channel Islands, close to the French coast. 

A London-bound Ryanair plane with 149 passengers on board was seized by the French authorities at Bordeaux airport on Friday because the Irish low-cost airline had failed to repay more than 500,000 euros it had received in undue subsidies from local government, which it finally settled several hours later.

An investigation into the deadly missile attack in 1994 on the aircraft carrying Rwandan president Juvenal Habyarimana, after which followed 100 days of slaughter of the Tutsi ethnic minority by members of Habyarimana's Hutu ethnic group, leaving an estimated 800,000 people dead, has been closed by French magistrates.

France is participating in Egypt-led investigation as it is the country where the Airbus 320 was made and 15 people on board were French.

The voluminous object was seen floating 70 kms from the French Indian Ocean island, where debris from vanished MH370 previously washed up.

French crash report says Andreas Lubitz repeatedly set Spain-bound plane to drop to 100ft before slamming it into French Alps on return flight.

There were no survivors from among the 116 people aboard the plane, 54 of them French, which crashed in desolate terrain in NE Mali.

New French president lands for crucial talks with Angela Merkel 90 minutes late after lightning strike forced him back home to change planes.