An Irish woman killed in the Air France disaster was in love with her childhood sweetheart and about to start her dream job as a surgeon, her funeral mass heard today.

Autopsies on victims of the Air France disaster suggest the plane broke up in the air, experts confirmed tonight.

Two Irish detectives are being sent to Brazil to help identify the bodies pulled from the Atlantic Ocean after the Air France disaster, it was announced today.

An Airbus 330-200 like the one involved in the Air France disaster was forced to make an emergency landing on a Pacific island after a small fire broke out in the cockpit.