French forces have found no evidence of debris from an Airbus A330 airplane that vanished over the Atlantic with 228 people on board, France’s transportation minister said today.

CRASH investigators have said that they may never find black boxes that could explain why an Air France jet plunged into the ocean, as naval teams trawled deep Atlantic waters.

BRAZILIAN Defence Minister Nelson Jobim said last night a 5-kilometre path of wreckage found in the Atlantic is confirmation that an Air France jet that carried 228 people crashed in the ocean.

The doomed Air France airliner that crashed into the sea killing all 228 on board may have been trying to return for an emergency landing at the time, aviation experts said today.

Three young Irish women onboard the Air France airliner which vanished over the Atlantic Ocean were best friends who were forging out promising careers as doctors.

THREE young Irish women onboard the Air France airliner which vanished over the Atlantic Ocean were best friends who were forging out promising careers as doctors, it emerged tonight.

An Air France jet missing with 228 people - including three Irish citizens - on board ran into a towering wall of thunderstorms over the Atlantic Ocean, officials said tonight.

Three Irish citizens are believed to have been onboard the Air France airliner which disappeared near Brazil, the Government said tonight.

A French airliner with more than 200 people on board vanished today while over the Atlantic on a flight from Brazil to Paris.

There were no survivors among the 155 people on board the Brazilian jetliner that was in collision with a smaller plane and crashed in the Amazon rainforest in the nation’s worst air disaster.

The Brazilian air force continued searching this morning in the densely forested Amazon region for a Gol airlines jet with 155 people aboard that went missing yesterday, Brazilian aviation authorities said.

Brazil’s first man in space landed back on Earth in the freezing Kazakh steppe today after a nine-day visit to the international space station.

THE student visa of Jean Charles de Menezes expired more than two years before he was wrongly shot by police, a British Home Office spokeswoman said last night.

A BRAZILIAN Air Force plane carrying the body of slain UN envoy to Iraq Sergio Vieira de Mello headed to Geneva on Sunday, one day after a vigil and funeral ceremony in his hometown.

Iraqi agents working as security guards at the UN headquarters in Baghdad may have helped the bombers who killed 23 people earlier this week, a US official said today.

The body of Sir Peter Blake, the champion New Zealand yachtsman killed by pirates in Brazil last week, was today due to arrive in Britain for burial.