DOUBTS over the safety of a Yemeni jetliner were at the forefront yesterday after an Airbus 310-300 carrying 153 people crashed into the Indian Ocean as it came in for a landing during howling winds on the island nation of Comoros.

A teenage girl was plucked from the ocean today, the only apparent survivor from an airliner crash that killed 152 people.

A private helicopter has crashed at the foothills of the Alps, killing the pilot and six amusement park employees who were on board, officials said.

AS Brazil and France disagreed last night about whether pieces of a downed Air France jet have been found in the Atlantic, investigators used the last messages from the plane to try to avoid future disasters.

Air France gave a possible clue to the loss of its Flight 447 tonight by announcing it was to replace a vital instrument sensor on all Airbus jets.

Reports that debris from lost Air France flight 447 had been found in the Atlantic were wrong, the French transport minister said today.

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.

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.

Heavy seas and low cloud today hampered the search for the wreckage of the Air France jet that crashed into the Atlantic with 228 people on board.

Vandals tried to derail a French high-speed train with concrete blocks on the track, it emerged today.

Vandals jammed iron bars into two electrical lines on a high-speed rail track in northern France, disrupting more than 30 train services to London, Brussels and other routes, the national rail authority said.

A train slammed into a bus carrying schoolchildren at a railway crossing in the French Alps today, killing six children and injuring 30 people, regional officials said.

FRANCE and Ireland are to work closely to ensure that the European Commission will not make any further concessions on agriculture in the world trade talks.

French prime minister Dominique de Villepin today ordered stricter measures to ward off bird flu.

Ireland and Russia today banned imports of British poultry and eggs, and farmers elsewhere in Europe took steps to shield their flocks from the possible spread of deadly bird flu from an infected British turkey farm.

Poultry farmers around Europe were on guard today against the possible spread of bird flu across the North Sea from infected Britain, fearing the disease could be carried by wild birds.

France’s agriculture minister today urged “very strong vigilance” – but no panic – in the face of bird flu outbreaks in Britain and Hungary.

THE Irish and French agriculture ministers yesterday expressed concern about the implications of a new world trade agreement.

The H5 bird flu virus turned up on a turkey farm in south-eastern France, but it was not immediately clear whether it was the deadly strain, France’s agriculture minister said today.

The H5 sub-type of bird flu has been found in a dead wild duck in France, and the government said it was almost certainly the lethal H5N1 strain.

FARMING futures will be on the line in Geneva, Switzerland, on June 26, as trade ministers make a last-ditch attempt to cut tariffs and subsidies for farm and industrial goods.

Wine is less a beverage than an elixir of life in France, but the country’s vintners say they’re confounded by a problem that threatens their livelihood - too much of a good thing and not enough people drinking it.

FRENCH President Jacques Chirac asked his unpopular Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin to stay on despite the regional poll disaster for the centre right, but ordered him to form a new government.

A flotilla of boats resumed searching today for flotsam and bodies from the charter jet of French tourists that crashed into the Red Sea, killing all 148 people aboard.

France today said it would send accident investigation experts to Egypt following the crash of a charter aircraft with 148 people on board, including 134 French tourists.

Air France’s streamlined white Concorde swooped into a Paris airport on its final commercial flight home today, an emotional end to years of supersonic travel between New York and Paris.

Police arrested a Moroccan passenger when a transatlantic jetliner touched down in Paris today after a friend claimed he intended to blow up the plane.