TWO minutes after he cleared a private plane for takeoff and a fateful flight over the Hudson River, an air traffic controller at New Jersey’s Teterboro Airport was on the phone with a woman in the airport operations office, joking about barbecuing a dead cat.

Crews lifted the wreckage of a helicopter from the murky Hudson River today as police using sonar located the submerged small plane that had collided with it.

Divers recovered a piece of a submerged helicopter and a fourth body today as investigators searched New York's Hudson River for wreckage from the helicopter and a small plane that collided in midair, killing nine people.

Lawyers for US singer Michael Jackson have settled a lawsuit brought by a finance company that claimed the 'Beat It' singer cheated it out of $48m (€35.7m).