EIGHTY thousand homes were without electricity this morning and two people have died after bad weather hit across France.
Heavy snowfall continues to affect the Massif Central and severe downpours have hit the south east.
Four departments will remain under orange alert by Météo France until 16.00 today - the Alpes-de-Haute-Provence, the Hautes-Alpes, the Alpes-Maritimes and the Savoie, with warnings of snow, black ice and avalanches.
The alert has however been lifted for the Auvergne region and the departments of the Ardèche, the Loire, the Lozère and the Var.
French search divers have recovered the cockpit voice recorder from the Airbus plane that crashed in the Mediterranean killing all seven people on board.
The black box was to be dried out in Paris before data was retrieved, said Air New Zealand’s Ed Sims.
Four of the airline’s staff, one aviation official and two German pilots were on the plane. Only two bodies have been found off the Perpignan coast.
MOSCOW, Russia (CNN) — A jet carrying 88 people crashed early Sunday morning in western Russia, killing everyone on board, an airline spokesman said.
Twenty-one foreigners were on the flight, including passport-holders from Azerbaijan, Germany, France, Italy, Switzerland and Ukraine, said Lev Koshlyakov, spokesman for flight operator Aeroflot Nord.
Authorities are trying to confirm the presence of an American on board, Koshlyakov said.
The person was listed as an American in the passenger list, but has a Russian last name, he said. Authorities intend to check with the U.S. embassy for a final determination.
( AP) Firefighters endured extreme temperatures and cramped quarters Friday as they extinguished an intense blaze in the undersea train tunnel that has revolutionized travel between France and England.
The fire deep under the English Channel left the British Isles cut off for more than a day from continental Europe other than by sea or air - the only routes that existed before the undersea tunnel opened to passengers in 1994.
Laboring through the night, firefighters painstakingly worked toward each other from separate ends in France and Britain to combat the blaze, which broke out Thursday afternoon aboard one of the trains that whiz back and forth through the 30-mile tunnel, transporting trucks and holidaymakers’ cars.
A Ryanair flight carrying British holidaymakers has been forced to make an unscheduled landing due to a loss of cabin pressure, the company has said.
Flight FR9336 from Bristol to Barcelona Girona Airport was hit by a “depressurisation incident” on Monday night, Ryanair confirmed.
The plane was diverted to Limoges in central France and 16 passengers were taken to hospital with earache.
Ryanair said it had sent an engineer to try to find out what happened.
In a statement posted on its website, Ryanair said said the loss of pressure “caused the oxygen masks on board to deploy”.
“As a safety precaution the captain descended and diverted the aircraft to Limoges Airport at approximately 2330 local French time,” the company said.
CHAMONIX, France (AP) — The bodies of eight climbers swept up in an avalanche near Mont Blanc were located Monday, buried beneath 20 to 50 meters (65-164 feet) of ice, police officials said.
Regis Lavergne, commander of the High Mountain Gendarmes based in Chamonix, said a helicopter picked up the signal of special homing devices the climbers were wearing. It appeared from the signals that the climbers — four Germans, three Swiss and one Austrian — had fallen into a deep crevasse. Read more
