Ocean Jet Crash Child Survivor

A toddler from a packed passenger jet that crashed in the Indian Ocean near the Comoros archipelago has reportedly been rescued.

Three bodies were also retrieved, along with debris from the plane, but no other survivors have been recovered so far, Comoros immigrations officer Rachida Abdullah said.

The Yemeni Airways Airbus 310 crashed with 142 passengers - including three children -and a crew of 11 Yemenis on board.

Most of the passengers were from Comoros, returning from Paris. Sixty-six on board were French nationals.

Two French military planes and a French ship had left the islands of Mayotte and Reunion to search for the passenger jet.

The flight, which began in Paris, was flying from Sanaa to Moroni, the capital of the main island of the Comoros archipelago.

Yemenia spokesman Mohammad al Sumairi said: "The weather conditions were rough - strong wind and high seas.

"The wind speed recorded on land at the airport was 61km (38 miles) an hour. There could be other factors."

A United Nations official at the airport said the control tower had received notification the plane was coming in to land, and then lost contact with it.

Yemenia is 51% owned by the Yemeni government and 49% by the Saudi Arabian government.

Its fleet includes two Airbus 330-200s, four Airbus 310-300s and four Boeing 737-800s, according to the company website.

The Comoros covers three small volcanic islands, Grande Comore, Anjouan and Moheli, in the Mozambique channel, 300km (190 miles) north west of Madagascar and a similar distance east of the African mainland.

It is the second Airbus to plunge into the sea this month. An Air France Airbus A330-200 crashed into the Atlantic Ocean killing 228 people on board on June 1.

In 1996, a hijacked Ethiopian Airlines Boeing 767 also crashed into the sea off the Comoros islands in 1996, killing 125 of 175 passengers and crew.

The European Union will soon propose the creation of a global blacklist of airlines deemed unsafe.

"My idea is to propose a world blacklist similar to that in the EU," Transport Commissioner Antonio Tajani.

He also said he would contact the carrier involved, Yemenia, to see what had happened in the Comoros crash.

Ashes Winning Capt Vaughan Retires

Ashes-winning cricket captain Michael Vaughan has announced his retirement from all forms of cricket.

He said it had been a hard decision but he realised that his form was no longer good enough and that he needed to make way for younger players to come through for the good of the game.

The 34-year-old Yorkshire batsman departs the international scene as England's most successful Test captain of all time - with 26 wins from his 51 matches in charge.

His achievements also include leading England to their first Ashes victory against Australia for 18 years in 2005; a first Test series win in South Africa for forty years - also in 2005 - and presiding over eight consecutive Test wins in 2004.

As a batsman, he scored 18 Test hundreds for England following his debut in 1999 and was ranked the number one batsman in the world following the 2002/3 Ashes Series in Australia in which he made 633 runs including three centuries.

He told reporters at Edgabston he nearly quit some months ago but wanted to give it one last shot at getting in this year's Ashes squad but he said: "I haven't been playing well enough."

He was also unhappy with his club form: "They always say that in the dressing room the senior players have to be the most enthusiastic.

"I just started feeling that in the Yorkshire dressing room I wasn't the most enthusiastic. That was the stage when I knew I had to move over."

Vaughan said it was hard to pick just one career highlight but England winning the Ashes in 2005 stood out.

"The 2005 Ashes win was special but it was also the build-up two years before that was special; I had to get a team into a unit and I was fortunate to get a team of very good players, so the 2005 Ashes was a pinnacle," he said.

"We captured the nation and cricket hadn't captured the nation for a very long time."

Commenting on his decision, English Cricket Board chief executive David Collier praised Vaughan for "his immense contribution" to the England team's success.

"His achievement in leading England to victory against the number one ranked team in the world, Australia in 2005, was arguably the finest by any England captain in the modern era," he said.

England captain Andrew Strauss said he counted Vaughan as a good friend as well as a team-mate and knew it had been a tough decision for him to stand down.

"I learned a great deal from watching him captain the side for five years at close hand and his ability to identify a new strategy for outwitting the opposition or bring the best out of his own players was a priceless asset," he added.