World briefs

Spanair ceased operations after a regional government in Spain announced it could no longer fund the airline, officials said.

Spanair’s financial woes were exacerbated by a 2008 crash that killed 154 people.

Eighteen people survived what was Spain’s worst aviation disaster in 25 years.

Mississippi milestone recalled

Two hundred years ago, the first steamboat meandered down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, taking more than four months to reach New Orleans.

That first docking was re-enacted along the banks of the Mississippi at the Cabildo museum in the French Quarter yesterday. The trip 200 years ago was marked by Indians chasing the paddled-wheeled boat and an earthquake that made the Mississippi flow in the opposite direction for 45 miles.

Despite it all, the steamboat New Orleans successfully sailed into the city it was named after, revolutionising business for the port, and opening up the Midwest to economic growth.

Officer dies in rescue attempt

A police officer has drowned and two others were missing in stormy seas after all three set out to try to rescue a young man who encountered difficulties while bathing off a beach in the north west of the country, Spanish officials said.

The bather was still missing, Interior Minister Jorge Fernandez said. It was not immediately clear what method or vessel the officers who went in search of the bather had used.

Security spokesman Ignacio Ulloa named the dead officer as Javier Lopez, 38, and said the missing bather was Tomas Velicky, a Slovakian national who had been studying economics on an Erasmus university exchange.

US murder suspect kills himself

A post mortem of a man accused of killing a Roman Catholic priest and taking the victim’s car on a family vacation to Walt Disney World shows he died in a prison suicide.

Rankin County, Mississippi Coroner Jimmy Roberts said the state medical examiner’s office concluded that 33-year-old Jeremy Wayne Manieri died from death by hanging.

Manieri was found dead early on Thursday in a prison cell in Rankin County with a sheet wrapped around his neck. He was not on suicide watch.

Life sentence for yoga killer

A US judge has ordered a woman convicted of killing her co-worker at a yoga clothing shop to spend the rest of her life in prison.

Twenty-nine-year-old Brittany Norwood was sentenced for the murder of Jayna Murray. She and the 30-year-old Murray worked together at the Lululemon Athletica shop in suburban Washington.

Norwood beat and stabbed Ms Murray during a fight on March 11 after the shop closed for the day. Ms Murray was found the following morning in a pool of blood, with at least 330 separate wounds.

Arrest warrant for ex-politician

An arrest warrant has been issued for a former Puerto Rico politician accused of corruption.

Ivan Rodriguez Traverso is accused of using public money for personal gain and of illegally obtaining jobs and services as a public servant.

Nydia Cotto, president of the Office of the Special Independent Prosecutor Panel, said that in one case, Rodriguez is accused of using office employees to clean and paint a property so he could use it for political activities.