An Air France airliner was forced to take emergency evasive action to avoid a mid-air collision with a private plane earlier this week, the French civil aviation authority said Saturday. The near miss happened on Wednesday when a Swiss Cessna failed to follow the standard route after take-off from Nice airport in southern France, cutting into the path of an Air France Airbus 319.

A television channel sparked a brief panic in Georgia on Saturday when it produced a fake newscast reporting that a Russian invasion was underway. The newscast on privately-owned Imedi television showed footage from the August 2008 Georgia-Russia war, reported that Russian tanks were headed for the capital Tbilisi and that Russian aircraft had bombed airports and ports.

Fifteen crew members on a passenger ferry in Zanzibar were rescued on Saturday after a fire broke on board, emergency services said. No one was harmed in the blaze, but the MV Serengeti, which at the time was moored off Zanzibar Town, capital of the Tanzanian archipelago, was completely destroyed. The Zanzibar shipping registrar Abdallah Mohamed and local police said the fire broke out as workers were welding in the engine room.

The Afghan government has bowed to pressure from news organisations and watered down a blanket ban on live television coverage of militant attacks, a government spokesman said Saturday. Rather than a total blackout on live broadcasts of violence that regularly blights the capital and other cities, the government has told broadcasters not to show the faces of security personnel or "disturbing" images.

An opposition MP said on Saturday he will seek to have the information minister grilled in parliament over measures to block live coverage on Arab satellite television of the deadly unrest in south Yemen. Information Minister Hassan al-Lawzi should be "questioned on the reasons for the seizure of the transmission equipment of Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya," Abdul Razek al-Hajari told a meeting in Sanaa.

Air France's insurance company Axa on Friday said it will appeal a Brazilian court ruling ordering the French carrier to pay compensation to the family of a victim in a major jet crash in 2009. "We will appeal this decision. This ruling cannot constitute a precedent," French insurer Axa said in a statement, adding that the Brazilian judgment did not meet certain criteria for receiving compensation.

Ten people were injured when a Nigerian Air Force plane overshot the runway at Port Harcourt airport, a senior official said Saturday. "The plane with 47 passengers and five crew was carrying out an emergency response exercise flight from Abuja when it skidded off the runaway and rammed into the bush yesterday (Friday)," the official of Federal Airport Authority of Nigeria told AFP.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy described recent rumours about his private life as "ravings" Friday, saying he had no time to waste on them. Sarkozy was asked about the rumours, which started on the Internet and have appeared in the mainstream British media, after talks with British Prime Minister Gordon Brown in London.

A British picture agency on has apologised to Prince William's girlfriend Kate Middleton and agreed to pay compensation for invading her privacy, it said. A photographer not employed by Rex Features took pictures of Middleton during a holiday with her family at Christmas, the agency said in a statement on its website.

Yemeni authorities have seized the transmission gear of Arab satellite news channels over their coverage of deadly unrest in the south of the country. "The SNG (satellite news gathering) equipment used by the Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya channels without being declared to the information ministry has been seized," the ministry said late on Thursday.