Weekly news digest: Wales

If you are just back from a week's break, BBC News Online brings you up-to-date with some of the headlines from Wales while you were away.

An investigation was launched on Monday to try and discover how three tyres burst on a plane as it landed at Cardiff International Airport.

Emergency procedures were launched after the My Travel aircraft touched down just after midnight. More than 160 holidaymakers were on board the aeroplane, returning from Tenerife, but no-one was injured.

Sweltering temperatures on Tuesday meant half the trains between south Wales and London had to be cancelled, leaving commuters in chaos.

The plane was returning from the Canarian island of Tenerife

Rail companies - worried that tracks might buckle in temperatures of up to 33C - imposed speed restrictions on some lines, but took other trains out of service.

Relatives of a holidaymaker killed by a bin truck on the Greek island of Rhodes insisted on Wednesday that he was not involved in a prank that went wrong.

Greek authorities had said they were investigating witness reports that Matthew Benney, 29, from Dunvant, near Swansea, may have ran under the truck for a bet.

Also on Wednesday, an inquest opened into the death of Pc Andrew James, from Caerphilly, who was hit by a car while chasing a suspected burglar.

Dyfed-Powys Police revealed on Thursday they would be sending Welsh detectives to join Thai police in a renewed attempt to track down the murderer of backpacker Kirsty Jones.

The 23-year-old from Tredomen, near Brecon, mid Wales, was three months into a two-year trip around the world when she was raped and murdered in the Aree guesthouse in Chaing Mai, in northern Thailand, in August 2000.

Officers from Brecon have been asked to interview a number of key witnesses in Britain. International crime agency Interpol will carry out a worldwide search of DNA databases.

Kirsty Jones was on a lone backpacking trip

On Friday, Plaid Cymru presidency hopeful Dafydd Iwan faced calls to step down from the leadership race following comments made about incomers to Wales.

Mr Iwan, the current Plaid vice-president, said in a speech at the National Eisteddfod that people were leaving England for Wales to escape Indian and Pakistani immigrants who had settled there.

His comments provoked a furious reaction from political opponents, but he insisted his comments had not been racist, but had been highlighting the problem of racism.

On Saturday it emerged that a party of British schoolchildren was robbed at gunpoint by bandits while on a mountain expedition in Peru.

The nine pupils, aged between 16 and 18 and from the Bishop of Llandaff High School in Cardiff and a school in Berkshire - were trekking with two teachers and an expedition leader when the bandits struck.

The teenagers decided to stay in the South American country and complete their holiday, despite their ordeal.

A memorial service was held on Sunday to remember three air cadets killed in a helicopter crash in north Wales 10 years ago.

Mark Oakden, Amanda Whitehead and Chris Bailey from East Lancashire - all Air Training Corps cadets - were in an RAF Valley helicopter when it plunged into Llyn Padarn in Llanberis in 1993.

Memorial plaques placed at the lakeside after the tragedy have been restored and were rededicated in the service.

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