Russia's leader apologises over the downing of an Azerbaijani plane in Russian airspace - without directly taking blame.

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Saturday that Russia’s air defense systems were active when an Azerbaijan Airlines flight attempted to land in Grozny, Chechnya on Wednesday.

The Kremlin has said that the Russian president "apologized for the tragic incident" and expressed his "deep and sincere condolences" to the victims' families.

An aircraft carrying 181 people has crashed at an airport in South Korea, killing at least 28 people, the Yonhap news agency reports. The aircraft drove off a runway and crashed into a wall at Muan International Airport in the south west of the country, the South Korean news agency reports.

An airliner veered off the runway and erupted into a fireball as it slammed into a wall at South Korea's Muan International Airport on Sunday.

The passenger-flight accident occurred during landing as the aircraft veered off a runway and collided with a fence.

A man is dead and two other men are injured after a head-on crash in Stanislaus County Thursday evening, the California Highway Patrol said.

One person has been killed and three others critically injured in a head-on crash on Rochester Road in Leonard, north of Oakland Township.