Paris

FRENCH technicians have successfully downloaded the cockpit voice recordings from the EgyptAir plane that crashed into the Mediterranean Sea in May, investigators said on Saturday, raising hopes that the information the recordings contain will soon put an end to the intense speculation about what caused the disaster.

The recordings, along with the contents of the jet's flight data recorder that were salvaged in a laboratory near Paris in the past week, will be returned to Cairo for further analysis, an Egyptian-led crash investigation committee said in a statement.