Mountain rescue helped by Twitter

LONDON - A mountain rescue in the Swiss Alps that played out over the blogging website Twitter has ended with a missing British snowboarder found dead.

Swiss police say the 29-year-old's corpse was found in a stream at the foot of a cliff late on Monday near Verbier. The Swiss ski resort near the French border is popular with British tourists.

British media identified the man as Rob Williams and said he had been travelling with an Irish friend, Jason Tavaria, when they were separated from their group in bad weather.

They say their friends launched an online rescue effort and kept each other up to date over Twitter. An appeal to internet users reportedly drew the number for Tavaria's iPhone, whose GPS function helped rescuers.

Tavaria was found unscathed nearby.

- AP