World/Nation
Inmate hangs himself after his mandated suicide watch is ignored
NEW YORK - A mentally ill inmate who hanged himself on New Year's Day in a Rikers Island jail cell was supposed to be placed on suicide watch, but it wasn't implemented, two city officials told The Associated Press on Friday.
A jail psychiatrist who saw Fabian Cruz on Wednesday at a clinic ordered that Cruz be transferred to a special observation unit in a different Rikers facility where he'd be placed under constant watch, but Cruz told a guard at the clinic he didn't want to go and was transferred back to his jail cell, the officials said.
Letting Cruz return to his cell was a violation of Department of Correction protocol because inmates don't get to decide where they're housed, said one of the officials, who both spoke on the condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to discuss the ongoing investigation into what happened.
The guard also was supposed to contact a supervising captain after the suicide watch was ordered but didn't, the official said.
Cruz, 35, was discovered Thursday evening and was pronounced dead by a jail doctor. The correction officer at the clinic has been placed on modified duty.
Much of the U.S. approaches the deep freeze next week
WASHINGTON - Much of America is about to get the Arctic shivers.
Meteorologists are confidently forecasting frigid polar air will plunge south into the northern plains, Midwest and then the East Coast from next Tuesday through Thursday. The Midwest should see temperatures well below zero, with single digit lows in much of the East and freezing temperatures as far south as Atlanta, New Orleans and parts of Florida.
National Weather Service meteorologist Paul Kocin, an expert on winter storms, said it is a classic pattern of massive blasts of Arctic air hitting just about everyone east of the Rockies. He said it will rival last year's January Arctic outbreak that introduced the phrase "polar vortex" to America.
"This is going to be a big cold outbreak, pretty windy as well," Kocin said. "It's going to drive all the way down south."
The wind and cold could mean wind-chill factors that will make the temperature feel like 30 degrees below zero - 50 degrees below zero in Minneapolis and Chicago, said meteorologist Ryan Maue of the private Weather Bell Analytics. He called it "old-timer's type of cold."
Powers move closer to nuclear deal, write up elements
VIENNA - Iran and the United States have tentatively agreed on a formula that Washington hopes will reduce Tehran's ability to make nuclear arms by committing it to ship to Russia much of the material needed for such weapons, diplomats said.
In another sign of progress, the two diplomats told The Associated Press that negotiators at the December round of nuclear talks drew for the first time a catalog outlining areas of potential accord and differing approaches to remaining disputes.
The diplomats said differences still dominate ahead of the next round of Iran-six power talks on Jan. 15 in Geneva. But they suggested that even agreement to create a to-do list would have been difficult previously because of wide gaps between the sides.
Iran denies it wants nuclear arms, but it is negotiating with the U.S., Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany on cuts to its atomic program in hope of ending crippling sanctions. The talks have been extended twice due to stubborn disagreements.
The main conflict is over uranium enrichment, which can create both reactor fuel and the fissile core of nuclear arms. In seeking to reduce Iran's bomb-making ability, the U.S. has proposed that Tehran export much of its stockpile of enriched uranium - something the Islamic Republic has long said it would not do.
30 AirAsia crash victims have now been recovered
PANGKALAN BUN, Indonesia - After nearly a week of searching for the victims of AirAsia Flight 8501, rescue teams battling monsoon rains had their most successful day yet, more than tripling the number of bodies pulled from the Java Sea, some still strapped to their seats.
Of the 30 corpses recovered so far, 21 were found on Friday, many of them by a U.S. Navy ship, according to officials.
The Airbus A320 carrying 162 passengers and crew went down Sunday, halfway into a flight from Surabaya, Indonesia's second-largest city, to Singapore. Minutes before losing contact, the pilot told air traffic control he was approaching threatening clouds, but was denied permission to climb to a higher altitude because of heavy air traffic.
It remains unclear what caused the plane to plunge into the sea. The accident was AirAsia's first since it began operations in 2001, quickly becoming one of the region's most popular low-cost carriers.
Indonesian authorities on Friday grounded AirAsia flights from Surabaya to Singapore, with the Transport Ministry saying the airline did not have a permit to fly on Sundays, the day of the crash. AirAsia said it was reviewing the suspension.
Immigrant smugglers now putting ships on autopilot
ROME - Smugglers who bring migrants to Europe by sea appear to have adopted a new, more dangerous tactic: cramming hundreds of them onto a large cargo ship, setting it on an automated course to crash into the coast, and then abandoning the helm.
It happened twice this week in the span of three days, and both episodes could have ended in tragedy if the vessels had not been intercepted at sea.
In the latest such incident, the cargo ship Ezadeen was stopped with about 450 migrants aboard after smugglers sent it speeding toward the coast in rough seas with no one in command. Italian authorities lowered engineers and electricians onto the wave-tossed ship by helicopter to secure it, and the Icelandic Coast Guard towed it to the Italian port of Corigliano late Friday.
Children and pregnant women were among the migrants, most of whom were believed to be from war-ravaged Syria, Italian Coast Guard Cmdr. Filippo Marini said. The Sierra Leone-flagged ship apparently set sail from Turkey, he said.
Some of the migrants, most of them young men, watched wearily from the railings of the ship as they waited to disembark early Saturday.
- The Associated Press