Here's what's happening across the United States and around the world today.
Bodies recovered in Indonesian waters where AirAsia plane vanished; weather hampering efforts
PANGKALAN BUN, Indonesia (AP) — Six bloated bodies and debris seen floating in Indonesian waters Tuesday painfully ended the mystery of AirAsia Flight 8501, which crashed into the Java Sea with 162 people aboard and was lost to searchers for more than two days.
The bodies were found about 160 kilometers (100 miles) from land and 10 kilometers (6 miles) from the plane's last known coordinates. The plane vanished Sunday on its way from Surabaya, Indonesia to Singapore after encountering storm clouds.
The six bodies were recovered, swollen but intact, and taken to an Indonesian navy ship, First Adm. Sigit Setiayanta, the Naval Aviation Center commander at the Surabaya air force base, told reporters. The corpses did not have life jackets on.
Search and rescue teams were lowered on ropes from a hovering helicopter to retrieve the corpses, their efforts hindered by 2-meter-high (6-foot) waves and strong winds, National Search and Rescue Director SB Supriyadi told The Associated Press.
The discovery came after several pieces of red, white and black debris were spotted in the Java Sea near Borneo island. AirAsia planes are red and white.
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Stories that affect your life across the U.S. and around the world.
Java Sea searchers looking for signs of missing AirAsia plane face monsoons, murkiness, trash
JAKARTA, Indonesia (AP) — Searchers combing the Java Sea to find and recover debris and bodies from the AirAsia jet that crashed there have the advantage of working in much shallower waters than those found in the open ocean, but also face challenges that include monsoons, murkiness and trash.
Flight 8501 crashed Sunday morning with 162 people on board while flying from Indonesia to Singapore. Searchers on Tuesday found bodies and debris floating off Borneo island believed to be from the plane.
Erik van Sebille, an oceanographer at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, said the Java Sea is 100 times shallower than the remote stretch of Indian Ocean where searchers are still looking for another missing plane, Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.
"It makes the search much simpler," he said.
Mostly enclosed by islands from the Indonesia archipelago, the Java Sea has average depths of about 40 to 50 meters (131 to 164 feet). Van Sebille said it's shallow enough that if conditions were perfect, searchers could probably spot any large pieces of debris on the ocean floor using only their eyesight.
The quick growth of Asian airlines creates challenge: how to safely train enough jet pilots
NEW YORK (AP) — Every week, a combined total of 28 new planes roll off the assembly lines at Airbus, Boeing, Bombardier and Embraer factories — the fastest production rate in the history of commercial aviation. Most of those aircraft feed the insatiable demand in Asia.
The rapid growth of Asian airlines is helping bolster economies and change lifestyles, but it's also creating a daunting safety challenge as more passengers head into an increasingly crowded airspace.
Much of the boom has been driven by the surge in popularity of Southeast Asia's budget carriers, such as AirAsia, whose Flight 8501 disappeared Sunday morning, 42 minutes after it took off from Surabaya, Indonesia, on its way to Singapore. It is still unclear what happened to the plane, but the aviation disaster has put a new spotlight on the obstacles that lie ahead for the booming region.
As Southeast Asia's economies grow, creating a burgeoning middle class, more people have the appetite to travel and airlines are struggling to ensure that their training and safety standards keep pace with the demand.
There are currently 1,600 aircraft operating in Southeast Asia, Brendan Sobie, analyst at the CAPA Centre for Aviation, a consultancy in Sydney, said by email. "It is the only region in the world with as many aircraft on order as in service," he said. "So the growth seems set to continue."
NY congressman says he'll resign from office Jan. 5 following guilty plea on tax charge
NEW YORK (AP) — A New York congressman who pleaded guilty to tax evasion just days ago has announced he'll resign from office next week because he would not be able to give the job his full attention anymore.
Republican Rep. Michael Grimm issued a statement late Monday saying he will resign effective Jan. 5.
"The events which led to this day did not break my spirit, nor the will of the voters," he said. "However, I do not believe that I can continue to be 100% effective in the next Congress, and therefore, out of respect for the office and the people I so proudly represent, it is time for me to start the next chapter of my life."
Grimm's guilty plea last week to aiding in the filing of a false tax return came after he was re-elected to his Staten Island seat in November, even though he was under indictment.
Following the plea, Grimm said he would stay in Congress as long as he could.
2 Albanian tugboat sailors killed during operation to secure Greek ferry
TIRANA, Albania (AP) — Two Albanian tugboat sailors died Tuesday during operations to secure a Greek ferry adrift for three days since a fire broke out on a car deck, with 10 people killed in the ensuing chaos.
The sailors were apparently hit by a line that they had been trying to attach to the crippled, fire-blackened Norman Atlantic, said Dionis Dulaj, the police spokesman in the Albanian port town of Vlore, closest to where the 186-meter (610-foot) -long ferry has been drifting.
Defense Ministry spokeswoman Edlira Prendi announced the deaths. One man had quickly been confirmed dead while a medical team had worked on the second but could not save him.
A Dutch salvage company, Rotterdam-based Smit Salvage, was overseeing the operations to secure the Norman Atlantic after completion Monday of the rescue of 427 people, including 56 crew. One lifeboat was deployed, but most of those on the ferry were transported by helicopters to safety in an all-night operation amid high winds and pelting rains.
Martijn Schuttevaer, a spokesman for Smit's parent company Royal Boskalis Smit, said one line was connected by early Tuesday and that the priority was to get a heavier tow line connection, aided by the arrival of larger tugs. It was not clear if that was the operation underway when the Albanian sailors were struck.
Putin foe Alexei Navalny found guilty of fraud, receives suspended sentence; brother jailed
MOSCOW (AP) — Alexei Navalny, the anti-corruption campaigner who is a leading foe of Russian President Vladimir Putin, was found guilty of fraud and given a suspended sentence of three and a half years on Tuesday, while his brother was sent to prison.
The verdict was scheduled for next month, but the court session was abruptly moved forward to the day before New Year's Eve, the main holiday in Russia, leading to speculation that authorities wanted to head off protests. More than 30,000 had previously signed up on Facebook to rally outside the Kremlin to protest what they called an unlawful trial.
Navalny and his younger brother Oleg were convicted of defrauding a French cosmetics company and given the same sentence as each other, but Oleg's was not suspended. The court also fined each of them 500,000 rubles (about $8,800) and ordered them to pay some 4 million rubles ($77,000) in damages.
Oleg Navalny, the father of two small children and a former executive of the state-owned postal service, has never played a role in the Russian opposition movement and his imprisonment could echo the Soviet-era practice of punishing the relatives of inconvenient people.
"Aren't you ashamed of what you're doing? You want to punish me even harder?" Alexei Navalny shouted out as Judge Yelena Korobchenko handed down the sentence for his brother.
After AirAsia tragedy, what's the status of the search for the other missing jet — Flight 370?
SYDNEY (AP) — As hundreds of search crews frantically scour the waters off Indonesia, where AirAsia Flight 8501 went down, a couple of ships a few thousand kilometers (miles) to the south are quietly combing another patch of ocean for perhaps the most infamous missing plane of all time — Malaysia Airlines Flight 370.
Nearly 10 months after the Malaysian aircraft vanished on a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing, not a single trace of it has been found, despite a massive, Australian-led search effort in the remote waters of the southern Indian Ocean.
While it's not yet clear what happened to either plane, Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott warned against drawing comparisons, saying: "This is not a mystery like the MH370 disappearance ... it's an aircraft that was flying a regular route on a regular schedule, it struck what appears to have been horrific weather and it's downed."
Still, the latest disaster has focused attention once again on the frustratingly fruitless hunt for Flight 370.
IRS to start collecting fines for not having health insurance; penalties to increase in 2015
WASHINGTON (AP) — The cost of being uninsured in America is going up significantly next year for millions of people.
It's the first year all taxpayers have to report to the Internal Revenue Service whether they had health insurance for the previous year, as required under President Barack Obama's law. Those who were uninsured face fines, unless they qualify for one of about 30 exemptions, most of which involve financial hardships.
Dayna Dayson of Phoenix estimates that she'll have to pay the tax man $290 when she files her federal return. Dayson, who's in her early 30s, works in marketing and doesn't have a lot left over each month after housing, transportation and other fixed costs. She'd like health insurance but she couldn't afford it in 2014, as required by the law.
"It's touted as this amazing thing, but right now, for me, it doesn't fit into my budget," she said.
Ryan Moon of Des Moines, Iowa, graduated from college in 2013 with a bachelor's degree in political science and is still hunting for a permanent job with benefits. He expects to pay a fine of $95. A supporter of the health care law, he feels conflicted about its insurance mandate and fines.
Luise Rainer, star of cinema's golden era who first won consecutive acting Oscars, dead at 104
LONDON (AP) — Luise Rainer, a star of cinema's golden era who won back-to-back Oscars but then walked away from a glittering Hollywood career, has died. She was 104.
Rainer, whose roles ranged from the 1930s German stage to television's "The Love Boat," died Tuesday at her home in London from pneumonia, said her only daughter, Francesca Knittel-Bowyer.
"She was bigger than life and can charm the birds out of the trees," Knittel-Bowyer said. "If you saw her, you'd never forget her."
The big-eyed, apple-cheeked Rainer gained Hollywood immortality by becoming the first person to win an acting Academy Award in consecutive years, taking the best actress prize for "The Great Ziegfeld" in 1936 in and "The Good Earth" in 1937.
It's a feat since achieved by only four other actors.
New York City mayor gets some boos, turned backs at police graduation, amid tensions
NEW YORK (AP) — New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio received some boos and heckles Monday at a police graduation ceremony, the latest chapter in his tension-filled relationship with the nation's largest police force.
The rift between de Blasio and much of the rank and file has grown considerably in recent weeks, and the leaders of the police union have blamed the mayor for fostering an anti-NYPD atmosphere they believe contributed to the ambush slayings of two officers earlier this month.
Twice in a week — including at the funeral for one of the officers — some officers turned their backs to de Blasio, adding an air of acrimony to the normally celebratory graduation ceremonies, which were held Monday morning at Madison Square Garden.
The 884 new police officers sat stoically in their seats when de Blasio was introduced to speak and many in the audience tepidly cheered. But boos could be heard from some in the crowd in the seats reserved for cadets' family and friends.
About a dozen or so people in the stands stood with their backs turned to de Blasio, emulating the searing pose of disrespect that hundreds of officers struck at Officer Rafael Ramos' funeral on Saturday. Some appeared to be in uniform but it was unclear if they were members of the New York Police Department.
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