US advises carriers to comply with China’s air zone

US advises carriers to comply with China’s air zone

BEIJING

The United States advised U.S. carriers to comply with China’s demand that it be told of any flights passing through its new maritime air defense zone over the East China Sea, an area where Beijing said it launched two fighter planes to investigate a dozen American and Japanese reconnaissance and military flights.

It was the first time since proclaiming the zone Nov. 23 that China said it sent planes there on the same day as foreign military flights, although it said it merely identified the foreign planes and took no further action.

Lawyer: Suspect ingested Ajax

SANTA ANA, Calif.

A California man who was awaiting trial on murder charges in the deaths of six people, including four homeless men, died after ingesting Ajax in his jail cell, his lawyer said Friday.

Itzcoatl Ocampo, 25, apparently accumulated the cleaning product over time while in custody, said his attorney, Michael Molfetta, who was briefed on the death. The incident raises serious questions about how well Orange County jail deputies were supervising Ocampo, who had mental- health issues, Molfetta said.

Ocampo, a former Marine, was found shaking and vomiting in his single-man cell Wednesday and taken to a hospital where he was pronounced dead Thursday afternoon, said Orange County sheriff’s Lt. Jeff Hallock.

18 kidnapped in Iraq found dead

BAGHDAD

Men dressed as Iraqi soldiers abducted 18 Sunnis, whose bullet-ridden corpses turned up in farmland just south of Baghdad, authorities said Friday, a grim reminder of the worst days of sectarian killings that plagued the country after the U.S. invasion.

Police said officers later discovered the beheaded corpses of three men in Baghdad’s eastern suburbs, their hands tied behind their backs, part of attacks that killed 25 others Friday. The apparently targeted killings come after similar killings earlier this week, raising fears that the country, already embroiled in months of rising violence, could see the return of Shiite and Sunni Muslim death squads roaming the streets.

Child-abuse failures put Ariz. governor in the spotlight

PHOENIX

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer could be politically damaged by revelations that her administration ignored thousands of child-abuse and neglect reports that prompted calls for her to replace her hand-picked leader of the state’s social-services agency.

While Brewer has made reforming Child Protective Services one of her top priorities in the past several years, critics of the Republican governor say the failures show her administration continues to shortchange kids.

Brewer is so far rejecting calls to replace the agency’s leader, and supporters say the governor ensured the botched cases were made public and has called for accountability.

Clarence Carter, director of the Department of Economic Security, which oversees CPS, revealed last week that more than 6,000 reports generated by the state’s child-abuse hot line hadn’t been investigated since 2009, most in the past 20 months.

Associated Press