AirAsia: The first bodies from AirAsia 8501 have been returned to Indonesia as recovery teams try to pick up as many as they can before they disappear into the sea. The first two unidentified bodies were carried in coffins marked 001 and 002. The Airbus A320-200 was carrying 137 adult passengers, 17 children and one infant, along with two pilots and five crew.

  The US is sending two ships to help in search and recovery. What looks like large parts of the jet have been spotted on the ocean bottom and searchers are optimistic about locating the jet’s black box to find out why the plane went down.

Blue Flu: New York cops are showing how angry they are with their mayor by refusing to enforce the law. Arrests are down 66 percent and citations for petty offenses and traffic violations are off 90 percent from the same week a year ago. Mayor Bill de Blasio met with police union leaders yesterday to try to massage the situation. But the NY Times says to the cops in an editorial, “Do your jobs. The police are sworn public servants, and refusing to work violates their oath to serve and protect.”

Spin City: Republicans are in spin mode after news broke that the third ranking House Republican once spoke to a political group founded by former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke. Louisiana Representative Steve Scalise delivered a speech in 2002 to the European-American Unity and Rights Organization, an avowed racist and anti-Semitic group.

  Scalise says that as a state representative at the time he delivered a lot of speeches about wasteful spending, corruption, and tax hikes and that he did not endorse EURO’s views. Speaking to them “was a mistake I regret, and I emphatically oppose the divisive racial and religious views groups like these hold,” Scalise said.

  House Speaker John Boehner so far is standing with Scalise.

GitLess: The US has released five prisoners from the Guantanamo Bay prison to freedom in Kazakhstan as President Obama continues trying to empty out the controversial terrorist holding pen. The government didn’t say how the men might be prevented from returning to war in Pakistan and Afghanistan. There are 127 prisoners left in GitMo.

Nation: An Idaho mother was killed yesterday while shopping at Walmart when her two-year-old pulled a concealed gun from her purse and shot her. Veronica Rutledge, 29, was a nuclear research scientist. Rutledge, along with her husband, was a big gun enthusiast with a permit to carry a concealed weapon. The purse she carried with a special compartment for the gun was a Christmas present from her husband.

The Weather Report: A mass of arctic air is plunging  into the plains and western US, bringing temperatures 20 to 40 degrees below normal. In the San Bernardino Mountains outside Los Angeles about 200 cars had to be towed when they became stuck on snowy mountain roads. It’s 15 in Great Falls, 4 degrees in Salt Lake, and 5 in Chicago. It’s a comfortable 28 in New York.

Goodbye 2014: We’d like to thank just a few of the people and stories that made it a great year in the news: Donald T. Sterling, V. Stiviano, Vladimir Putin, Oscar Pistorius, The Interview, Ray Rice, Adrian Peterson, A-Rod, Jameis Winston, Amy Pascal and Sony Pictures, computer hackers, legal marijuana, The Dow Jones, Michael Sam, The CIA, Kim Jong-un, Bill Cosby, Andy Dick, Chris Christie, Bruce Jenner, Jill Abramson, Yingluck Shinawatra, Dov Charney, Warren G. Harding, and White House fence jumpers.

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