In brief: Airlines replacing suspect speed monitors

Recife, Brazil – Airlines moved quickly Tuesday to replace speed monitors like those suspected of feeding false information to the computers on Air France Flight 447 and possibly leading the plane to break up over the Atlantic Ocean.

Seventeen more bodies were pulled from the sea Tuesday, bringing the number recovered to 41. Another 187 have yet to be found. The remains will be flown to this coastal city today for identification.

Federal police began visiting families in Rio de Janeiro to collect genetic material – hair, blood, a cheek swab – to help identify the corpses.

Figuring out where the victims were seated and studying their injuries might help explain what brought down Flight 447 as it flew into thunderstorms on May 31.

Investigators have been focusing on the possibility that external speed monitors – called Pitot tubes – iced over and gave false readings to the plane’s computers in a thunderstorm.

Treatment of suspects probed

London – A group of Scotland Yard officers were suspended after “serious allegations” about their behavior during the arrests of five suspects last year, police said Tuesday.

Sky News television, the Daily Mail and the Times of London newspapers reported that six officers were accused of “waterboarding” drug suspects.

A Scotland Yard spokesman for the force refused to comment on the nature of the allegations, the statement acknowledged that they were grave and “do raise real concern.”