Midday Roundup: Terror suspect extradited to France 'ready to talk'

Terror talk. Salah Abdeslam, the terror suspect captured in Belgium last month, has been transferred to France, where he eventually will stand trial on charges related to his role in the Nov. 13 attacks that killed 130 in Paris. Abdeslam’s lawyer said the 26-year-old is ready to talk and described him as “falling apart.” He wants to tell investigators about his role in the attacks and “he wants to explain his route to radicalization,” attorney Frank Berton said. Islamic State claimed responsibility for the Paris attack and the one in Brussels just days after Abdeslam’s arrest. After the Paris attack, Abdeslam returned to Belgium, but French investigators found a suicide belt with his fingerprints, linking him to the attack. It’s not yet clear what role he might have played.

Nasty weather. Severe storms that rolled through the central United States last night spawned at least five tornados and baseball-sized hail. According to the National Weather Service, twisters were confirmed in Texas, Indiana, Kansas, and Missouri, with another one possibly spotted in Oklahoma. During the height of the storm, meteorologists recorded 11,000 lightning strikes between Kansas City and Dallas. Officials received more than 180 reports of hail-related damage. One person reportedly died in the storms, a Houston woman who was killed when a tree crashed into her house.

iPhone fight. The family of one of the teen boys who disappeared while fishing off the coast of Florida last year has dropped a lawsuit against the other boy’s parents. Perry Cohen and Austin Stephanos vanished in July after their small boat capsized in a severe storm. The Coast Guard located the boat a few days after the accident but was unable to retrieve it. Last month, a Norwegian cargo ship captain spotted the vessel off the coat of Bermuda. Inside a tackle box, salvage crews found Stephanos’ iPhone. The Cohen family filed suit in an attempt to prevent officials from releasing the phone to the Stephanos family without first attempting to retrieve its data. But in a statement issued yesterday, Cohen’s parents said they were confident the Stephanos family would share any information gleaned from the phone. Apple has reportedly agreed to help try to salvage the data from the phone, which has been submerged for eight months.

Doctor strike. Britain’s junior physicians are walking picket lines outside hospitals this week. It’s the first all-out strike in the 70-year history of the U.K.’s National Health Service (NHS). Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt said the strikers, doctors with 10 years of experience or less, are protesting the government’s plan to expand NHS care on weekends. The current government proposal seeks to increase pay for Saturday night and Sundays, but the two sides are deadlocked over Saturday pay. Hunt accused the junior doctors of endangering patients needing emergency care. But Shiv Galati, one of the thousands of doctors on strike, said his colleagues would much rather be caring for patients than carrying signs. “It hasn’t been an easy decision up until today,” he said. “And I think that hopefully Jeremy Hunt listens.”

Still a mystery. Police in Piketon, Ohio, are still not releasing much information about last week’s horrific murder of eight members of one family. Pike County Sheriff Charles Reader said his deputies are working “around the clock” to follow leads and tips and conduct interviews. One or more killers remain at large after shooting five men and three women on Friday at four separate locations. The coroner’s office revealed on Tuesday that most of the victims were shot multiple times. One had as many as nine gunshot wounds. Some other details have leaked out—police found commercial-sized plots of marijuana growing on the Rhoden family property and individually caged roosters—a sign of illegal cockfighting often associated with drug operations.

WORLD Radio’s Kristen Eicher and Jim Henry contributed to this report.