Are sudden turns and descents a standard emergency procedure? First, I'm not looking for speculation on an accident, I just want to know if pilots are trained to make certain maneuvers in response to an emergency.

In reading about the jet that just went down in Egypt, the story stated


  "It turned 90 degrees left and then a 360 degree turn toward the right, dropping from 38,000 to 15,000 feet and then it was lost at about 10,000 feet," Kammenos added.


Assuming the report is accurate, are those maneuvers a standard procedure of some kind? Are pilots trained to maneuver like that in an emergency? If so, in what type of emergency would those maneuvers be useful?
There are no emergency procedures I'm aware of that requires a pilot to turn left 90 degrees and then turn right 360 degrees.

There is a procedure for situations requiring rapid descent for things like medical emergencies and fires.  They consist of a 45 degree banked, full-flap, power-idle descent flown at maximum flap extension speed.  So it is a spiraling-turn descent.

Also, the Cessna 172N checklist instructs the pilot to slip in the opposite direction from a wing fire to keep the flames blown in an outboard direction.