Fugitive linked to Jakarta blasts

Tributes are left for those killed in the hotel attacks

Indonesian officials say there are “strong indications” a key wanted fugitive was behind Friday’s deadly attacks on two hotels in Jakarta.

Noordin Mohamed Top is wanted for plotting the Bali bombings of 2002 and 2005 and other Indonesian attacks.

Nine people, including two suicide bombers, died in the attacks on the Ritz-Carlton and JW Marriott.

At least four of Friday’s victims are said to be foreigners but have not all been formally identified.

Police in the Indonesian capital are studying DNA and other evidence to try to identify those behind the attacks.

The anti-terror chief, Ansyaad Mbai, has told the News he believes there are strong indications that Noordin was the mastermind behind the blasts.

NOORDIN MOHAMED TOP Born in Malaysia, fled to Indonesia after 9/11 Wanted for planning bombings on Bali in 2002 and 2005 and other attacks Said to have split from Jemaah Islamiah over strategy disagreements and set up new group Main accomplice Azahari Husin killed by police in 2005 Escaped police raid in 2006 and continues to evade capture

Noordin was said to be a key financier for the Jemaah Islamiah militant group but is now thought to have set up his own splinter group.

Jemaah Islamiah has links to al-Qaeda and has a long track record of bomb attacks in Indonesia including the 2002 Bali bombings, which killed more than 200 people.

Friday’s bombs contained nails, ball bearings and bolts, identical to ones used by Jemaah Islamiah, police said.

Mr Mbai said he believed the aim of the attacks was to embarrass Indonesia’s government at a time when the country was enjoying a greater degree of stability than it had in the past.

The Indonesian people have been truly shocked by these attacks as they thought they had put events like this behind them.

Investigators on Friday recovered an unexploded bomb and other explosives material from what they said was the “control centre” for the attacks – room 1808 in the Marriott.

The attackers paid to stay at the hotel and smuggled in the explosives before detonating them in two restaurants on Friday.

CCTV footage showed one attacker wearing a cap pulling a bag on wheels into the Marriott restaurant, followed by a flash and smoke.

Security has been tightened across Indonesia in the wake of the attacks, with 500 troops put on standby to support police in the capital.

‘Shoulder to shoulder’

A New Zealander, businessman Tim Mackay, has been confirmed killed.

I strongly condemn the attacks that occurred… in Jakarta and extend my deepest condolences to all of the victims and their loved ones Barack Obama

Indonesian police say Australians Nathan Verity and Garth McEvoy also died.

Their countryman, diplomat Craig Senger, was at the same breakfast meeting. He is missing and feared dead.

A health ministry report said a Singaporean and an Indonesian were also confirmed dead.

At least 17 foreigners were among the wounded, including eight Americans.

Other foreign nationals wounded included visitors from Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, India, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, South Korea and the UK.

President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono condemned the attacks as “cruel and inhuman”.

US President Barack Obama said: “I strongly condemn the attacks that occurred… in Jakarta and extend my deepest condolences to all of the victims and their loved ones.”

Australian Foreign Minister Stephen Smith is due to arrive in Jakarta on Saturday.

He said he wanted to stand “shoulder to shoulder with Indonesia at this terrible time”.

The Manchester United football team had been booked to stay in the Ritz-Carlton next week ahead of a game in Jakarta.

The team has cancelled the Indonesian leg of their tour.

The attacks come just weeks after the peaceful presidential elections.

The country of 240 million people has been praised in recent years for maintaining a pluralist democracy while finding and punishing radical Islamists responsible for the series of bombings more than five years ago.

Americans seek their African roots

Oprah Winfrey originally thought her ancestors were Zulu

First it was Oprah Winfrey’s wistful reach for the continent, now other prominent African Americans are finding their roots.

In 2005 Oprah Winfrey underwent DNA testing in an effort to determine the genetic make-up of her body’s cells.

The popular American talk show host wanted to know where her ancestors, taken as slaves to the United States, had come from.

Famous genes

Since then thousands of other African Americans have followed suit, many of them household names in the US.

Comedian Chris Rock discovered that he was descended from the Udeme people of northern Cameroon.

Chris Rock is descended from the Udeme people of northern Cameroon

LeVar Burton, an actor who played the slave Kunta Kinte in the TV drama Roots, linked himself up genetically with the Hausa in Nigeria.

Civil rights leader Andrew Young traced his lineage to the Mende people of Sierra Leone and is also believed to be a distant relative of one of the leaders of the 1839 Amistad slave ship mutiny.

DNA testing has also resulted in some African Americans being bestowed with honorary African titles.

The Oscar-winning actor Forest Whitaker, who portrayed the Ugandan dictator Idi Amin, was made an honorary chief of Igboland in south-eastern Nigeria.

He was given the title of Nwannedinambar of Nkwerre which means “brother in a foreign land”, during a visit to Nigeria in April.

Getting results

There are more than two dozen genealogy organisations in the US selling genetic ancestry tests but African Ancestry is the only black-owned firm.

It is also the first to cater specifically to African Americans. Of the half a million Americans who have purchased DNA tests, around 35,000 of them are African American.

African Ancestry charges $349 to test either a person’s maternal or paternal lineage.

Once the fee is paid, swabs used to collect a DNA sample from the inside of the cheek are sent to the customer and then back to African Ancestry’s laboratory.

We did not talk about where we came from when I was growing up Lyndra Marshall

The DNA’s genetic sequence is extracted and compared to others in the firm’s database.

The company claims this contains 25,000 samples from 30 countries and 200 ethnic groups, and is the largest collection of African lineages in the world.

African Ancestry say that they are very precise in tracing where a person’s ancestors originate from.

Once this is known, a “results package” is sent out, including a print-out of a person’s DNA sequence, a certificate of ancestry and a map of Africa.

“It’s a kind of welcome to Africa package,” said Ghanaian-born Ofori Anor, editor of the African expatriate magazine, Asante.

Transformation

Gina Paige, a founder of African Ancestry, wants to transform the way people view themselves and the way they view Africa.

When many African Americans visited Africa in the past, they were interested mostly in kente cloths and masks, nowadays they want to know more about the country they are visiting.

The company has been accused by critics of being inaccurate

Although they still visit the slave castles, they are now also interested in the price of property.

Purchasing a townhouse in the Ghanaian capital Accra or a commercial property in Sierra Leone’s Freetown feels less implausible.

“What we need now is for people to get deeply involved in one particular country or region or culture,” said Andrew Young, the civil rights leader whose consulting firm acts as a liaison for American companies wanting to do business in Africa.

There has been a change too in the way Africans see African Americans and claims of kinship that were once viewed with amusement are now embraced.

This is partly due to the emergence of President Barack Obama and because of the role played by African Americans in his historic election.

As a result, African politicians and businessmen want African Americans to lobby in the US on the continent’s behalf.

Traditional African rulers have also been busy handing out honorary chieftaincies to African Americans in the hope it will lead to an increase in investment and a boost in tourism.

With Obama being both African and American, and our president, this has made many of us interested in where we came from Lyndra Marshall

Guinea-Bissau’s Tourism Ministry encouraged comedian Whoopi Goldberg to visit when in 2007, DNA tests showed she was descended from the Papel and Bayote people of the country.

Unfortunately, Goldberg has not taken up the offer as she has a fear of flying and has not been in an aeroplane for 20 years.

Unlike the Hollywood actress, as soon as Lyndra Marshall, a 56-year-old retiree from Maryland near Washington DC discovered her African heritage, she immediately boarded a plane for Ghana’s Ashanti region.

“We did not talk about where we came from when I was growing up,” said Ms Marshall.

Since she found out she was of Ashanti descent, she has been trying to get other people to visit and invest in the country.

Along with DNA technology, Ms Marshall credits President Obama with kindling an interest in Africa.

“With Obama being both African and American, and our president, this has made many of us interested in where we came from, too.”

Getting it right

Although many people are excited about the prospect of tracing their ancestry, critics say the work of America’s genealogy companies is far from accurate.

African Americans just want to be able to say they were once kings and once ruled the world Ofori Anor Editor, Asante magazine

On a visit to South Africa in 2005, Oprah Winfrey said that DNA testing had conclusively revealed where she is from. She thought she was Zulu but subsequent DNA testing showed she was a descendent of the Kpelle people of Liberia.

Professor Deborah Bolnick of the University of Texas is particularly critical of African Ancestry.

She says its database is too small to fulfil its marketing promise that it is “the only company whose tests will place your African ancestry in a present day country or region in Africa”.

“Consumers should know the limitations and complexities before they spend hundreds of dollars thinking they’re going to find an answer to who they really are,” said Professor Bolnick.

“It’s really much more uncertain than the testing companies make out.”

Despite these limitations, African Ancestry customers like Ms Marshall are convinced her results are correct.

“I have lots of family that look very Ghanaian, they are short like them, dark like them and I have a cousin that looks just like the Ashanti king.”

However, comments like this offend the Editor of Asante magazine.

“African Americans just want to be able to say they were once kings and once ruled the world,” said Mr Anor.

He feels that African governments and traditional rulers should stop the practice of granting citizenship and chieftaincies to African Americans.

“Just because your genetics show you came from a place, should that mean you can lay claim to that group of people or place now?”

Atlantic crash bodies identified

Only 50 bodies from the Air France crash have been recovered so far

Officials in Brazil have identified the first 11 of 50 bodies recovered from the Air France disaster in which 228 people died three weeks ago.

The bodies were those of 10 Brazilians and one male foreigner, officials said. They gave no further details.

The Airbus A330 plunged into the Atlantic on 1 June. The data recorders have not been found, and the cause of the crash remains a mystery.

Search teams from several countries are still scanning the search area.

Investigators are examining the bodies and debris at a base set up in the northern Brazilian city of Recife.

Five of the victims were identified as Brazilian men, five as Brazilian women and one as a “foreigner of the male sex”, local officials said on Sunday. The nationality of the foreigner has not been revealed.

DNA samples

Dental records, fingerprints and DNA samples were used to identify the bodies, a statement said.

Families of the Brazilian victims and the embassy in Brazil representing the foreigner’s home country have been notified, the statement added, but the identities will not be publicised in keeping with relatives’ wishes.

Debris from the plane is being brought back to Recife

Speculation about what caused the plane to go down between Rio de Janeiro and Paris has so far focused on the possibility that the airspeed sensors were not working.

The plane is known to have registered inconsistent speed readings just before it crashed in turbulent weather.

The plane’s “black boxes” can emit an electronic tracking signal for about 30 days and French-chartered ships are scouring the search area pulling US Navy underwater listening devices.

A French nuclear submarine is also involved in the search for the recorders, which could be up to 6,100m (20,000ft) deep, on the bed of the Atlantic.

US and Brazilian officials said on Sunday that so far no signals had been picked up.

Remains found in Fossett’s plane

US investigators say they have found what they believe may be human remains amid the wreckage of adventurer Steve Fossett’s plane in eastern California.

The remains, although minimal, are said to be enough to provide a DNA sample for identification testing.

The 63-year-old millionaire disappeared a year ago while on a solo flight from a ranch in neighboring Nevada.

His plane was finally located on Wednesday after a hiker handed items belonging to Mr Fossett to police.

‘Bone fragment’

The wreckage was found during a subsequent aerial search of a remote stretch of the Sierra Nevada mountains west of the town of Mammoth Lakes, at an altitude of around 10,000ft (3,048m).

A ground team flown into the area by helicopter later confirmed the identity of the plane, a single-engine Bellanca Super Decathlon, which officials said seemed to have struck the mountainside head-on.

“It was a hard-impact crash, and he would’ve died instantly,” said Jeff Page, emergency management co-ordinator for Lyon County, Nevada, who assisted in the search.

Most of the fuselage had disintegrated, with engine parts scattered over a debris field stretching about 150ft (46m) by 400ft (122m).

Search teams combing the site found more personal effects and what they described as a bone fragment, measuring 2 inches (5cm) by 1.5 inches (2.5cm).

SOME OF FOSSETT’S RECORDS 1998/2002: Long-distance for solo ballooning 2001/2002: Duration for solo ballooning 2002: First solo round-the-world balloon flight First balloon crossings of Asia, Africa, Europe, South America, South Atlantic, South Pacific, Indian Oceans Seven fastest speed sailing titles 13 World Sailing Speed Record Council titles 2001: Fastest transatlantic sailing 2004: Fastest round-the-world sailing Round-the-world titles for medium airplanes US transcontinental titles for non-military aircraft

“We found human remains, but there’s very little,” said Mark Rosenker, acting chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board. “Given the length of time the wreckage has been out there, it’s not surprising there’s not very much.”

DNA tests would be performed on the material on a lab in California, he said.

Earlier, Madera County Sheriff John Anderson confirmed the find but injected a note of caution. “We don’t know if it’s human. It certainly could be,” he said.

Officials now plan to remove the wreckage of the plane for reassembly and examination, and search for further human remains. But snow is expected over the weekend, which could potentially hamper the investigation.

Steve Fossett became the first person to circle the globe solo in a balloon in 2002 and had about 100 other world records to his name.

He vanished in September 2007 after taking off from a Nevada ranch for a solo flight.

For more than a year there was no trace of him, despite an intensive search.

But on Monday the hiker found identification documents belonging to him in undergrowth about 0.25 miles (0.4km) from the crash site, triggering an aerial search of a new area.

“The uncertainty surrounding my husband’s death over this past year has created a very difficult situation for me,” Mr Fossett’s widow, Peggy, said in a statement. “I hope now to be able to bring to closure a very painful chapter in my life.

“I prefer to think about Steve’s life rather than his death and celebrate his many extraordinary accomplishments.”

British entrepreneur Sir Richard Branson also paid tribute to his friend and fellow adventurer.

“He led an extraordinary, absolutely remarkable life, and now we can remember him for what he was and move on,” he said.

Life for microwave baby killer

Arnold was not in court to hear the sentence

A mother who murdered her one-month-old daughter by burning her to death in a microwave oven has been sentenced to life in prison without parole.

China Arnold, 28, was spared the death penalty when the jury in Dayton, Ohio failed to reach a consensus.

Prosecutors said Arnold, who maintains she is innocent, killed her daughter in 2005 after a fight with her boyfriend.

Judge Mary Wiseman said the crime was “shocking and utterly abhorrent for a civilized society”.

“No adjectives exist to adequately describe this heinous atrocity,” Judge Wiseman said, rejecting a plea by Arnold’s lawyers for a sentence that allowed the possibility of parole after 25 years in prison.

Arnold was not in court to hear her sentence, but followed proceedings by video-link from a side room.

Cell confession

The court had heard that China Arnold had argued with her boyfriend Terrell Talley about whether he was the biological father of baby Paris.

Officials investigating the case said Paris Talley had suffered high-heat internal burns but had no external marks.

Prosecutors said that the baby’s DNA had been found inside the microwave in Arnold’s apartment.

Arnold’s cellmate told the court that she had confessed to putting her daughter in the microwave and switching it on, because she was afraid that her boyfriend would leave her if he discovered that he was not the baby’s father.

The defence team said that there was evidence that somebody else was responsible for Paris Talley’s death, and says the cellmate has now changed her story.

Arnold’s lawyers now want a third trial. The first hearing was declared a mistrial when new witnessed came forward.

Arnold “has faith in the system, she is strong and will continue to fight until her innocence is proven,” said her lawyer Jon Paul Rion.

All Spain crash bodies identified

The plane crashed in a field near Madrid’s airport and burst into flames

All 154 bodies from last week’s plane crash in Madrid have been identified, the Spanish interior ministry says.

It says the bodies – some of them badly burned – are now being returned to grieving relatives for burial.

The Spanair flight from Madrid to the Canary Islands crashed after take-off on 20 August. Only 18 of 172 passengers and crew survived the accident.

An investigation is now under way into the crash – the country’s worst air accident in 25 years.

The MD82 plane veered into a dry river bed just after take-off from Madrid’s Barajas airport. It then broke up and burst into flames, setting light to surrounding vegetation.

Experts had to use DNA analysis, fingerprints and dental information to identify some of the badly burned bodies.

Spanish Interior Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba said last week that was the main reason why the identification process was taking longer than expected.

Investigation

Spanair had considered switching the aircraft at the last minute, a Spanish government minister said earlier this week.

The flight JK 5022 was delayed for about an hour because of a problem with an air temperature gauge.

Sources close to the inquiry, quoted by the newspaper El Pais, have said the plane may have lacked sufficient engine power during take-off.

Video footage showed the plane travelled much further along the runway than normal before getting airborne, the paper reported.

Two bodies found at arson house

Police have revealed that two bodies have been recovered from the burnt-out Shropshire home of a millionaire and his family.

Christopher Foster, 50, his wife Jillian, 49, and daughter Kirstie, 15, who lived at Osbaston House, near Maesbrook, are all missing.

The building was deliberately set alight early on Tuesday, police said.

The remains will be examined by a Home Office pathologist and postmortem examinations will be carried out later.

West Mercia Police said the bodies were found in the main part of the house overnight on Friday, but the search of the property is likely to take some days, possibly several weeks.

It is going to be a painstaking and lengthy process before the full examination of the house and its surrounds is completed Supt Gary Higgins

Police said they were not able to give any further details such as the gender or age of the bodies which were found.

Formal identification would take place in the future and there were a range of techniques which could help, such as dental records and DNA profiles, Supt Gary Higgins said.

He added: “It is going to be a painstaking and lengthy process before the full examination of the house and its surrounds is completed.

“In the meantime, we will keep an open mind concerning what we may, or may not find.”

Mr Higgins said all possible lines of inquiry were being followed up.

Special prayers will be said for the family at a church service on Sunday

Police have retrieved two computers from the house and are examining them as part of their inquiries.

Forensic teams were able to move into the main part of the house by mid-afternoon on Friday after access was delayed by falling debris.

Three horses found dead in a stable block, which was also gutted in the fire, have now been examined and police are awaiting test results.

Detectives also confirmed the bodies of three dogs had been found close to the horses and a large horse box, parked close to the gates of the property, had been removed from the site for forensic examination.

CCTV cameras from the property have also been taken away by police.

Firm in administration

Special prayers will be said for the Foster family at a church service in Maesbrook on Sunday.

The service, at St John’s Church at 1000 BST, will be open to members of the public and the media.

The Fosters had been at a friend’s barbecue on Monday evening before returning home later.

The fire in the house, thought to be valued at £1.2m, started at about 0500 BST on Tuesday.

Mr Foster, who made his fortune developing insulation technology for oil rigs, is listed as the director of Ulva Limited – a thermal insulation manufacturing company in Telford – with Mrs Foster named as company secretary.

The firm went into administration in August last year and a court order was issued in November for the company to be wound up.

A judge later found Mr Foster had spent the previous months stripping Ulva of its assets and transferring them to a new firm he had set up called Ulva International.

Anyone with information has been asked to contact West Mercia Police’s incident room at Shrewsbury or Crimestoppers.