Midday Roundup: Al-Qaeda claims it ordered Paris attacks

Responsible? The leader of Yemen’s al-Qaeda branch claimed responsibility for last week’s attack on the French satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo, reinforcing statements made by brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi after they killed 12 people at the newspaper’s offices. But Nasr al-Ansi offered no evidence to support his claim, raising questions about its validity. If Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula did orchestrate and finance the attack in Paris, it would mark the first time the group has managed to perpetrate terror outside Yemen. Al-Ansi did not claim to have ordered the simultaneous attack on a kosher market, perpetrated by one of the brother’s friends, Amedy Coulibaly. In a video released after French security forces killed him, Coulibaly claimed affiliation with ISIS, an al-Qaeda rival. Al-Ansi praised the market attack, in which four people died, but called the timing of the two a coincidence. Even so, he called for unity among jihadi groups in their battle against the West.

Grisly scene. Ten people died and five were critically injured in a prison bus crash in West Texas today. The bus was driving on Interstate 20 from Abilene, Texas, to El Paso when it drove off an icy overpass, landed on railroad tracks, was hit by a train, according to local news reports. Twelve prisoners and several guards were on the bus when it crashed; two of the dead were corrections officers.

Grim discovery. Search teams have found the fuselage of AirAsia Flight 8501, which went down in the Java Sea just after Christmas. Forty-eight bodies have been recovered so far, but experts believe many more of the 162 people who died in the crash will be found in the newly located wreckage. Officials aboard the Singapore Armed Forces ship that found the fuselage said it has part of a wing still attached and is almost 100 feet long. It settled on the bottom of the ocean floor about 2 miles from where search teams found the plane’s tail section. Crews already have recovered the plane’s black boxes, which officials hope will reveal more about what brought the plane down in storm weather just off the Indonesian coast.

No delay. The trial of accused Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev will continue as planned after a judge declined his lawyers’ request for a delay because of last week’s terror attacks in France. The attorneys claimed news about the attacks made it even harder to select an impartial jury. They previously attempted to move the trial out of Boston for the same reason. Jury selection began last week with 1,350 people filling out questionnaires. Tomorrow, those who made it past the first round of cuts will be back in court for more questioning. U.S. District Judge George O’Toole said reviewing the questionnaires has only reinforced his belief that Tsarnaev can get a fair trial in Boston.

False alarm? The American astronauts at the International Space Station had to evacuate their module and take refuge with their Russian counterparts early this morning when an alarm indicating a possible ammonia leak startled them awake at about 4 a.m. Technicians with the Johnson Space Center in Houston say the alarm might have been caused by a faulty sensor, but are keeping the astronauts out of the module for now. NASA has two astronauts aboard the station: Barry Wilmore and Terry Virts. The rest of the crew is made up of three Russian cosmonauts and one astronaut from the European Space Agency.

Survival at sea. A former NFL player told a miraculous story of survival yesterday, four days after he fell off his boat and swam 16 hours to shore. Rob Konrad, who was a fullback for the Miami Dolphins between 1999 and 2004, was fishing about 9 miles from Palm Beach, Fla., when a wave knocked him off his 31-foot boat. With the autopilot engaged, it kept going, leaving Konrad alone, with no life jacket. He said he knew he was in real trouble and decided he had to try to reach shore. Endurance swimmer Diana Nyad called Konrad’s story “incredible.” She attributed a lifetime of athleticism to helping him survive. With his wife at his side, Konrad said when he wanted to give up, he thought of his daughters, ages 8 and 10.