Whitney Houston died from accidental drowning, but drug abuse and heart disease were also factors, a coroner has ruled today.
Coroner’s spokesman Craig Harvey said drug tests indicated Whitney Houston was a chronic cocaine user.
The announcement ends weeks of speculation over the cause of Whitney Houston’s death.
Whitney Houston cause of death was accidental drowning, but drug abuse and heart disease were also factors
The report also found that Whitney Houston had marijuana, as well as Xanax (anxiety medication), Flexeril (muscle relaxer) and Benadryl (allergy medication) in her system.
A source connected to the investigation told TMZ us it is “very possible” Whitney Houston had a heart attack that caused her to lose consciousness and drown. The heart attack may have been triggered by hardening of the arteries as a result of cocaine use.
Whitney Houston was found unresponsive and underwater in a bathtub at the Beverly Hilton Hotel on February 11, a day before the Grammy Awards, and was pronounced dead at the scene soon afterward.
Coroner officials previously confirmed that prescription pill bottles were found in her room, but the pills were “not in alarming amounts.”
However, investigators found no evidence of cocaine in the hotel room.
A final report is expected to be ready for release within two weeks.
“We are saddened to learn of the toxicology results, although we are glad to now have closure,” Patricia Houston, Whitney’s sister-in-law, said in a statement released to E! News.
Whitney Houston, who had long battled drug addiction, was laid to rest on February 19 at the Fairview Cemetery in Westfield, New Jersey, alongside her father, following a star-studded memorial the day before.
According to reliable sources in Korea, iPhone 5 will have a much bigger 4.6-inch screen and will launch this summer.
The leak, reported in the Maeil Business Newspaper in Korea, would make the new iPhone the same size as its cult Android rival the Galaxy S2.
Korean sources are often reliable indicators of the likely form – and date – for upcoming devices, as Korean plants supply screens and processors for many hi-tech companies, including Apple.
Apple has decided on the bigger 4.6-inch display for its next iPhone and started placing orders to its suppliers, the Maeil Business Newspaper said, quoting an unnamed industry source.
iPhone 5 will have a much bigger screen than iPhone 4S
Its major display suppliers LG Display and Samsung Electronics Co. declined to comment.
Sales of the iPhone, first introduced in 2007 with the touch screen template now adopted by its rivals, account for around half Apple’s total sales.
Samsung, which is also the biggest challenger to Apple in smartphones, uses 4.6-inch OLED display for its flagship Galaxy S II smartphone, introduced in April last year.
The high-definition “Retina” display – containing several times as many pixels within the same area – is used in the latest iPad released earlier this month.
The latest iPhone 4S was introduced in October 2011.
Five more bodies have been found after more than two months since the cruise ship Costa Concordia capsized off the Italian coast.
Italian authorities say the bodies were found outside the ship, in a small space between the wreck and the sea bed.
Altogether 30 bodies have now been found since the vessel ran aground off the island of Giglio on 13 January.
The Costa Concordia was carrying 4,200 passengers and crew when its hull was torn open by rocks.
Civil Protection Agency chief Franco Gabrielli did not give any details on the sex or ages of the latest victims to be found.
Two people remain missing and are presumed dead.
Five more bodies have been found on the capsized cruise ship Costa Concordia
Eight more bodies were found in late February, but forensic authorities are still working on formally identifying them.
A crew member from India and passengers from the US, Italy and Germany are reported to be among those as yet unaccounted for.
The ship’s captain, Francesco Schettino, was accused by prosecutors of causing the accident by steering the Costa Concordia too close to the island’s shore.
Francesco Schettino denies charges of manslaughter, causing a shipwreck and abandoning ship before all those aboard were evacuated.
Salvage experts say they are close to completing the operation to remove all the oil from the ship’s 17 tanks. Work began on 12 February and the team involved said they would stop on Friday night.
Although they said that some fuel remained in the bulkheads of the tanks, the oil involved was in “such small quantities as to pose no significant environment risk”.
The next stage of the salvage operation will involve cleaning up the sea bed and the area around the ship’s hull before work begins to lift the wreck. Removing the Costa Concordia is expected to take up to a year.
Following the fallout from the National Enquirer’s publication of Whitney Houston‘s open casket photo, there’s been quite a bit of speculation as to who leaked the shot.
The most obvious culprit would be the Houstons themselves. There were reports that Whitney Houston was broke by the time she died, and they admitted to selling the footage to the Newark funeral, in part to help Whitney’s daughter Bobbi Kristina.
While Whigham Funeral Home and Whitney Houston’s family adamantly deny any involvement, Bobby Brown has remained silent on the matter.
But The Improper claims that the prime suspect is Tina Brown, Bobby Brown’s sister, who gave an exclusive interview with the National Enquirer that ran in the same issue.
“The tabloid will likely never disclose its source, but it probably paid a pretty penny for the photo. Since it also has a two part interview with Bobby Brown’s sister Tina in the paper as well, she is the prime suspect,”The Improper wrote.
The Improper claims that the prime suspect of leaking Whitney Houston open casket photo to National Enquirer is Tina Brown, Bobby Brown's sister
The interview features the usual quotes about Whitney Houston’s drug use: “I did crack with Whitney!” is the headline – including an admission that Tina Brown was a mooch: “Hey, I was using and she was paying. It was free.”
If Tina Brown did leak the photo, it wouldn’t be the first time. She was also behind the leaked photos in 2006 of Whitney Houston’s bathroom that were sent to The Sun, which showed clearly that the singer had been cooking freebase cocaine – a.k.a., crack – in her bathroom, which is something that many crack users do to ensure the quality of their product, or to avoid the stigma of buying from a crack dealer.
When TMZ cameras caught up with Bobby Brown outside of a lounge in Hollywood, he didn’t answer any questions about the shot, though he did make goofy faces at the cameras once inside his vehicle. Bobby Brown was accompanied by fiancée Alicia Etheridge.
It’s unfair to assume that because Bobby Brown hasn’t talked about the photo that he’s not disturbed by it. Sources have said previously that Bobby Brown is afraid media attention will inhibit his efforts to bond with his and Whitney Houston’s daughter, Bobbi Kristina.
That is, unless Bobby Brown is saving his thoughts for the alleged tell-all book he is rumored to be writing.
Angry Birds Space, the new version of the most downloaded game in history, has been launched on iTunes, Android, PC and Mac.
Angry Birds Space’s launch has been accompanied by a level of fanfare normally only seen around big Hollywood releases – including T-shirts, toys, TV shows on Nickelodeon, a companion book by National Geographic, and a tie-up with Wal-Mart, the world’s biggest retailer.
Angry Birds has been downloaded 700 million times, and parent company Rovio is now estimated to be worth $8.8 billion, just two years after the game first launched.
Wal-Mart, the world’s biggest retailer, will stock limited-edition T-shirts, plush toys and snacks containing clues that unlock bonus levels of Angry Birds Space, which will be available beginning on Thursday in app stores, from where users download software applications.
The iTunes version is priced between $1 and $3 for an HD iPad version. The Android version is available free, supported by in-app adverts.
Peter Vesterbacka, marketing chief of the company behind the world’s most downloaded game said that Rovio, the makers of Angry Birds, sees itself as an entertainment brand, not just a games company.
“We want to make Angry Birds a permanent part of pop culture,” he said, comparing the brand to Nintendo’s Mario and Sanrio’s Hello Kitty. “We’re just getting started.”
Angry Birds Space, the new version of the most downloaded game in history, has been launched on iTunes, Android, PC and Mac
Angry Birds, in which the player uses a slingshot to catapult birds to destroy green pigs hidden in fortresses, has been downloaded more than 700 million times, and is the fastest-growing game on Facebook.
Rovio raised its profile hugely last year by hitching a game to the hit animated movie Rio, made by News Corp’s 20th Century Fox, even burying a clue to the game in the movie studio’s Super Bowl ad.
Rovio’s value has been estimated in recent media reports at up to $8.8 billion, little more than two years after it first released Angry Birds for the iPhone.
“It’s as good a guess as any,” said Peter Vesterbacka, comparing Rovio to Facebook games maker Zynga, which went public in December and has a market value of $9.5 billion.
Rovio has also signed up a top U.S. retailer to put its branded toys, books and T-shirts in dedicated areas of thousands of stores nationwide, timed to coincide with the launch of its new Angry Birds Space game this week.
The company also plans to open branded retail stores in China soon.
Rovio has about 300 staff, up from 50 a year ago, and has had to move out of central Helsinki to new, bigger headquarters next to mobile phone maker Nokia.
Peter Vesterbacka reiterated that Rovio was in no hurry for a public listing. Its last funding round was last year, when it raised $42 million from venture capital firms Accel, Atomico and Felicis Ventures.
He said Rovio had not needed the money and had raised the capital primarily to attract onto its board investors such as Atomico’s founder Niklas Zennstrom, a co-founder of Skype.
“This year we’ll be very busy, like we were last year, with building up the infrastructure,” said Peter Vesterbacka.
A Korean study has found that obesity in later life puts people at higher risk of brain decline.
The study included 250 people aged between 60 and 70 found those with a high body mass index (BMI) and big waists scored more poorly in cognitive tests.
The Alzheimer’s Society said the research, published in the journal Age and Ageing, added to evidence that excess body fat can affect brain function.
Lifestyle changes can help make a difference, it said.
The study looked at the relationship between fat levels and cognitive performance in adults aged 60 or over.
The study included 250 people aged between 60 and 70 found those with a high body mass index (BMI) and big waists scored more poorly in cognitive tests
The participants underwent BMI – a calculation based on a ratio of weight to height – and waist circumference measurements, a scan of fat stored in the abdomen and a mental test.
Both a high BMI and high levels of abdominal fat were linked with poor cognitive performance in adults aged between 60 and 70.
In individuals aged 70 and older, high BMI, waist circumference and abdominal body fat were not associated with low cognitive performance.
The lead author of the study, Dae Hyun Yoon, said: “Our findings have important public health implications. The prevention of obesity, particularly central obesity, might be important for the prevention of cognitive decline or dementia.”
Courtney Love was spotted stumbling around the streets of Manhattan last night after leaving the party of the Salvatore Ferragamo’s launch of their Signorina Fragrance at Palazzo Chupi in New York with the aid of an assistant to prop her up.
Looking worse for wear, it was almost as if Courtney Love, 47, had stepped back in time to her hellraiser days.
Courtney Love says she’s clean these days, but certainly seemed addled by something.
Last night, Courtney Love refused to confound anyone’s expectations with the rapid transformation from red carpet winner to hedonistic casualty.
When Courtney Love arrived at the fashion soiree, she hit all the right notes.
The little leather dress was perfect for her and evoked memories of her strongest role, that of a visceral she-rocker.
Her hair also looked incredibly similar to the ultimate grunge blonde shoulder-length bob she sported in the early 90s’ when she was hugely successful in her own right, and married to the late legendary, Kurt Cobain.
Courtney Love was spotted stumbling around the streets of Manhattan last night after leaving a fashion party in New York with the aid of an assistant
But at Courtney Love’s age, and after her dramas, she should merely pay homage to her rock ‘n’ roll past, and not still be trying to live it.
Worryingly, that’s just what she appeared to be doing last night as she stumbled through the streets of Manhattan last night.
Seeming to need the aid of a friend or assistant, the mother-of-one couldn’t manage to walk alone.
Courtney Love’s right hand was also covered in troubling red marks; possibly from a burn.
She has also expressed an interest in fashion, starting up the blog What Courtney Wore Today and playing with Hole at high-profile fashion shows for design houses like Givenchy.
But the fashion crowd is fickle, and if she becomes an embarrassment it’s likely she’ll be frozen out of that crowd, too.
Rihanna has been spotted making a midnight visit to Ashton Kutcher’s house in Los Angeles on Wednesday.
Rihanna, 24, visited Ashton Kutcher, 34, – who split from wife Demi Moore in November 2011 amidst allegations he had cheated on her – at around 12:00 a.m. on Wednesday (21.03.12), and didn’t leave until four hours later.
The singer arrived with her entourage at Ashton Kutcher’s five-bedroom Los Angeles property in a black 4×4 vehicle.
The purpose of Rihanna’s visit is not known, but Ashton Kutcher is said to be moving out of the rented property soon, as it has reportedly been sold to Justin Bieber for $10 million.
Rihanna has been spotted making a midnight visit to Ashton Kutcher's house in Los Angeles on Wednesday
Ashton Kutcher moved into the $50,000-a-month house a few months ago and reportedly fell in love with the house because it was an ideal “bachelor pad”.
The eight bathroom property comes complete with a floating dining room, infinity swimming pool, hot tub, private screening room and an open sky terrace.
A source said at the time: “Ashton loved this property. It has bachelor pad written all over it. This neighborhood is stunning. It’s a trophy house with a view of all of Los Angeles. It’s totally the type of place a hot, single Hollywood guy would want.”
Whitney Houston was planning to remarry Bobby Brown, after they got back together weeks before the singer’s death, claims author Derrick Handspike.
Whitney Houston had apparently wanted to reunite with her former husband of 14 years.
Author Derrick Handspike – who wrote a book about Bobby Brown – claims the pair got back together just weeks before her death and hoped to remarry with their only child Bobbi Kristina, 19.
Derrick Handspike told The Sun newspaper: “They were planning a small wedding with just their daughter Krissi.”
Derrick Handspike claims that Whitney Houston and Bobby Brown got back together just weeks before her death and hoped to remarry with their only child Bobbi Kristina
Whitney Houston- who dated actor Eddie Murphy in the 80’s – had been in an on-and-off relationship with rapper Ray J for several years following her 2007 divorce from Bobby Brown.
Meanwhile, a rep for Bobbi Kristina Brown has quashed rumors she’s engaged to her “adopted” brother Nick Gordon.
Speculation mounted that Nick Gordon had proposed after Bobbi Kristina Brown was pictured wearing a sparkler on her left-hand ring finger.
However, Bobbi Kristina’s rep said: “Bobbi Kristina is not engaged. She is simply wearing her mother’s ring.”
Nick Gordon was taken in by Whitney Houston 10 years ago after his father was jailed, although she never made her parental status official.
The French police siege in Toulouse has ended with the death of Mohamed Merah, the man suspected of killing seven people, the French interior minister has said.
Police stormed the flat where Mohammed Merah was holed up at 10:30 a.m., after a siege that had lasted 32 hours.
Mohamed Merah, 23, fired at officers and was found dead after jumping from a window.
The self-confessed al-Qaeda militant was suspected of killing four people outside a Jewish school and three soldiers in three separate attacks.
Mohamed Merah said he was acting to “avenge Palestinian children” and protest against French military interventions overseas.
Interior Minister Claude Gueant said officers had thrown grenades and entered by the door and windows of the flat.
After surveying the scene and finding no sign of the suspect, they proceeded to the bathroom, moving slowly as they were wary of booby-traps.
When officers tried to find out if there was anyone in the bathroom, the suspect came out firing several weapons.
Claude Gueant said the suspect was “shooting very violently. The bursts of gunfire were frequent and hard”.
Mohamed Merah then jumped from a window, continuing to fire. He was found dead on the ground.
Mohamed Merah, 23, fired at officers and was found dead after jumping from a window
One police source told AFP that Mohamed Merah had been killed by police as he fled.
Two officers were reported wounded in the final assault.
Claude Gueant said: “A RAID [special police] officer who is used to this kind of thing told me that he had never seen such a violent assault.”
Earlier Claude Gueant had said it was unclear whether Mohamed Merah was still alive, because there had been no contact overnight.
He had said the object had been to take Mohamed Merah alive.
A number of explosions had been set off overnight to intimidate Mohamed Merah, officials said.
They said he was armed with a Kalashnikov high-velocity rifle, a mini-Uzi 9 mm machine pistol, several handguns and possibly grenades.
Street lights were switched off in the vicinity of the building on Wednesday evening and surrounding areas evacuated.
Mohamed Merah claimed to have received al-Qaeda training in Pakistan’s Waziristan area, and also said he had been to Afghanistan.
Claude Gueant defended intelligence services for not preventing the attacks, describing Mohamed Merah as a “lone wolf”.
“The domestic intelligence agency tracks a lot of people who are involved in Islamist radicalism. Expressing ideas… is not enough to bring someone before justice,” Claude Gueant said.
Christian Etelin, a lawyer who has previously acted for Mohamed Merah, said his client had violent tendencies.
“There was his religious engagement, an increasing hatred against the values of a democratic society and a desire to impose what he believes is truth,” Christian Etelin said.
He also denied earlier reports that Mohamed Merah had been jailed for explosives offensives in Afghanistan, saying his client was in jail in France for robbery with violence at the time – from December 2007 to September 2009.
The killings took place in and around Toulouse in three separate incidents earlier this month.
On 11 March, a soldier was shot and killed while waiting to see a man about selling his motorcycle.
Days later, two soldiers were shot and killed and a third was wounded while waiting at a cash machine.
Then earlier this week, three children and an adult were shot and killed outside a Jewish school.
The four Jewish victims were buried in an emotional funeral in Jerusalem on Wednesday.
Also on Wednesday, President Nicolas Sarkozy attended a memorial for the three murdered soldiers at a military base in Montauban near Toulouse.
French police siege in Toulouse has ended with the death of Mohamed Merah, the man suspected of killing seven people, the AFP news agency reports, although there is no official confirmation as yet.
Police had entered the flat where Mohamed Merah was holed up after a siege that lasted more than a day.
Police sources told AFP that three officers had been wounded, one seriously, in the assault.
Mohamed Merah is dead after his Toulouse flat was under siege for more than one day
Mohamed Merah, 23, was suspected of killing seven people in Toulouse in three separate attacks.
Earlier the interior minister had said Mohamed Merah had wanted to die “with weapons in hand” and there had been no contact with him overnight.
The siege of Mohamed Merah suspected of seven killings in Toulouse, southern France, is nearing its end, police sources say.
Three loud explosions were heard from the apartment block in the city of Toulouse at about 10:30 a.m., with reports police are now inside the flat.
The siege of the building where Mohamed Merah, 23, is holed up has lasted more than a day.
Interior Minister Claude Gueant had said Mohamed Merah wanted to die “gun in hand” and there was no contact overnight.
It was not certain he was alive, Claude Gueant said.
Claude Gueant earlier told French radio: “We have one priority: to take him alive so that he can surrender to face justice. We hope he is still alive.”
However, the minister said it was “quite strange that he did not react” to the explosions that were set off overnight to intimidate Mohamed Merah.
“We heard two shots, we don’t know what they were,” Claude Gueant said.
“Despite redoubled efforts throughout the night, there has been no contact with him.”
A number of explosions, beginning late on Wednesday, had prompted deputy mayor Jean-Pierre Havrin to tell local media that “negotiations have finished and the assault has begun”.
The siege of the building where Mohamed Merah, 23, is holed up has lasted more than a day
However, sources from the French interior ministry later said this was only the start of an operation to put pressure on Mohamed Merah.
“[The blasts] were moves to intimidate the gunman, who seems to have changed his mind and does not want to surrender,” interior ministry spokesman Pierre-Henry Brandet told Reuters.
Mohamed Merah had given conflicting messages about surrendering.
Anti-terror chief Francois Molins had said: “He’s explained that he’s not suicidal, he doesn’t have the soul of a martyr and he prefers to kill but to stay alive himself.”
Officials said Mohamed Merah was armed with a Kalashnikov high-velocity rifle, a mini-Uzi 9 mm machine pistol, several handguns and possibly grenades.
Street lights were switched off in the vicinity of the building on Wednesday evening.
The five-storey block of flats has been evacuated, and police also moved residents from nearby buildings.
Police had surrounded Mohamed Merah’s building after two officers were shot at when they tried to get into his flat early on Wednesday morning.
Elsewhere in the city, police are hunting for accomplices and have detained several members of Mohamed Merah’s family.
Francois Molins said on Wednesday that Mohamed Merah had planned to kill again.
“If he’s telling the truth, he would have left his house this morning and he would have once again killed any soldier that he came across,” he said.
Francois Molins said the suspect had expressed no regret for the killings, but had said he wanted to kill more people and “bring France to its knees”.
Mohamed Merah has said he acted to “avenge Palestinian children”.
He claimed to have received al-Qaeda training in Pakistan’s Waziristan area, and also said he had been to Afghanistan.
Claude Gueant defended intelligence services for not preventing the attacks, describing Mohamed Merah as a “lone wolf”.
“The domestic intelligence agency tracks a lot of people who are involved in Islamist radicalism. Expressing ideas… is not enough to bring someone before justice,” Claude Gueant said.
Christian Etelin, a lawyer who has previously acted for Mohamed Merah, said his client had violent tendencies.
“There was his religious engagement, an increasing hatred against the values of a democratic society and a desire to impose what he believes is truth,” Christian Etelin said.
He also denied earlier reports that Mohamed Merah had been jailed for explosives offensives in Afghanistan, saying his client was in jail in France for robbery with violence at the time – from December 2007 to September 2009.
NASA’s Messenger probe has found further tantalizing evidence for the existence of water ice at Mercury’s poles.
Though surface temperatures can soar above 400 C, some craters at Mercury’s poles are permanently in shadow, turning them into so-called cold traps.
Previous work has revealed patches near Mercury’s poles that strongly reflect radar – a characteristic of ice.
Now, the Messenger probe has shown that these “radar-bright” patches line up precisely with the shadowed craters.
Messenger is only the second spacecraft – after Mariner 10 in the 1970’s – to have visited the innermost planet. Until Messenger arrived, large swathes of Mercury’s surface had never been mapped.
The bright patches were detected by ground-based radio telescopes in the 1990s, but as co-author Dr. Nancy Chabot explained: “We’ve never had the imagery available before to see the surface where these radar-bright features are located.”
The researchers superimposed observations of radar bright patches by the Arecibo Observatory on the latest photos of Mercury’s poles taken by the MDIS imaging instrument aboard Messenger.
“MDIS images show that all the radar-bright features near Mercury’s south pole are located in areas of permanent shadow,” said Dr. Nancy Chabot, from Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (JHUAPL).
“Near Mercury’s north pole such deposits are also seen only in shadowed regions, results consistent with the water-ice hypothesis.”
NASA’s Messenger probe has found further tantalizing evidence for the existence of water ice at Mercury's poles
However, Dr. Nancy Chabot cautions, this does not constitute proof, and for many craters, icy deposits would need to be covered by a thin layer (10-20 cm) of insulating debris in order to remain stable.
Maria Zuber, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), who is a co-investigator on the Messenger mission, said: “The most interesting interpretation of [the radar observations] is that they were due to water ice.
“Sulphur had been proposed, there had also been some suggestion it was roughness – though there was no reason craters at the poles should be rougher than those at low latitudes.”
“The new data from Messenger… is strengthening the evidence that there is some sort of volatile there, and water-ice seems quite likely.”
Maria Zuber said information from several instruments on Messenger was currently being analyzed in order to answer the ice conundrum: “I think this is a question that we can come to a definitive answer on, as opposed to <<we think it may be this>>,” the MIT researcher explained.
On Wednesday, scientists from the Messenger mission published findings that Mercury had been geologically active for a long period in its history.
Data from the probe shows that impact craters on the planet’s surface were distorted by some geological process after they formed.
The findings, reported in Science magazine, challenge long-held views about the closest world to the Sun.
Scientists also presented a new model of Mercury’s internal structure, which suggests the planet’s huge inner core is encased in a shell of iron sulphide – a situation not seen on any other planet.
Messenger was launched in 2004, and entered orbit around its target in March last year. NASA recently announced that its mission would be extended until 2013.
Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have discovered a biological clue to male baldness, raising the prospect of a treatment to stop or even reverse thinning hair.
In studies of bald men and laboratory mice, US scientists pinpointed a protein that triggers hair loss.
Drugs that target the pathway are already in development, they report in the journal Science Translational Medicine.
The research could lead to a cream to treat baldness.
Most men start to go bald in middle age, with about 80% of men having some hair loss by the age of 70.
The male sex hormone testosterone plays a key role, as do genetic factors. They cause the hair follicles to shrink, eventually becoming so small that they are invisible, leading to the appearance of baldness.
Now, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have analyzed which genes are switched on when men start to go bald.
Researchers found levels of a key protein called prostaglandin D synthase are elevated in the cells of hair follicles located in bald patches on the scalp, but not in hairy areas
Researchers found levels of a key protein called prostaglandin D synthase are elevated in the cells of hair follicles located in bald patches on the scalp, but not in hairy areas.
Mice bred to have high levels of the protein went completely bald, while transplanted human hairs stopped growing when given the protein.
Prof. George Cotsarelis, of the department of dermatology, who led the research, said: “Essentially we showed that prostaglandin protein was elevated in the bald scalp of men and that it inhibited hair growth. So we identified a target for treating male-pattern baldness.
“The next step would be to screen for compounds that affect this receptor and to also find out whether blocking that receptor would reverse balding or just prevent balding – a question that would take a while to figure out.”
The inhibition of hair growth is triggered when the protein binds to a receptor on the cells of hair follicles, said Prof. George Cotsarelis.
Several known drugs that target this pathway have already been identified, he added, including some that are in clinical trials.
The researchers say there is potential for developing a treatment that can be applied to the scalp to prevent baldness and possibly help hair regrow.
Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt’s children are very unruly, say family insiders, who are also worried about the kids’ health and hygiene.
Sugar binges, screaming tantrums, violent fights, and more; insiders say it’s an absolute zoo with Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie‘s family.
According to a new report in OK! magazine, the couples’ friends say the kids – Maddox, 10, Pax, 8, Zahara, 7, Shiloh, 5, and Knox and Vivienne, 3 – are on the verge of a meltdown.
“There’s not much any of us can do but sit and watch,” a family friend says.
“The kids are all goofed up on sugar, and after Shiloh has five cookies in a row and Maddox downs his third orange Fanta, it’s crazy hour. That’s what we call it: Crazy Hour. Toys fly. Kids melt down into tantrums. There’s fighting, it’s just a zoo.”
Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt’s children are very unruly, say family insiders, who are also worried about the kids’ health and hygiene
Angelina Jolie has called junk food the “family weakness” in the past, but that doesn’t stop her from letting the kids eat whatever they want.
“The kids eat fast food every day, doughnuts for breakfast,” the friend reveals.
“Shiloh’s a sugar addict, screaming when she’s cut off.”
Despite all the sugar, the pal says Angelina Jolie doesn’t enforce teeth brushing.
“Angelina does not insist the kids brush every day or wash hands before meals,” the insider says.
“They bathe whenever they want, which is not often. Brad’s friends say that his kids smell like Johnny Depp.”
The kids’ safety is also a concern to friends.
“The twins are in that stage where they put everything in their mouths,” the insider reveals.
“Brad and Angie don’t always catch them and the worry is that one day they’ll get something really toxic. On top of that, it’s downright gross.”
But most troubling is the violence.
“Angelina lets the boys play with guns, rifles, though they are unloaded and some are just toys,” the friend says.
“Others are real and pricey antiques – they’re the ones the boys use to pretend-kill the staff.”
Angelina Jolie isn’t disturbed by the faux-violence.
“Apparently, Angie actually thinks it’s funny when her kids pretend to shoot people,” the friend says.
“She laughs out loud. A lot of people think she and Brad need to put a stop to it, but that’s not likely to happen.”
The reason Kim Kardashian dumped Kris Humphries after just 72 days of marriage has nothing to do with fame, Andrey Hick, an old friend of Kris’ who is currently in jail, has told Star magazine.
It turns out Kim Kardashian dumped Kris Humphries over money. The reality star, who claims to have built a multi-million dollar empire, reportedly decided Kris Humphries wasn’t rich enough for her.
“Kris told her he wouldn’t be pulling in $20 million a year and that deflated things for her,” Andrey Hick reveals.
“Kim was not going to let it fail once it reached critical mass. Once the engagement happened, she was going to have that wedding and make money from it.”
Kim Kardashian dumped Kris Humphries because he wasn't rich enough for her, claimed Andrey Hick
Andrey Hick says that Kim Kardashian was spending tons of money out of their joint bank account and using it as her own personal piggy bank.
“Whatever was earned by Kim and Kris separately was going to be theirs but any money earned together such as from the wedding would go into the account,” Andrey Hick says.
“We have Kim presenting herself as extraordinarily wealthy but she was borrowing $10,000 here and $10,000 there.”
Andrey Hick goes on to say that Kim Kardashian was worth the same amount as Kris Humphries at the time of their wedding and Kim isn’t as wealthy as she makes herself out to be.
“Her net worth is only $8 million,” Andrey Hick says.
“And $3 million of that is in furniture and clothing. This is a woman who wants at whatever cost, to support her lifestyle.”
Mohammed Merah, the Frenchman suspected of a spate of shootings in the Toulouse area, has not been arrested yet, but police have surrounded his flat and are trying to persuade him to surrender.
According to French prosecutors, Mohammed Merah planned more killings.
Anti-terror chief Francois Molins said suspect Mohammed Merah, 23, of Algerian descent, intended to kill a soldier and two police officers.
Mohammed Merah, who says he was trained by al-Qaeda, is suspected of murdering three soldiers and four Jewish people.
Police have surrounded his flat and are trying to persuade him to surrender. He is said to be heavily armed.
Earlier reports said he had been captured, but officials later rebuffed the claims.
The killings took place in and around Toulouse in three separate incidents earlier this month.
On 11 March, a soldier was shot and killed while waiting to see a man about selling his motorcycle.
Days later, two soldiers were shot and killed, and a third was wounded while waiting at a cash machine.
Then earlier this week, three children and an adult were shot and killed outside Ozar Hatorah Jewish school.
The four Jewish victims were buried in an emotional funeral in Jerusalem earlier.
French police have surrounded Mohammed Merah’s flat and are trying to persuade him to surrender
In a news conference, Francois Molins said Mohammed Merah had planned to kill a soldier later on Wednesday and also had plans to target the police.
Francois Molins said the suspect had expressed no regret for the killings, but had said he wanted to kill more people and “bring France to its knees”.
President Nicolas Sarkozy has attended a memorial at a military base in nearby Montauban for the three murdered soldiers.
Nicolas Sarkozy earlier told Jewish community leaders that the gunmen had been planning more attacks before police had surrounded his apartment block.
Police moved into Mohammed Merah’s block after two officers were shot at when they tried to get into his flat.
Officials say he is heavily armed with a Kalashnikov high-velocity rifle, a mini-Uzi 9 mm machine pistol, several handguns and possibly grenades.
The five-storey block of flats was evacuated earlier, and police were also moving residents of nearby buildings.
Elsewhere in the city, police are hunting for accomplices and have detained several members of his family.
His mother was taken to the scene in the hope that she could persuade him to surrender, but she told police that she had no influence over her son.
Negotiators have been talking to Mohammed Merah all morning, but officials said he appeared to have no particular demands.
The suspect has said he acted to “avenge Palestinian children”.
Mohammed Merah admitted to receiving al-Qaeda training in Pakistan’s Waziristan area, and also said he had been to Afghanistan, prosecutors said.
He had apparently spent time in Pakistan and Afghanistan, where he was jailed for three years for planting bombs.
The prison director in Kandahar, southern Afghanistan, Gulam Farooq, said Mohammed Merah was arrested in 2007, but escaped in a Taliban-led break-out in 2008.
Judith Tebbutt, the British woman kidnapped in Kenya, has been freed in Somalia six months after she was seized and her husband David killed.
Judith Tebbutt, 56, from Bishop’s Stortford, Hertfordshire, was flown to Nairobi after her family paid the pirates a ransom for her release.
The woman said she was “very relieved” and looking forward to seeing her “fantastic” son Oliver.
Judith Tebbutt’s husband David, 58, was shot by a gang of six men at their remote holiday resort in Kiwayu, north of Lamu island, in Kenya.
Social worker Judith Tebbutt, who is believed to be deaf and was wearing a double hearing aid, said: “I’m very relieved to have been released. Seven months is a long time. Under the circumstances, with my husband passing away, it made it harder.
“I’m just happy to be released and I’m looking forward to seeing my son who successfully secured my release. I don’t know how he did it, but he did, which is great.”
Judith Tebbutt said she was still coming to terms with her husband’s death, which she only found out through contact with her son about two weeks after she was kidnapped.
“I feel extremely sad. Very, very sad indeed. He was a good man. That was very unfortunate. Really horrible. But you’ve just got to pick up the pieces…. and move on,” she said.
Judith Tebbutt, the British woman kidnapped in Kenya, has been freed in Somalia six months after she was seized and her husband David killed
Judith Tebbutt landed in Nairobi on Wednesday where she will be looked after by officials from the British embassy before being flown back to the UK to be reunited with friends and relatives.
Prime Minister David Cameron’s spokesman confirmed the release and said the government would provide consular care in Nairobi.
He said it did not pay ransoms and did not “facilitate concessions to hostage takers”, but had met the family regularly to discuss the case.
It is understood Judith Tebbutt’s son Oliver is in the Kenyan city to greet her.
Judith Tebbutt was seized on 11 September last year from Kiwayu Safari Village, a luxury resort on a deserted stretch of Kenyan coastline, comprised of thatched cottages on the beach.
David and Judith Tebbutt had arrived only the previous day and were the only guests.
Judith Tebbutt was taken away in a speedboat by Somali pirates, after her husband had been killed.
It appears that a private security company had secured her release, not British officials.
It was unclear how much money was involved, and revealing the amount was generally discouraged to avoid copy-cat gangs.
Paying the ransom was not illegal because it was not known to be going to a terrorist organization, he added.
The ransom had been paid in the last three days.
Rick Blears of Save Our Seafarers, the global anti-Somali piracy campaign, said that “any move at government level to ban the payment of ransoms to pirates, as US Secretary of State Hilary Clinton proposes, would have a massively detrimental effect and put the lives of hostages at grave risk”.
Police in Kenya said six gunmen had burst into the Tebbutts’ room last September and officers speculated that David Tebbutt may have tried to resist the gang.
David Tebbutt worked for publisher Faber & Faber and sat on the board of the Book Trade Charity, which supports those in the book trade.
David Tebbutt worked for publisher Faber & Faber and sat on the board of the Book Trade Charity
The Kenyan government said at the time of the kidnap that it believed the al-Shabab Islamist group, which has since merged with al-Qaeda, was behind the murder and kidnap. The group denied the allegation.
In October 2011, Kenya sent troops into its neighbor in pursuit of the militants and in support of the weak interim Somali government, which controls only the capital, Mogadishu, and a few other areas.
Rachel Chandler, who was held with her husband Paul for 13 months by pirates in Somalia, said: “My feeling is one of relief and happiness for Judith Tebbutt and her family, that finally she is free.
“I hope she will have an opportunity to pick up the pieces of her life, and deal with the loss she has had.”
EU foreign policy chief Baroness Ashton said she was delighted Judith Tebbutt was finally free and would work hard to fight the “scourge” of piracy and kidnapping in the horn of Africa.
Last year, two men appeared in court in connection with the attack, with both denying the charges.
One of them, Ali Babitu Kololo, told the court he had been forced at gunpoint to lead a group of men to the hotel and had not been a willing accomplice.
El DeBarge was arrested for possession of narcotics in a Los Angeles suburb on Monday afternoon, just one month after he talked to Whitney Houston about their addiction.
According to E! Online, El DeBarge is out on $30,000 bail and awaits an April 9 court date.
It’s a big setback for the singer, who was sentenced to two years in prison in 2008 for possessing crack and drug paraphernalia and violating probation (from a previous drug bust) and had been arrested two other times since 2001.
El DeBarge scotched a comeback tour last year, checking into rehab instead.
El DeBarge was arrested for drug possession, just one month after he talked to Whitney Houston about their addiction
Last month, El DeBarge talked about meeting with his friend Whitney Houston days before her death.
“She was telling me, <<I miss you El>> and we started crying together,” El DeBarge told The Boombox at the Grammys, where he was nominated for Best R&B Album.
“She wanted to talk to me about her addiction, I could tell she did, and we just didn’t get our chance to.
“Drugs are a very strong, outside aggression.
“That’s what it is. It attacks leadership and it just attacks things and it gives you a challenge that you really don’t want to have but you have to be strong and we all have the strength.”
The new iPad, which went on sale last Friday, appears to be 5 C hotter than its predecessor when running, according to Dutch technology website Tweakers.
One disgruntled customer said he was returning his after it reached temperatures of 47 C (117 F) following only ten minutes of use.
Customers have complained that the gadget is “too hot to hold”, particularly when playing games, prompting a spokesman for the U.S. watchdog Consumer Reports to announce it was conducting its own “scientific analysis with thermal imaging”.
Consumer Reports found that the product became “significantly hotter” after playing the popular game Infinity Blade II, with temperatures of 47 C recorded on the device’s front and back.
However, tester Donna Tapellini said the gadget was “not especially uncomfortable if held for a brief period”.
One user of Apple’s official support website said: “I think we all know what we have to do – which is to return the iPad.
“They simply did not do a good enough job with this iPad, maybe next year. They also have so much money now that they are giving it away to the stock holders.
“It was reported that Apple sold over 3 million iPads over the weekend. I hope they all return their iPad forcing Apple to revise and fix this iPad sooner rather than a year from now.”
The new iPad, which went on sale last Friday, appears to be 5 C hotter than its predecessor when running, according to Dutch technology website Tweakers
A spokesman for Apple said the new iPad’s performance was “well within our thermal specifications”, adding that concerned customers should contact the company.
The launch of the iPhone 4 in 2010 was also troubled, with buyers complaining that the handset could not connect to the internet or make calls if held in a certain way.
Tweakers said: “On the left is the new iPad – with a temperature of 33.6 C in the lower right hand corner.
“The iPad 2 scored in the same place a temperature of 28.3 C, a difference of 5.3 C.”
The Dutch bloggers say that their image tallies with complaints on Apple websites.
“Forum messages noted that the location of the processor is a hot spot,” says Tweakers.
“At 33.6 C, the iPhone is not too hot to touch, although the warmer housing is very noticeable.”
On blogs, some iPad owners have even claimed that it goes into “cool down mode” and freezes until it has reached a stable temperature.
The issue seems to be confined to the bottom left hand side, though some people said that the whole left side of the device was too hot.
User Faatty began the discussion by posting: “It gets rather warm/hot after 30 minutes of usage. It has never happened on my iPad 2. Do you think it’s harmless or..?”
Rawwave added that his got “almost too warm to hold whilst malegno” said: “The heat on mine is concentrated on the bottom-left although the whole left side seems to be hotter than the right side.”
In a separate threat on the Apple website user znz212 wrote: “It begins getting warm within about 10 minutes for me, and after about 25 it’s quite hot to touch (not hot enough to burn or anything, but hotter than it feels like it should be).
“I can even feel the heat on the front – the top half of the screen is warmer than the bottom half.
“It cools down very fast (within 5 minutes) when locked or even on the home screen, so I’m not sure if the heat is normal with the new chip.”
Apple has not addressed the problem directly but customers who took their iPad to a store have written that it has been exchanged for a new one with no problems.
This is not the first time that Apple has run into teething problems with its gadgets.
The launch of the iPhone 4 was marred by reports that it would not connect to the Internet if it was held in a certain way.
Apple solved the “grip of death” issue by giving out a free silicone rubber band to put round the phone.
Among the other glitches have a software problem with iPhones and iPod touches which stopped the alarm clocks working until Apple issued an update to sort it out.
The iPad went on sale on March 16 and was widely praised for its 3.1 million pixel 9.7″ Retina display, which is the sharpest out of any tablet computer.
On the official Apple website it says the iPad should stay below 35 C for optimum “operating temperature”.
New evidence suggests that taking a low dose of aspirin every day can prevent and possibly even treat cancer, as the drug appeared not only to reduce the risk of developing many different cancers in the first place, but may also stop cancers spreading around the body.
The three new studies published by The Lancet add to mounting evidence of the drug’s anti-cancer effects.
Many people already take daily aspirin as a heart drug.
But experts warn that there is still not enough proof to recommend it to prevent cancer cases and deaths and warn that the drug can cause dangerous side effects like stomach bleeds.
Prof. Peter Rothwell, from Oxford University, and colleagues, who carried out the latest work, had already linked aspirin with a lower risk of certain cancers, particularly bowel cancer.
But their previous work suggested people needed to take the drug for about 10 years to get any protection.
Now the same experts believe the protective effect occurs much sooner – within three to five years – based on a new analysis of data from 51 trials involving more than 77,000 patients.
And aspirin appears not only to reduce the risk of developing many different cancers in the first place, but may also stop cancers spreading around the body.
The trials were designed to compare aspirin with no treatment for the prevention of heart disease.
But when Prof. Peter Rothwell’s team examined how many of the participants developed and died from cancer, they found this was also related to aspirin use.
Aspirin appears not only to reduce the risk of developing many different cancers in the first place, but may also stop cancers spreading around the body, suggests fresh evidence
Taking a low (75-300 mg) daily dose of the drug appeared to cut the total number of cancer cases by about a quarter after only three years – there were nine cancer cases per 1,000 each year in the aspirin-taking group, compared with 12 per 1,000 for those taking dummy pills.
It also reduced the risk of a cancer death by 15% within five years (and sooner if the dose was higher than 300 mg)
And if patients stayed on aspirin for longer, their cancer death risk went down even further – by 37% after five years.
Low-dose aspirin also appeared to reduce the likelihood that cancers, particularly bowel, would spread (metastasis) to other parts of the body, and by as much as half in some instances.
In absolute numbers, this could mean for every five patients treated with aspirin one metastatic cancer would be prevented, the researchers estimate.
At the same time, aspirin cut the risk of heart attacks and strokes, but it also increased the risk of a major bleed.
However this elevated bleeding risk was only seen in the first few years of aspirin therapy and decreased after that.
Critics point out that some of the doses given in the study were much higher than the 75 mg dose typically given in the UK. Also, some very large US studies looking at aspirin use were not included in the analysis. The researchers acknowledge both of these points in their published papers.
Prof. Peter Rothwell says for most fit and healthy people, the most important things they can do to reduce their lifetime cancer risk is to give up smoking, take exercise and have a healthy diet.
After that aspirin does seem to reduce the risk further – only by a small amount if there is no risk factor, but if there is a family history for something like colorectal cancer, it tips the balance in favor of aspirin, Prof. Peter Rothwell said.
Moondog Coronation Ball, the world’s first rock concert, was staged in Cleveland in 1952 by two men whose passion for music bridged the racial divide in a segregated US.
Jimmy Sutphin was playing poker and drinking beer in a hotel room with some hockey team pals when they heard the commotion outside.
Peering out of the fifth-floor window, they saw thousands of people besieging the indoor arena across the road.
The 20-year-old student and his friends abandoned their card game and piled downstairs to investigate.
It was Friday evening, 21 March 1952, in Cleveland, Ohio, and they were about to witness history being made.
The crowd was angrily demanding entry to a performance featuring a radical new music movement that was about to sweep the nation.
The world’s first ever rock concert – the Moondog Coronation Ball – was about to end in turmoil after it had barely begun.
The years seem to peel away from Jimmy Sutphin, now a 79-year-old grandfather, as he stands outside the former site of the Cleveland Arena, remembering.
“The crowd were screaming, <<let us in>>, and banging on the doors,” Jimmy Sutphin recalls.
“It was chaos.
“Turns out the place was sold out and they had closed the doors on them. And these people had tickets and were not happy.
“The doors had a glass centre panel and they ended up breaking them so they could get into the building.”
When police captain Bill Zimmerman arrived with dozens of officers, he was confronted by pandemonium.
Gatecrashers had stormed the 9,950-seat venue and it was dangerously overcrowded.
Moondog Coronation Ball, the world's first rock concert, was staged in Cleveland in 1952 by two men whose passion for music bridged the racial divide in a segregated US
The musicians, who are thought to have only performed several songs, were ordered to stop playing as police waded into the mob. A man was stabbed in the melee.
The next morning, Jimmy Sutphin remembers entering the Cleveland Arena, which his father built, to find it strewn with whisky bottles.
John Soeder, music critic for the Cleveland Plain Dealer newspaper – which carried a front-page story on the tumultuous event the next day – says the Moondog Coronation Ball was the “Big Bang of rock ‘n’ roll”.
But it might not have been possible without two visionaries who raided the airwaves with this pulsating, insurrectionary new sound, and in doing so brought black and white kids together to dance in post-war America.
One of them was the concert’s emcee, Alan Freed. The other was Leo Mintz, owner of a music store on the fringes of Cleveland’s black community.
Leo Mintz had noticed an increasing number of white teenagers sifting through his extensive collection of rhythm and blues tracks by African-American artists.
But the singles were often a turn-off for such buyers because the industry marketed them as “race records”.
And it wasn’t just west-side white folk who viewed these juke-joint tunes as undesirable.
Terry Stewart, president of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland, says: “These songs were filled with double-entendres, lyrics like, <<she just loved my 10 inch record of the blues>>.
“Many of the church-going black families were just as upset as the white families with this music being played for their children.”
However, when Leo Mintz listened to this raucous sound – with its thumping back beat, locomotive rhythm, and infectious 12-bar blues melodies – he heard the future.
Leo Mintz convinced Alan Freed – a friend and onetime radio broadcaster from orchestral dances in Akron, Ohio – that the obscure tracks deserved some airtime.
His son, Stuart Mintz, says his father told Alan Freed the “kids are rocking and rolling in the aisles to these records, but they won’t buy them”.
Leo Mintz helped Alan Freed, then a humble sportscaster, secure a new show on the city’s WJW radio in 1951, devoted to playing this underground music.
Alan Freed would coin the term rock ‘n’ roll – an old blues euphemism for sex – to describe the tracks.
Using the on-air alias King of the Moondoggers, he would ring a cow bell, drink beer and howl in tribute as he played the records, while pounding out the beat with his fist on a phone book.
The flamboyant Alan Freed’s late-night show caused a sensation with black and white listeners alike.
Leo Mintz and Alan Freed’s logical next step was to stage a live concert featuring the edgy new acts.
Headlining the Moondog Coronation Ball that night 60 years ago was Paul Williams and his Hucklebuckers, supported by Tiny Grimes and his Rockin’ Highlanders, the Dominoes, Varetta Dillard and Danny Cobb. Tickets were $1.50.
One of the few photos from the event shows the men in flannel suits, saddle shoes and fedora hats, while the immaculately coiffed women wear dresses with pinched-in waists and high heels.
It is all a far cry from the ripped jeans, merchandise t-shirts and untamed hairstyles sported by rock fans of later years.
Terry Stewart says that when Alan Freed appeared on stage that night there was uproar.
The predominantly black audience apparently could not believe the exuberant radio personality whose show they had been tuning in to for nine months was white.
The delighted crowd “went nuts”, says Terry Stewart.
He adds: “The fact that this many people would show up for an all-black rhythm and blues event, based solely on advertising on a late-night radio show, and tear the doors off an arena to get inside, made promoters and record labels say, <<wait a minute, something’s happening here>>.”
Less well known is the reason why the Moondog Coronation Ball ended in disaster: a minor printing error.
The mistake was caused by someone forgetting to add the date to tickets issued for a follow-up ball, which Leo Mintz had set about organizing immediately after the initial one sold out.
As a result, an estimated 20,000 people showed up on the same night for the first concert – at a venue which could hold half that number.
Leo Mintz was on holiday that Friday in Florida when he was informed by an afternoon phone call of the ticket foul-up.
Stuart Mintz says: “My dad was told, <<there’s an emergency, you’d better come home right now>>, and he took a plane.
“By the time he arrived [at the Cleveland Arena] there was already a full-blown riot.
“The fire department opened up hoses on the crowd. He just tapped the cab driver on the shoulder and said, <<find me a bar>>.”
The concert that was billed on a promotional poster as “the most terrible ball of them all” had certainly lived up to the pre-show hype.
Freed narrowly escaped criminal charges, although the event’s notoriety helped propel him to stardom.
Younger generations raised on rap videos might well be perplexed at the idea that rock ‘n’ roll could have once made the authorities squirm with unease.
But this was a dozen years before the Civil Rights Act. J Edgar Hoover’s FBI would place Freed under surveillance because the records he played were deemed such a threat.
As broadcast historian Mike Olszewski says: “Back then, it seemed, the United States was always looking for new enemies.
“It was the beginning of the Red Scare. In 1948, you had Roswell and the UFO scare.
“People were always looking for a devil and rock ‘n’ roll was a devil that came right into their homes.”
Alan Freed’s downfall would be just as sudden as his meteoric rise to fame.
In 1957, the trailblazing DJ’s nationally televised rock ‘n’ roll show on the ABC network was cancelled after a black performer danced with a white girl on stage, outraging Southern affiliates.
Alan Freed’s career was finished by the payola scandal, a then-widespread practice of disc jockeys accepting gifts from promoters to play their records.
Convicted of commercial bribery in 1962, Alan Freed died of complications from alcoholism three years later, aged 43.
Though Alan Freed had been silenced, the rock ‘n’ roll genie was well and truly out of the bottle. The Moondog Coronation Ball laid the foundations for every rock gig that followed, from Woodstock to Glastonbury.
The Cleveland Arena was demolished in 1977 and an American Red Cross office block stands today at the spot where a new era of live entertainment was born.
Recalling how he came to be a bystander to the dawning of a new era on Euclid Avenue six decades ago, Jimmy Sutphin says: “Who would have thought it would be such a memorable event?”
French police hunting an Algerian-origin gunman suspected of killing seven people in southern France in two separate attacks, including Ozar Hatorah Jewish school, have surrounded his flat in Toulouse.
The 24-year-old Frenchman from Toulouse has said he belongs to al-Qaeda and acted to “avenge Palestinian children”.
Police are now negotiating with the man, who is still said to be heavily armed but has indicated he may give himself up in the afternoon.
Two police officers were injured in exchanges of fire during the raid and there are reports of a fresh blast.
The suspect’s brother is under arrest.
The suspect’s mother, who is Algerian, has been brought to the scene, but Interior Minister Claude Gueant, who is in attendance, said she had refused to become involved as “she had little influence on him”.
The minister said the suspect had made several visits to Afghanistan and Pakistan.
“He claims to be a mujahideen and to belong to al-Qaeda,” Claude Gueant said.
“He wanted revenge for the Palestinian children and he also wanted to take revenge on the French army because of its foreign interventions.”
The man shot at the door after police arrived, Claude Gueant said, injuring one officer in the knee and “lightly injuring” another.
The man has thrown one gun, a Colt 45, from a window, Claude Gueant said, but it is believed he has other weapons.
The minister said: “Our main concern is to catch him and to catch him under such conditions that he can be brought to justice.”
French police hunting an Algerian-origin gunman suspected of killing seven people in southern France in two separate attacks, including Ozar Hatorah Jewish school, have surrounded his flat in Toulouse
One official told Agence France-Presse news agency the suspect had been “in the sights” of France’s intelligence agency after the first two attacks, after which police had brought in more “crucial evidence”.
French media have linked the suspect to a group called Forsane Alizza (Knights of Pride) that was banned by Claude Gueant in January.
They also say the suspect had earlier been arrested in Kandahar, Afghanistan, for unspecified, but not terrorist-related, criminal acts and also has a criminal record in France.
Investigators report the suspect’s first name as Mohamed and that he was identified because of an e-mail message sent to his first victim about buying a scooter.
The message, sent from the suspect’s brother’s account, set up an appointment at which the soldier was killed, sources told AFP.
The man had also sought out a garage in Toulouse to have his Yamaha scooter repainted after the first two attacks. A scooter was used in all the attacks.
The house in Toulouse is a five-storey block of flats and the man is on the ground or first floor.
Police wearing helmets and flak jackets have cordoned off the area and prosecutors say other operations are under way to track down possible accomplices.
The brother was reportedly arrested in another part of Toulouse and a second brother has attended a police station, French media say.
A huge manhunt had been launched after Monday’s shooting at a Jewish school that left four people dead, and the killing of three soldiers in two incidents last week.
The funerals of the rabbi and three children killed on Monday are under way in Jerusalem.
Israeli police said they expected thousands of people to attend.
The attacker gunned down Jonathan Sandler, a 30-year-old rabbi and teacher of religion, his two young sons Arieh and Gabriel and then – at point blank range – the head teacher’s daughter, 7-year-old Myriam Monsonego, in Monday’s attack at a Jewish school in Toulouse.
Their bodies were carried out of Ozar Hatorah school on Tuesday in two black hearses and taken to a nearby airport.
A military jet then flew them to Paris, from where they were placed on a commercial flight to Tel Aviv.
French Foreign Minister Alain Juppe has accompanied the relatives of the dead to the funerals in Jerusalem.
Also on Wednesday, French President Nicolas Sarkozy is to attend a memorial service for the three soldiers killed in the two attacks last week.
All three were of North African descent. Another soldier from the French overseas region of Guadeloupe was left critically ill.
Socialist presidential candidate Francois Hollande and Marine Le Pen, the leader of the far-right Front National, will attend the memorial service in Montauban.
After Wednesday’s raid took place, Marine Le Pen said the “fundamentalist threat has been underestimated” in France.
John Henry Browne, the lawyer representing Staff Sgt. Robert Bales accused of killing 16 Afghan civilians in their homes has said there is little proof of his client’s guilt.
John Henry Browne said there were “no forensic evidence” against his client and “no confession”.
He also dismissed reports suggesting Robert Bales was having financial troubles as irrelevant to the case.
Robert Bales, 38 is being held a military detention centre awaiting charges, which are expected this week.
The killings have undermined US relations with Kabul and led to calls for NATO to speed up their planned withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan.
After meeting with Sgt. Robert Bales at a US army base in Kansas, John Henry Browne told reporters: “We’ve all heard the allegations. I don’t know that the government has proved much.”
Robert Bales is the only known suspect in the killings – despite repeated Afghan assertions that more than one American was involved.
There is no evidence in Afghan massacre suspect Sgt. Robert Bales case, says his lawyer John Henry Browne
John Henry Browne said he now plans to travel to Afghanistan to gather his own evidence.
The lawyer also responded to questions about Robert Bales’ financial history.
Robert Bales and his wife had reportedly struggled to make the payments on two properties they had bought.
It has now also emerged that – along with another man and his company – Robert Bales owed a reported $1.5 million from an arbitration ruling nearly a decade ago which found him guilty of securities fraud while he was working as a stockbroker.
John Henry Browne told Associated Press “that doesn’t mean anything”.
“Sure, there are financial problems. I have financial problems. Ninety-nine percent of America has financial problems,” John Henry Browne said.
“You don’t go kill women and children because you have financial problems.”
Robert Bales’ wife, Karilyn, has issued a statement expressing her condolences to the victims and their families and saying what reportedly took place is “completely out of character of the man I know and admire”.
John Henry Browne first met his client at Fort Leavenworth on Monday to begin preparing his defense.
The Pentagon has previously said that Sgt. Robert Bales could face charges that carry a possible death penalty.
Such a trial could take years, contrasting with Afghan demands for swift and decisive justice.
A large earthquake with a magnitude of 7.4 struck near Acapulco on Mexico’s Pacific coast on Tuesday, sending terrified workers and residents running into the streets and damaging an estimated 800 homes.
According to United States Geological Survey (USGS), the quake had a magnitude of 7.4 and put the epicentre at 15 miles (25 km) east of Ometepec, in Guerrero state.
Witnesses in the capital, Mexico City, said the tremor sent office workers rushing out onto the streets.
An estimated of 800 houses were damaged in Guerrero and Oaxaca states.
Guerrero’s governer Angel Aguirre told Milenio television that so far there were no casualties in Guerrero state or nearby Oaxaca state, adding that authorities were checking schools and public buildings near Ometepec.
The director of the country’s seismological service, Carlos Valdes Gonzalez, said that there had already been some six aftershocks and further ones could be expected in the next 24 hours.
Carlos Valdes Gonzalez said one of the aftershocks had already registered a magnitude of 5.3.
A large earthquake with a magnitude of 7.4 struck near Acapulco on Mexico's Pacific coast on Tuesday
A pedestrian bridge reportedly collapsed and crushed a microbus in Mexico City, but there were still no reports of deaths.
Office workers and residents were sent running into the streets in wealthy districts and poor neighborhoods alike.
Samantha Rodriguez, a 37-year old environmental consultant, was evacuated from the 11th floor of an office block.
“I thought it was going to pass rapidly but the walls began to thunder and we decided to get out,” she said.
Sirens could be heard across the city, and police helicopters are crisscrossing the skies.
“I swear I never felt one so strong, I thought the building was going to collapse,” said Sebastian Herrera, 42, a businessman from a neighborhood hit hard in Mexico’s devastating 1985 earthquake, which killed thousands.
Mexico City Mayor Marcelo Ebrard’s Twitter account said the water system and other “strategic services” were not experiencing problems and no damage was reported in the central or northern areas of the city.
Mobile phone networks have been affected, our correspondent says, and people have had trouble contacting their loved ones.
Gabino Cue, the governor of Oaxaca state, next to Guerrero state, said via Twitter that the quake had caused cracks in school buildings and damaged roofs in one part of the state.
The USGS said the epicentre was 11 miles (18 km) underground.
The US president’s daughter, 13-year-old Malia Obama, was on a school trip in Oaxaca, south-western Mexico. A White House official said she was safe and had never been in danger.
