France arrests 20 suspected Islamists in dawn raids

Police in France have arrested some 20 suspected Islamists in dawn raids, French media say. Several of the raids were in Toulouse, where gunman Mohamed Merah operated, but also took place in other cities. Merah, who killed seven people in three separate attacks, was buried in Toulouse on Thursday after being killed in a shoot-out with police on 22 March. Police have been hunting possible accomplices but sources said there was no direct link with the raids. Merah's brother, Abdelkader, has been charged with aiding him and police are hunting a third man said to be involved in the theft of a scooter that Merah used in all the killings. Forsane Alizza The raids were carried out by the domestic intelligence agency, the DCRI, with the help of the elite Raid police commando group, Agence France-Presse news agency reports. Continue reading the main story Analysis Christian Fraser BBC News, Paris Merah's brother Abdelkader told police that when he helped his brother steal the Yamaha T-Max scooter used in the killings there was another person in the car. His identity has not been revealed. But on Thursday they discovered a stolen Renault Clio containing parts of the motorbike and the crash helmet used by Merah 80 miles (130km) from the council house in Toulouse where he was shot dead last week. Another part of the investigation is the USB memory stick that was posted to the al-Jazeera TV channel containing the video he took of the killings. It was dropped in a post box in the Toulouse area on the day the siege of Merah's flat began, which means someone else posted it. If a third man is on the loose, it raises the possibility there is another active terrorist prepared to strike again. Several of the raids were in Toulouse, particularly the Mirail quarter, sources told AFP. But there were also raids in Nantes, which is believed to be a centre for the Forsane Alizza (Knights of Pride) group, to which Merah had been linked by some French media. It is a Salafist group that was dissolved by the interior ministry in an earlier investigation. Other arrests took place in Lyon, Marseille, Paris, Nice and Le Mans. Police sources told AFP that some weapons had been seized, including at least one Kalashnikov rifle. After Merah's killings, French President Nicolas Sarkozy ordered police to evaluate the level of danger posed by those known to sympathise with radical Islamists. Merah, 23, was buried at the Cornebarrieu cemetery in Toulouse on Thursday. His body was accompanied by around 15 men, although it was not clear who they were. Toulouse's mayor had said it was "inappropriate" for Merah to be buried there, but Algeria, where his family is originally from, had refused to accept his body. Merah died in a police assault on his flat in Toulouse on 22 March after a 32-hour siege. He had killed three soldiers in two separate attacks before shooting dead three children and a teacher at a Jewish school. Merah is said to have told police he wanted to avenge Palestinian children and to attack the French army because of its foreign interventions.

French foie gras exports hit by Spain demand drop

 

Exports of French foie gras fell 8 percent last year, mainly dampened by economic troubles in Spain, France's main export market for the delicacy, producers group CIFOG said on Wednesday. The tsunami in Japan, another major destination of French foie gras, also contributed to the fall in 2011 exports, which was mostly a drop in sales of raw foie gras. A small rise in sales within France, pegged at 1.1 percent in volume in supermarkets, however, meant that overall sales of French foie gras in 2011 were about flat, CIFOG said.

Facebook App Lets You Add Enemies Online

 

Forget friending. A new Facebook app allows users of the social network to identify and share people, places and things as “enemies” for all to see. The app, called EnemyGraph, lets you list anything with a Facebook presence — ranging from “friends,” to foods, to products, movies or books — as an enemy. Since the app launched March 15, it’s seemed to appeal especially to users with a liberal bent. Some of its most-selected nemeses so far include Rick Santorum, Westboro Baptist Church and Fox News. The app was developed by a professor and two students at the University of Texas at Dallas. Dean Terry, who directs the school’s emerging media program, helped conceptualize the project, while graduate student Bradley Griffith and undergraduate Harrison Massey built the app. Griffith said EnemyGraph has so far accumulated some 400 users. But more importantly, its creators say, press coverage has helped meet the team’s goal of sparking a larger conversation about the nature of social media and Facebook in particular. “One thing that has always struck me is the enforced niceness culture,” Terry told Mashable. “We wanted to give people a chance to express dissonance as well. We’re using the word enemy about as accurately as Facebook uses the word friend.” But the app has utility beyond simply sparking a philosophical debate, Terry adds. Researchers and marketers have long gathered information on social media users based on what they support, but at the expense of possibly overlooking another valuable data source. “You can actually learn a lot about people by what they’re upset about and what they don’t like,” Terry says. “And the second thing is that if you and I both don’t like something, that actually creates a social bond that hasn’t been explored in social media at all, except with Kony and some big examples like that.” Terry and Griffith teamed up last year to create Undetweetable, a service allowing Twitter users’ deleted tweets to be uncovered posthumously. That project gained some attention as well but Twitter quickly forced it to shut down. Terry wouldn’t be surprised if EnemyGraph meets a similar fate from Facebook. “My guess is it goes against their social philosophy and purpose,” he says. “It is a critique of their social philosophy for sure.” Do you like the EnemyGraph idea? Let us know in the comments.

Nicolas Sarkozy bans imams from entering France in fundamentalist crackdown

 

France is to ban radical Muslim preachers from entering the country as part of a crackdown after shootings by an al Qaeda-inspired gunman in Toulouse, President Nicolas Sarkozy said today. The President said he would block the entry of some imams invited to an Islamic conference next month, organised by the Union of French Islamic Organisations (UOIF). The UOIF, one of three Muslim federations in France, is regarded as close to Egypt's Islamist Muslim Brotherhood.          'I have clearly indicated that there certain people who have been invited to this congress who are not welcome on French soil,' Mr Sarkozy told France Info radio.         The crackdown follows the murder of seven people in Toulouse by Islamic extremist Mohammed Merah, 23. The gunman shot down a Rabbi, three children and three soldiers in three separate attacks before being shot dead at the end of 32-hour police siege. Following the shootings last week, Mr Sarkozy has announced plans to punish those viewing websites advocating Islamic extremism and going abroad for indoctrination or terrorist training.

Pakistani Taliban training Frenchmen

Pakistani intelligence officials say dozens of French Muslims have been training with the Taliban in northwest Pakistan. The officials said on Saturday they were investigating whether Mohamed Merah, a Frenchman of Algerian descent suspected of killing seven people in southern France, had been part of this group. Merah traveled to Pakistan in 2011 and said he trained with al-Qaida in Waziristan. He was killed in a gunfight with police Thursday in the French city of Toulouse. The officials said 85 Frenchmen have been training with the Pakistani Taliban in the North Waziristan tribal area for the past three years. Most have dual nationality with France and North African countries. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to the media.

Cheap drugs abroad could pay for break

HOLIDAYMAKERS can pay for the cost of a break in the sun by buying their prescription drugs while abroad. Legally they can purchase their prescribed drugs -- at a fraction of the cost here over the counter -- in Malaga, Marbella , Faro or Lisbon. Those on long term medication and covered by the Drug Payment Scheme, who cough up €132 a month, can particularly benefit. For example, a patient on holiday in Marbella recently bought the three main elements of her prescription. Prescribed for the treatment of high blood pressure, high cholesterol and to reduce risk of cardiovascular problems they cost her almost four times as much in Dublin as in Spain. The products -- Lipitor, Cozaar Comp and Tritace -- in their generic form came to €108.13 in Dublin for a month's supply. In Marbella the same medicines are sold under a different name for €63.72 for two months' supply. That is a saving of €152.54 for two months. On that basis a six month prescription for the three tablets would cost €648.78 in Dublin as against €191.16 in Spain -- a staggering saving of €457.62. The Irish Medicines Board and the Revenue Commissioners both confirmed that medication, prescription and non prescription, bought for personal use within the EU or outside may be brought back in to the State legally. imported They agreed that travellers are permitted to import on their person or in their baggage "a reasonable amount of such medicines for personal use". "Anyone entering the State may bring their personal medication with them and that personal medication should be no more than any amount that may be obtained on a prescription, for example up to a three months supply. "Any amount being imported above a level that would be considered to be normal personal use, could be considered to be a commercial quantity and for business purposes." This "personal use" exemption does not apply to products imported by other means, ie. in the post, by express couriers or in merchandise. Revenue said that the law of the country where you are visiting will dictate whether your Irish prescription will be accepted or whether you will require a doctor's prescription from that country. They advised it is always a good idea to have a copy of your prescription in your possession so that customs officers can verify it by contacting the dispensing pharmacy and the doctor who issued it.

France's Jihadist Shooter Was No Lone Wolf

Mohamed Merah, the Frenchman who assassinated three French paratroopers of North African background and then launched a terrible attack on a Jewish school—murdering a teacher, his two young sons and an 8-year-old girl—claimed to act for al Qaeda. Skeptics have dismissed the claim, saying al Qaeda barely functions anymore. But Merah was no "lone wolf" and did indeed bear the imprint of al Qaeda. Young and alienated, Merah had served two years in a juvenile prison for robbery. Was he rejected by French society because of his Algerian background? "He snapped," say friends. After prison, he was completely cut off from reality, said his lawyer. In fact, Merah was practically a prince in French jihadist circles. His mother is married to the father of Sabri Essid, a leading member of the Toulouse radical milieu who was captured in Syria in 2006. Essid and another Frenchman were running an al Qaeda safe house in Syria for fighters going to Iraq. In a 2009 trial that came to be known in the press as "Brothers for Iraq," they and six others were convicted in France of conspiracy for terrorist purposes. Essid was sentenced in 2009 to five years imprisonment. Family contacts could have been instrumental in setting up Merah's jihadist contacts and facilitating his travels to South Asia. Le Monde reports that the Pakistani Taliban and the Uzbek Islamic Movement trained Merah to become a killer. In 2010, he was captured in Afghanistan (reportedly by Afghan forces) and handed over to the French government, yet French media report that he was able to return to Northwest Pakistan in 2011. The French police have confirmed that Merah was under periodic surveillance in recent months. That he slipped through and was able to carry out his attacks will become a source of criticism and self-recrimination on the part of the generally efficient French police. It certainly suggests that he had help from a network. In executing his attacks, Merah did everything by the jihadist textbook. He made sure he would die a martyr's death that would be witnessed on television screens around the world. He murdered with a video camera strapped to his body, making him star and director of his own epic. He told journalists his videos would soon be uploaded. In the attack at the Jewish school Monday morning, Merah held a little girl by her hair while he paused to reload his gun. He then shot her. In a recording found in his apartment he tells another victim, a soldier: "You kill my brothers, I kill you." This is theater. The Internet was his friend. "I have changed my life . . . on video," said one of his last tweets (in French) during the siege. His account ID featured a black knight on a horse holding high the flag of jihad. He signed that last tweet "Mohamed Merah-Forsane Alizza." Forsane Alizza, or "Knights of Glory," is a France-based jihadist media organization that was banned in January by French authorities after they discovered members preparing to train in armed combat. The ban made little difference, as content was uploaded to new sites. A website using the Forsane Alizza alias is still active—and registered with a domain name registrar and Web hosting company based in the state of Washington. Two hours before the police arrived at his apartment, Merah was calling a French TV station. He appears to have had the media on speed-dial and was an active user not only of Twitter but of Facebook and YouTube. (Authorities took down his online outlets one-by-one on Wednesday.) Merah's shootings in Toulouse again shatter the illusion that counterterrorism can be 100% successful. Jihadist terrorism exploits our freedoms and opportunities in a global campaign linking foreign insurgencies and extremist activism in the West. Highly scripted and planned with the assistance of accomplices in and outside of France, Merah did not act in isolation.

France is a deeply racist country, and Toulouse will only make that worse

 

Barely had Mohammed Merah leapt from his bathroom widow in Toulouse yesterday, still blasting away with his gun, than politicians and experts were analysing just what it might mean for the President and the other candidates in the coming election. It's unseemly. It's obscene. It has precious little to do with the facts of the case, the question of religion or the future of society in France. But it is what politics is now about, as much in France as the US. And, of course, it does matter in electoral terms. Think back only two days when the gunman was thought to be a man of the extreme right, very probably a dismissed soldier, who was as eager to take his revenge on Muslims and blacks as Jews. Then it seemed as if the loser might be Marine Le Pen, the leader of the National Front, and the question was whether Sarkozy could draw some of her support to him or whether the Socialists, under Francois Hollande, would reap the benefit. Once the assassin was fingered as a Muslim with allegedly al-Qa'ida connections, however, the whole focus changed. Now it is Le Pen, despite the halt to campaigning during this time, who is on the offensive again with a rallying call to "fight this war against these politico-religious fundamentalists who are killing our Christian children, our young Christian men", and Sarkozy, already tacking hard to the right, who is caught trying to catch up. On the one hand, he needs to be statesmanlike and, as President, above it all; on the other hand, he wants to garner the emotions and the votes of those who want to use this as a good reason for reducing immigration and putting Muslims within France in their place. There doesn't seem much doubt which way Sarkozy, ever hyperactive, will turn. Even without an election, he has long been fierce in his opposition to immigration and his rejection of multiculturalism. As Interior Minister during the riots of 2005, he dismissed protesters as rabble. As President, he has urged new laws restricting the veil and halal meat. For all the public statements over the past few days on the need for national unity, France remains a deeply racist country. The threat of Muslim terror has allowed the French to transfer their resentments away from the Jewish population to the Arab one, and to feel the better for it. But the sentiments are exactly the same and made only the worse by rising unemployment and slowing growth. Mohammed Merah's trail of death will only serve to make such prejudices more publicly acceptable. Even the liberal left in France will find it hard to make him into a martyr for racism. They shouldn't be too thrown. Mohammed Merah's name may be no help, but his case is peculiar. It's not the kind of grand attack on society in the manner of the July bombings in London and which al-Qa'ida would normally seek to arouse. Instead, there remains something very personal about these killings which would belie generalisations. Had the killer survived, the right could have continued to play on the statements and information which would have come out over the coming weeks of campaigning. As it is, Merah wasn't taken alive, as the police had planned, but died in a peculiarly cinematic and unsatisfactory (for the authorities) way. The questions which will now surface will be as much about police incompetence as his support. How, given that he was on the radar of the intelligence and security forces, was he not stopped sooner? Why were the police unable to capture him in the end? Why was the knowledge of his time in Afghanistan not joined up with suspicions about him at home? It is right that these questions are asked. There is far too much talk about grander themes of race relations, ethnic differences and religious motivations, and far too little acceptance of the simple fact that these cases are uncommon, they have always occurred through history and society's best defence remains good policing, not draconian legislation. Mohammed Merah should have been caught even before his first murder. Whether you blame the failure to do so on Sarkozy as head of government, the police or Muslim extremists will no doubt be the stuff of the election in the coming weeks. It probably won't make that much difference. It will be economics, as always, not race which will probably determine the outcome. The nearest parallel to events in Toulouse is not the July 7 bombings here in the UK, but Norway. Anders Behring Breivik, who killed over 90 people in a murderous spree last summer, is a right-wing fanatic from the opposite end of the spectrum to Merah. Yet Norwegian politicians and the media made little of this in the aftermath or even during his arraignment. Instead, they worked to bring the nation together in a solemn moment of mourning. Sarkozy has the opportunity to do the same in France if he wanted to step back and up to be the voice of the French people in the way that President Clinton managed after the Oklahoma City killings in the US. One can't see him doing it. The temptations of electioneering are just too great. It can't be said that it would be any different here.

French Muslims in Paris react to death of Toulouse gunman

Muslims in France have been reacting to the death of the gunman who was killed by a police sniper during a siege at a flat in Toulouse. Mohammed Merah, 23, who claimed to have al-Qaeda training, opened fire on police commandos after they stormed into his flat at 09:30 GMT. The Frenchman of Algerian descent was wanted in connection with a spate of murders in southern France.

Toulouse shooting: killer 'was on US no-fly list'

 

Nationwide relief greeted the news that no police fatalities had been incurred in eliminating Mohammed Merah, 23, wanted in the killings of three French paratroopers, a rabbi and three children ages 4, 5, and 7 shot outside a Jewish school in Toulouse. But the authorities faced growing criticism that it should have prevented a killing spree by a known fundamentalist who was the US no-fly list and had attended an al-Qaeda training camp. Jund al-Khilafah, an al-Qaeda front organisation claimed responsibility the shootings in a statement posted on jihadist websites. "On ... March 19th, our brother Yousef the Frenchman carried out an operation that shook the foundations of the Zionist Crusaders ... and filled their hearts with terror," it wrote. "We claim responsibility for these operations," it went on, adding that Israel's "crimes ... will not go unpunished."

Whitney Houston drowned after cocaine use, says coroner

Whitney Houston's death was caused by accidental drowning, but drug abuse and heart disease were also factors, a coroner has ruled. Coroner's spokesman Craig Harvey said drug tests indicated the 48-year-old US singer was a chronic cocaine user. The announcement ends weeks of speculation over the cause of Houston's death. She was found submerged in the bath of her Los Angeles hotel room on the eve of the Grammy Awards on 11 February. In a statement, the LA County Coroner's office described Houston's manner of death as an "accident", adding that "no trauma or foul play is suspected". The cause was cited as drowning and "effects of atherosclerotic heart disease and cocaine use". Other drugs found in her blood included marijuana, as well as an anti-anxiety drug, a muscle relaxant and an allergy medication. But these were not factors in her death, the coroner's statement said. Patricia Houston, the singer's sister-in-law and manager, told the Associated Press news agency: "We are saddened to learn of the toxicology results, although we are glad to now have closure." The pop star was laid to rest at a cemetery in her home state of New Jersey after a funeral that was attended by celebrities including Oprah Winfrey, Alicia Keys, Mariah Carey and Mary J Blige. The singer, who was one of the world's best selling artists from the mid-1980s to late 1990s, had a long battle with drug addiction.

Hit by cuts, bankers run from London's square mile

 

In a small French village, nestled deep in Languedoc-Roussillon wine country, Gary Langton is putting the final dabs of paint to his bed and breakfast before the first guests arrive. It's the type of pet project many Britons dream of, though the opening of the restored 18th century silk farm, complete with heated swimming pool, is not without its stresses.   Langton, 58, faced an entirely different type of pressure as Italian bank UniCredit's global head of loan syndications and a top UK boss. He is one of a growing group of London investment bankers either turning their backs on the industry for good, switching to smaller finance boutiques or setting up their own, put off by what some see as the greater demands and diminishing rewards of their jobs at big banks. While recruitment specialists say the financial crisis has not dimmed the industry's allure for graduates, it's the fallout from 2008 and the wave of new regulation that is mainly frustrating those in senior ranks. For Langton, it was the "scare management" post-crisis, and the pressure on staff to make money despite taking less risk, and with fewer people, that prompted his departure. "There was a period of time when management teams were running around like headless chickens," he said, speaking by phone from his chambre d'hotes near the town of Uzes, surrounded by Roman ruins and some of the Mediterranean's most scenic wilderness. "There were across the board decisions that everything had to be cut by 30 percent for example, rather than a strategic look at the business." In the past year, most top investment banks, from Switzerland's UBS to Germany's Deutsche Bank, say they have embarked on precisely that: deeper, more strategic reviews of their models. But that doesn't mean the outlook is any rosier. Stricter rules on capital are forcing banks to retrench drastically in some areas like bond trading, and the end of debt-fuelled banking is also hurting returns, meaning cost-cutting is key to getting firms back on track. Return on equity at investment banks, a key measure of profitability, will drop to 6.8 percent in 2013, JPMorgan forecast last week, compared with 13.6 percent before new rules on capital and trading were introduced. This bigger picture is adding to the various smaller irritations which Langton, for one, said were already gnawing at him: years of 5:30 a.m. starts and a financial crisis that suddenly turned bankers into "the worst people in the world", causing him to pretend at dinner parties that he was a teacher. Ajit Madan, 39, a former leveraged finance banker who left Societe Generale in 2010, said the souring atmosphere within banks also made work tougher. "There was a lot of politics within banks, people knifing each other in the back because they all wanted to survive. I hear it's even worse now," Madan said. He said running Camellia's Tea House, a specialised tea shop in London's fashionable Carnaby Street set up with his sister, could be as tough as banking in terms of hours and challenges. But the attractions of that world changed post-crisis. "We were still working very, very hard but bonuses were being sucked up by strategic issues in the banks," he said. BONUSES A PULL FOR SOME While more expensive executives further up the banking food chain leave, graduates are still drawn to the sector often by the high levels of pay on offer that might allow them one day to strike out alone. The crisis, and recent scandals like an explosive public resignation letter by a former Goldman Sachs employee last week which criticised the firm's "rip-off" culture, have done little to put applicants off. Competition for places is hotting up, though this is partly as a result of cutbacks - vacancies in investment banks and funds could be down more than 40 percent for 2011-2012 compared with 2010-2011, according to an Association of Graduate Recruiters (AGR) survey. Starting salaries at investment banks and funds are still much higher than elsewhere. They stood at a median level of 38,250 pounds ($60,600) a year in the 2010-2011 recruiting season, according to the AGR, well above the 24,750 pounds on offer at accountancy firms. Cambridge economics student Marc Ramelet, 25, said a third of the 100 people on his masters course wanted to be academics, but another third were aiming for banking jobs. Pay was a key consideration. "We speak quite often about it, like 'this company did badly, they cannot pay their bonuses'. It's something that comes into the conversation quite often," Ramelet said. Even at some of the firms most obviously damaged by the crisis, like Britain's part-nationalised Royal Bank of Scotland, applications are up year on year, said its head of graduate recruitment, Mike Maddick. "We believe we pay well, and there is also a huge emphasis on the fact we train well ... we progress graduates quickly. That really counts," Maddick said. "Graduates are practical. With unemployment as it is, they are just focused on getting jobs." RBS, which implemented large cuts at its investment bank this year, may reduce intake in the division by 10-15 percent, although the bank's total graduate intake of about 700 people a year would most probably be stable in 2012, Maddick said. DISTRACTIONS AND FRUSTRATIONS Where the younger generation of graduates and those leaving their more advanced banking careers find common ground, however, is the increasing pull of the smaller, specialised investment banks or funds. More of these firms are scouring universities for post-graduate students to fill one or two positions, career centre directors said. Since 2008, it's these types of boutiques that many investment bankers have also left to join, or to set up. The exact number of moves is hard to track. But the more than 130,000 job cut plans announced last year by major U.S., European and Asia banks have been an added catalyst. Regulations have a bearing too: small partnerships are not always subject to stricter rules limiting upfront bonus cash payments, like bigger banks are. Funds can also bet with their own money, which banks in the United States will be banned from. A different mindset and focus outside the big banks is often cited as a reason for joining small firms. A new breed of merger and acquisition specialists that cropped up in the past decade, such as Moelis or Perella Weinberg, are attracting more staff, and those now setting up similar firms praise the appeal of a pure advisory model. "Within a full-service investment bank there is a temptation to use M&A advice as a marketing tool for bringing in debt or equity mandates that pay higher fees," said Kevin Pakenham, a founder of Pakenham Partners, a boutique focused on advising asset managers. Pakenham, who co-founded the firm with colleague Krzysztof Owerkowicz, said bureaucracy in larger organisations could also be "distracting and frustrating, eating up a considerable amount of emotional energy". He set up the firm last year after leaving advisory business Putnam Lovell, bought out by U.S. firm Jefferies in 2007. While Pankenham's three person operation in London's smart Knightsbridge area may seem far removed from the world of big investment banks so many have grown up in, it's still not quite as dramatic a leap as that made by Langton or Madan. And while those with an exotic entrepreneurial calling are in the minority, many more are starting to share the desire to never go back. "It's so liberating compared to what I did before," said Madan. ($1 = 0.6307 British pounds)

France siege gunman 'is dead'

 

The man suspected of killing seven people in al-Qaida-linked attacks in France is dead, the French interior minister said today. The suspect died after jumping from his apartment window after police stormed his apartment following a 32 hour standoff.  Claude Gueant says the suspect, who claims links to al-Qa'ida, jumped after police entered the apartment and found him holed up in the bathroom. Police and the suspect exchanged fire before Mohamed Merah died.  Gueant says two policemen were injured.

TWO men who have been arrested by detectives investigating the murder of crime boss Eamon 'The Don' Dunne are senior lieutenants of crime lord Christy Kinahan.

 The mobsters were picked up by armed gardai during a dawn raid at a property in the north inner city and are currently in custody at Store Street Garda Station. Sources do not believe that either is the gunman who actually killed Dunne in the gangland murder in a Cabra pub in April 2010 but they believe that the pair played a key role in organising the hit. The Herald can today reveal that gardai also planned to arrest the young criminal who they believe shot Dunne but he "has gone to ground." The north inner city gunman is a close associate of the two related men who are in garda custody today. Selling One of those arrested -- aged in his late 20s -- was mentioned by Spanish authorities in the four-page European Arrest Warrant they used to extradite 'Fat' Freddie Thompson to Spain last year. The warrant asserts explosive details about the criminal's role within the multi-million euro Christy Kinahan drugs organisation. This man, who comes from a flats complex in the city, was previously arrested by Spanish police as part of Operation Shovel -- the massive probe against Kinahan's organisation which revealed that his mob were selling shipments of drugs worth a staggering €1m every two months. The 'Fat' Freddie warrant alleges that the arrested criminal is a "member of this organisation in Ireland". The warrant claims that the criminal travelled to Malaga on May 7, 2010, to meet Christy Kinahan's son Daniel to discuss a major drugs shipment into Ireland. "Daniel was supposedly going to finance part of the shipment. A surveillance operation was launched in Malaga Airport and officers saw Ross Browning, another one of the persons under investigation, arrive at the airport," the warrant alleges. The Herald has previously revealed that Browning (28) was named in the warrant, which claims he was a driver for the Kinahan drugs organisation. Browning, from the north inner city, is a close associate of the men arrested yesterday. In January 2001, a 30-year-old, who is in custody today, was involved with Browning in the robbery of over £IR13,000 from a a Securicor van driver. Both men later received suspended sentences. Gardai believe the shocking murder of Dunne was sanctioned by Christy Kinahan who felt that the reckless behaviour of the gang boss was getting out of control. 'Dapper Don' Kinahan -- who is serving the last days of a jail sentence for money laundering in Belgium -- is regarded as the biggest drugs trafficker in the history of the Irish State.

A Nation 'Addicted' To Statins...

Dear Reader,

In the UK alone, more than 7 million people are taking cholesterol-lowering statins. This is extremely worrying when you consider the damage these over-prescribed drugs can inflict, with side effects ranging from liver dysfunction and acute renal failure to fatigue and extreme muscle weakness (myopathy).

Slowly tearing us apart

Even more concerning are the side effects that crop up after long-term use, which are often not linked to statins. For example, one study monitored the symptoms of 40 asthma patients for a year. 20 of these patients started statins at the outset of the study, while the remaining 20 did not.

The results showed that those patients on statins used their rescue inhaler medications 72 per cent more often than they had at the start of the study, compared to a 9 per cent increase in those who were not taking statins. The researchers also reported that patients taking statins had to get up more frequently at night because of their asthma and also had worse symptoms during the day...

Worsening asthma symptoms is just the beginning. More recent research has linked statins with an increased risk of developing type 2 diabetes, depression, Alzheimer's disease and dementia.

Still, doctors are very quick to reach for their prescription pads and push these drugs. There appears to be an unofficial (but widely practiced) 'statins for all' approach... especially if you are aged 50 and over.

Luckily, some mainstreamers are slowly catching on to what we've been saying for nearly a decade. In 2011, research published in the Archives of Internal Medicine drew attention to the fact that there is inadequate medical data available that proves the benefits of statins, and that many studies fail to acknowledge the most commonly reported adverse effects of statins.

The fact remains (and your doctor may still deny this) that in total, statins cause serious damage in about 4.4 per cent of those taking them, in comparison to the 2.7 per cent statin users benefiting from them... and it looks as if this message is finally getting through to medical authorities.

A case in point is simvastatin or Zocor. After being on the market for almost 3 decades and causing havoc and distress with its horrendous side effects, the American Food and Drug Administration (FDA) finally issued a warning about the use of this drug... saying that even the approved dosage can harm or even kill you!

Yep! Kill you!

All well and good

It's all fair and well and good that the FDA flagged this warning, but what's the point if doctors continue to prescribe these drugs left, right and centre?

Professor Sarah Harper, director of Oxford University's institute of population ageing, recently said that the UK's "love affair" with prescription medicine, shows how people choose to pop pills rather than follow a healthy lifestyle.

She cited the widespread use of statin drugs to 'help' protect against heart disease and lower cholesterol, instead of eating healthily, quitting smoking, reducing alcohol intake and taking regular exercise.

By all means, I applaud Prof Harper for pushing the message that living a healthy life plays a big part in preventing disease, but why blame patients for being a bunch of pill poppers when doctors hand out drugs with reckless abandon... and recommend taking preventative drugs to ever younger age groups. So in fact, the white coats should be labelled as Big Pharma's drug pushers, because they're part of the problem... especially considering that so many people put their entire trust in their doctor and would never dream of questioning their advice. Most people take what they say as gospel.

Then there's the media, inundating Joe Public with inflammatory headlines like: 'Statins could help fight breast cancer' or 'Statins can prevent infections like pneumonia'... Not to mention their reporting on botch studies showing the 'unintended benefits' of statins, like their potential to prevent pneumonia, combat diabetes, reduce the risk of oesophageal cancer, breast cancer and prostate cancer — all of these so-called benefits are of course not yet proven, and highly unlikely. Still, they reach the front pages!

So, yes we might have turned into a pill popping public, but it's the mainstream and the media that have created this monster all with the help and backing of the puppet master: Big Pharma. Because as you and I know all too well, it's all about the money. 

Shooting suspect Mohamed Merah arrest denied by French officials

 

French police continue to lay siege to an apartment block where a self-declared al-Qaeda militant suspected of committing a series of deadly attacks on troops and Jewish children is holed up. Local media had earlier reported the hours long siege in southwestern France had ended in the arrest of the suspect, identified as Mohamed Merah. Those reports have now been denied by French Interior Minister Claude Gueant. Gunfire erupted as members of the RAID police special forces team tried to storm Merah’s apartment in a residential district of Toulouse in a pre-dawn raid, and two officers were wounded, Gueant said. Officials said that Merah, a 23-year-old Frenchman of Algerian descent who has visited Afghanistan and Pakistan, bragged of being an al-Qaeda member and said he had killed to avenge the deaths of Palestinian children. About 300 police, some in bullet-proof body armor, have cordoned off an area surrounding the four-storey house where the Merah has been holed up on the ground floor. A police source had said earlier that authorities would not allow the siege to drag on indefinitely. Another source claimed Merah also planned to kill another soldier. He said the suspect “told investigators this morning that he had decided to kill a soldier in Toulouse on Wednesday morning and had already identified the victim.” Merah had been arrested for bomb making in the southern Afghan province of Kandahar in 2007 but escaped months later in a Taliban prison break, the director of prisons in Kandahar said. Kandahar prison chief Ghulam Faruq said that security forces detained Merah on Dec. 19, 2007, and he was sentenced to three years in jail for planting bombs in Kandahar province, the Taliban’s birthplace. Merah escaped jail along with up to 1,000 prisoners, including 400 Taliban insurgents, during a Taliban attack on southern Afghanistan’s main prison in June 2008.

A bomb exploded outside the Indonesian embassy in Paris today

A bomb exploded outside the Indonesian embassy in Paris today, breaking windows but causing no casualties, Chief Political and Security Minister Djoko Suyanto said.

The package was discovered by an embassy employee who removed it from the building in Rue Cortambert, in Paris's elegant 16th district, according to a French police source.

The device, which involved a gas cylinder, exploded shortly afterwards, damaging windows and cars but injuring no one, the source told Reuters in Paris.

"Indonesia's embassy in Paris has reported an explosion in one intersection near the embassy at 5.20 local (Paris) time .... It is not certain what the target of the bomb was," Suyanto said.

"The Indonesian ambassador is in the location but couldn't go near. Windows at the embassy are broken. There are no Indonesian casualties among citizens or staff working at the embassy," he told reporters.

Indonesia's Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa said he was deeply concerned about the explosion.

"We are yet to ascertain whether the explosion was actually directed against the Indonesian embassy or whether it was by coincidence that it was located ... by the embassy," he told reporters.

"We are quite a resilient lot, Indonesians, and I don't think it takes a little explosion to deter us from going on with the business of our activities. But we will be very vigilant obviously," he said.

Police hunting a gunman suspected of killing seven people in southern France have surrounded a flat in Toulouse.

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• The victims

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.

Mr Gueant, at the scene, said the suspect had shot at the door when police arrived

"He claims to be a mujahideen and to belong to al-Qaeda," Mr 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, Mr Gueant said, injuring one officer in the knee and "lightly injuring" another.

The man has thrown one gun, a Colt 45, from a window, Mr 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."

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 Mr 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.

Operations are under way to track down possible accomplices

The BBC's Hugh Schofield in Paris says 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.

Our correspondent says 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.

Memorial services

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.

Jonathan Sandler and his two oldest children were killed in the school attack

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, seven-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, Ms Le Pen said the "fundamentalist threat has been underestimated" in France.

• 11 March: Off-duty sergeant shot dead in Toulouse while waiting for a man about a motorbike sale
• 15 March: Two paratroopers shot dead and a third injured while waiting at a cash machine in Montauban
• 19 March: Three children and a teacher shot dead, and a youth injured, at a Toulouse Jewish school