Colin Randall

Police end 32-hour siege as Islamists linked to Al Qaeda say they were behind killing spree by petty criminal who shot a father, three children and three soldiers.

France's interior minister, Claude Guéant, said Mohamed Merah, aged 23 or 24, French of Algerian origin had admitted all the attacks and had said he was a member of Al Qaeda.

Claude Gueant, the French interior minister, confirms the death of Mohamed Merah without saying how he died except that he had leapt from a first floor window of his Toulouse flat and was found dead on the ground.

Nicolas Sarkozy, the president, declares a "scarlet" state of security alert in the region of Midi-Pyrénées, France's highest level, with concerns that gunman could strike again.

The school shooting which left three children and a teacher dead raises fears that a killer driven by hatred of ethnic minorities is at large.

While there are successes among French citizens of Algerian descent, their career paths are more often defined by frustration or departure a half-century after the two nations severed their colonial ties, Colin Randall, Foreign Correspondent, reports.

As many as 1.5 million people may have died in eight years of bloodshed as Algerians fought for independence from France in the 1950s.

After a series of damaging and costly scandals, the British newspaper arm of Rupert Murdoch's media conglomerate is becoming something of an albatross around News Corp's neck, and some say the octogenarian may offload it.

Euro Zone: The world's media has saturated the news with continuous reports of a failing of Greece and the looming spectre of its total collapse. But, as one long-term British resident reveals here, the inside story is often more compelling.

After UN veto, China's foreign ministry calls on world powers to send aid to Syria as the violence and bloodshed showed no sign of easing.

France's highest court overturns the acquittal of a commentator who accused a TV journalist of fabricating a report on the killing of a Palestinian child in Gaza during the second intifada.

Pamela Druckerman, an American author who lives in Paris, has inspired a parenting debate with her book observing that French children are better behaved than those elsewhere.