(image: Fox News)

UPDATE, 1.30PM ET, JAN 9: At least four hostages and the gunman holding them were understood to have been killed when French police stormed a kosher supermarket in Vincennes, to the east of Paris.

In what appeared to be a co-ordinated operation, police also moved in at a print works in Dammartin-en-Goele north of the capital, where the two suspects in Wednesday’s attack at the offices of Charlie Hebdo magazine were apparently holding a single hostage.

Meanwhile, it remains unclear whether a third developing hostage situation, at a jewelry store in Montpellier, is in any way related to events in Paris.

Follow live updates via The Guardian here,  via Reuters here, via The BBC here, via Sky News here, or via Vice News here.

UPDATE, 11.30AM ET, JAN 9: French special forces stormed two locations where hostages were being held by gunmen wanted in connection with Wednesday’s attack on the Charlie Hebdo magazine, and in the shooting of a policewoman on Thursday.

Initial reports said that the two brothers suspected of carrying out the Hebdo attack were killed at a print works in Dammartin-en-Goele north of the capital, and, according to AFP, their single hostage had been freed.

At a supermarket in Vincennes, where reportedly five hostages were being held, explosions and gunfire were heard and the hostage-taker was said to have been killed. It is uncertain exactly how many hostages have been freed.

UPDATE, 9AM ET, JAN 9: Two people are reported to have been killed in an ongoing hostage situation at a kosher supermarket in Vincennes, in the east of Paris. Five people are understood to be held. The hostage-taker is said to be a suspect in the shooting of a policewoman in the capital on Thursday morning.

UPDATE, 7AM ET, JAN 9:  The two suspects in the Charlie Hebdo attacks are holding one person hostage at a print works in the small town of Dammartin-en-Goele north of Paris. Hundreds of French special forces have surrounded the area, and there has apparently been contact between police and the men, who are reported to have said they are “ready to die as martyrs.”

There are also reports of a shooting incident and a possible hostage situation developing Friday morning at a kosher supermarket in eastern Paris.

Meanwhile, police said the shooting of a policewoman in the capital on Thursday morning was, in fact, linked to the Charlie Hebdo attacks. Initially, officials had not immediately connected the two.

(image: Reuters)

Midnight ET, Thursday: The Eiffel Tower in Paris went dark as part of France’s national day of mourning, but the country remains on edge tonight as the manhunt continues for two suspects in Wednesday’s Charlie Hebdo murders.

Thousands of armed police officers are involved in the search, which is now centered on a wooded area in the Piicardy region, an hour north of Paris. A number of people, thought to be associates of the two fugitive brothers, have been arrested.

Earlier, there were reports of attacks on mosques while a young policewoman was shot and killed and a colleague wounded south of the capital, although that incident was not immediately linked to the attack at the magazine office.

Charlie Hebdo itself, meanwhile, will publish a special edition next week, with a planned print run of 1m instead of its usual 30,000-60,000.  The edition is set to have financial backing from media groups in France and from the Digital Publishing Innovation Fund, paid for by Google. Another financial supporter, The Guardian, which has donated £100,000, also hosted a debate tonight to raise funds for the families of the victims.

On social media, the #JeSuisAhmed hashtag gained traction today, honoring Ahmed Merabet, the Muslim policeman shot on the sidewalk as the attackers made their escape.

OTHER NEWS

* POLITICS * President Obama – who paid his respects at the French embassy in Washington this evening – is expected to expand on his plan to make the first two years of community college “free, if you’re willing to work for it” when he speaks in Knoxville, Tennessee on Friday.   

California Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer announced – in rhyme – she wouldn’t run for re-election in 2016 which would shake up the state by prompting its first open Senate contest for more than 20 years. California GOP congressman Darrell Issa declined to say if he’d seek the seat, saying only “There’s been a vacancy for two decades.”

Staying with comedy, GOP congressional members will head for a retreat in Hershey PA next week, where they’ll be entertained by Jay Leno and former prime minister Tony Blair. Presumably not as a double-act. (Although after Conan O’Brien teamed up with former Labor secretary Robert Reich, anything’s possible.)

As Britain starts to gear up for voting in May, The Telegraph’s Cathy Newman has a piece on how political wives can survive general election hell.

* WORLD * Despite objections from the US, Amnesty International and other human rights groups, it was reported from Jeddah that Saudi Arabia began a series of public floggings of liberal blogger Raif Badawi. The co-founder of  a now-banned website, the Liberal Saudi Network, had been convicted of “cybercrime and insulting Islam.” (7am ET)

This June, there will be a “leap second” which could throw a spanner in the works of various computer systems. According to Wired, though, there’s a plan to get rid of it.

* MEDIA * Andy Carvin wrote about how Reported.ly covered the Charlie Hebdo story on just their third day of existence. It’s a compelling tale, with even some echoes of how CNN reported from Baghdad at the start of the 1991 Gulf War.

To follow up a point the other day about New York Times corrections, the paper has another good one, involving a whole new country. I’d still really  like to see how much additional traffic they’re generating.

* BUSINESS * Friday morning’s release of US employment data for December is expected to indicate that domestic job growth continued its recent positive trend, but total numbers of new jobs were expected to be less than November.

* CULTURE * Today would have been Elvis’s 80th birthday, the occasion marked by an auction of memorabilia at Graceland. including an acetate of his first-ever recording. Coincidentally, tomorrow would have been the 102nd birthday of former President Richard M Nixon.

(image: White House)

Today was also Kim Jong-Un’s birthday. As far as we know he wasn’t serenaded by an NBA star this year.

The 1954 “Black Beauty” guitar – the prototype for Gibson’s Les Paul range – will come up for auction on February 19 in New York.

* SPORTS * Boston was chosen by the US Olympic Committee as the US city to bid for the 2024 Olympics. The city was chosen ahead of Los Angeles, San Francisco and Washington, D.C. But not everyone is happy.

In football, Cardiff City will hold a board meeting on Friday to consider returning to its original blue shirt color. The club’s Malaysian owner, Vincent Tan, bought the club in 2010 and changed their colors to red two seasons later, arguing it would be “luckier”.