jQuery text editor (jqte) adds automatic <br> tag?

Question

For some reason jqte is automatically adding an html break at the end of the textarea and I don't know how to get rid of it.

Source:

<div>
<textarea class="about_me" name="about_me" value="">
Just some test text.&lt;br&gt;
</textarea>
</div>

From the testing I've done, these HTML entities are added whether there is anything in the textarea or not. I checked the demo on jqueryte.com/demos and these tags aren't there.

$(function() {
    $(".about_me").jqte({
        link: false, 
        unlink: false, 
        source: false, 
        rule: false, 
        sub: false, 
        sup: false,
        outdent: false,
        indent: false,
        remove: false
    });
});

The plugin version I have is 1.4.0 (latest). Even if I do br: false they still show up. I've also tested in IE and firefox but both have the issue.

EDIT :
I still don't know the cause, but I do know the <br> is added when pressing the spacebar.