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Cruiser OSR, which contains the neonicotinoid insecticide thiamethoxam, was banned for use on oilseed rape by the French Ministry of Agriculture.

Made by the Swiss agrichemical company Syngenta, Cruiser OSR is a seed treatment, which is coated onto the rape seeds.

The 137-year-old London Metal Exchange has agreed a £1.4bn takeover from Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing (HKEx) after a nine-month auction process which saw bids from InterContinental Exchange, CME Group and NYSE Nasdaq.

The deal will mean massive windfalls for the LME’s largest shareholders, JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs and Metdist, the metal brokerage owned by the LME’s former chairman Raj Bagri’s family.

Andrew Shapiro, assistant secretary of state for political-military affairs, underlined that the United States also hopes to boost sales with India, which is mulling a $1.4 billion deal for 22 Apache helicopters.

“Today, I can confirm that this is already a record-breaking year for foreign military sales. We have already surpassed $50 billion in sales in fiscal year 2012,” which ends September 30, Shapiro told journalists in a conference call.

This figure already represents a 70 percent increase over government-to-government sales by the United States in 2011, itself a record-setting year at just over $30 billion.

“Obviously the sale to Saudi Arabia was very significant,” said Shapiro, referring to a $29.4 billion deal that included 84 Boeing-made F-15SA fighter jets and upgrades to its existing fleet of 70 F-15s.

Malware analysts at the security firm Bitdefender say they’ve found a unique capability within Flame’s code that would potentially allow it to steal data even from computers that aren’t connected to the Internet or to other networked machines. Instead of simply uploading stolen data to a remote server as traditional spyware does, Flame can also move the target information–along with a copy of itself–onto a USB memory stick plugged into an infected machine, wait for an unwitting user to plug that storage device into an Internet-connected PC, infect the networked machine, copy the target data from the USB drive to the networked computer and finally siphon it to a faraway server.

Spreading itself over an infected USB device is hardly a new trick for malware. But Bitdefender’s researchers say they’ve never before seen a cyberespionage program that can also move its stolen digital booty onto the USB stick of an oblivious user and patiently wait for the opportunity to upload it to the malware’s controllers.

The warning comes in the wake of the Flame virus that targeted key computers in the Middle East, and in part used confidential Microsoft certificates in order to access machines.

According to Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer at security firm F-Secure, the claim is a logical conclusion to a series of recent discoveries and disclosures linking the US government to 2010’s Stuxnet attack on Iran and ties between Stuxnet and the recent Flame attack.

“The announcement that links Flame to Stuxnet and the conclusive proof that Stuxnet was a US tool means that Flame is also linked to the US government,” Hypponen said.

“This makes you think that this breach of Microsoft’s update system was done by the Americans and most likely a US agency, someone like the NSA,” Hypponen said. “That must make Microsoft mad as hell that its most critical system, used by 900 million of its customers, was breached by fellow Americans.”

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“They didn’t hack Microsoft, no-one has broken into Microsoft, but by repurposing the certificate and modifying it with unknown hash collision technologies, and with the power of a supercomputer, they were able to start signing any program they wanted as if it was from Microsoft. If you combine that with the mechanism they were using to spoof MS Update server they had the crown jewels,” Hypponen said.

The breach raised questions over whether Microsoft knew its software was being used for espionage, but according to Hypponen the company would not have risked damaging its reputation and was most likely a pawn in the escalating cyberdefence ecosystem.

“I don’t think Microsoft was in on it, that it was helping the US government and I don’t believe that because it looks very bad for Microsoft. I find it very hard to believe that Microsoft’s top management would have approved that,” Hypponen said.

“It’s plausible that if there is an operation under way and being run by a US intelligence agency it would make perfect sense for them to plant moles inside Microsoft to assist in pulling it off, just as they would in any other undercover operation,” he said. “It’s not certain, but it would be common sense to expect they would do that.”

“This exciting and fast-paced Research and Development project will plan, execute, and assess an Offensive Cyberspace Operation (OCO) mission,” reads a posting for a job with the bland title “Cyber Software Engineer” at defense firm Northrop Grumman. Booz Allen Hamilton seeks a “Target Digital Network Analyst” capable of “exploit development for personal computer and mobile device operating systems, including Android, Blackberry, iPhone and iPad.”

Defense contractor giant Raytheon is looking for a “Unix Attack developer.” TeleCommunications Systems wants a “Windows Attack/Exploit Developer.” NSA contractor SAIC seeks a “Red Team Developer.” All three of those companies’ job descriptions include the phrase: “analyzing software for vulnerabilities as well as development of exploit code.”